Via Hunter at Random, this is why I like Pete Buttigieg.
Jake Tapper: Let me just ask you, some of your Democratic opponents including senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, who I’ll be talking to shortly, called the strike a “assassination.” They say it’s an assassination. Do you believe it was an assassination?
Pete Buttigieg: I am not interested in the terminology. I’m interested in the consequences and I’m interested in the process. Did the president have legal authority to do this? Why wasn’t Congress consulted? It seems like more people at Mar-a-Lago heard about this than people in the United States Congress who are a coequal branch of government with a responsibility to consult. Which of our allies were consulted? The real-world effects of this are going to go far beyond the things that we’re debating today and we need answers quickly.
Meanwhile, pundits and idiots (often a redundancy) are getting all twitterpated because Elizabeth Warren used the word “assassination.” That is entirely beside the point but it’s a perfect example of how the nutsery can create a meaningless distraction so as to avoid the real issue: Trump is starting a war because he’s been impeached. People will die because of it. And he’s committing more impeachable offenses to do it.
That’s the point.
It seems as though the tendency has increased among the press over the past couple of decades to go for the bright shiny object and miss the substance — or deliberately ignore it. Makes them easy targets for both the GOP and Russian disinformation bots. And, given their position in American discourse, it’s too easy for them to manipulate the public (Fox News, anyone? But they’re not alone) while they are being manipulated themselves.
Oh, and thanks for the nod.