I'm enjoying this Twitter spat between Greg Gutfeld and Molly Jong-Fast (the journalist/daughter of Erica Jong who got the big scoop interview of Lisa Page).

I don’t want to call it too early, but I think @greggutfeld may have the dumbest take on my Lisa Page interview. https://t.co/b9FDjYl1c9

— Molly Jong-Fast (@MollyJongFast) December 2, 2019

Thats no rebuttal. You’re the recipient of media welfare and the drooling posts after your “scoop” prove it. https://t.co/tXdb6xJ9Jb

— GregGutfeld (@greggutfeld) December 2, 2019

We talked about the interview yesterday, here. I didn't think there was anything in it worth reading. I just was fascinated by Page's calling attention to Trump's imitation of her boyfriend's orgasm. So I'm inclined to believe Gutfeld's "You’re the recipient of media welfare and the drooling posts after your 'scoop' prove it."

And while I'm here and talking about the attention given to the imitation orgasm, let me show you this other tweet from Jong-Fast:

Honestly, I’ve watched that clip a bunch of times and I think at this point it’s done some psychological damage. https://t.co/ZGJVtGngjW

— Molly Jong-Fast (@MollyJongFast) December 3, 2019

We'd have all forgotten Trump's fake orgasm if Page and Jong-Fast hadn't dug it up and thrust it in our face yesterday. Take some responsibility.

And I think there are quite a few of us who remember having kids who suddenly needed explanations about Bill Clinton having oral sex in the White House.

But the news is the news. Keep your children away from all the news if knowing about the world as it is seems more damaging than protecting them from reality. There are so many things in the news that could hurt a youngster. Hearing a hard-breathing "I love you, I love you" from Trump is close to nothing unless the parent chooses to go graphic about it and explain what adults know. Why couldn't you just say "Oh, he's being silly and exaggerating how these 2 people were so in love with each other"?

I'm giving this my "using children in politics" tag because Hasan and Jong-Fast are just dragging children into view for their own political purposes. It's the desperate old what-about-the-children? plea.

IN THE COMMENTS: Freeman Hunt said:

Windows 10 was popping up little news notifications on our new computer, so when my ten year old logged on to math class this morning, he was greeted with the news that teens tortured a deer and a woman hung her children with a leash. The notifications are now disabled.

I think I can handle explaining Trump's impression.

Lisa Page talks like Trump.

That's the way things look at The Daily Beast.

For the nearly two years since her name first made the papers, she’s been publicly silent (she did have a closed-door interview with House members in July 2018). I asked her why she was willing to talk now. “Honestly, his demeaning fake orgasm was really the straw that broke the camel’s back,” she says. The president called out her name as he acted out an orgasm in front of thousands of people at a Minneapolis rally on Oct. 11, 2019.

Yes, it was that fake orgasm! That was the last straw! Did he really do that? I had to track down the video myself. Here (I think the "orgasm" is between 1:20 and 1:32):



Anyway, it was the headline that got me. Page is talking like Trump. I did nothing! No crime! But the "orgasm" motivation icing on the cake.

ADDED: Big Streisand effect on that fake orgasm. I had forgotten it, and now I'm watching it over and over and laughing a lot. Maybe Page thinks she can get women stirred up on her behalf, because the fake orgasm was "demeaning." But Trump was imitating Strzok, the man, so let's just see if the men of America take umbrage that Trump did a comical male orgasm.

"So we released the transcript of the call, which was so good that that crooked Adam Schiff, this guy is crooked, he had to make up a fake conversation that never happened... and he delivered it to the United States Congress and the American people."

"It was a total fraud. And then Nancy Pelosi said, 'Oh, I think the president said that.' These people are sick. I’m telling you, they’re sick. And you know what? Had they waited one day longer, they would have had the transcript of the actual call, word for word. It would’ve been perfect. Instead, they released it, they went early, they said all these horrible things. You know why? Because they never thought in a million years that I was going to release a transcript of the call."

Said Donald Trump at his Minneapolis rally last night, just a few minutes after he made up a fake conversation:

Months earlier, Peter Strzok, remember, he and his lover, Lisa Page. What a group. “She’s going to win 10 million to one. She’s going to win. I’m telling you, Peter. I’m telling you, Peter, she’s going to win. Peter. Oh, I love you so much. I love you, Peter.”

“I love you too, Lisa. Lisa, I love you. Lisa, Lisa, oh God, I love you, Lisa. And if she doesn’t win, Lisa, we’ve got an insurance policy, Lisa. We’ll get that son of a bitch out. We got an insurance policy.”

And we’re living through the insurance policy. That’s what it is. The phony Russia hoax. "Lisa, I love you.”

