A Dereliction of Duty?

A whistleblower leaked to The Free Press an audio tape of a CBS news editorial meeting on Monday, October 7, in which senior executive Adrienne Roark admonished the CBS Mornings cohost, Tony Dokoupil, for his interview the previous week with author Ta-Nehisi Coates about his just published book, The Message.This episode should send shivers down the spine of every serious journalist. As Bari Weiss called it in comments on The Free Press Live, “The actual complaint is that Tony Dokoupil committed the sin of doing real journalism on morning TV.”The background is simple enough.Ta-Nehisi Coates is a greatly celebrated author. He spent a decade at The Atlantic, where he wrote extensively about African Americans and white supremacy. A MacArthur Foundation “Genius Grant” Fellow, Coates has won more than dozen of journalism’s top prizes, including National Magazine and George Polk awards, and a National Book Award for his second book, the 2015 Between the World and Me. It was a NY Times bestseller for two years. Over the past few years, Coates had focused on Hollywood, writing the sixth volume of Marvel Comics’ Black Panther series, landed an Oprah Winfrey-HBO series about Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Civil Rights Movement, and was hired to write the next Superman script for Warner Brothers/DC Films.Coleman Hughes, an American writer and former Manhattan Institute Fellow, wrote in a Free Press review of The Message that “Ta-Nehisi Coates is one of those journalists treated by the left-of-center establishment more like a prophet than a writer. . . .And when Coates publishes a book, it’s an event.”Little wonder that Penguin Random House has set a massive media rollout for Coates’s The Message. It is four interweaving essays about Coates’s observations and conclusions from his visits to Dakar, Senegal; Columbia, South Carolina, and the West Bank and East Jerusalem. New York magazine in a profile last month said The Message “lays forth the case that the Israeli occupation is a moral crime, one that has been all but covered up by the West.” Coates told the magazine that, “I don’t think I ever, in my life, felt the glare of racism burn stronger and more intense than in Israel.” It was “horseshit” he told the magazine that the conflict between Israel and its Arab neighbors was “complicated.” For Coates, the situation in the Middle East is analogous to slavery and segregation. “It’s complicated,” he said, “when you want to take something from somebody.”In fact, Coates new book has been described by critics as “a one-sided polemic against Israel,” “flawed and ill-informed,” and “the crudest version of identity politics in which everything [is]… reduced to a childlike story in which the ‘victims’ can do no wrong (and have no agency) and the ‘villains’ can do no right (and are all-powerful).”The Message omits in its 260-pages that Israel is surrounded by countries that have launched four wars to annihilate it. He does not discuss that Israel must contend with Iran-backed terror groups dedicated to wiping out the Jewish state.As Coleman Hughes notes in his eviscerating review of The Message, Coates “doesn’t even mention the word Hamas—or Fatah, or Palestinian Islamic Jihad, or Hezbollah, or Iran—once. In his telling, the threats don’t exist, only the barriers that Israel erects to contain them.”“That’s like writing a book about the Civil War without mentioning slavery,” notes Free Press founder, Bari Weiss. “I mean, there's so much missing information, it's more like a lie.”This was the backdrop to a September 29 interview on CBS Mornings. Tony Dokoupil, a veteran news reporter who is one of the show’s anchors, did exactly what any decent journalist would do: politely but firmly push back against Coates’s one-sided narrative.“Why does Ta-Nehisi Coates, who I've known for a long time, read his work for a long time, very talented, smart guy, leave out so much,” asked Dekoupil.“Why leave out that Israel is surrounded by countries that want to eliminate it? Why leave out that Israel deals with terror groups that want to eliminate it? Why not detail anything of the First and the Second Intifada, the cafe bombings, the bus bombings, the little kids blown to bits? And is it because you just don't believe that Israel, in any condition, has a right to exist?”At another point in the seven-minute interview, Dokoupil said, “Imagine if I took your name out of it, took away the awards and the acclaim, took the cover off the book the publishing house goes away, the content of that section would not be out of place in the backpack of an extremist.”Coates later told Democracy Now, “I don't really have a problem with a tough interview. You know, I knew what I wrote. You know, I knew I'd be confronted. I know. Was he rude? Was he aggressive? You know, I like, I can't really get into that. Like, it's not really something that I think too much about. The question I would ask, though, is, how often on CBS, on NBC, on ABC or any major news organization, do you see someone who is a defender of the Israeli state project get confronted in that kind of way?”Social media blew up. Self-appointed woke influencers complained that Dokoupil was “too tough” and “biased.” Racism was the only narrative by which some could see a white interviewer grilling an African American writer about Israel and Palestine. Others complained that Dokoupil was biased since he has two children from his first marriage living in Israel.No one seemed to take notice that what Dokoupil did with his questioning is what is supposed to happen during any decent news interview. When I have published some of my books with controversial findings — Oswald alone killed JFK or that some Saudi royals had advance notice of 9/11 or that the Vatican profited from the Nazi death camps during World War II — interviewers often vigorously pressed me to see how I defended my findings. I never objected. It is what good reporters are obligated to do.This would have been a nothing-story if the complainers remained confined to social media. But the much more problematic response was that inside CBS News the madness played out. Some CBS news staffers claimed they were “traumatized” and complained to senior news executives continuously for a week.On October 7, by chance the anniversary of the Hamas terror attack that killed 1,200 Israelis, CBS held an editorial meeting in which the news division’s senior executives disavowed the interview and Dokoupil was eviscerated in front of his colleagues.It was an audio of that internal CBS meeting that a whistleblower sent later that morning to The Free Press.“I want to be clear,” said Adrienne Roark, in charge of all the network’s news gathering, “we will still ask tough questions. We will still hold people accountable. That's part of our job, too, but we will do so objective, and that means very plainly, we have to check our bias and opinions at the door, and that applies to every single point. After a review of our coverage, including the interview, it's clear there are times we have not met our editorial standards.”Roark went on: “There are times we fail our audiences and each other. We’re in one of those times right now, and it’s been growing. And we’re at a tipping point. Many of you have reached out to express concerns about recent reporting. Specifically, about the CBS Mornings Coates interview last week as well as comments made coming out of some of our correspondents’ reporting. I want to acknowledge and apologize that it’s taken this long to have this conversation.”Only one journalist at the editorial meeting refused to swallow the woke Kool-Aid. Jan Crawford, the network’s veteran chief legal correspondent, pushed back. “It sounds like we are calling out one of our anchors in a somewhat public setting on this call for failing to meet editorial standards for, I’m not even sure what. I thought our commitment was to truth. And when someone comes on our air with a one-sided account of a very complex situation, as Coates himself acknowledges that he has, it’s my understanding that as journalists we are obligated to challenge that worldview so that our viewers can have that access to the truth or a fuller account, a more balanced account. And, to me, that is what Tony did.