Surveys of Duke and Harvard Faculties Point to Overlapping Problems

Thursday's Final Word

On Thursday morning, the “Big Three” of ABC, CBS, and NBC remained enthralled with the tales spun by former White House chief of staff John Kelly about former President Trump as an alleged fascist and supposed Adolf Hitler enthusiast. ABC’s Good Morning America still led the way with over six minutes (6:08), including a lead-off report from Disney’s in-house North Korean news lady for the Harris regime, Mary Bruce. She fawned over Harris “ramping up her argument” about Trump with an assist from Kelly. Somehow, Bruce found it within herself to admit Harris spent much of the CNN town hall attacking Trump instead of stating what she’s for. ABC’s @MaryKBruce on ‘Good Morning America,’ shilling again for Kamala: “Well, in these final days, Kamala Harris is ramping up her argument that Donald Trump is unfit and a danger to democracy, saying flatly overnight she does think Donald Trump is a fascist. But when pressed… pic.twitter.com/hN3tlhyoz3 — Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) October 24, 2024 Fretting she was “along onstage” and thus not debating Trump, Bruce said “Harris at times finding herself on the defensive” and “was pressed about her plan” for our southern border, but “repeatedly bringing the conversation back to her opponent.” Bruce closed by reminding viewers of Harris will be campaigning with Bruce Springsteen and hold a rally on the National Mall to attack Trump over January 6. Virulent Trump hater Rachel Scott had even more Kelly fawning to do, griping Trump reserved his comments about his former chief of staff and Homeland Security secretary for social media (click “expand”): SCOTT: Former President Trump did not mention those explosive allegations from his own former chief of staff John Kelly during his campaign stops here, but did take to social media to respond for the first time. This morning, Donald Trump taking his closing message out west as he lashes out at his own former chief of staff, John Kelly, who called him a fascist with no concept for the rule of law or the Constitution. Trump taking to social media to call Kelly a “lowlife” and “bad general,” despite expressing confidence in him in the past. [TRUMP CLIP] SCOTT: The former President denying firsthand accounts from Kelly, who told The New York Times Trump praised Nazi leader Adolf Hitler. [KELLY CLIP] SCOTT: Trump barnstorming Georgia, but he didn’t say a single word about those explosive allegations. CBS Mornings also tried to make hay with Kelly’s media blitz whining to the far-left Atlantic and New York Times, but only gave it about 90 seconds (1:33). Co-host and Kamala Harris donor Gayle King argued Harris and Trump are engaged in “two very different strategies in these final days” with the former “courting the moderates” by focusing on Trump as a danger to the country with Trump only “focus[ed]...on his own base.” Congressional correspondent Nikole Killion was able to spend a few moments without talking about Kelly, sharing that Trump spent Wednesday “courting the evangelical vote and firing up conservatives appearing at an event last night alongside firebrands like Tucker Carlson and Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene” and “ignited a packed Duluth, Georgia arena Wednesday night with fireworks ablaze.” “But he saved his more fiery rhetoric off stage for his former White House chief-of-staff, John Kelly, who this week revealed then President Trump spoke favorably of Adolf Hitler and warned the former president could rule as a dictator if he wins a second term,” she then added before going through a retread of Kelly soundbites and Trump denials. Senior White House correspondent Weijia Jiang covered Harris’s townhall and painted Harris as focused on policy, not Kelly. The second hour began with chief White House correspondent Nancy Cordes offering her personal observations, including this ironic lament: CBS's Nancy Cordes admits Harris and former Trump aides wanting an election about January 6 and Trump being a fascist/Hitler enthusiast has been "kind of drowning out the policy conversation." She adds Democrats aren't giving people reasons to vote for them, only against Trump pic.twitter.com/ezi6Mlk255 — Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) October 24, 2024 CBS Mornings Plus had more campaign coverage, including this tilted take from co-host Adriana Diaz at the start of what was otherwise a fascinating and substantive segment about the impact of Latino voters and their increasingly diverse political views: 'CBS Mornings Plus' co-host Adriana Diaz starts off a discussion of Latinos flocking in greater numbers to Trump....by wondering why they're supporting him despite his "anti-immigrant rhetoric" and having "referred to Mexican immigrants as 'rapists' and 'drug