Glenn Greenwald and other anti-anti-Trump "lefties" are right-wingers

[erimir]

This is just gonna be the place for cataloguing the evidence that Glenn Greenwald and other anti-anti-Trump "lefties" are basically just right-wingers who constantly engage in bad faith and hypocrisy.

Feel free to add shit about Matt Taibbi and other people who are nominally on the left but seem to spend most of their time attacking Democrats and defending Republicans, often defending the GOP with right-wing arguments, or even more ludicrously, asserting that the GOP is actually the one on the left on certain issues (a la Greenwald spending years assuring us that Rand Paul was more committed to civil rights than the Democrats, only for Rand Paul to roll over and endorse nearly every Trump move that violated his supposed libertarian principles). But really, in the past couple years a lot of them have moved towards having generically right-wing opinions and making generically right-wing arguments.

Here are some to start:

Greenwald: Stacey Abrams refusing to concede that Kemp won a fair election given voter suppression in Georgia, but not legally contesting the election... this is the same as Trump trying to coerce state elections officials to "find" extra votes, suing to have legitimate votes thrown out, calling the election rigged based on no evidence, etc.


The Russia story is "vastly" worse than the disinformation than Trump and the GOP engage in. Because the Steele dossier might not all be true, but Greenwald never acknowledges that the Senate's investigation concluded there was basically coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia, he never acknowledges that Russia hacked the DNC, etc. so he pretends that there's nothing to the Russia 2016 story.

But even if you want to conclude that what is there isn't that big of a deal, and so the media and Dems are still bad on this... he's saying this is worse than:

1. Trump claiming he won the 2020 election and inciting violence with his lies
2. Trump claiming that illegal immigrants are disproportionately criminals and rapists
3. GOP climate denialism
4. Trump and GOP anti-vaccine lies, which continue to result in the deaths of thousands of their voters
5. the GOP's foreign policy lies about Iraq and so on, which Glem used to care about (although he's right that it's different because that disinformation campaign wasn't actually run in conjunction with the CIA, although Glem would probably blame the CIA anyway)

The interesting thing about this... is that it's no different from what a Republican would say.

The NYT, the WPost, CNN, NBC and the digital liberal outlets are all vastly more guilty of what they have spent years claiming Trump and the GOP are: they basically ran a dangerous disinformation campaign, full of lies, in conjunction with CIA/FBI, and now won't own up to it.

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) November 6, 2021

Here we have Greenwald mocking things people were saying about Rittenhouse (who Greenwald unambiguously supports, btw, because defending people who take high-powered guns to anti-police brutality protests is the left-wing thing to do) and also mocking the idea that there's anything unsavory about associating with Alex Jones. I guess Alex Jones must be left-wing now too.



Greenwald likes to make a show of complaining about Democrats actions in the Middle East, and particularly any stray instances of Islamophobia on their parts. Yet he claims that Tucker Carlson, who once referred to Iraqis as "semiliterate primitive monkeys" (direct quote) is dedicated to racial equality and merely has some issues with the way BLM conducts itself. Tucker Carlson also had a segment fear-mongering about "Gypsies coming to America" and hosted Charles Murray for a skull-measuring session, to name just a couple things off the top of my head.



Of course, Greenwald spends so much time on Carlson's show, most of it spent attacking Democrats, that one could be forgiven for thinking that that a Fox News pundit was actually a right-winger.

And this isn't even getting into his anti-trans views or various other things.

Of course, Greenwald's support for Tucker's wink-wink "not racist" nativism isn't that surprising if you're aware he once wrote this:

Originally Posted by Glenn Greenwald

Current illegal immigration – whereby unmanageably endless hordes of people pour over the border in numbers far too large to assimilate, and who consequently have no need, motivation or ability to assimilate – renders impossible the preservation of any national identity.

Or the fact that his only notable legal case as a lawyer was defending a neo-Nazi murderer.

He's just reverting to type.

The biggest question for me is whether he will, and how long it will take, for him to pivot to being pro-Bolsonaro (or at least anti-anti-Bolsonaro), as it becomes difficult for him to resolve the cognitive dissonance of being pro-Trump (or anti-anti-Trump ) and anti-Bolsonaro, given the strong affinity between Bolsonaro and Trump.

[erimir]

Oh I forgot to mention that that Darren J. Beattie guy that Greenwald is interacting with in a friendly manner was literally fired as Trump's speechwriter for having ties to white nationalists that were too overt for the Trump White House.