“Tony prevented a one-sided account from being broadcast on our network that was completely devoid of history or facts. As someone who does a lot of interviews, I’m not sure now how to proceed in challenging viewpoints that are obviously one-sided and devoid of facts and history.”The audio of the editorial meeting makes it clear that Crawford was alone in her defense of Dokoupil. The consensus from the CBS News brass was that Dokoupil’s interview had crossed some ambiguous editorial standard.Once The Free Press broke the story about CBS scolding one of its anchors for the respectful but probing questioning of Coates, it went viral in the mainstream news. Was the Dokoupil interview too tough?” asked the Associated Press. The Washington Post judged the interview “unusually tense and substantive.”“I don’t think you understand the shockwave that interview created,” said talk show host, Trevor Noah, “not because of what you said but because of the way people felt like you were treated.”What happened next is what is to be expected. The next day, at “an emotional meeting” led by CBS Mornings executive producer, Shawna Thomas, Tony Dokoupil expressed his “regret” at having upset his colleagues. Some at the meeting were in tears, they were so distressed at what they considered his harsh questioning of Coates.The pushback from CBS staffers was so great that the network hired Dr. Donald Grant, a self-described “mental health expert, DEI strategist and trauma trainer” to counsel those who felt traumatized by what had happened. After word of that leaked, CBS cancelled Grant’s appearance at the Tuesday meeting but has not said when he will mediate the tension inside the network’s news division.“How does a DEI consultant actually add to this particular conversation?,” John Ziegler, a conservative commentator, asked the News Nation’s Dan Abrams. “Well, I actually think that the DEI aspect of this may tell the real story of what's going on here, because we live in a media world now where DEI is everything, even when it shouldn't matter to the actual subject. You showed a clip, there were four people on that set. One was a straight white male, the other three happened to be people of color. If Gayle King had asked the exact same questions that Tony did, we would not be having this conversation. This would not be a controversy, because Gayle King is a black female and also happens to be friends with Oprah. She has all sorts of PC protection. No one's going to go after her on DEI grounds. And so, I think Tony's race is an important element of this.”Bari Weiss thinks it is less about race and more about the subject matter.“And the thing is, at CBS,” said Weiss yesterday, “when they have, I don't know, a Republican, on when they have someone who you know is a vociferous advocate for the Second Amendment, on when they have any number of people on you would expect CBS to do its job. Would challenge that person, yes. So why in this case was it unacceptable? . . . . the reason that this is a sin in this case, is because of the subject, which is Israel.”“Can you imagine, on the first anniversary of 9/11 if something like this had occurred,” asks Ziegler, “where there was an author who was pro-Taliban and was gently chided on national television, and somehow the anchor, the person who asked them legitimate questions got basically destroyed in front of their own coworkers in a ridiculous meeting. That would be unfathomable, but that's how much journalism has degraded over the last 20 years or so.”Whether it is DEI or the subject of Israel that has caused CBS News to admonish one of its anchors for doing his job, there is no doubt about the message it sends to young journalists at CBS and other mainstream news outlets:“Think about a 26-year-old that works there that wants to become one of the anchors, says Weiss. “What message does it send to them? What kind of chilling atmosphere does it create?”CBS is punishing Dokoupil for the unwritten crime of journalism that violates the sanctioned coverage permitted by the network’s woke overlords. It is simply the latest in a long line of infuriating and depressing examples of how the mainstream press has become hostage to political correctness and in the process, has gutted its ability to fairly and fully report the news. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.justthefacts.media

It did not take very long for conspiracy theories to start about why Trump had a bad debate night. One pro-Trump Twitter account with half a million followers posted last night, “It appears Kamala Harris was being coached by using earphones embedded in her earrings during the ABC presidential debate against President Trump.” Another pro-Trump X account posted that claim while the debate was underway and got over 5 million views.I know crazy debate conspiracy theories when I see one. In 1996 I wrote a biography of independent presidential candidate Ross Perot. He told me that he thought when he debated Vice-President Al Gore about the North American Free Trade Agreement, that Gore was fed good answers through a secret earpiece. That showed me that Perot was someone who would never admit that he had lost a one-on-one debate. He had to spin a wild story to explain why his opponent was better. Sound familiar?I am nonpartisan as a journalist. As a registered Independent I try to call balls and strikes as I see them. That means I make people angry on both sides of the political aisle at different times. I’m also a high school and university national debating champion, winner of the Meiklejohn medal while at U.C. Berkeley. What makes a good debater? In school, we had a single topic for the entire year. We did not know until immediately before each debate about which side of the issue we would argue. Being a great debater required the ability to argue both sides of controversial topics with passion, knowledge and conviction. As a society, we have mostly lost the ability to even understand why someone holds a belief contrary to our own, much less have the capability to argue their case.Can you imagine anti-Israel college demonstrators taking the stage to be advocates for Zionism? Or someone arguing as effectively both for and against abortion rights?That is, however, what debate is about.Sure, the ABC moderators could have asked tougher questions of Harris, had more follow-up to her generalities or misstatements, and pressed her more on why she and others in the administration kept telling the public that Biden was sharp as a tack in private when they knew he was not fit to run for another four years. But it is not up to the moderators to do that. Blaming the moderators for a poor performance is like a sports team losing the game and blaming the refs while refusing to admit they got beat by a better team that day. No one likes a sore loser.I have had debates in which I thought the moderator was tipping the scales in favor of my opponent. It just meant I had the responsibility for highlighting inequities in the questioning and then going on the offensive to make my points.Last night’s debate was a classic showcase of what to do and most of all what not to do.While presidential debates are not real debates, there are still basic strategies that are good no matter