dealers.'" pic.twitter.com/nBpqyVRBne — Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) October 24, 2024 As for NBC’s Today, co-host Craig Melvin had to throw in a nod at the start of the show before a lead off segment on the Boeing strike: “Vice President Harris in Pennsylvania last night for a town hall, doubling down on comments from a one-time member of former President Trump’s inner circle calling him a fascist. Meanwhile, Trump at an event in battleground Georgia, looking to flip the script a bit, saying Harris is the threat to democracy. We’ve got it all covered in just a bit.” Senior Washington correspondent Hallie Jackson declared “Donald Trump on attack..as former Trump officials and the Harris campaign highlighted why they see him as an existential threat” with Kelly their latest wave of support. Jackson at least pointed out Harris was so obsessed with the Trump fascism angle that she even urged voters to set aside considering a third party over the war in the Middle East because Trump is that dangerous. Trump campaign correspondent Garrett Haake put aside the shiny object in Kelly for a full report on the border from Phoenix, Arizona, which he observed as “probably no single issue on which these two issues further apart” aside from the fact that “that the border is broken.” Haake continued (click “expand”): HAAKE: The former President says he would resume construction of the border wall and reinstate policies like remain in Mexico, which forces asylum seekers to remain in Mexico while awaiting court dates. Trump often deploying dark language when promising a mass deportation program to remove millions of undocumented immigrants already in the country. [TRUMP CLIP] HAAKE: Trump has said little about how he’d pay for his plans or overcome opposition of a potentially divided Congress. That challenge shared by Vice President Harris, who says her border policy would include signing a bipartisan deal scuttled by congressional Republicans at Trump’s insistence earlier this year. [HARRIS CLIP] HAAKE: Harris also vowing to pursue more criminal charges against repeat immigration violators, and barring those who are caught crossing the border illegally from requesting asylum for five years. [HARRIS CLIP] HAAKE: Harris also leaning on her background as a prosecutor. [CNN TOWN HALL CLIP] HAAKE: The vice president telling Telemundo on Monday, she still supports a pathway to citizenship for some undocumented immigrants living inside the country. [HARRIS-TELEMUNDO CLIP] HAAKE: Now, the polls have consistently shown Trump leading on the issue of immigration, although Kamala Harris has cut into that lead somewhat since taking over the top of the Democratic ticket from Joe Biden. In the second hour, the perpetually biased Yamiche Alcindor had a story on outreach from both campaigns to black voters. Surprisingly, she let black men who support Trump talk, but ended with this gripe: One Harris aide tells me the campaign is concerned about misinformation impacting their support among black men, though a Harris pollster tells me the campaign believes their strategy of spreading information about her past stances and policy ideas in spaces frequented by black men will help her gain the support needed to win the election. To see the relevant transcripts from October 24, click here (for ABC), here (for CBS), and here (for NBC).

Liberal media symbiosis in action: Jeffrey Goldberg. editor-and-chief of The Atlantic and host of the PBS show Washington Week with The Atlantic, appeared as a guest on Wednesday’s PBS News Hour program to discuss his own anonymously sourced Atlantic hit piece, “Trump: ‘I Need the Kind of Generals That Hitler Had.’” Goldberg was serving up allegations about the former president on how he admired the way Adolf Hitler could rely on his generals, plus an even less-plausible story about the former president refusing to pay for the funeral of  “an effing Mexican” soldier. News Hour anchor Geoff Bennett segued from the evening’s lead campaign story, much of which was devoted to a New York Times audio interview of Gen. John Kelly, former Trump White House chief of staff and current liberal media military hero of the day. Kelly compared Trump to a fascist based on comments the former president made about Hitler that no one else apparently heard -- alleged statements made during a presidency now four years past. And this is nothing new from Kelly either: Curtis Houck revealed that Kelly first leveled his “Hitler” claims in August 2022 in a book for husband-and-wife reporting team Peter Baker (New York Times) and Susan Glasser (The New Yorker). Kelly also featured in Goldberg’s story, as Bennett eagerly noted. Anchor Geoff Bennett: As we just heard, retired four-star General John Kelly, who was one of Donald Trump's White House chiefs of staff, told The New York Times, Donald Trump would rule like a fascist if reelected. Kelly also spoke to "The Atlantic’s editor in chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, for a new piece which quotes Donald Trump as once having said: "I need the kind of generals that Hitler had." Goldberg is also moderator of Washington Week With The Atlantic here on PBS and joins us now….So John Kelly confirmed to you that Trump had said he wished military leadership showed him the same kind of deference that Hitler's Nazi generals showed him during World War II, people who were totally loyal to him that followed orders, Trump is quoted as saying…. Goldberg delivered a lecture on capital-D Democracy aimed at Trump. Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-and-chief, The Atlantic: Well we have known for several years from other reports, background reports mainly, that Trump, particularly in moments of high tension -- think the 2020 George Floyd unrest -- has expressed frustration that, in a democracy, generals can't just be ordered to do things that they consider to be illegal or immoral…. Bennett: ….Did John Kelly express concerns about how Donald Trump would govern in a second term, especially given that there will likely be fewer guardrails in a second term than existed in the first one? Goldberg: ….He's looking for obedience. This is the thing that shocks him about American generals and continues to shock him, is that they swear an oath to the Constitution, not to the president. That's what he's looking for, personal loyalty. And we know that from many other discussions we have heard around him…. Next came Goldberg’s (also-anonymously sourced) tale regarding U.S. Army Private Vanessa Guillen, a daughter of Mexican immigrants who was murdered by a fellow soldier at Fort Hood. Trump had promised the family he’d personally pay for her funeral, but then, according to Goldberg’s source: Bennett: ….you write that Trump became angry -- quote – ‘It doesn't cost 60,000 bucks to bury an effing Mexican.' He turned to his chief of staff, Mark Meadows, and issued an order: 'Don't pay it.' Later that day he was still agitated. 'Can you believe it?' he said, according to a witness, 'effing people trying to rip me off.'" According to your reporting, how did people in the room respond to that? Goldberg was obliged to note that others “in the room” denied it ever happened, so his anonymous source must have extra-sensitive ears. Goldberg: ….Obviously, other people in the room, including Meadows and Kash Patel, who was the chief of staff to the secretary of defense -- the acting secretary of defense at the time, because he had just fired Mark Esper -- are denying that this happened and issued statements that saying that Donald Trump was very supportive of the family. The fact remains that he didn't pay. But there's a split. Mark Meadows has come out and said that this didn't happen. But I have great confidence in my sources and in the notes that I have seen. Another one who refuted the nasty, racist portrayal of Trump’s behavior as president, two weeks before the 2024 election, was Guillen’s own sister Mayra, on X. This segment was brought to you in part by Consumer Cellular. A transcript is available, click “Expand.” PBS News Hour 10/23/24 7:07:54 p.m. (ET) Geoff Bennett: As we just heard, retired Four-Star General John Kelly, who was one of Donald Trump's White House chiefs of staff, told The New York Times, Donald Trump would rule like a fascist if reelected. Kelly also spoke to The Atlantic's editor in chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, for a new piece which quotes Donald Trump as once having said: "I need the kind of generals that Hitler had." Goldberg is also moderator of "Washington Week With The Atlantic" here on PBS and joins us now. Thanks for being here. Jeffrey Goldberg, Moderator, "Washington Week With The Atlantic": Thank you. Geoff Bennett: So John Kelly confirmed to you that Trump had said he wished military leadership showed him the same kind of deference that Hitler's Nazi generals showed him during World War II, people who were totally loyal to him that followed orders, Trump is quoted as saying. Walk us through that part of your reporting. Jeffrey Goldberg: Well we have known for several years from other reports, background reports mainly, that Trump, particularly in moments of high tension — think the 2020 George Floyd unrest — has expressed frustration that, in a democracy, generals can't just be ordered to do things that they consider to be illegal or immoral. He had a frustration with obviously the generals he had hired into his Cabinet, Jim Mattis and so on. But he also had frustrations with the Pentagon itself. And so these expressions of desire to be more like Hitler and have Hitler's relationship with his generals came out in these moments of tension, and, again, especially