Political media has been dominated by the Kavanaugh hearings. Under the wire, however, a “B list” story has been energizing the Republican faithful. Project Veritas has begun releasing a series of recordings demonstrating, absolutely, that there is a “Deep State” and that it is working against President Trump. It’s being carried as a headline story by Republican pundits from David Limbaugh to Breitbart.
There’s only one problem, and it’s that they’re lying.
What Project Veritas is doing has value. They are not always successful in their sting operations; their failed attempt to seed a false story to the Washington Post reminds us of that. In that case, an operative of PV spent months developing a relationship with a Post employee, gaining trust, so that they would be considered a reliable source when Project Veritas wanted to get a fake news item attacking Roy Moore published. It backfired, with the Post reporters investigating the tip and revealing both the story’s inaccuracy and the infiltration efforts.
I know, you’re wondering about the gay sexual predators. I’m getting to that.
“Undercover” reporting has been performed for decades. Project Veritas crossed a line by injecting known falsehoods into the story beyond the initial setup, but that’s a line that’s been crossed by other reporting outlets in the past. It’s bad journalism, but it’s hardly unique.
At issue with their latest releases is a logical flaw, not any known issue of deceptive reporting.
PV has, in the past, best worked when it exposes corruption within an organization. They helped to take down ACORN – or at least make it change its name – when they showed key personnel at offices throughout the country were flagrantly violating the law. Unfortunately, James O’Keefe, the founder and primary reporter for PV, had misrepresented one of those videos and had kept from his audience the fact that the recorded person had called the police to report him immediately after he left the office. O’Keefe was forced to pay $100,000 in damages to the smeared ACORN employee.
That incident, and others, undermined the effectiveness of their expose of Planned Parenthood, and of their expose on teachers’ unions. In each case Project Veritas has provided video that is red meat for the Republican base but which is presented as having Michael Moore-style credibility issues by the press (although Moore is a regular and pervasive liar, and is often presented as being credible by the press and even treated as a political hero by entertainment sources like The Simpsons.)
Back to the gay sexual predators. But I had to explain how the organization works, because it’s where they’ve gone off the rails.
Historically, PV presents a handful of people in key positions and posits that the opinions and actions revealed are endemic throughout the system. In this case, they’re showing that some mid-level government officials are misusing their positions and performing political actions. This is exposing corruption. It’s a good thing.
What that does not do, in any way, is expose a “deep state”. That is a structure which is supposedly in place that has coordinated people working to undermine the President. It’s a conspiracy theory, and a key aspect of it is that people are conspiring, that there’s a framework of a shadow government in place.
No, what this exposes is that people in political positions will abuse those positions. That’s not a new thing. Leaks have always happened. People who have spent their lives in bureaucracy tend to support large-government bureaucracies and people who have spent their lives in law enforcement tend to support Constitutional behavior, and when directives come which run counter to their instincts they sometimes balk. That includes abusing their authority.
Hell, that’s one reason why conservatives used to bristle against large government and increased spending that inevitably leads to debt and/or taxation.
Now, finally, the gay sexual predators!
The best way to demonstrate the failure of the Project Veritas argument that it has exposed “The Deep State” – and the complete mendacity of David Limbaugh and others who promote it – is to provide an example.
Mark Foley was a Representative who stepped down from office after he was revealed to have pursued sexual relations with former Congressional staffers who had recently turned 18. Wes Goodman stepped down from the Ohio House after being exposed as a gay molester in 2017.
In both of these cases, significant proof was provided that other party officials had full knowledge of their colleagues’ orientation but chose to say nothing and, often, helped cover it up.
Those are facts, exactly like the video evidence provided by Project Veritas. The organization then extrapolates from that to say that because a few examples can be provided, and because some of their colleagues might know about them, it is “proof” of a vast conspiracy at work.
If that is the standard, then the Republicans have their own Pizzagate to worry about, and people should be very cautious about letting their kids be unattended near any Republican.
Or maybe, just maybe, “Deep State” is still a bunch of crap peddled by Jerome Corsi, former second-in-command under Alex Jones at Infowars, and the Republican punditry that loves to publicly mock Jones is unofficially taking their marching orders from him, via President Trump.