what the topic. Staying on message is key. I always tried to get the other debater to talk about my issues, put them on the defensive, and get under their skin. A good debater has not only studied up on all the details and nuances of a topic but is quick on their feet to adapt to unexpected questions while staying disciplined and on message.What I saw last night with Trump was someone who ignores his advisers. They must have repeatedly told him during preparation not to go off topic to talk about whether he thinks the last election was stolen or defend the size and enthusiasm of the crowds at his rallies. But there he was, doing exactly that. How did Trump get into talking about the Central Park Five, a 1989 rape of a woman in Central Park in which five Black and Latino teens were wrongfully convicted? Because Harris mentioned it and Trump, being Trump, started talking about it. He was reactive time and again, a sure way to lose control of the debate and allow an opponent to drive their issues.Last night, Harris did just about everything she needed to, without any major hiccup. She talked about the issues she wanted, put Trump on the defensive, rattled him at times, and balanced her performance by focusing on the future while mixing in an occasional dose of outrage and indignation.Trump, on the other hand, missed opportunity after opportunity to engage in a real debate instead of simply repeating canned campaign lines. It made him look like the candidate from yesterday while it allowed Harris to portray herself as the one with fresh ideas for the future. It is not easy for an incumbent to become the change candidate, but Trump allowed her to do that repeatedly. He could have pressed her for details on the many plans she said she had. But he not only failed to do that, but he backed off when discussing health care from having his own plan to talking only about “concepts of a plan.”  Want evidence that the Harris team was elated at her performance? They put out the word immediately afterwards that she was open to another debate. My simple advice for Trump if there is another round? Discipline and focus. It is the only way he will leave a debate stage without later looking to put blame on the moderators for not doing what he should have done. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.justthefacts.media

The Washington Post published an article today by Kyle Melnick about Trump’s promise to release all the JFK assassination files and what those documents might disclose. It is thorough old-fashioned journalism, one of most balanced and informative pieces about the JFK files from a mainstream outlet this year.Melnick sets out the facts and includes interviews with me and Jefferson Morley, the editor of JFK Facts. The article shows where Morley and I agree: the full release of the files is long overdue. It also highlights were we disagree: I think the remaining files might show the CIA failed to share all its information on Oswald’s trip to Mexico City with the FBI, while Morley believes the files might show that some Kennedy opponents in the CIA worked with Oswald.Morley says freeing the files is “not about a smoking gun” while I content that even if the documents do not any provide “any evidence of a conspiracy in the case, people believing in a conspiracy will say, ‘Well, see, there you go. They destroyed the real documents.”A CIA spokesman at the close of the article says the “CIA believes all substantive information known to be directly related to Oswald has been released.” (I will have a separate comment this coming week about the significant shortcomings in that statement).The Washington Post article is responsible journalism. That, of course, means it is unlikely to go viral or bring in lots of clicks. No problem.The Daily Mail tabloid knows how to juice a story. They recast Melnick’s sober reporting into a front-page banner headline: “JFK BOMBSHELL.”The Mail focuses on Morley’s statements that CIA employees did not believe Oswald acted alone and that a counterintelligence official may have tried to “wait out” the Warren Commission by denying it information.None of that is surprising. There were plenty of government officials who thought Oswald was the assassin but suspected he might have done it as part of a conspiracy. LBJ shared the same belief as some in the CIA that Castro and Cuba had a hand in it. The problem was that there was no solid evidence to back up their hunches. And there is also no surprise that a CIA official denied information to the Warren Commission. I write in Case Closed about how the CIA hid from the Warren Commission, among other matters, that it was working with top mafia bosses to assassinate Fidel Castro.Melnick quoted me in the Washington Post saying, “Some of the biggest headlines that have been pulled from the JFK files the last four or five years are what I call tabloid stories about stories that were actually old.”The Daily Mail again proves my point.Tabloids measure success in clicks.  A clickbait headline might be a hit by their metrics. The only casualty is the truth. Little wonder so many people - who check the headlines and do not read the articles - believe there is something explosive still in the JFK files. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.justthefacts.media

Many of our subscribers are familiar with yesterday’s disastrous landmark court ruling in Australia that women’s only spaces must admit men who identify as women. “[I]n its contemporary ordinary meaning, sex is changeable” concluded the trial judge, and “sex is not confined to being a biological concept.”This was a test case for whether women would remain a protected sex class. The answer is no. Sex no longer defines the class. Anyone can join by declaring themselves to be a woman. The judge’s Orwellian conclusion is that men who self-identify as women, must be protected from discrimination under a law designed to protect women.At the center of this high-profile case was an online app available only to women and girls, but the verdict’s broad language could apply equally to physical spaces such as women’s changing rooms, athletics, even women’s only domestic violence and abuse shelters or prisons. The judge’s findings that gender is a personal preference rather than a product of nature and biology could have implications far beyond Australia and is why it is being celebrated widely by trans activists. The ruling, for instance, would have made mute the recent controversy about the biological sex of the Taiwanese and Algerian boxers who won gold medals at the Paris Olympics. The facts of the case seemingly are straightforward.Sall Grover, a screenwriter, launched an online app in 2020. The then 35-year-old Grover had “a conversation between me and my Mum. I had recently returned from almost ten years in Hollywood, where I had experienced everything the Me-Too Movement represents. It was my Mum who said, ‘There needs to be a way for girls to help girls!’ We decided that we would create an app despite having no idea how to do that.”Grover called her app Giggle, a collective noun for a group of girls and its mission was to create an international online community for girls and women where they could safely meet other women for freelance work, finding roommates, holiday companions, sharing car rides, maybe even partners.By serendipity, Covid had started the lock downs in Australia and many other countries in the summer of 2020. Online connection apps like Zoom boomed. In seven months, Grover had raised $500,000 and Giggle was launched. By August 2020, it was in 84 countries and had twenty thousand women and girls as members.Grover and her team enforced what they thought was a simple rule. They rejected the online applications of men who applied to join Giggle.One of the men who applied in 2021 was a transgender woman who had three years earlier gotten a revised birth certificate that listed him as a woman named Roxanne Tickle.So many women were joining the app that Grover and her team used AI to scan the selfies sent along with new applications. Artificial intelligence ‘approved’ Roxanne Tickle’s selfie as a woman. It was not until Grover later personally reviewed the application that she rejected it.Tickle filed a legal challenge claiming unlawful discrimination and cited international human rights conventions to which Australia is a party. The suit also relied heavily on Australia’s 1984 Sex Discrimination Act, a law that protected women who faced inequality or discrimination based on their sex. In 2013, Australia’s Labour government amended the Sex Discrimination Act and removed the biological definitions of men and women and replaced them with gender identity (the Prime Minister at the time was a woman, Julia Gillard).The discrimination lawsuit filed by Tickle was the first case in which the courts faced the question of whether biological sex was still protected in Australia.Grover contested the constitutionality of the 2013 gender amendments and argued that Tickle was not a woman, sex is unchangeable, and it was appropriate to block Tickle from joining Giggle to preserve a women’s-only space.The case attracted international attention. Trans activists rallied to Tickle’s support and Sall Grover was outspoken about the case’s larger implications: “It is ‘what is a woman’ case,” she told one interviewer, “it’s the most important woman’s rights case in Australian modern history, we are fighting to ensure that female is a sex class in law that men cannot identify into.” Grover’s activism drew support from some prominent women, including J.K. Rowling and Martina Navratilova, but also made her a target of merciless social media trolling and dismissive coverage from progressive news outlets such as The Guardian, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, and the BBC. Grover had to suspend her Giggle app in 2022. There were financial pressures as well as increasing malware attacks on the site. She promised to get it back up but so far that has not happened. Still, she continued to fight the discrimination lawsuit from Roxy Tickle.This past April, Grover told an interviewer that, “If you’ve got a man in a female only space, you’re dealing with someone who has no respect for boundaries. You’re already dealing with a predator. Good men don’t go into female spaces. Female spaces exist to protect us from the men who want to go in.”In April of last year, Robert Bromwich — the same judge who issued the latest verdict — granted permission for Tickle to bring the case personally against Sall Grover. In June 2023, Bromwich gave a preliminary ruling that allowed the case to move forward and rejected motions for dismissal (few knew that Bromwich’s father was a noted surgeon, someone who might have contested his son’s view that gender identification trumped biology).As the case continued, the legal costs were threatening to put Grover into bankruptcy. Grover decided to crowdfund the litigation and raised nearly $600,000AU of an estimated $850,000AU in legal costs. Grover also promised that if any money was left over at the end of the final appeal, she would “donate those funds to other gender critical crowdfunders and causes. I will not keep any of the funds raised.” On the crowdfunding page, it notes that “The decision by the Federal Court will have far-reaching implications, likely influencing not only the Australian legal system but also international law and policy regarding the intersection of gender identity and sex-based rights. It will serve as a crucial reference for future legal frameworks and discussions on sex discrimination and sex-based rights, and their direct conflict with gender-identity ideology worldwide.”Yesterday’s ruling was a total disaster for biological women. The judge ruled Grover and her women’s only app “had engaged in indirect gender identity discrimination against the applicant.”  As for the question on everyone’s mind – what is a woman? – the judge ruled that all that was required was that a man “identifies and is legally recognized as a woman.” The legal recognition in this case was the revised birth certificate issued by the Queensland Register with a female sex marker.Roxy Tickle had undergone in 2019 extensive gender surgery. That, however, was not an important issue for the judge. In the ruling, surgery or hormones are not necessary for a man to be protected from discrimination as a self-identified woman.Adding insult to injury, the judge awarded Tickle A$10,000 in damages plus legal costs.Tickle was jubilant after the verdict, telling reporters outside the courthouse “I hope it is healing for trans and gender diverse people. The ruling shows that all women are protected from discrimination. I brought my case to show trans people that you can be brave, and you can stand up for yourself.”Grover said little after the ruling, tweeting only “Unfortunately, we got the judgment we anticipated. The fight for women’s rights continues.”Grover has previously said she would appeal any adverse decision, all the way if necessary to Australia’s High Court. She must. The opinion of a single male judge, with such wide-ranging repercussions for women everywhere, cannot be allowed to stand. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.justthefacts.media

[This post will be familiar to those on Twitter, where I have posted much of the below in a couple of long tweets that kicked off a lot of debate. At least it is getting people thinking about the consequences of what many at first think is a virtuous policy]My ‘shame of the week’ award goes to Wes Streeting, the UK Health Secretary. He said this past Wednesday that people who are racist to NHS staff in health settings “can and should” be turned away from care. That prompted a remarkably fast same-day endorsement from the Royal College of Nursing. For the first time, the country’s largest nursing association changed its 'withdrawing care' guidelines to include “racism" to instances in which "there is discriminatory behavior." The Health Secretary and the RCN said that NHS staff should never have to be subjected to abusive and violent behavior. That is undoubtedly true. But it is not what the Health Secretary and the Royal College of Nursing embraced. The new standard, as evidenced on the RCN's own site, is about controlling behavior.Doctors in civilian settings treat convicted serial killers and terrorists among many other unsavory patients, and during war, tend to enemy combatants. Israeli surgeons, for instance, saved the life of Hamas chief Yahya Sinwar, when he had a brain tumor while in prison in 2004. There is a duty of care that is the ethical foundation for medical practitioners. One UK health care provider posted, "I nurse all of my patients in the same way, be they sex offenders, racists, petty criminals, or Mary Poppins. My job isn't to judge or press my opinion, it's to provide health care to anyone who needs it. No matter how I privately feel about them." Another said, "When I was nursing, we treated prisoners shackled to prison officers, paedophiles, rapists etc. Everyone did, and should, get equal care by the NHS." A lot of people seem to have forgotten the outrage in 2010 when a German surgeon refused to operate on a man who was already anesthetized when he noticed a swastika tattooed on the patient’s upper arm. Are Muslim doctors going to decide not to treat patients who served in the IDF? Can Jewish doctors turn away patients with a Hamas or ISIS symbol? Are there health care providers in the UK, who