The Morning Dispatch: The Alternate Reality Machine

A deadly riot's enablers.

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681

Happy Tuesday! We here at TMD are very proud to announce that the Treasury Department has never linked us to a Russian disinformation campaign, implicitly or otherwise.

Quick Hits: Today’s Top Stories

  • House Democrats officially introduced an article of impeachment against President Trump on Monday, saying he “gravely endangered the security of the United States” and “threatened the integrity of the democratic system.” A vote in the House is scheduled for Wednesday.

  • Dozens of large corporations have announced they are suspending political donations in the wake of last week’s attack on the Capitol. Some, like Goldman Sachs, will cease all donations entirely, while others, like AT&T, Dow, and Marriott, will cut off only those members of Congress that objected to the certification of the presidential election.

  • The Pentagon has authorized the deployment of up to 15,000 National Guard troops from states across the country to Washington, D.C. ahead of and during President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration next week.

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  1. Avatar photo
    Bill McDavitt

    As a paid subscribe to The Dispatch, I very much appreciate what this company is doing. I have to point out that for years, I have very much enjoyed Dennis Prager's columns and 5 minute videos. It is not lost on me the split that has occurred. While I suspect David and Jonah would agree with Dennis on a large number of federal policy subjects (taxes, regulations, Israel foreign policy, Islamic terrorism to name but a few topics) there would be significant disagreement on how they view Donald Trump and his presidency. I suspect they would have significant disagreements on how they view Silicon Valley private social media companies. While good for The Dispatch, it saddens me to see Dennis's inability to be critical of the president and his most fervent base supporters. As such, I felt compelled to speak out. I did my best to give appropriate credit where credit is due. I copied and pasted some of the text from this column and pasted into the comment section of Dennis' Townhall.com column titled the 'Good American.' https://townhall.com/columnists/dennisprager/2021/01/12/the-good-american-n2582982
    As a Christian, as an American and as Dispatch subscriber, I very much hope I have not violated any terms and conditions of The Dispatch by providing their verbatim text on another website's comment section. David and Sarah - I am not a lawyer. =)

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  2. Joe1776

    Can we all agree that protestors that are violent and destructive should be arrested regardless of party affiliation?

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    1. Tim Johnson

      I don't see anyone disagreeing to that. Are you merely attempting to conflate the actions of this summer with the actions on Jan. 6: the latter is an attempt to overthrow our government.

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    Hanna Reinhart

    Probably a little of both. I subscribe to the NYTimes and Washington Post headlines, but don’t really read it.... Would it be weird to say I followed you guys because you affirm some of my views?

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  4. Danny Grizzle

    I try to find balance. I subscribe to a local paper, WashPo, Dispatch, Atlantic , etc ... I want a fair take on the issues, but when I know I’m being logrolled - by either side - I won’t read. Do it too often and I unsubscribe. I’ll re-up Dispatch, not sure about the Atl.
    Keep it coming.

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  5. E. M.

    Levin still has stuff like this in his Twitter feed: https://mobile.twitter.com/marklevinshow/status/1344655040376680449

    The stuff leading up to the 6th isn’t all that great either (telling Congress not to accept the electors, but not weighing in on Pence). I wonder if Levin’s media bosses will ever make him scrub out his archives. If he ever deletes his account, that’s probably why, not his protests about censorship.

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    Antebellum Whig

    feedback goes both ways, of course.

    I'm happy to get news from any outlet that I think is offering real news.

    Sometimes I want reassurance that my take isn't crazy so I'm interested to hear similar takes. but I also want reassurance that my take really ISN'T crazy, so I want different, challenging takes.

    the only thing I reflexively mistrust is transparent propaganda.

    the dispatch is probably my most trusted source, though its reach is limited.

    for news: Economist, NPR, WaPo, Guardian, Atlantic

    for commentary: the above plus National review, commentary, America, vox

    other sources sometimes have good material: eg the nation (much as i hate to say it)

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  7. Avatar photo
    The Bell Tower

    My political beliefs are independent of news sources. Through college and early adulthood, I voraciously read sources I vehemently disagreed with because I wanted to understand the “other side.”

    Unfortunately, a change happened in the media. It’s ridiculous to say this Politico article is exactly when it happened but I remember it when it first appeared and it certainly reflects the juvenile mentality that modern “journalism” has devolved to:

    https://www.politico.com/story/2008/07/is-fournier-saving-or-destroying-the-ap-011716

    Lazy, arrogant, aimless opinion mongering. I can’t read a damned baseball game recap these days without some beat writer telling me about how I should celebrate a frigging bat flip. Let’s not get into political reporting.

    To say that I despise ninety five percent of the crap that rolls out to the Internet and passes for “news” is like saying the Pope hates adultery. News is no longer reported, it is inflicted upon us like a plague of mosquitoes only if those mosquitoes could talk incessantly.

    The Dispatch is mostly an exception to this cacophony of stupidity, which is why I subscribe.

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  8. Avatar photo
    Ben

    Until the middle of Trump's presidency, I (subconsciously, I think) gravitated towards sources that affirmed my conservative beliefs/desires. I also read liberal news sources but only so I could know which positions I'd need to refute with my preferred sources. At some point around the end of Trump's first term or the beginning of his second, I realized I was defending behavior I didn't actually condone and ignoring critiques that not only resonated with me but that I knew I'd be repeating if the person in office were a Democrat. Now, I make a conscious effort to read pieces from as many different sources as I can find (mostly reporting, but some opinion stuff), gather all the relevant facts, and then form my own opinion. While this process often results in my forming an opinion that makes my Democrat and Republican friends equally mad, it's helped me feel a lot better about the way I consume news and advocate for what I believe.

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    1. Tim Johnson

      That's very interesting and perceptive, thanks for posting, I imagine a lot of us fall into that same trap.

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  9. deathtomcmansions

    In the time Before trump (BT), I mostly just read my local paper, assorted periodicals (Reason and a military affiliation monthly, my alma mater's alumni pubs, a few lifestyle) and whatever popped into my email from existing newsletter subscriptions. Until it went to specials/online? only, I read US News and World Report. But in the After times (AT), I started to make a concerted effort to spread my reading sources around. I've never found much of either extreme to be very readable (or interesting for that matter;) the farthest right I could stomach was the federalist, and the farthest left was Vanity Fair. I do have a paid subscription to WaPo and LA Times, and access to NYT and Chicago Tribune if I'm really interested in something there.

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    Michael Berkowitz

    I'm confident that I don't get my politics from my news sources. Of course so is everybody else and I doubt we're *all* right. Still, five decades of reading the 'Times don't seem to have left a mark...

    The more interesting question is whether I gravitate to news sources that match my politics. How could it be otherwise? My politics are reasonable, and I want to read reasonable, and knowledgable, coverage of the day's events and issues. I followed David French here from National Review and I'm glad I did. Perhaps I should be more like your reader @Scarlette Tarte, who goes out of her way to read partisan news, but I find I have little patience for it. So I read The Dispatch with unfailing pleasure, Persuasion with pleasure that occasionally fails (except for Kat Rosenfield, who is a treasure), NR with less-and-less (Kevin Williamson is perhaps the best essayist around, but too acerbic for my tastes; the outrage pieces about abortion and campus wokeness are familiar; Andrew McCarthy is a seemingly reasonable man who comes to unaccountable conclusions and Kyle Smith's recent disrespect of Jill Biden was simply repellant) and not much else on a regular basis.

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