The NYT purports to show us "how" Biden did something we don't even know that he did.

This is an embarrassing headline: "How Biden Changed His Mind on Pardoning Hunter: ‘Time to End All of This’/The threat of a retribution-focused Trump administration and his son’s looming sentencings prompted the president to abandon a promise not to get involved in Hunter Biden’s legal problems."

They — the authors are Katie Rogers and Glenn Thrush — cannot know the interior of the President's mind. He may have changed what he was saying about his thoughts, but I presume that he was lying all along, for political purposes, when he said he wouldn't pardon Hunter, and I presume that he always intended to pardon him.

The phrase "How Biden Changed His Mind" is misdirection — sleight of hand. If we fall for it, we unwittingly form a belief that Biden did change his mind. He and his supporters weren't lying to us throughout the campaign season. He was weighing all the factors and the factors changed after the election. He painfully reweighed and his consistent and honorable decision-making process yielded a new result. Let Rogers and Rush detail the factors and burnish our respect for the venerable statesman.

No, no, absolutely not. Now, and only now, am I reading past the headline. So let's see:

A dark sky had fallen over Nantucket, Mass., on Saturday evening when President Biden left church alongside his family after his final Thanksgiving as president.

It was a dark and stormy night. We begin with a weather report.  

Inside a borrowed vacation compound earlier in the week, with its views of the Nantucket Harbor, Mr. Biden had met with his wife, Jill Biden, and his son Hunter Biden to discuss a decision that had tormented him for months....

Who, if anyone, is the source of this knowledge of Biden's months-long mental torment? 

Support for pardoning Hunter Biden had been building for months within the family...

Who? Jill? Hunter? Who's talking to the NYT? How is building support observed? Was this support in the mind of Jill? Was it voiced to the President? 

... but external forces had more recently weighed on Mr. Biden, who watched warily as President-elect Donald J. Trump picked loyalists for his administration who promised to bring political and legal retribution to Mr. Trump’s enemies.

Biden also "watched" as Trump got elected, but that's not mentioned. It's not politically convenient to characterize Biden as waiting to see if his party might win, lying about the pardon in an effort to produce that win, and needing a new plan when the party lost. It needs to be about Trump's bad behavior, and son of a bitch, it was!... in this dark-and-stormy-night tale the NYT is telling. 

Mr. Biden had even invited Mr. Trump to the White House, listening without responding as the president-elect aired familiar grievances about the Justice Department — then surprised his host by sympathizing with the Biden family’s own troubles with the department, according to three people briefed on the conversation.

So Trump was sympathetic, and it's here, for the first time in the article, that we see a reference to sources. It's harder to portray Trump as a vengeful narcissist when 3 sources say he sympathized with Biden. It was sympathy, we're told, in the context of Trump's complaining that Biden's administration was using criminal prosecution against Trump. Maybe that inspired Biden to see how a pardon of Hunter could be portrayed not as a political favor to Hunter but as an end to political disfavor. It sounds crazy, but we're looking for "How Biden Changed His Mind."

But the article doesn't pursue that, perhaps because it had no evidence that the meeting with Trump jogged Biden's thoughts on the subject. Or do you think the fact that Biden was smiling widely is circumstantial evidence that a wonderful new idea had arisen?

The next thing in the article is this:

But it was Hunter Biden’s looming sentencings on federal gun and tax charges, scheduled for later this month, that gave Mr. Biden the final push....

The final push. So we were supposed to see the Trump meeting as a push? This is a long article, and it purports to tell us "How Biden Changed His Mind," but there was no elaboration of "how" in that bit about the meeting with Trump. Now, I'm wondering if Trump cleverly played Biden somehow? The Times had 3 sources about the conversation and we got one unenlightening sentence.

But there is much more to the article after that introduction. We're told the NYT spoke with "a half dozen people close to the president and his family," but not told who they are or anything about how they could have access to Biden's mind and why they should be trusted to tell the truth.

When the president returned to Washington late Saturday evening, he convened a call with several senior aides to tell them about his decision. “Time to end all of this,” Mr. Biden said, according to a person briefed on the call....

That's says nothing about how or when Biden decided to pardon Hunter, only about the timing of the action. 

Mr. Biden’s decision has tarnished a storied public legacy that began more than 50 years ago....