Oh and this thing, which is from Eoin Higgins. Higgins is a leftist who has said some truly idiotic shit, like that Jeb! Bush is more principled than Bernie Sanders (because Sanders endorsed Clinton, while Jeb! was unwilling to endorse Trump). But he did bother to quantify how Greenwald has become not just a Fox News guest who goes on to present a counter view, but a Fox News booster. Greenwald claims, often, to only be going on to bring the message to an audience that might not hear his "left-wing" message. Of course, in reality his message on Fox is mostly attacking Democrats, which is hardly different from what Fox News viewers normally hear.

Anyway, you can see here that rather than trying to bring a counter message or being critical of the right-wing disinformation on Fox, he has decided to suck up to the company that gives him those sweet, sweet media hits. Meanwhile, this guy who constantly goes on the most popular corporate cable news show on the most popular corporate cable news channel and now, apparently, mostly praises that corporate news channel, loves to criticize everyone else as in thrall to corporations, unlike Glem, a fiercely independent journalist who speaks truth to power. Apparently Rupert Murdoch and Fox News don't count as powerful.

Here you can see Greenwald's positive and negative tweets about Fox over that timeline—and then what those tweets look like with his appearances overlaid.https://t.co/HNedx3RZio pic.twitter.com/yz7oV6Obgj

— Eoin Higgins (@EoinHiggins_) November 22, 2021

His narcissistic impulse to be on TV is also the root of his obsession with how CNN and MSNBC have lower ratings than Fox News. Maddow stopped inviting him on, and now he has a grudge.

I will say that much of Greenwald's behavior could be explained by narcissistic injury rather than coherent right-wing ideology per se. Nevertheless, whether he does it because he's a narcissistic asshole or because he's reasoned himself into right-wing ideology, he's still out there promoting right-wing propaganda when he praises Fox News and so on.

Who cares if he says he supports universal healthcare, if he prioritizes his petty grievances to attack the party that cares about universal healthcare and defends the party that would rather kick people off Medicaid? The end result is still that his preferred outcome would've been one in which the GOP had the votes to pass the Obamacare repeal and kick millions off their healthcare. It doesn't really absolve him in any way.

[fragment]

Originally Posted by erimir

whether he does it because he's a narcissistic asshole or because he's reasoned himself into right-wing ideology

* fragment inserts they're the same picture meme

[erimir]

Liberals are the real racists, and Tucker Carlson is the real anti-racist, I guess:

Glenn Greenwald: "I have never ever, ever, ever heard Tucker frame immigration or any other issue in the racist terms that you attributed to him. In fact, he believes that what is racist is liberal discourse, the idea that we should judge people based on their race." pic.twitter.com/BR2jgKBiIP

— Matthew Dimitri ���� (@themattdimitri) November 28, 2021

I already mentioned a couple things above. Carlson, of course, also insists that white supremacy is not a real problem in America today and that it's harder to be white in America than non-white. He had to fire one of his top writers once his blatantly racist and slur-filled online postings were connected to him (surely he had no influence on the tenor of Carlson's coverage of racial issues, nor did Carlson approve any such influence! If only the czar knew!), and constantly fearmongers about immigrants and suggests that Democrats and Mexico are conspiring to change America, with more or less explicit gestures towards the "white genocide" theory (aka "the Great Replacement") that inspired the Tree of Life synagogue and Christchurch mass shootings.

But he's not racist at all.

But hey, I'm sure Greenwald's takes on Brazilian politics are 1. great and 2. especially insightful compared to actual left-wing Brazilian commentators and 3. worth wading through all of Greenwald's other shit.

[beyelzu]

I guess it’s the non-racist version of replacement theory.

In a video posted to Fox News' YouTube account Wednesday, Carlson said President Joe Biden had aligned himself with sentiments of "The Great Replacement," which Carlson explained as "the replacement of legacy Americans with more obedient people from far away countries. They brag about it all the time, but if you dare to say it's happening they will scream at you with maximum hysteria."

Historian, author and University of Chicago assistant professor Kathleen Belew recently explained the theory to NPR's Lulu Garcia-Navarro. "The idea is that somehow, nonwhite people or outsiders or strangers or foreigners will overtake the United States via immigration, reproduction and seizure of political power," Belew said. "One reason that the ADL is sensitive to this issue is that many incarnations of this theory involve a supposed cabal of Jewish elites."

Tucker Carlson promotes racist theory, ADL denounces, Gaetz supports


But for real, anyone who says Cucker isn’t racist loses all credibility.