are guided by the Health Secretary’s declaration, who would refuse to treat Tommy Robinson, one of the UK’s most prominent right-wing activists? Introducing racism as a supposedly objective factor is particularly challenging given that it is a constantly shifting, and often overused, concept. Is the standard for refusing to treat a patient now subject to the interpretation of racism by the treating medical staff? The University of Chicago offers a course that teaches that "Speech is a medium within which violence is performed." Does that empower someone who is triggered by what a patient says to turn them away for medical treatment? Many young people contend that anything they dislike or disagree with constitutes "literal violence."How would that work in an A&E/emergency room setting when the patient exhibiting the "discriminatory behavior, including racism" might be suffering from mental illness, dementia or Alzheimer's disease, be on the spectrum, or in great pain, or even strung out on drugs? Many patients arriving at a busy A&E are in both a physical and mental distress that brings out their worst sides. That is not an excuse for abusive behavior. It is instead a challenge to the medical staff to quickly and accurately determine whether the patient has their full mental capacity before refusing to treat them. Abuse and violence toward medical staff can and should be criminally pursued. Patients, however, even the difficult ones, are also entitled to medical care. It is a slippery slope to turn healthcare providers into subjective arbiters of whether patients should be refused medical care for "discriminatory behavior, including racism." What's next, turning away patients for misgendering? That might seem farfetched. However, Kellie-Jay Keen, a prominent British gender critical activist, has been banned recently from her general practitioner’s office for objecting to pronoun badges worn by the medical staff. Once this creeps into medical treatment, you never know where it ends. But it never ends well. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.justthefacts.media

This 10 minute attached video covers the issues I raised the other day in my article “A Dereliction of Duty? Problems in the Trump Shooting Deadline.” Smerconish lays out in the first half the latest information about the security lapses that preceded the shooting. Then we talk about what I conclude is “the greatest breach and dropping of the ball in terms of Secret Service security that I’ve ever seen.” Be sure to listen to the last minute, when Smerconish speaks about the failure of federal agencies, particularly the Secret Service and Homeland Security, to provide any public updates. “If any of those investigative agencies take issue with our timeline presentation, it’s your fault, because you haven’t come out and told the public what the public needs to know. It’s been a week, we have a right to know. In the end, we are going to find out.” This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.justthefacts.media

[Updates to this article are in double brackets, dated and in bold]. The VoiceOver for this article is only the original July 16 post] I wrote on X a couple of days ago decrying the rush to conspiracy theories about the attempted assassination of Donald Trump. “How about waiting for the facts to emerge?” I asked. “There is a story behind the Trump assassination. I just don't know what it is yet.”It is still too early to answer most questions, especially given the sparse information available on Thomas Crooks, the wannabe assassin. It is not too early, however, to draw some conclusions about what appears to be a startling security failure as information emerges about missed opportunities to intercept the shooter before he pulled the trigger.I studied security protocols around political assassinations for books I did on the murders of John F. Kennedy (Case Closed) and Martin Luther King, Jr. (Killing the Dream). Presidential security was lax before the Kennedy assassination changed everything. Publishing in local newspapers the president’s motorcade route was common practice. JFK was in an open convertible when Lee Harvey Oswald gunned him down with a long-distance rifle shot in Dallas. When it came to Martin Luther King, Jr., the civil rights preacher, King himself eschewed much of the local police protection offered in different cities. He did not want to be surrounded by a contingent of cops wherever he went. And federal protective services were not helping to protect him but rather used to spy on him.We have become accustomed to much better protection around presidents and presidential candidates in the decades since Kennedy’s murder. All the multiple layers of redundant security again got tightened considerably after the failed 1980 assassination attempt on Ronald Reagan.Protecting the president and candidates for the office is not fail safe. Secret Service agents with whom I have spoken over the decades acknowledge they always fear any professional assassin willing to die for the mission.That was not what the security team confronted this past Saturday in the attempted assassination of Donald Trump. A 20-year-old came within an inch of pulling off the assassination and did so notwithstanding there having been considerable time to have stopped him after eyewitnesses warned law enforcement about a potential shooter and his location.The timeline of the assassination is a damning indictment of a dereliction of duty.An NBC Pittsburgh affiliate reports this morning that one of eight members of a local Beaver County Emergency Services Unit assigned to security outside the Secret Service perimeter, spotted a suspicious man on the roof from which Crooks fired his shots. The Secret Service will almost certainly have to reevaluate its rules for setting a security perimeter for such large public events. There is always enhanced security inside the perimeter, usually weapon checks on entering the area, as well as increased surveillance by the Secret Service. Outside the perimeter local and state law enforcement are responsible. There will be plenty of questions as to how a gunman with an AR-style 223 rifle was able to shoot in an unobstructed view about 150 yards from his target. That distance, for proficient shooters, is considered an almost certain kill zone. [[July 17: It is also the same distance that Army recruits must repeatedly hit a human-sized target in order to qualify for basic proficiency with an M-16 rifle. According to an unidentified law enforcement source cited by CNN, the day before the attempted assassination, Crooks practiced with his rifle at a shooting range of which he was a member.]]The Beaver County ESU unit was composed of spotters and snipers. That first encounter with Crooks was at “prior to 5:45 p.m.” [[July 17: The New York Post reported what was meant by “prior to 5:45 p.m.” A “local police counter-sniper officer” took a long range photo of Crooks apparently crawling or leaning low to the ground around 5:30 p.m. In the photo, Crooks is wearing a gray t-s**t with a logo for Demolition Ranch, a popular YouTube channel. The police sniper who took it searched the area for him but Crooks had moved away by then.At 5:45 p.m., eighteen minutes before Trump began speaking, the same Beaver County counter-sniper officer saw Crooks again, this time on the roof of the building from which he soon tried to kill Trump. He called that into the command center. What the command center did with that information is not yet public.About 10 minutes before Trump took the stage, Secret Service went from looking at Thomas Crooks as “suspicious” to considering him a “threat.” Still, the Secret Service did not inform Trump or cancel his rally appearance.Moreover, around 3 p.m., more than three hours before Trump took the stage, CNN reports that Crooks was spotted at the rally’s screening area with a rangefinder, a binocular-like device used mostly by golfers and hunters to measure distance. The rangefinder would not have stopped him from entering the inside perimeter. Secret Service agents evidently monitored him near the screening area but did not keep surveillance on him when he walked away. The CNN reports is based on “a senior law enforcement official briefed on the investigation.” A report in the Daily Mail cites unidentified eyewitnesses who report that Crooks “was also acting strangely around the metal detectors” and that he “was furiously checking his phone and operating a hunting range finder.”]]Let that sink in.Trump did not take the stage for until 6:03 p.m.