Here's a good place for elision. 

Hunter Biden’s decision to plead guilty on the tax charges — after a weeklong gun trial in Delaware in June that rehashed the family’s darkest days — had further embittered Mr. Biden....  [who] began to realize there might not be any way out beyond issuing a pardon. It appears that there was never serious consideration of anything short of a full pardon, such as a commutation of his sentence, they said.

Was there any serious consideration of restricting the full pardon to the gun and tax charges? The article doesn't mention the sweep of the pardon Biden gave, covering every possible federal crime in a 10-year period, such as the oft-alleged corrupt dealings with Ukraine and China!  

For his part, Hunter Biden was hardly shy about telling the people around him that he wanted — needed — a pardon, although it is unclear how often he had discussed the matter directly with his father before this past week....

You've got sources. What did he say? Did he threaten to do drugs again and yell about how it would all be dad's fault? Did he say he's writing a memoir that will destroy Joe's reputation forever? Did he threaten to offer his testimony to Trump officials about Joe's involvement in corrupt dealings with Ukraine and China? You're inviting your readers to visualize this scene. That's what I'm seeing.

And here's a hint that the corrupt dealings were part of the discussion:

While both father and son expressed anger over the yearslong effort by Republicans to link Hunter Biden’s questionable foreign business consulting to the president — the unproven “Biden crime family” narrative — they were almost equally contemptuous of the prosecutors who aggressively pursued both cases....

The door was cracked open for half a sentence, then quickly shut.

The statement that followed from Mr. Biden on Sunday offered a window into the mind-set of an aggrieved president who, in the end, could not separate his duty as a father from his half century of principled promises as a politician....

The most comforting possible narrative is chosen! That's the answer to how — how Biden "changed" his mind. He's just too devoted a father — to his duty as a father. Surely, you won't subtract very much from the value of his half century of principled promises as a politician!

I've read the whole thing now, and the NYT hasn't rebutted my presumption that Biden was lying all along, for political purposes, when he said he wouldn't pardon Hunter. And I need to know much more about the 10-year sweep of the pardon, covering all federal crimes, and how that connects to Joe Biden's own possible corruption. Don't just label that "unproven." Investigate it!

ADDED: I just listened to this morning's episode of the NYT "Daily" podcast, and it is much better. The guest is the NYT reporter Peter Baker. Excerpts:

I think obviously the only thing that's changed between June... and December when he gives this pardon, is the election. And you can look at it a couple of different ways. You could look at it in the way of him not being honest in the summer. That he really was in fact considering this, but didn't want to say before an election because it would be politically damaging. And only after the election does he admit that in fact he is going to use his extraordinary power for his son. Or — and this may be an and/or — you can also look at it as waking up to the reality of a Trump-run Justice Department in which this new president is promising retribution and specifically to go after Hunter Biden and a president who's on the way out thinking, I'm not going to let that happen. I'm not only going to pardon him for this tax and gun charges. I'm going to protect him from the next guy who's making very clear he's going to use the FBI for retribution....

[In his statement announcing the pardon, Biden] talks about the current prosecutions that his son has faced being unfair and selective. He doesn't say the other part... which is that he is guarding against politicization of the Justice Department by his successor. Right? He could have framed it that way, but he didn't. But the net effect of what he did by making it a 10-year sweeping pardon for any and everything that his son might have done does have that effect. And it does tell you what was probably going through his mind when he decided to issue the pardon.

What Peter Baker says was "probably going through his mind" is what I was saying Rogers and Thrush left out of their "How Biden Changed His Mind" article.

"[Thomas Matthew Crooks] was a straight A student. He participated in class discussions. He truly excelled in science and math and...."

"... was also known to be very competent working with technical stuff and computers. But he was also kind of isolated and quiet. People say he did not have a large circle of friends and he had virtually no social media presence.... He was online playing video games. And also he did a lot of searches.... he searched famous politicians. He, in addition to President Trump, he searched Joe Biden, but he also searched Merrick Garland, the Attorney General and Christopher Wray, the FBI director. And he looked up the dates of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago along with dates of Trump rallies. And he also seems to have looked into the British royal family.... They have not found a manifesto and they didn't even find any sort of political paraphernalia in his room. So there's a sense, I think, among investigators that he was really interested in famous people more than pursuing any kind of a partisan path.... With the caveat that investigators might find some connection, he looks a lot like the alienated young men that have been responsible for school shootings and other mass shootings.... In many of these shootings we've learned to accept some level of ambiguity. It's less about finding one cut and dried motive than a set of circumstances in a person's life. And I think that's where we're headed on this one."