[erimir]

Remember when it was "drones, drones, drones" about Obama, and how he was a murderer, no better than Bush (maybe worse), Trump was just a continuation (somehow Trump never got so much hate for ramping up drone bombings to a far higher level than Obama with laxer rules around civilian casualties and reporting, for some reason), and Biden was going to be the same? And the Forever Wars will never stop and both parties agree on that, etc.

Greenwald in particular talked about Trump having a "non-interventionist" mindset, praised him for "not starting any wars" (escalating wars is apparently not that big of a deal), and somehow found very little time to talk about Trump's increased use of drones (most of Greenwald's discussion of drones during the Trump years... was about Obama) and usually would blame the "Deep State"/generals for Trump's aggressive foreign policy choices.

For some reason, most of this crowd has not been giving Biden constant praise for exiting Afghanistan. And seem to have nothing to say about this:

I didn't appreciate how Biden has all but halted the drone war, especially compared to Trump https://t.co/kjTNuWdw3r pic.twitter.com/wE7qyqjAmO

— ryan cooper (@ryanlcooper) November 30, 2021

It's almost as if...

[Crumb]

I don't often say this, but good for Joe Biden!

[erimir]

I could post this in the Ukraine thread, but I think it makes more sense here.

Just as Glem is anti-anti-Trump, he also appears to be anti-anti-Putin. But don't you dare say he's pro-Trump and pro-Putin!

Sure, he did an hour-long video about how maybe Ukraine really was developing bio-WMDs, a justification for invasion that Russia coincidentally only discovered several days after they invaded and their other justifications fell flat, but does that really make him a Putin apologist?

It is consistent for Glem, someone who bought into the Bush administration's lies and supported the Iraq War. The fact that he was a fairly standard libertarian/right-winger before later turning on Bush gets memory-holed.

But, basically:

[Ari]

Hmm I wonder, did Glenn Greenwald or Tucker Carlson first broach the topic of the possible bioweapons labs? As this claim seems pretty easily traceable from official Russian propaganda to conspiracy theorists and the Qanon right wing.

Tucker Carlson, Glenn Greenwald biolabs questions have simple answers.

[erimir]

[erimir]

Funny. Greenwald is a hero to the left, and yet here he is reacting to the news of the impending SCOTUS ruling ending abortion rights in most of the US by saying that ackchually, Roe v. Wade was bad.

I see glenn has written a screed enthusiastically supporting striking down Roe v. Wade just as a big new surveillance market for daddy pete has opened up pic.twitter.com/Fch1xUOPrQ

— deutsche bank whistleblower (@lib_crusher) May 3, 2022

(Here's the link, if you don't trust the screenshot: The Irrational, Misguided Discourse Surrounding Supreme Court Controversies Such as Roe v. Wade) (ETA: wtf Substack, inserting the entire article in response to a link)

I wonder how much his mask needs to come off before we can all agree he's no friend of the left.

[mickthinks]

@lib_crusher has misread or for other reasons has chosen to misrepresent Greenwald's piece. If you follow the link and read carefully, Greenwald does not say Roe v Wade was bad.

I believe it is impossible to say on the basis of that piece alone whether Greenwald supports women's access to abortion and Roe v Wade, or women's access to abortion but not Roe v Wade, or neither. It may be clearer from other pieces he's written, but @lib_crusher cites no other pieces and claims no other knowledge of Greenwald's views.

They have simply misrepresented the piece they cited.

Have you any idea why they did that?

[erimir]

I don't think it's a misrepresentation to say that the piece is against Roe v. Wade.

It's true that Greenwald does not really say much about what he thinks abortion laws should be, but it's hard to read what he wrote and not get the impression that he thinks Roe v. Wade was a bad decision, not based in the Constitution, anti-democratic and that abortion laws should be left to the state.

Of course, Greenwald also defends the Electoral College and Senate (despite their manifestly undemocratic aspects), because they support his preferred outcomes: Republicans winning elections. The notion that the states would be a more democratic locus of power to decide these issues requires ignorance of how gerrymandering and other state-level anti-democratic schemes work, or to be purposely eliding them because you support their outcomes (since they benefit conservatives/the GOP right now).

And he says all this crap about Roe v. Wade being "anti-democratic" despite 70% of Americans thinking that Roe v. Wade should not be struck down! The result will be, for example, a GOP legislature in Wisconsin passing abortion laws that most Wisconsinites don't support, and their voters won't be able to dislodge them unless there's a landslide on the order of 15-20 pts in favor of Democrats. Similar notes apply to many other GOP controlled states (NC, GA, TX, FL, and so on). Because you know, this is the more democratic outcome.