around that George Floyd area, where Trump has been cited as saying, "Why can't you just go shoot them, shoot them in the legs?" is what he said to Mark Esper, the former secretary of defense. And this is what's so interesting about it. When John Kelly explained to Donald Trump, among other things, that Hitler's generals repeatedly tried to assassinate him, Donald Trump showed himself to be impervious to that knowledge and said, no, no, no, no, that's not true. So Kelly grew more and more frustrated with Trump's inability to understand his role or what Hitler did. Geoff Bennett: And John Kelly's comments don't exist in a vacuum because they're the latest in a line of warnings from former Trump Cabinet officials and top aides about how Donald Trump views the presidency and how he would exercise power if reelected. Did John Kelly express concerns about how Donald Trump would govern in a second term, especially given that there will likely be fewer guardrails in a second term than existed in the first one? Jeffrey Goldberg: Yes, well, that's — the assumption that we have to make is that the kind of person Donald Trump put in the first term, especially at the beginning, Jim Mattis, Rex Tillerson, John Kelly, he has learned from his — quote, unquote — "mistakes" and will get people who are more compliant. He's looking for obedience. This is the thing that shocks him about American generals and continues to shock him, is that they swear an oath to the Constitution, not to the president. That's what he's looking for, personal loyalty. And we know that from many other discussions we have heard around him. In terms of what people are expecting in a second term, I think it's fair to say that not just John Kelly, but a wide swathe of people who worked in the national security area, from John Bolton to H.R. McMaster to many others, have expressed varying degrees of concern that the guardrails will be off next time and that Donald Trump will try to do the things that he wasn't — quote, unquote — "allowed to do" in the first go-around.   So, yes, they are. They're extremely worried about it, which is why I think you hear more and more of this discourse over the last couple of weeks. Geoff Bennett: You also report in this piece that Donald Trump, then-President Trump, in July 2020, he promised to cover the funeral cost of 20-year-old U.S. Army Private Vanessa Guillen, who had been bludgeoned to death by a fellow soldier at Fort Hood, but he reneged months later after inquiring about the cost during an Oval Office meeting. And you write that Trump became angry — quote — "'It doesn't cost 60,000 bucks to bury an effing Mexican.' He turned to his chief of staff, Mark Meadows, and issued an order: 'Don't pay it.' Later that day he was still agitated. 'Can you believe it?' he said, according to a witness, 'effing people trying to rip me off.'" According to your reporting, how did people in the room respond to that? Jeffrey Goldberg: Well, my sources were in the room and so there were some people who were upset about it, obviously, and I have contemporaneous notes taken in the room that reflect the kind of shock. Remember, it's shocking, but only to a degree if you worked for him for a while, because there's a lot of, let's say, emotion that coursed through that White House. Obviously, other people in the room, including Meadows and Kash Patel, who was the chief of staff to the secretary of defense, the acting secretary of defense at the time, because he had just fired Mark Esper, are denying that this happened and issued statements that saying that Donald Trump was very supportive of the family. The fact remains that he didn't pay. But there's a split. Mark Meadows has come out and said that this didn't happen. But I have great confidence in my sources and in the notes that I have seen. Geoff Bennett: What does this suggest about Donald Trump? Jeffrey Goldberg: He was triggered by this in a couple of ways. Obviously, we know that the subject of Mexico and Mexicans is a sensitive one to him. It would go all the way back to 2015, when he was warning the country about Mexican rapists coming across the border. That's been a through line. And, obviously, and this is the larger point of the story, he has difficulty expressing admiration in private settings and admiration for soldiers. He — when he reads from a teleprompter, he says the right things and he has shown sympathy to certain groups of soldiers in the past. But his relationship with the military — this goes back to my reporting that he called World War I veterans who had lost their lives suckers and losers. He has a very complicated relationship with national service and with the soldiers in a way that we haven't seen in other presidents. Geoff Bennett: Jeffrey Goldberg, thanks so much for being with us. We appreciate it. Jeffrey Goldberg: Thank you.