Says Glenn Thrush, interviewed on today's episode of the NYT "Daily" podcast, "How the Secret Service Failed to Protect Trump."

Thrush does have that caveat — he says it twice in the interview — that investigators may find something more, but you see how a lone gunman theory emerges: He was another one of those isolated, alienated young men. It wasn't about ordinary political partisanship. He was looking for famous people, looking for fame. We'll probably never really know and will need to accept some level of ambiguity... that's where we're headed on this one.

Nothing is inconceivable after it happens. What is the thought you don't want to think that would make it conceivable?

Let me quote one more thing from the new episode of "The Daily" podcast, "The Attempted Assassination of Donald Trump." 

The reporter Glenn Thrush talked about the forthcoming investigation of the security provided to Trump:

I think this is going to be regarded as one of the darkest days in the history of the Secret Service. Now, all of us who have covered the White House have traveled with agents — tremendously high level of professionalism. And the job is difficult, bordering on impossible at times, but allowing someone to have a clear firing line to a major presidential candidate in the middle of this kind of highly polarized environment is frankly inconceivable.

That seems to demand a link to the "inconceivable" montage from "The Princess Bride" — the one that ends with "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."

Allowing the clear firing line is not inconceivable. In fact, nothing is inconceivable after it happens. But maybe it was inconceivable before it happened. Yet even then, I think it was only inconceivable to those who chastely excluded ugly thoughts from their lovely mind. Knowing that it happened, now you can't turn away. You must find the additional elements to the story that make it make sense.

Thrush adds that "the FBI and folks at the Department of Justice were fairly unvarnished in private, in their criticism of the way that the Secret Service planned this." We need "a significant investigation." Obviously. Who can be trusted? I'll bet we never learn what really happened — why the Secret Service did not secure that rooftop.

How quickly Trump "pivoted to a complete understanding of what the image was, what the moment meant..."

I'm listening to the NYT reporter Glenn Thrush on the new episode of "The Daily" podcast, "The Attempted Assassination of Donald Trump."

And the thing I found most extraordinary, having covered Trump on and off all these years is how quickly — when he realized that he was physically okay — that he pivoted to a complete understanding of what the image was, what the moment meant politically. Right? And, and there's just this extraordinary moment of defiance where he balls his fists and the crowd starts to chant "U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A!." 

I just can't emphasize how extraordinary that was. And just like he had this instinct that this may have been a horrific event, but he was somehow seeing it as a political one. He was making use of it and, and really connecting with the people at the rally.

Somebody who worked with Trump for many years said this to me a long time ago. A lot of other politicians play the music. They can read the notes, Trump can hear the music. And that was one of those moments where he intuitively understood the moment, understood the image, understood the sound, and behaved in a way that maximized his position going forward. It was really, really something else.

Trump takes whatever comes to him and uses it as material. He did it in an instant, immediately after a close brush with death. Now, he has a longer but still short space of time before he gives his convention speech. What music is he hearing?

Is he Trump, the changed man, or Trump, the defiant one, same as ever?

Not only did he have a near-death experience — with all the potential for real spiritual change as well as the opportunity to appear dramatically changed — but he also has a new near-certainty that he will win the election, and with that comes an opportunity to speak in presidential terms, bringing us together... and leaving the Biden campaign in the dust... in the embarrassing tatters of its Trump-is-Hitler theme.

"Time will tell whether Mr. Garland and Ms. Monaco made the right calls in the period before they turned the investigation over to Mr. Smith..."

"... who within eight months brought not only the election-case indictment but the separate charges against Mr. Trump for mishandling classified documents. But like many before them, Mr. Garland and his team appear to have underestimated Mr. Trump’s capacity for reinvention and disruption, in this case through delay...."

I'm reading this long NYT article by Glenn Thrush and Adam Goldman, "Inside Garland’s Effort to Prosecute Trump/In trying to avoid even the smallest mistakes, Attorney General Merrick B. Garland might have made one big one: ending up in a race against the clock."