I suppose Greenwald could be invoking "states' rights", because to claim it's more democratic for the 30% to get their way over the 70% could make sense if you view looking at it as state units, as opposed to, you know, the people of the country (the demos of democracy). But that doesn't really make much sense - there's nothing inherently more democratic about looking at that way, and plenty of ways for it to be less democratic, as I've pointed out. Given the current composition of the states, it is clearly less democratic. It is also the logic used by the defenders of Jim Crow and slavery, of course.

But it is a convenient argument if what you want is for abortion restrictions to be put in place contrary to the will of the people. The Supreme Court rules in a way contrary to the will of the national majority. And then gerrymandered, democratically unaccountable majorities will pass draconian abortion restrictions at the state level. And I don't mean just in purple states - in states that are reliably Republican, the restrictions are likely to be far beyond what the people of the state themselves support. Even in red states, people support exceptions for rape, incest, and the life of the mother. I would be surprised if they didn't all support keeping IVF treatments, IUDs and other forms of contraception legal, regardless of whether certain extremists view them as "abortifacients". The GOP, if it wins enough senate seats, almost certainly while winning fewer votes, and the presidency (also fairly likely to occur while winning fewer votes), will pass national abortion restrictions not supported by most Americans. This is what will be the predictable result of the "democratic process" and "will of the majority" that Greenwald lauds. The anti-democratic aspects of these processes and outcomes is also pretty easy to follow, and certainly a professional politics-knower such as Greenwald ought to understand them.

So I think I can be excused from thinking that these restrictions on abortion are an outcome that Greenwald supports!

And it is kind of strange for him to write that much about Roe v. Wade without putting down any marker for his own view of the issue. He has spent some of the time since this article pointing out that he has not revealed his position in response to tweets accusing him of being anti-abortion. I think his piece here is fairly revealing of his position: at best, he doesn't much care about the consequences for women, he certainly doesn't care that abortion restrictions will be passed contrary to the will of the national majority and the wills of state-level majorities. At worst, he supports these restrictions being put in place.

I will grant you this: Greenwald might only prefer this outcome because he hates the Democrats and enjoys seeing them lose, rather than because of any principled opposition to abortion. But this isn't exactly much of a defense of him.

[mickthinks]

erimir: here [Greenwald] is reacting to the news of the impending SCOTUS ruling ending abortion rights in most of the US by saying that ackchually, Roe v. Wade was bad.
mick: If you follow the link and read carefully, Greenwald does not say Roe v Wade was bad.
erimir: [wall of text that does not show where Greenwald says Roe v. Wade was bad].


So I think I can be excused from thinking that these restrictions on abortion are an outcome that Greenwald supports!
You can be excused for thinking that, and you may even be right (though I think the evidence you've presented here is circumstantial and flimsy). What you can't do is claim that Greenwald has said it in that piece.

[erimir]

Because Greenwald purposely plays coy with his views frequently.

He says he does not support Trump, but most of the time he spends talking about Trump is to defend him from Democratic attacks, to praise him about things that were obvious bullshit (like Trump's "non-interventionist mindset"), etc. You know, exactly the behavior you'd expect from someone who does support Trump.

I'm not obligated to take Greenwald's bad faith protestations at face value. I don't care if you think that I'm inferring things that Greenwald didn't say explicitly enough.

He has been asked about this specific question, and instead of forthrightly stating his views, he chooses to hide behind "I never said that explicitly". He can easily clear things up, and doesn't want to. But he wants to comment on the case anyway.

Greenwald writes things like this:

Alito's decision, if it becomes the Court's ruling, would not itself ban abortions[1]. It would instead lift the judicial prohibition on the ability of states to enact laws restricting or banning abortions. In other words, it would take this highly controversial question of abortion and remove it from the Court's purview and restore[2] it to federal and state legislatures to decide it. One cannot defend Roe by invoking[3] the values of democracy or majoritarian will[3]. Roe was the classic case of a Supreme Court ruling that denied the right[2,3] of majorities[3] to decide what laws should govern their lives and their society.
One can defend[4] Roe only by explicitly defending anti-majoritarian and anti-democratic values: namely, that the abortion question should be decided by a panel of unelected judges, not by the people or their elected representatives.
[...]
Anti-Roe judges are the ones who believe that abortion rights should be determined through majority will[5] and the democratic process.

