This is what passes for “news” at Newsweek?
Former President Donald Trump’s supporters are determined to avoid the mistakes of 2020 and are preparing to use every legal method available to prevent Democrats from dishonestly changing the results.
And there are undercover recordings to prove it!
That was the sum total of an article Newsweek published Wednesday, piggy-backing off a similar report Tuesday by Rolling Stone.
Both reports are based on conversations recorded surreptitiously by liberal documentary film maker Lauren Windsor and an accomplice, with Trump backer Roger Stone at an event at the Mar-a-Lago Club in South Florida.
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Windsor was making headlines last week with similar super-duper recordings of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito that, contrary to leftist fantasies, only proved how perceptive Alito is. That was also splashed big first in Rolling Stone.
Now, no one expects “journalism” from an outfit like Rolling Stone.
The supposedly anti-establishment, rock ‘n’ roll rebel magazine has been a Democratic shill — a house organ of the Democratic Party as predictable as The New York Times but with more colorful, if sophomoric, writing.
Newsweek, however, makes at least the pretense of being a serious publication, and by that standard, the article isn’t merely inadequate, it’s about as dumb as it’s possible to be.
As long as it’s legal, should the GOP use every trick in the book to win 2024?
First, here’s the recording — where Stone vows that Trump supporters are going to be prepared for the inevitable legal fights that are going to follow the Nov. 5 vote. It’s worth watching, not just for Stone’s words, but to understand how hyperbolic the leftist reaction is:
NEW UNDERCOVER inside Mar-a-Lago: Trump Ally Roger Stone’s Plan to Win Election Relies on Judges and Courts pic.twitter.com/SNdcdCqcl7
— Lauren Windsor (@lawindsor) June 18, 2024
In the recording, Windsor initiates a conversation with Stone with an ingratiating “you’re in a position to know more than anyone else….” then asks his opinion about the election.
“Too early to say,” he responds, reasonably enough.
When Windsor tries to goad him with the line “Biden can’t win again” he answers:
“No but it can be stolen again.”
Stone then goes on to talk about actual election-related material, especially the importance of turning out the evangelical vote for Trump and keeping Trump supporters from becoming complacent.
“Overconfidence is one of our giant problems right now among our own people,” he said.
“What are we going to to do stop it, though?”
Stone apparently took the question to refer to his earlier statement about the election being stolen — which it may have been. Participants in an in-person conversation generally know what the other is referring to better than eavesdroppers on a hidden recording device.
“We’re working on it,” Stone said. “Lawyers, judges, technology.”
In other words, the GOP is working with the weapons of modern election warfare — just like Democrats have become experts at (just ask Marc Elias).
And for Newsweek, this qualifies as news.
The Windsor video includes an earlier interaction between Stone and Windsor accomplice Ally Sammarco, in which Sammarco, pretending to be a fan, tells Stone she participated in the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol incursion. Obviously attempting to bait Stone, she said point-blank that the 2020 election was stolen by Democrats.
His response was clear as day for what it portended for Trump supporters:
“We’re gonna, between now and then, we’re gonna work very hard and very smart to make sure that doesn’t happen.”
Again, nuts and bolts campaign work and nuts and bolts campaign law work. This is not the stuff of undercover recording legend.
“So far, given the incredible power they have and they will use ruthlessly, we are beating them as of today,” Stone said.
He cited the legal problems facing the Democratic prosecution of Trump in Fulton County, Georgia, and special counsel Jack Smith’s cases against Trump in Florida and D.C. as signs the offensive against Trump is stalling.
And he declared that Republicans would be ready this election to fight in a way that they were not in 2020.
If that’s news at all, it’s the kind that should hearten Trump supporters, tired of seeing Democrats abusing the American legal system in their quest for power.
That’s not the kind of “news” Newsweek’s editors saw, though, as the headline declared: “Roger Stone Secret Recording Sparks Fury.”
The “fury” was, naturally, made up entirely of Democrats who apparently see something sinister in the idea that Republicans can defend themselves in a legal fight.
If the goal of the Windsor recordings was to expose something supposedly secret, it was a failure. Nothing in Stone’s words were shocking, and only comforting for Trump supporters to know their side won’t roll over and die when the going gets rough in the fall.
The fact that liberal activists are going to such lengths, coming up so empty, and pretending the attempts are just shy of the Potemkin mutiny in their importance basically reeks of liberal panic.
If the goal was to humiliate Stone personally — which was almost certainly at least a secondary aim, considering the left’s fear and loathing for the man — it was worse than a failure. And Newsweek’s publication of such an embarrassing, ham-handed piece of polemics only humiliated the publication instead.
Stone probably summed up the situation best in his own social media post, calling the story a “NOTHINGBURGER.”
The video of me illegally obtained by @lawindsor in which I lay out the perfectly legal steps Republicans must take to ensure a free ,fair and honest election is a NOTHINGBURGER https://t.co/IMs4LRBZTi
— Roger Stone (@RogerJStoneJr) June 19, 2024
“The video of me illegally obtained by @lawindsor in which I lay out the perfectly legal steps Republicans must take to ensure a free, fair and honest election is a NOTHINGBURGER,” he wrote.
It’s a nothingburger all right.
But it’s the kind of news that passes for “news” at Newsweek.