That's a free-access link. I only get 10 of them a month, and I'm selecting this one so you can do your own reading and help me answer the questions I had when I saw this as the top news article on the front page of the Times today. What are they trying to do with this article and why now? It feels like a pre-post-mortem to me.

"A grim Donald J. Trump leaned back from the defendant’s table inside a jammed 13th-floor courtroom in Miami on Tuesday, jaw set, arms crossed, his back muscles tensing visibly under his dark suit jacket."

I feel like I'm reading the first line of an old dime novel.

But, no, it's the first line of the NYT front-page story, "In Court, a Tense Trump and a Poker-Faced Smith Finally Cross Paths/The former president and the special counsel were 20 feet from each other. But they exchanged not a word during their first, nearly hourlong encounter" (by Glenn Thrush).

Does Trump — a 77-year-old overweight man — really have back muscles that do things that are visible through his suit jacket?

Isn't it wonderful that cameras are banned in the courtroom forcing journalists to paint a picture in words?

"Mr. Trump’s body language in the courtroom suggested he understood the gravity of the situation. A former president who thrives on being in control seemed uncomfortable with having so little as a defendant...."

All you can do is imagine how he feels. How does any criminal defendant feel? Is it unseemly to dwell on such things?

This sentence conflates too much.

Let me screenshot this little squib from the upper left corner of the NYT website:

Clicking on that doesn't get me to more context, but I'll trust the reporting that Trump's legal team is presenting a wider perspective in which all 3 criminal matters merge into one story of politically motivated persecution. But Thrush puts too many things in one sentence: 1. By using the word "wants," he makes an assertion about the inside of the lawyers' head, 2. By using the word "conflate," he's inserting his own opinion. The lawyers don't want to "conflate"!

"The federal prosecutors working on the case watched [Cassidy Hutchinson's] appearance before the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, riot and were just as astonished..."

".. by her account of former President Donald J. Trump’s increasingly desperate bid to hold on to power as other viewers. The panel did not provide them with videos or transcripts of her taped interviews with committee members beforehand, according to several officials, leaving them feeling blindsided. The testimony from the aide... came at a critical moment in parallel investigations that will soon converge, and possibly collide, as the committee wraps up a public inquiry geared for maximum political effect and the department intensifies a high-stakes investigation aimed at securing airtight convictions. Committee members have repeatedly suggested that Attorney General Merrick B. Garland has not moved fast enough to follow up their investigative leads. But for reasons that are not entirely clear... members have resisted turning over hundreds of transcripts until they are done with their work...."

From "Hutchinson Testimony Exposes Tensions Between Parallel Jan. 6 Inquiries/That the House panel did not provide the Justice Department with transcripts of Cassidy Hutchinson’s interviews speaks to the panel’s reluctance to turn over evidence." (NYT).

Something doesn't fit together! The NYT says the reasons "are not entirely clear." That's putting it mildly! 

I did put an ellipsis after that phrase, and I don't want to seem as though I'm withholding something insightful the reporters —  Glenn Thrush, Luke Broadwater and Michael S. Schmidt — might have said. 

Here's their sketching out of the possibly reasons that may be lurking inside the unclarity: 1. "classic Washington bureaucratic territorialism," 2. "the department’s unwillingness to share information," and 3. "the desire to stage-manage a successful public forum."

Something's amiss. Let's brainstorm some less mushy reasons. I invite you to speculate about the motives and to put it as clearly as you can or as brutally as you wish. 

"A key to Mr. Biden’s relevance as vice president was his willingness to take jobs nobody else wanted."