I pointed out the various ways most of these are bullshit above, but to be clear again:

1. Many states have inactive anti-abortion laws on the books, including some that are explicitly written to trigger upon Roe v. Wade being overturned. This decision will immediately ban abortions in dozens of states. It's a mere semantic game to say otherwise.
2. He uses language like "restore" and "denied the right" which suggests positive connotations towards the decision and negative connotations towards Roe. If he were taking a neutral position, he would say "denied the ability" of majorities to decide these laws, because precisely what is at issue is whether majorities do have the right to ban abortion under the Constitution. It is assuming the conclusion to use the term "right" there. If he wants to say this isn't his view, he has the option to do so, but this paragraph appears to be his view.
3. I pointed out above all the ways in which the result of this opinion will be minoritarian. For one, the clear majority will of the public is for Roe to be left standing! For another, abortion restrictions will be passed by minority rule through gerrymandered legislatures, gerrymandered House of Representatives and the very non-proportional, minoritarian Senate. If Greenwald wants to defend those institutions, and say their minoritarian aspects are fine, or even good, he can do so, but he can't honestly claim that this is the result that better reflects the will of the majority.
4. In relation to point 2 above, when he instead discusses ways Roe can be defended, he uses this "one can defend" construction which clearly distances him from what he's describing. Which is consistent with me interpreting him as endorsing the criticisms of Roe rather than defending it. When Greenwald says it can only be defended in a certain way, and the explanation of the defense is clearly implied not to be his own opinion, it suggests that he does not, you know, defend it.
5. It's notable that one of these judges was part of the Bush v. Gore majority (not demonstrating a concern for will of the majority). The other four judges on the opinion were appointed by GOP presidents who lost the popular vote. These judges do not demonstrate a concern for the will of the majority, where in terms of popular opinion or through their elected representatives in other cases (the VRA was renewed nearly unanimously by Congress, and yet that did not stop them from eviscerating it, despite it being explicitly authorized by the 15th Amendment). They know they are enabling anti-majoritarian legislatures, legislatures they have empowered through enabling gerrymandering and voter suppression. They do not, in fact, think that majority will, at either the national or state level, should result in laws allowing abortion.

All of these things point in the same direction. Every point that is questionable on the facts is questionable in a way that benefits the anti-Roe argument. Every aspect that suggests via connotation what Greenwald's opinion is suggests that he does not agree with it and that defenses of Roe are not his opinion.

He says he doesn't comment on abortion and thus he won't state what his views are. But he chose to write about Roe v. Wade, which is obviously commenting on abortion, and he did so in a way that is transparently biased in favor of the GOP justices' decision. It's not unfair of me to infer the obvious from this. He is aware of the impression he has created and is perfectly capable of clearing these things up.

He chooses not to, because he prefers for people like you to defend him. Because he finds it useful to be considered on the left, and thus he engages in obfuscation and bad faith on his many obvious right-wing preferences.

[mickthinks]

I don't care if you think that I'm inferring things that Greenwald didn't say explicitly enough.

It's not a question of what you infer and whether you have good grounds for the inference. When you wrote "here he is reacting to the news of the impending SCOTUS ruling ending abortion rights in most of the US by saying that ackchually, Roe v. Wade was bad.", that wasn't just a claim that could be inferred from what Greenwald said. It was a claim that Greenwald had said it.

You have cited several places where you believe that Greenwald's choice of words have implications for what he believes about the issue of Roe v Wade. But here's the thing: the implications you have drawn needn't be drawn. They aren't inescapable. In that and every other sense, Greenwald hasn't said what you said he had said.

He chooses not to, because he prefers for people like you to defend him.
I'm not defending him. I am trying to persuade you that you (and @lib_crusher) have misrepresented what he wrote.

[erimir]

I never said he said that verbatim or explicitly. The piece is pretty clearly anti-Roe. You are free to disagree, but I feel comfortable with saying it based on my experience of Glem's behavior.

And saying that my inferences aren't "inescapable" is a pretty high bar. So what if they aren't "inescapable"? That doesn't make them unreasonable. Particularly given that Glem's response to this criticism is to pointedly refuse to state that he disagrees with the views being inferred!

And sure, "Mr. Greenwald, who I do not defend, didn't say this thing you are accusing him of" doesn't count as a defense. Ok. Regardless of your semantic quibbling over the word "defend", the point is your quibbling over whether he really thinks the thing that his writing and behavior are totally consistent with is what he wants and why he won't come out and state his position clearly.