[[July 17: That was about an hour later than scheduled.]]No one is certain yet how Crooks gained access to the roof of the commercial building from which he planned to shoot Trump. [[July 17: According to an unidentified law enforcement source cited by CNN, on the morning of the shooting, Crooks bought a five-foot ladder at Home Depot. However, an ABC News report on an unclassified congressional briefing reported that Crooks did not appear use the ladder to climb on the roof and the ladder was not found at the scene. Investigators believe Crooks scaled an air conditioning unit of an adjacent building and pulled himself up onto the roof. He managed from there to gain access to the top of the building he had chosen to set up a sniper’s nest. Eyewitnesses told ABC News that Crooks shimmied up the slope of the roof to the area where he ultimately shot at Trump.]].A stunning development today was that Secret Service Director, Kimberly Cheatle, told ABC News that a local police sniper team was stationed inside the one story structure while Crooks was on the roof. Cheatle emphasized that local police - not the Secret Service - were “responsible” for securing the outer perimeter.The New York Post quoted unidentified sources that the police were still inside the building when the shooting started.By 6:09, people at the rally began voicing concerns about the man they saw in a prone position on top of a building roof. An amateur video captures the anxious couple of minutes of chaos that preceded the shots.“Look, they're all pointing,” someone says as at least one police officer walks around the side of the building.“Someone's on top of the roof.”“There he is, right there. Right there, see him? He's laying down.”Someone else gestures to the cop, “He's on the roof … right here, right on the roof!”Other witnesses told CBS News, they had seen “the guy move from roof to roof. [I] told an officer [he] was on the roof.”Michael Slupe, the Butler County Sheriff, confirmed to CBS’s Pittsburgh affiliate, KDKA, that shortly before the shooting began, one of his armed officers reached the ledge of the roof that Crooks had picked as his sniper’s nest. The cop evidently backed off when the gunman pointed the rifle toward him.“All I know is the officer had both hands up on the roof to get up onto the roof,” Slupe recounted “because the shooter had turned towards the officer. And rightfully and smartfully [sic], the officer let go.”  Slupe admitted that after that officer retreated from confronting Crooks, the shooter pointed his rifle back toward the rally stage.It is not yet known if the police who learned of a man on a roof with a rifle immediately warned Secret Service agents. Although four police officials told NBC news that when rallygoers told local cops about a man behaving strangely near the security checkpoint, the Secret Service was told and the local police began looking for him.Twelve seconds before the first shot, a police officer on amateur video is seen walking around the building that has Crooks on the roof. Yet in another video which starts exactly five seconds before the first shot, a group of people are screaming that the man on the roof has a gun. Some start running away from where Crooks is readying to shoot Trump.A third video –- only four seconds before Crooks pulls the trigger — shows more people yelling that the shooter is “right here” and pointing to the rooftop sniper’s nest.A multi-feed video montage put together by MilkBarTV uses video clips from different angles to show the chaos in the agonizing 120 seconds preceding the failed assassination. People spot Crooks on the roof and try to alert the police. The rally attendee shooting the video hears a nearby commotion. “Look, they’re all pointing,” he says. He pans the camera seconds later and captures a police officer walking around the front of the building that Crooks was on top of.More people start gathering around to see what is happening. A few can be heard in the background.“Yeah, someone’s on top of the roof, look! There he is right there, see him? He’s laying down, see him?”“Yeah, he’s lying down,” replies a female voice.Crooks comes into view for the first time, lying on his right side, at the video’s 17-second mark.Five seconds later the crowd moves closer to the building to check on the growing ruckus. Another ten seconds passes before the man filming points out Crooks to another bystander. At the 34-second mark, Crooks is in the frame and rolls from his right side to rest on his stomach.While Crooks is changing his shooting position, a male voice yells “Officer!”A woman begins providing a play-by-play of what she sees and calls out to nearby police. “Come over here, he’s on the roof! He’s flat! Right here, he’s flat on the roof! He’s standing up now, he went flat on the roof again.”Others in the crowd can be heard calling out but it is not possible to make out what they were saying.At the 52-second mark, about a minute before the first shot is fired, the video montage shifts to a full frame of Trump speaking on stage. It returns to a split-screen when the timer gets to 1minute and 15 seconds and later changes to four simultaneous views, two of Trump, one from the original videographer, and one view from behind Trump.At a minute, 50 seconds, a man in what seems to be a military uniform, with a green helmet, steps into the frame and seems to motion to the crowd before disappearing as he walks in the opposite direction of the building with the shooter.At the 1 minute, 55 second mark, a male voice screams, “He’s got a gun!”It is then that the film gets increasingly shaky, yet still manages to capture what looks like a uniformed police officer walking toward the building where Crooks is prone on the roof.The first shot is only five to six seconds away. As the clock ticks down we all know now what comes next. There is no hero’s intervention, just the crack of the first rifle shot and everything erupts into chaos.The sequence of shots can be timed from news coverage of Trump’s speech. Crooks gets off the first shot at 6:11:33, as Trump was talking about immigration. The next two come on top of one another only a second later, at 6:11:34. Three seconds go by before a volley of at least three shots. And a final shot that sounds different, described by ballistics experts as an “outgoing shot.” That is likely the shot that two law enforcement officials told CBS News was the single round fired by a Secret Service sniper, assisted by a spotter, that killed Crooks. [[July 17: The Secret Service agent in charge of security for the rally was on the phone wit local and state police when the shooting began]]Did the Secret Service have all the assets it needed for the event? That is still to be determined and might not be known until after Congressional investigations obtain access to electronic and phone communications between the local Secret Service field office and Washington D.C. headquarters. Law enforcement sources who were on previous presidential protection details told the New York Post that field offices often had to fight with Washington to get the protection budget for an event, and often got only “a fraction” of what they needed.The Trump shooting timeline begs many more questions. If government officials and law enforcement should have learned anything from the JFK assassination, it is that transparency is critical to not only getting to the truth, but also to eliminating the many legitimate questions ordinary citizens will have about what took place. Does that mean the Secret Service and local and state law enforcement, and any military assets, are likely to open their files for public inspection any time soon? Do not count it. But one thing that is certain is that I, and lots of other investigative journalists, will not stop looking for the answers behind such a staggering security failure.Thanks for reading Just the Facts with Gerald Posner! 