"In early 2014, as others on Mr. Obama’s team raced to finish big-splash deals with Cuba and Iran, Mr. Biden told the president he wanted to take on three of the most unappetizing foreign-policy tasks left undone: containing the Islamic State, curbing immigration from Central America and keeping Russia from devouring Ukraine.... Mr. Biden applied his Amtrak charm to local players like Ukraine’s embattled president, Viktor Yanukovych, with limited effect. Former White House aides recall watching an agitated Mr. Biden ducking in and out of a secure phone booth outside the situation room in early 2014, trying to reach Mr. Yanukovych on his cellphone. 'Where the hell is this guy?' he kept asking, before learning that Mr. Yanukovych had fled Kiev, ultimately for Russia, as huge street protests erupted against his regime’s corruption and his pivot away from Europe and toward Moscow. Mr. Putin then rushed in, annexing Crimea and backing paramilitaries who invaded the country’s east.... Things seemed to be looking up in May 2014 with the election of Mr. Poroshenko, an oligarch who billed himself as a reformer. At first, the vice president’s hard-edged messages to him on corruption were coated with kibbitz — demands accompanied by Bidenesque inquiries like whether the puffy-eyed president was getting enough sleep, aides recalled. Within months, though, the State Department began suspecting that the office of Mr. Poroshenko’s first prosecutor general was accepting bribes to protect Mykola Zlochevsky, the oligarch owner of Burisma Holdings, the gas company where Hunter Biden was a board member.... The prosecutor general was fired soon after. But it wasn’t long before the new prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, was drawing allegations of corruption, including from State Department officials who suspected he was shaking down targets and intentionally slow-walking investigations to protect allies. Mr. Giuliani has claimed, without evidence, that Mr. Biden’s push to oust Mr. Shokin was an attempt to block scrutiny of his son’s actions...."

From "What Joe Biden Actually Did in Ukraine" by Glenn Thrush and Kenneth P. Vogel (at MSN.com and originally in the NYT).

That "without evidence" — in "Mr. Giuliani has claimed, without evidence..." — would make more sense to me if the same words were used when people are imagining Trump's intentions based on something that we know he did.

We know what Trump said in his Ukraine phone call, but we continually hear that's strong evidence that he was using U.S. monetary aid to bribe Ukraine into manufacturing dirt on his political opponent to serve his personal interests.

Why don't they say people only claim that without evidence? We have evidence of Biden's statements and activities, but we don't know what was in his head, but he could have been motivated by a desire to cover for his son. That's an inference you could make from the evidence, and it's always hard to prove what's inside somebody's head.

I'd just like to see a consistent approach to talking about other people's thoughts. You could say "without evidence" whenever you're making an inference about thought from the evidence that we do have. Or you could make inferences from the evidence and just speak about them as if the inferences are evidence.

Both of those approaches are bad, and I know damned well that nobody understanding the choice and wanting to be consistent and neutral would pick either option. What I want is clear speech about what evidence there is, the need to make inferences from the evidence, which inferences are stronger, and what we should do when there are different possible inferences.

The NYT decides, "based on individual circumstances," that not firing Glenn Thrush is "an appropriate response."

I'm finally forcing myself to read "Glenn Thrush, Suspended Times Reporter, to Resume Work but Won’t Cover White House" (at the NYT).

The New York Times said on Wednesday that Glenn Thrush, one of the paper’s most prominent political reporters, would remain suspended until late January and then be removed from the team covering the White House after he faced allegations of inappropriate sexual behavior....

[Dean Baquet, the executive editor] said Mr. Thrush was undergoing counseling and substance abuse rehabilitation on his own and that he would receive training “to improve his workplace conduct.”

“We understand that our colleagues and the public at large are grappling with what constitutes sexually offensive behavior in the workplace and what consequences are appropriate,” Mr. Baquet added. “Each case has to be evaluated based on individual circumstances. We believe this is an appropriate response to Glenn’s situation.”

I agree with that statement at the high level of abstraction where it is made, but it's a high-level-abstraction statement about how decisions should be made at a low level of abstraction, looking at the individual particularities. What confidence do I have that the NYT has any standards at all and that they will be applied fairly and consistently?

I'm looking at the specific factors without seeing analysis of what exactly was key. There was an article (in Vox) containing accusations by 4 women, only one of whom was named. The women said Thrush subjected them to "unwanted kissing and touching."

Three of the women described encounters that occurred when Mr. Thrush was working at Politico. One described an incident that occurred in June. None of the women cited in the article worked at The Times.

So... is it the totality of the circumstances, considering all the factors including the number of alleged incidents, the severity of the alleged actions, when they took place, whether the alleged victims are employees of the same company, how important the accused is to the employer, and the submission to counseling? Is that what the NYT is doing and what the NYT would recommend to other employers dealing with sexual harassment cases?

How does the NYT know what Trump does in his bedroom when he wakes up in the morning?