I've already written — approvingly — of Trump's "I love you, Lisa" routine, but I want to ask when is it okay to make up quotes and put them in the mouths of real people? Obviously, it's comedy, but it's comedy that's based on something that happened in real life, something that we may not remember exactly, and the comic exaggeration may distort memories of what really happened.

Here's my post from last week about Schiff's satirical paraphrase of Trump's phone call to the Ukrainian President. Schiff — you may remember — said:

"I’m going to say this only seven times, so you better listen good, I want you to make up dirt on my political opponent, understand, lots of it, on this and on that...."

The real-life statement by Trump was:

"The other thing, there's a lot of talk about Biden's son, Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that so whatever you can do with the Attorney General would be great. Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution so if you can look into it... It sounds horrible to me."

Nothing about asking that "dirt" be "made up." And there's a firm grounding in specific facts that were well-supported by Joe Biden's own public bragging. The more I go back to Trump's original statement, the more it seems like something a President ought to do. If you look only at Schiff's comic restatement, you can't see any of the basis for thinking what Trump did was acceptable! It sounds more like Trump wanted the President of Ukraine to put together something like the Steele dossier.

If Trump wants to take Schiff and Pelosi to task for their self-serving paraphrase of him, shouldn't he be careful about creating a dialogue like his highly amusing Page-and-Strzok shtick?

One answer is that Schiff was speaking in Congress, in his role as chair of the House Intelligence Committee, while Trump was speaking a political campaign rally. But if you think the line should be drawn there, what motivated you — neutral principles of line-drawing or a desire to find Trump right and Schiff wrong?

"Lisa, I love you!" — Trump at his comic best.

This is not the behavior of a normal person. pic.twitter.com/Iyi8Sq2rTa

— Jay Caruso (@JayCaruso) October 11, 2019

ADDED: I saw that this morning when Scott Adams tweeted it with "It's a feature, not a bug. #NotNormal." But I watched the whole speech last night. That was one of the most amusing parts, and I would prefer a longer clip.

AND: Here's the whole thing:



PLUS: With the help of this transcript, I was able to find the longer segment I wanted you to watch:



Text:

"Former FBI lawyer Lisa Page admitted... that 'the FBI was ordered by the Obama DOJ not to consider charging Hillary Clinton for gross negligence in the handling of classified information'..."

"... [Texas Republican Rep. John Ratcliffe] alleged in a social media post late Tuesday, citing a newly unearthed transcript of Page's closed-door testimony..... 'So let me if I can, I know I’m testing your memory,' Ratcliffe began as he questioned Page under oath, according to a transcript excerpt he posted on Twitter. 'But when you say advice you got from the Department, you’re making it sound like it was the Department that told you: You’re not going to charge gross negligence because we’re the prosecutors and we’re telling you we’re not going to —' Page interrupted: 'That is correct,' as Ratcliffe finished his sentence, ' -- bring a case based on that.' The document dump was part of a major release by House Judiciary Committee Republicans, who on Tuesday released hundreds of pages of transcripts from last year's closed-door interview with Page, revealing new details about the bureau's controversial internal discussions regarding an 'insurance policy' against then-candidate Donald Trump. Fox News has previously reviewed portions of Page's testimony."

Fox News reports today (about testimony from last summer).

Trump tweeted: "The just revealed FBI Agent Lisa Page transcripts make the Obama Justice Department look exactly like it was, a broken and corrupt machine. Hopefully, justice will finally be served. Much more to come!"

"In the Russian Federation and in President Putin himself, you have an individual whose aim is to disrupt the Western alliance and whose aim is to make Western democracy more fractious..."

"... in order to weaken our ability, America’s ability and the West’s ability to spread our democratic ideals.... That’s the goal, to make us less of a moral authority to spread democratic values... With respect to Western ideals and who it is and what it is we stand for as Americans, Russia poses the most dangerous threat to that way of life."

Said Lisa Page, in private testimony to a joint House Judiciary and Oversight Committee, quoted in "F.B.I. Opened Inquiry Into Whether Trump Was Secretly Working on Behalf of Russia" (NYT).

Do you think it's true that Russia poses the most dangerous threat to Western ideals and who it is and what it is we stand for as Americans — to our way of life?

I don't. I think we ourselves are the greatest threat.

ADDED: Nate Silver tweets this shot of the NYT from just before the 2016 election (note the date, October 31, 2016):



And says: "I’m not trying to be a jerk but the Times still owes its readers an explanation about what the f*** was going on with this vector of its reporting in 2016."

Then he clarifies: "NYT screwed up some shit in 2016. It’s OK. It was a hard election to cover. NYT is great. But the 'no clear link' story is literally sort of incomprehensible, in light of subsequent reporting. What happened?"