V. Hanson: 'Rhodes Scholar' Rachel Maddow Was Wrong on Dossier -- Rush, Hannity, Nunes Were Right
By Michael W. Chapman | December 30, 2019 | 11:40am EST
Commenting on how many over-educated people in the liberal media are not wise and lack common sense, Victor Davis Hanson -- himself no intellectual slouch -- strongly criticized MSNBC host and Rhodes Scholar Rachel Maddow for promoting the anti-Trump Steele dossier as largely true for nearly two years.
Hanson also derided Maddow's colleagues who endorsed the salacious dossier but noted that conservatives such as Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), who were excoriated by the liberal media as unsophisticated, explained clearly and pragmatically, day after day, why the dossier was false.
On FNC's The Story With Martha MacCallum, Dec. 27, guest host Ed Henry explained how Maddow had promoted the dossier and said to Hanson, "when it comes to Maddow, she pushed this DNC-funded anti-Trump dossier and it turned out to be bunked."
Hanson, professor emeritus of Classics at California State University-Fresno and a Hoover Institution senior fellow, said, "Well, you know, the playwright Euripides once posed the question, what is wisdom? And it came down on the side of pragmatism and ordinary people, superior intellect to the intellectual classes, and this whole psycho-drama of impeachment is pitted -- this elite against common people."
"So in the case of the Rhodes Scholar Rachel Maddow, and she was reassuring America that the Steele dossier was correct, you could go on and listen to Rush Limbaugh here and Sean Hannity -- both without sophisticated degrees -- who were practical, pragmatic, and pointed out chapter and verse how it could not be true," said Hanson.
"Same thing with Devin Nunes," he said. "Devin Nunes's memo was trashed, he was caricatured as a farmer, turned out that [Inspector General Michael] Horowitz basically substantiated every point [by Nunes] and the Harvard law graduate Adam Schiff was completely erroneous and disingenuous."
Rachel Maddow. (Getty Images)
Adam Schiff is the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. He holds a B.A. form Stanford University and a J.D. from Harvard University Law School.
Hanson continued, "When we got to the Mueller investigation, remember we were told there's a Dream Team, there's a 100 killer team. There's all-stars from Ivy league and they're pitted against these sort of [Ty] Cobb and John Dowd and Jay Sekulow, these people would just melt before this Ivy League fire power and it didn't happen then either."
"I think it's a reminder about the symbolic lessons from the 2016 election that this country has got to take a deep look at who is intelligent," said Hanson, "and who is honest and who is virtuous and it's not synonymous with all these people with these star-studded resumes."
Ranking member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Devin Nunes (R),with Democratic Chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Adam Schiff (L), delivers his closing remarks following Ambassador Kurt Volker, former special envoy to Ukraine, and Tim Morrison, a former official at the National Security Council, testimony before the House Intelligence Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC on November 19, 2019. (Photo by SHAWN THEW/
Fox's Ed Henry then interjected, "Yes, let's start with the media. We get to congressmen in a minute. In terms of Maddow, she's not the only one in the media. A whole bunch of people in mainstream media were pushing the dossier again and again, that it's somehow corroborated or at least pieces of it."
"Is there ever going to be you mentioned a moment ago, learning lessons from 2016?" said Henry. "Has anybody in the media learned anything?"
Hanson replied, "I don't think so. I think they feel that -- and we see that with the Shorenstein survey that 90 percent of the mainstream media's coverage is biased. They feel that Donald Trump poses an existential threat to the entire progressive agenda and therefore any means necessary are justified by that noble end of removing him."
Rachel Maddow (Getty Images)
"And it's sad, I think they thought they were going to bleed him with 1,000 cuts but after the emoluments clause, the Logan act, the 25th Amendment, Robert Mueller, Robert Mueller's embarrassing testimony, Ukraine, Ukraine, recession that people turned off," said Hanson, whose most recent book is The Case for Trump.
"It's not dramatic, it’s not climactic, but what we're seeing is incrementally and insidiously Trump's polls are going up and support for impeachment's going down and that's created a lot of frustration.," said Hanson. "We didn't have a recession, the economy is booming, and the Democrats now are reduced to kind of the sword of Damocles hanging over Trump."
"This is impeachment and every once in a while, we'll throw something in and maybe the sword will get lower, but they don't know what to do right now because the American people are not with them," he said. "They didn't have a special counsel report. They didn't have bipartisan support. They didn't have public support. They didn't have specific crimes like bribery and treason or high crimes and misdemeanors that are outlined in the Constitution."
"It just wasn't like the Nixon impeachment inquiry or the actual impeachment and trial of Bill Clinton and I think people caught on to that," he said.
Rachel Maddow, 46, is the host of MSNBC's The Rachel Maddow Show. She earned a B.A. at Stanford University and a Doctor of Philosophy degree at Lincoln College, Oxford University. She was also the first open lesbian to win a Rhodes Scholarship.
(Screenshot, YouTube)
Commenting on Maddow's reporting, media critic Eric Wemple at The Washington Post wrote, "The case against Maddow is far stronger. When small bits of news arose in favor of the dossier, the franchise MSNBC host pumped air into them. At least some of her many fans surely came away from her broadcasts thinking the dossier was a serious piece of investigative research, not the flimflam, quick-twitch game of telephone outlined in the Horowitz report. She seemed to be rooting for the document."
"And when large bits of news arose against the dossier, Maddow found other topics more compelling," said Wemple. "She was there for the bunkings, absent for the debunkings — a pattern of misleading and dishonest asymmetry."
Also, see "Rachel Maddow rooted for the Steele dossier to be true. then it fell apart," by Eric Wemple, The Washington Post, Dec. 26, 2019.
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