[mickthinks]

I never said he said that verbatim or explicitly.

erimir, your knowledge of language is second to none here at and commands the respect of all, I think. So you know that that is not how language works. Just because "he said it was bad" doesn't contain the words "explicitly" or "verbatim" doesn't mean it isn't a claim about what he actually said, and is instead a claim about what construction might, more or less reasonably, be put upon it.

Counsel: Will you tell the court what you heard the accused say?
Witness: He said that he was going to pay someone to kill his wife.

Counsel: Did he use those exact words?
Witness: Not those exact words, no. But that's what he said. He said he wanted her dead.
Counsel: He said he wanted her dead? Those exact words?
Witness: Yes, that's what he said. But maybe not those exact words?
Counsel: Can you remember the words he used?
Witness: Yes, he said she had become impossible to live with.
Counsel: So, you heard the accused complain that his wife was impossible to live with. That's hardly a statement of intent to commit murder.
Witness: It's not an unreasonable inference. Last year he paid a man to remove a tree that was blocking the light and dropping its leaves on his drive. He's a wealthy man who readily spends money to remove anything that causes him difficulty. I feel comfortable with saying it based on my experience of his behavior.
Counsel: I have no more questions, your honour.

[erimir]

The analogy you're making there with the murder accusation is laughable. You're conflating reasonable inferences about positive or negative sentiment with a ludicrous misinterpretation based on literal interpretation of hyperbole, multiple conflations of senses of polysemous words and an unjustified assumption that he views humans as demanding no more moral consideration than trees.

If you had a specific argument about me doing any of those sorts of things, based on my specific claims or the content of Greenwald's writing, you would make it. Instead you're posting this idiocy.

So no, I don't "know" that "that is not how language works". You have made no case that Greenwald's piece can't be fairly summarized as an argument that Roe is bad and that the imminent Dobbs decision is good.

[Stephen Maturin]

I love this thread very much, but damn, I've been a "leftie" all my adult life and had no clue whatsoever that anyone considered Greenwald a leftie himself or a friend of lefties. I generally avoid the guy's writing (it's largely unreadable in addition to being substantively repugnant), but everything he's written that I've read invariably makes me think, "What an odious wingnut this fuck is."

[LarsMac]

So, Who the hell is Glenn Greenwald, anyway?

[erimir]

I fortunately didn't have much experience of Greenwald before 2011 or whenever it was his mask was starting to slip with his constant praise of Rand Paul as a "principled libertarian" or whatever (that seems to have stopped for some reason, perhaps related to Rand Paul having been exposed by Trump as having no deeply-held principles?). Most of my experience of him is through the news and Twitter, not through attempting to read his bloviating prose.

But I have had the experience of "hate at first sight" with a writer before. I used to read Andrew Sullivan's blog during the early Obama years (often disagreeing with him, but he was decent as a news/opinion aggregator) and Sullivan invited this guy Freddie de Boer to contribute to the blog. And there was just something about his writing, beyond whatever substantive disagreements I had, that made me loathe the guy.

Later he fabricated a rape accusation against someone he disliked on Twitter, got caught, admitted it, blamed it on his bipolar disorder and took a leave from social media for a few years. Unfortunately, he has decided to grace the internet with his shitty opinions again, but I feel pretty vindicated in my initial reaction to him.

[viscousmemories]

Most of my exposure to Greenwald has been through Twitter and podcasts, and up until fairly recently I believed he was first and foremost a legitimate investigative journalist. I even defended him here somewhere! However since over the past months he has started making regular appearances on Tucker Carlson's show and going all out against Democrats (especially "the Squad") and left pundits I respect (e.g. Sam Seder) at every opportunity while favoring right-wing talking points over rational analysis, I have come to believe that he has become (or maybe always was) all about generating controversy for its own sake and, consequently, making bank. As such I have lost all interest in what he has to say.

[Ari]

I read through that stupid thing because of the argument, and while I see Mick’s literalist point that he doesn’t directly say, he also heavily implies leaning one direction. However that seems to be beside the point of calling specific liberal journalists hypocrites, in a ‘I shall school you with my genius’ manner that makes me really dislike him. He strikes me as someone who “hates drama” yet somehow drama always follows him around.

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

A “side order of plausible deniability”. Saying a general statement that doesn’t exactly have a target in order to claim not having said what they implied. Also see: disingenuous.