I'm reading "INSIDE TRUMP’S HOUR-BY-HOUR BATTLE FOR SELF-PRESERVATION/With Twitter as his Excalibur, the president takes on his doubters, powered by long spells of cable news and a dozen Diet Cokes. But if Mr. Trump has yet to bend the presidency to his will, he is at least wrestling it to a draw."

The article — by Maggie Haberman, Glenn Thrush, and Peter Baker — says it's based "on interviews with 60 advisers, associates, friends and members of Congress." But that doesn't mean every stated fact has 60 sources. Who was in the bedroom? The most logical guess is that the report comes from Trump himself:

Around 5:30 each morning, President Trump wakes and tunes into the television in the White House’s master bedroom. He flips to CNN for news, moves to “Fox & Friends” for comfort and messaging ideas, and sometimes watches MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” because, friends suspect, it fires him up for the day.

Energized, infuriated — often a gumbo of both — Mr. Trump grabs his iPhone.

So first he turns on the TV, watches it until he gets excited, and then he grabs his iPhone? Personally, I begin by grabbing my iPhone — oh, sometimes I just pick it up — and I read the news, probably the NYT, until feel so inspired to blog that I jump out of bed. Just kidding. I don't jump out of bed. And, really, who "jumps" out of bed in real life? But it's what everyone does in writing, just like they "grab"* their iPhone.

Anyway, I believe that when Trump wakes up, he turns on the TV and uses it to orient himself to the morning. Is he looking for something precise, like "news" from CNN, "comfort" from Fox, and "fire" from MSNBC — and in that order? "Friends suspect"! Well, I suspect some poetic license is taken there, but the reporters have deniability: They're passing along the suspicions of "friends." How many friends — all 60? What could they know of the order Trump flips through the news channels, what he's seeking on each of the channels, the feelings that actually arise — a "gumbo" of energy and fury! — and whether those feelings impel his famous fingers to the small electronic device.

Sometimes he tweets while propped on his pillow, according to aides.

Does he really tweet from the iPhone? That takes dexterity... or willingness to use speech-to-text. I never do that. I have to leap out of bed — literally hurtle myself out — to get to a real computer with a good keyboard, not just to make typing easier, but to feel better grounded in the real world. But then, I am clinging to the edge of reality in my remote outpost in Madison, Wisconsin, and President Trump, even propped on his pillow, is in the White House, and when he turns on the TV, on multiple channels, people are talking about the fact that he's in the White House. I'm sure he feels grounded. Or insane. One or the other.

But that gumbo, I want to talk about the gumbo. I know HabermanThrushBaker are using "gumbo" to mean "stew," but "stew" is well established to mean "A state of excitement, esp. of great alarm or anxiety." The OED has that meaning for "stew" going back to 1806, whereas "gumbo" only means okra, the "soup thickened with the mucilaginous pods of this plant," something mud-related, and "A patois spoken by black people and Creoles in the French West Indies, Louisiana, Bourbon, and Mauritius." Yes, metaphor can take you beyond those meanings, but why express contempt for Trump by using a word associated with black people?

Other times he tweets from the den next door, watching another television. Less frequently, he makes his way up the hall to the ornate Treaty Room, sometimes dressed for the day, sometimes still in night clothes, where he begins his official and unofficial calls.

So the man walks down the hall, possibly in his pajamas. Or what are we talking about here — "night clothes"? "Quite undress'd, with only Night-cloaths on my Head, and a loose Morning Gown wrapt about me." I'm back to reading the OED. That quote is from the 1722 novel "Moll Flanders," by Daniel DeFoe. I'm just going to picture Trump in pajamas and a bathrobe. Maybe they didn't want to say "bathrobe" because there are too many bathrobes in the news lately. (I see a Slate article from last month, "Ban Men's Bathrobes.")

Back to the NYT article:

As he ends his first year in office, Mr. Trump is redefining what it means to be president. He sees the highest office in the land much as he did the night of his stunning victory over Hillary Clinton — as a prize he must fight to protect every waking moment, and Twitter is his Excalibur. Despite all his bluster, he views himself less as a titan dominating the world stage than a maligned outsider engaged in a struggle to be taken seriously, according to interviews with 60 advisers, associates, friends and members of Congress....