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[Sorry for a second Just the Facts on the same day. Long time subscribers know my regular pace is a new piece every couple of weeks or so. Below is a reprint of my Wall Street Journal OpEd. It is online now for those who have a WSJ account and want to comment there. It will be in the paper tomorrow]Incendiary political language has consequences. Donald Trump’s claims that the 2020 election was stolen agitated his supporters and culminated in the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol. The assassination attempt against Mr. Trump follows years of relentless attacks from left-wing media and many in the Democratic Party, who likened the former president to Hitler and claimed his re-election would end democracy.The Trump-Hitler comparisons started during the 2016 campaign, accelerated after the 2017 rally by white supremacists in Charlottesville, Va., and reached a fever pitch in recent months.In December, the Washington Post ran an article by Mike Godwin titled “Yes, it’s okay to compare Trump to Hitler. Don’t let me stop you.” MSNBC’s Joy Reid said in a TikTok video a week ago: “Let me know who I got to vote for to keep Hitler out of the White House.” The New Republic’s June cover was a 1932 Hitler campaign poster altered to look like Mr. Trump. In its lead story, “American Fascism: What Would It Look Like,” the magazine editors wrote, “We can spend it”—the election year—“debating whether Trump meets the nine or 17 points that define fascism. Or we can spend it saying, ‘He’s damn close enough, and we’d better fight.’ We unreservedly choose the latter course.”This theme wasn’t limited to left-wing commentators. In December, Politico noted: “Comparing a political opponent to Adolf Hitler might seem like an extraordinary step. For Joe Biden’s campaign, it has become part of the routine of running against Donald Trump.” Biden campaign officials and surrogates have compared Mr. Trump to Benito Mussolini, Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un. Even the president himself fell back on the Nazi comparison. At a December fundraiser he warned that Mr. Trump’s language “echoes the same phrases used in Nazi Germany.” In a poor choice of words last week, the president told donors that “it’s time to put Trump in a bull’s eye.”It is a shame that those who repeatedly talked about Mr. Trump as an existential threat hadn’t studied how the volatile atmosphere in 1963 Dallas and 1968 Memphis, Tenn., emboldened Lee Harvey Oswald and James Earl Ray to assassinate John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr.Dallas, where 24-year-old Oswald lived, was a hotbed of anti-Kennedy propaganda and right-wing extremism. Anticommunists had portrayed the president as a traitorous appeaser of the Soviet Union. Ted Dealey, owner and publisher of the Dallas Morning News, had presented JFK a nine-page broadside during a personal meeting at the White House. Dealey said: “It is better to die than to submit to communism and slavery.”Kennedy was repeatedly portrayed as a socialist threat to the republic. Edwin Walker, a retired Army general and failed candidate for governor, led the John Birch Society’s campaign warning that JFK was secretly planning to cede U.S. sovereignty to the United Nations. Integration and civil rights added to the anti-JFK fervor. The head of the country’s largest Baptist congregation condemned Kennedy and his allies as “a bunch of infidels, dying from the neck up!”In the months before Kennedy got to Dallas, King had visited and there had been a bomb threat. When U.N. Ambassador Adlai Stevenson visited a month before JFK, an angry mob attacked him. On JFK’s arrival in November, a full-page, black-bordered advertisement in the Morning News accused the president of being a Communist tool. Walker posted thousands of handbills along the streets with an image of Kennedy and the message “WANTED FOR TREASON.”After JFK’s murder, Dallas was widely referred to as a “city of hate.” Oswald was no right-winger, but the local atmosphere made him feel like less of a fringe outsider.The same was true in Memphis in April 1968. King was no stranger to threats against his life. He had visited Miami not long before, and there were so many threats that the police begged him not to leave the hotel. A lot of white Americans were frightened of King’s message that “America is still a racist country.” A Harris poll not long before his death gave him a nearly 75% disapproval rating. Many Americans thought he hated the country, hated white people, or was a communist.In Memphis, after riot police had used indiscriminate force to stop some 1,000 sanitation workers and supporters during a march, the strike became a nasty battleground for racists. Commentary from elected officials and local media fed a lurid narrative that King was a race-baiting troublemaker whose far-left supporters made him a danger not only to Memphis but to the country itself. King’s Poor People’s Campaign march, planned for June in Washington, had become a target for right-wing critics. Newspaper editorials warned about “suspicions of communist influence.” King was painted as a narcissistic radical who threatened to cause a race war.Ray, who died in 1998, took his reason for killing King to the grave. There is no doubt, though, that he was heartened by the anti-King hysterics. He wanted to get to apartheid South Africa after the assassination, expecting to find a sanctuary.As with Oswald, who was murdered two days after he killed Kennedy, we may never know Thomas Matthew Crooks’s motive for shooting Mr. Trump. But politicians, media figures and all citizens must ask whether the constant drumbeat of Trump as Hitler might have created an atmosphere in which an unstable 20-year-old was encouraged to take a shot.There is a price to reckless speech that portrays public figures as threats to the American way of life. It can be the spark that helps push an assassin to act. It is impossible to separate the violence of political assassinations in modern American history from the temperature of the times. It takes only a little fuel to push someone into the history books as an assassin. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.justthefacts.media