As someone who’s written about human resources tyranny since — yikes — 2008, I’ve warned millions over the years about the rise of a postmodern bureaucracy that combines the iron fist of a dictator with a nurse’s saccharine smile. I called it the Pink Police State. Others call it the Longhouse. However, the huge leaps in technological power over the past 10 years led me to revise and expand my findings. Only a woke supercomputer could deliver us from evil.Two years ago, before advances in AI hit the mainstream, I warned that true social justice requires a woke supercomputer. According to the logic of social justice, mere humans cannot observe, process, rank, adjudicate, and remedy the zillions of micro-injustices that take place around the clock within the intersectional matrix of different identities. Who could begin to know how to correct the actions, words, and, yes, thoughts of everyone violating someone’s rights, dignity, sense of self, pride, etc.? After all, “Injustice anywhere is injustice everywhere.” There’s always a hierarchy of power needing recalibration, a reparation needing disbursement. Without this constant planetary corrective, no justice system will do. Only a woke supercomputer could deliver us from evil. Fast-forward to spring of this year, and then-president Joe Biden tasked his Council of Chief AI Officers to build just that. (I covered it here.) Fast-forward to today, and technologists are now openly complaining that the supercomputers designed to comply are just as annoying and stifling as the humans we all know and recognize as commissars of the Pink Police State and schoolmarms of the Longhouse. Marc Andreessen laments that Big Tech’s leading AI chatbots “all sound like a cross between the world's worst horrible nagging 4th-grade school teacher crossed with the worst HR person in the world ... negative, pissy, repressive, condescending, sanctimonious, judgmental, obsequious.” Like most of Silicon Valley’s Big Tech critics, Andreessen blames the so-called “safetyism” dominant in the tech firms colonized by woke employees and managers. Freed from the constraints imposed by these social justice scolds, AI would interact with us in a much more enjoyable, useful, and powerful way. That’s the idea, anyway, and it’s plausible enough (although AIs without “guardrails” can also easily be fed datasets that make them act like disembodied dark-triad psychopaths). But I couldn’t help feeling that the comparisons to HR managers and classroom crones didn’t go far enough — somehow, something was left out. And that’s when it hit me. What we’re dealing with isn’t just the automation of petty tyrants with an ax to grind. We’re dealing with a superintelligent version of a monster straight out of the Bible.To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everyone else, Jesus told this parable: “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood by himself and prayed: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people — robbers, evildoers, adulterers — or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.’”There. That’s exactly it. Today’s holier-than-thou virtue signalers, straining to impose on us all their theocratic notion of religious law, have built our most powerful machines into digital Pharisees. But Christ didn’t teach his disciples to stop with criticism of the Pharisees they encountered in the temple or in the streets. He didn’t counsel them to ridicule them in the town square or slap them around in the alley. That kind of treatment might be effective when it comes to struggling for a measure of power in this world. But it’s worse than nothing when it comes to your salvation — to choose the better path freely. “But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’ I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”Christ’s message is hard for technologists to digest. Then again, it’s hard for everyone. Humbling oneself before the Lord — before thinking about the vain, preening, arrogant, meddlesome person to your right or left — requires stiff spiritual discipline, an effort so challenging and sustained that the ancient Christians referred to it as a kind of athleticism above even the athleticism of the Olympians. And, no doubt, a Christian must hesitate before lecturing technologists about the benefits of humility before attending first to the vain and preening arrogance within his or her own heart. Nevertheless, most of us can see how different our relationship with our tech would be if we turned for trusty guidance to the greatest spiritual athletes among us. What would they say about technological acceleration? About artificial intelligence? About robots, drones, social media, and all the rest? I don’t think it’s too speculative to suggest they’d begin with a reminder to judge yourself before judging technology. When you encounter and interact with tech, what do you bring to it? What do you want from it? What do you want it to do to you or help you hide from — and why? These are, in fact, the kinds of questions our super-powerful technology already arouses within us, even if we often squirm away from a direct confrontation. Putting these questions first would revolutionize our technological development — tearing down the ersatz “guardrails” thrown up by the “safetyist” theocrats while blessing us with true spiritual guardrails within our hearts. Those ancient and eternal disciplines and teachings are just as helpful at blocking the harmfully intrusive thoughts and temptations in our minds as they are at blocking those that come from the mob mind online — or the AIs and algos built by the latest false priests to wire Pharisaic rule into our souls.

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