But that is the way they portray him in the news —  a maligned outsider engaged in a struggle to be taken seriously. I don't need 60 insiders to explain that to me. It's an accurate picture of the media. Now, you may say, he just shouldn't watch the TV, shouldn't pay attention to media, should let media do its thing and stick to what's conventionally presidential — ignore what's being said about him.

Before taking office, Mr. Trump told top aides to think of each presidential day as an episode in a television show in which he vanquishes rivals. People close to him estimate that Mr. Trump spends at least four hours a day, and sometimes as much as twice that, in front of a television, sometimes with the volume muted, marinating in the no-holds-barred wars of cable news and eager to fire back.

Don't fight back. Be above it all. Remember how well that worked for George W. Bush? But that's not Trump. I can see why he uses Twitter. He's a master at Twitter, keeping the media honest (or at least looking as dishonest as it is (or might be)). Maybe you think he shouldn't stoop to things like this:

.@DaveWeigel @WashingtonPost put out a phony photo of an empty arena hours before I arrived @ the venue, w/ thousands of people outside, on their way in. Real photos now shown as I spoke. Packed house, many people unable to get in. Demand apology & retraction from FAKE NEWS WaPo! pic.twitter.com/XAblFGh1ob

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 9, 2017

But I don't believe that sort of thing takes much time, just like I don't believe that having a muted TV running in the background for 8 hours means he's spending 8 hours watching TV.  I read Trump's Twitter feed. Some days there's nothing. Some days there is one thing. Occasionally, he spreads out and drops 4 or 5 tweets. How much time does that really take? It might save time, because instead of feeling irritated and distracted by some stupid news report (e.g., Weigel's "phony photo") and involving somebody else in doing something about it, Trump spends probably one minute typing out a tweet. Efficient, effective. The media would, I'm sure, prefer to filter his message through their own template, replete with naysayers and qualifications. But Trump leaps over the media. He springs. He vaults.

Yes, yes. Excalibur. I haven't talked about Excalibur....

__________________

* "Grab" is an evocative word in anti-Trumpiana, because of "Grab ’em by the pussy. You can do anything."

"The huntresses’ war cry — 'believe all women' — has felt like a bracing corrective to a historic injustice."

"It has felt like a justifiable response to a system in which the crimes perpetrated against women — so intimate, so humiliating and so unlike any other — are so very difficult to prove. But I also can’t shake the feeling that this mantra creates terrible new problems in addition to solving old ones. In less than two months we’ve moved from uncovering accusations of criminal behavior (Harvey Weinstein) to criminalizing behavior that we previously regarded as presumptuous and boorish (Glenn Thrush). In a climate in which sexual mores are transforming so rapidly, many men are asking: If I were wrongly accused, who would believe me? I know the answer that many women would give — are giving — is: Good. Be scared. We have been scared for forever. It’s your turn for some sleepless nights.... I believe that the 'believe all women' vision of feminism unintentionally fetishizes women. Women are no longer human and flawed. They are Truth personified. They are above reproach. I believe that it’s condescending to think that women and their claims can’t stand up to interrogation and can’t handle skepticism. I believe that facts serve feminists far better than faith. That due process is better than mob rule."

This is an excellent NYT op-ed — "The Limits of 'Believe All Women'" by Bari Weiss, and I'm sorry I didn't catch it when it was first published, on November 28th. Why am I reading it this morning? Because I did a search of the NYT archive for the name "Glenn Thrush." (See it in there: "behavior that we previously regarded as presumptuous and boorish (Glenn Thrush).")

Why was I searching for the name "Glenn Thrush"? Because I remembered that the NYT reacted to the allegations about him by suspending him. (Here's the NYT announcement of that on November 20th.) Yet I see his name on  a big NYT article about Trump that went up last night "INSIDE TRUMP’S HOUR-BY-HOUR BATTLE FOR SELF-PRESERVATION/With Twitter as his Excalibur, the president takes on his doubters, powered by long spells of cable news and a dozen Diet Cokes. But if Mr. Trump has yet to bend the presidency to his will, he is at least wrestling it to a draw."

I am going to blog about that article in the next post, so please don't comment on the details of what's inside that article in this comment thread. Please pay attention to Bari Weiss's excellent op-ed, which is similar to some of what I said in my December 8th post "How the Franken & Franks resignations will, I'm afraid, end up hurting women."

