News Brief: NBC's Sleazy Tulsi/Russia Innuendo is a Dress Rehearsal for Attacks on Sanders

This mini-episode is disappointing. I feel like I JUST listened to a Citations Needed episode in which you guys scoffed at the notion that we’re obliged to denounce victims—but in this episode you take a cryptic pot-shot at Gabbard to open this discussion. Before we can discuss the fact that Tulsi Gabbard is being smeared, we all have to agree that she’s bad, apparently. (Greenwald does this too: “Don’t get me wrong; I don’t like Gabbard, but...” You guys preface these discussions like the ACLU prefaces its defenses of the KKK’s free-speech rights. Gabbard is an honorable person with a humane and appealing platform, and deserves better.) You imply that the smear campaign against Gabbard matters mostly because it will be used on people like Sanders. In this way, you essentially concede that Gabbard is not a serious candidate. Then you conflate RT with “Russia,” when my impression is that RT’s staff have some degree of editorial independence (and would be expected to prefer Gabbard, given that she’s the only dove in the race). You concede in passing that Gabbard probably IS the preferred candidate of “Russia.” In other words, NBC is probably right, but they should have sourced the story more professionally. There’s no acknowledgement of the danger of letting third-party endorsements (note: David Duke has also endorsed Gabbard)—endorsements over which the candidate has no control—frame the discussion. Any bad actor can open a Twitter account, after all. Finally: who cares whether New Knowledge is a sleazy propaganda tool or a reputable firm full of deeply decent people? They should still be required to present their evidence. A lawyer can’t go to court and say “ladies and gentlemen, I’m a terrific person, so take my word for it that the defendant is liable.” Only in the corporate media does this sort of argument fly. To recap: you concede that Gabbard is bad (for reasons to be discussed another time); that her candidacy is inherently unserious (but that we should be alert to techniques that will be used later against real candidates); that “Russia probably does prefer Gabbard”; that NBC’s evidence-free McCarthyite assertions would be more acceptable if they didn’t come from a tainted source; and that RT directly expresses the will of Vladimir Putin. If I were among the people trying to smear Gabbard, I’d have to say: mission accomplished. Sure, NBC looks lazy and tacky here, but the people coming after Tulsi get every concession that they could have hoped to gain. Her candidacy is essentially cancelled. Until Sanders declares, it seems pretty clear to me that Gabbard is the best candidate in the race, so I find this really bleak. (Citations Needed is still my favorite podcast.)