Take your pick of suspects. The Deep State, Jews, the Democratic Party, Islamists, Israel, maybe Putin? How about it was staged? Since I wrote Case Closed 31 years ago about the JFK assassination, I have been asked hundreds of times in interviews about whether the Kennedy conspiracies would have started quicker and been more florid had there been an internet and social media. I always said yes. The aftermath of speculation, misinformation, fake reports, hearsay, guesswork, and efforts to pin blame in this hyper-polarized political environment is even worse than I might have imagined. How about waiting for the facts to emerge? I realize that is impossible on social media in which everyone is an instant expert on bullet angles, presidential security, eyewitness and earwitness credibility, and there are self-appointed digital detectives looking for suspicious "evidence." I used to say that Americans love conspiracies. It seems it is a worldwide infection. Conspiracies happen, no doubt. But the knee jerk response to immediately see every major event as the product of a nefarious plot is a sad commentary on how most people process information. It should not be a surprise in a world in which half of Tik Tok users get their news from the app. I will wait for the slow release of information. And then I will do some reporting, question it, probe to see what was right and wrong, and criticize any shortcomings. If some government agency covers up what they should have done beforehand, I'll go after that. There is a story behind the Trump assassination. I just don't know what it is yet. But I do know enough to realize that the feverish conspiracy speculation is off the charts. By the way, I have an opinion piece running tomorrow in the Wall Street Journal. It is about the assassination, but a very different angle than this commentary. I will send it out tomorrow on Just the Facts as well. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.justthefacts.media

Everybody gives lip service to free speech. Until it runs counter to what they believe. It is not easy nowadays to have a reasonable discussion about topics such as gender ideology or the effect of the T on LGB without some zealots making life miserable for those with whom they disagree. Debate often quickly devolves into a verbal food fight. No wonder so many of the smartest people I know stay away from these topics as if they are social third rails. That is especially true of my progressive friends. They have discovered that it is not just high-profile public figures, such as J. K. Rowling, who become targets of a woke mob. Ordinary people suffer the consequences of free speech by running the real risks of getting cancelled at work or in social settings. Next Monday at 7PM EST, Trisha Posner and I will be guests on a Twitter/X Space hosted by Democrats for an Informed Approach to Gender (DIAG). It will be a wide-ranging discussion on how our institutions, the Democratic party, and many progressives, have been captured by gender ideology.DIAG is an all-volunteer 501c3 formed by Democrats, or politically homeless former Democrats, who still embrace liberal values but think the party has “veered way off track” when it comes to gender. DIAG’s members include parents, public health professionals, lawyers, teachers, and policy experts, all focused on the issue of gender and minors.DIAG is trying to have a voice on the gender issue inside the Democratic Party. On the Team Bios page of its website, thirteen of the sixteen people are identified by pseudonyms (one of the three listed under a real name is Jenny Poyer Akerman, some of you will remember that I was a guest on her TransMuted podcast a few weeks ago). Why are 80% of DIAG team members hiding their real names? "Many of us are balancing family situations and jobs that require us to remain anonymous." They know that merely expressing public opinions about gender ideology could cause problems with friends or families and might even put them in jeopardy professionally. It is a shame but that is where we are in 2024 when it comes to progressive censorship on issues such as gender.DIAG members are not the only ones concerned about getting into a public fray on hot button issues.A Bard professor, Omar Encarnación, wrote a New York Times opinion piece last week, “America Got Gay Marriage, but It Came at a Cost.” He argued that American gay activists who successfully pressed the campaign for same-sex marriage framed their efforts too narrowly as about “tax advantages, inheritance rights and hospital visitation privileges.” Instead, Encarnación contended, such a narrow focus “limited the transformative power of gay marriage and helped enable today’s backlash against L.G.B.T.Q. rights.”I am passing along below the smart and well-reasoned email from a friend and colleague who had drafted a response to that New York Times OpEd. My friend, a respected community activist in Florida, is himself gay, and has a unique perspective on why there has been some pushback on LGBT rights in America. However, as with the DIAG volunteers, he prefers anonymity, avoiding those activists who would prefer to make his life miserable for progressive heresy. “I do not agree that the lack of emphasis on moral equivalency of gay and straight marriage is the cause of backlash.When same-sex couples won the right to marriage, I viewed that as the culmination of gay rights activism, the normalization of gay households as additional building blocks of a traditional society with flexibility.I believe many heterosexuals felt the same way, and grew used to gay marriage, and their children gave not a thought to it.Then, gay rights organizations, having fulfilled a mission, needed to justify their existence with a new cause. This is called the March-of-Dimes effect.The March of Dimes aimed to fund the creation and distribution of a polio vaccine.They succeeded. Rather than disband, they moved on to another cause: birth defects. That, at least, was quite worthy.The gay organizations latched on to ever more initials, LBGQTIA, with ever more arcane and bizarre aims far removed and often in direct opposition to their original cause.In 1973, I believe, the psychiatric organizations removed homosexuality from their lists of mental illnesses.We were not insane, sick, and did not need treatment or therapy. Society as a whole needed therapy to let us live normal lives.Now, the trans agenda says the exact opposite. They cry that trans children suffer from an illness, gender dysphoria, and demand medical and psychiatric treatment.They are trying to normalize the therapy but not the people. The idea is to transform the trans people into the correct sex. It is as though their birth sex was a birth defect.It turns out that many young people thinking they have dysphoria are gay and will outgrow the confusion. But these organizations would rather trans away the gay, and sometimes without even asking the parents. I wonder how gay parents would feel if schools started using different pronouns from the birth sex of their children and secretly encouraged transitioning.Like any straight parent, they would go ballistic.This is the real attempt to destroy marriage and the nuclear family and have the state control everything. By latching on to this transexual revolutionary Marxist agenda so corrosive to a family-based society, gay organizations have greatly alarmed society. Their methods remind me of the Soviet Union, which would encourage students to spy on their parents for counter-revolutionary activity and betray them to state authorities.No wonder there is a backlash. Heterosexuals, after believing gay marriage was the goal, see the same organizations that fought for marriage equality, now fighting for goals that would destroy the family's ability to defend their children. They are beginning to think that we are insane, and I don't blame them.”Personally, I look forward to a time when it is possible to discuss gender with a group of Democrat party mothers and professionals, or print a critical email from a gay man about LGBT rights, and they will use their real names without fear that modern day McCarthyites will punish them for expressing independent opinions that do not fit into a progressive orthodoxy,. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.justthefacts.media