The Weiss line I most wish I'd written is: "I believe that the 'believe all women' vision of feminism unintentionally fetishizes women."

And feel free to talk about how Glenn Thrush got unflushed.

ADDED: Now, I see the note at the bottom of the long article: "Glenn Thrush contributed to this article before he was suspended pending the result of an investigation into allegations of inappropriate behavior." So, he's still in exile.

"Many of the male journalists who stand accused of sexual harassment were on the forefront of covering the presidential race between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump."

"Matt Lauer interviewed Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Trump in an official 'commander-in-chief forum' for NBC. He notoriously peppered and interrupted Mrs. Clinton with cold, aggressive, condescending questions hyper-focused on her emails, only to pitch softballs at Mr. Trump and treat him with gentle collegiality a half-hour later. Mark Halperin and Charlie Rose set much of the televised political discourse on the race, interviewing other pundits, opining themselves and obsessing over the electoral play-by-play. Mr. Rose, after the election, took a tone similar to Mr. Lauer’s with Mrs. Clinton — talking down to her, interrupting her, portraying her as untrustworthy. Mr. Halperin was a harsh critic of Mrs. Clinton, painting her as ruthless and corrupt, while going surprisingly easy on Mr. Trump. The reporter Glenn Thrush, currently on leave from The New York Times because of sexual harassment allegations, covered Mrs. Clinton’s 2008 campaign when he was at Newsday and continued to write about her over the next eight years for Politico. A pervasive theme of all of these men’s coverage of Mrs. Clinton was that she was dishonest and unlikable.... It’s hard to look at these men’s coverage of Mrs. Clinton and not see glimmers of that same simmering disrespect and impulse to keep women in a subordinate place...."

From "The Men Who Cost Clinton the Election," by Jill Filipovic in the NYT.

"The New York Times said on Monday that it was suspending Glenn Thrush, one of its most prominent reporters..."

"... after he was accused of inappropriate sexual behavior," the NYT reports.

The move came after the website Vox published a report containing allegations from four female journalists that Mr. Thrush, who was hired by The Times in January to cover the Trump administration, had acted inappropriately toward them. Mr. Thrush was a star reporter at Politico before joining The Times....

The women cited in the Vox article described Mr. Thrush’s behavior as including unwanted kissing and touching. Three of the women were not identified by name. The fourth, Laura McGann, wrote the article, which was presented in the first person.....

ADDED: Excerpt from the Vox piece (by Laura McGann):

I started to think maybe I shouldn’t be in journalism if I couldn’t hang in a tough newsroom. I found myself on edge, nervous and anxious all the time. I started to believe I had brought this all on myself.

In the course of reporting this story, I was told by a male reporter who’d worked at Politico at the time that my instinct was right. He said that the day after that night at the bar, Thrush told him about the incident, except with the roles reversed. I had come onto him, the reporter said Thrush told him, and he had gently shut it down....

The source said that Thrush frequently told versions of this story with different young women as the subject. He would talk up a night out drinking with a young attractive woman, usually a journalist. Then he’d claim that she came onto him. In his version of these stories, Thrush was the responsible grown-up who made sure nothing happened....

"While Mr. Kelly has quickly brought some order to a disorganized and demoralized staff, he is fully aware of the president’s volcanic resentment about being managed..."

"... according to a dozen people close to Mr. Trump, and has treaded gingerly through the minefield of Mr. Trump’s psyche. But the president has still bridled at what he perceives as being told what to do. Like every other new sheriff in town Mr. Trump has hired to turn things around at the White House or in his presidential campaign, Mr. Kelly has gradually diminished in his appeal to his restless boss. What is different this time is that Mr. Trump, mired in self-destructive controversies and record-low approval ratings, needs Mr. Kelly more than Mr. Kelly needs him. Unlike many of the men and women eager to work for Mr. Trump over the years, the new chief of staff signed on reluctantly, more out of a sense of duty than a need for affirmation, personal enrichment or fame."

From "Forceful Chief of Staff Grates on Trump, and the Feeling Is Mutual" by Glenn Thrush and Maggie Haberman in the NYT.

A dozen people close to Trump talked to the NYT reporters. That alone is interesting.