Why Is 'The Atlantic' Hoax Central?

AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais, File

Forget General John Kelly's role in the latest hoax being perpetrated on the American people. 

He is clearly bitter. As I wrote earlier today, it is obvious that he is lying about Trump's admiration for Hitler because the alternative is that he chose to work for a man who admired Hitler. In either case, he is a fatally compromised man who deserves no respect. 

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No American General or White House Chief of Staff could, in good conscience, stand by the side of a man who aspired to be Hitler. And, needless to say, it is highly suspicious that he just remembered this five years after he left the Oval Office, and right before a presidential election. 

Uh huh. 

So dismiss John Kelly. Sometimes, honorable men are broken by being humiliated, and Trump humiliated him not just by forcing him out but by calling him dumb multiple times. He is bitter. 

But The Atlantic bears some more scrutiny since the once-great magazine has been on a Jihad against Trump, publishing stories about how Trump is HITLERSTALINMUSSOLINI and making all sorts of wild accusations. 

Why?

Meet Laurene Powell Jobs, the widow of Steve Jobs and the person behind Kamala Harris' continued rise to power after Willie Brown got her on her way up the ladder.  I swear that is not a crude reference. Keep your mind out of the gutter. 

Powell Jobs is rich. As in MEGA rich, and as the New York Times makes clear, she is the woman behind Kamala just as Willie Brown was the man who stood before her. 

After Vice President Joe Biden swore in Kamala Harris as a United States senator in January 2017, they posed for a customary photo in the Capitol with her family. Then she asked her future boss for a favor: Would he indulge in one more photo?

“Come on, everybody,” Ms. Harris said, waving in a dozen others. “My extended family is here.”

The first member of Ms. Harris’s entourage to approach Mr. Biden just happened to be one of the richest people in the world: Laurene Powell Jobs.

Ms. Powell Jobs, the philanthropist who controls a fortune worth over $11 billion, stood just behind Mr. Biden’s right shoulder, joining Ms. Harris’s best friend from kindergarten and others in her inner circle. As the photo was snapped and the group broke up, Mr. Biden grabbed a coveted 60 seconds with Ms. Powell Jobs — asking about her son and talking about his ambitions for cancer research.

Few figures have cultivated a more consequential friendship with Ms. Harris, now the Democratic nominee for president, than Ms. Powell Jobs, who for decades was married to one of America’s most famous entrepreneurs, Steve Jobs.

Over the past 20 years, she has become one of Ms. Harris’s most essential confidantes, providing counsel and money, and helping to expand Ms. Harris’s public profile. Now, in this year’s presidential race, the wealthiest woman in Silicon Valley has emerged as a powerful player behind the scenes. She has quietly contributed millions of dollars to an organization backing Ms. Harris, according to three people briefed on the gifts.

She played a hidden but key role in helping usher Mr. Biden out of the race, which cleared the way for a Harris run.

And Ms. Powell Jobs, who is so close to the vice president that her staff refers to her simply as “L.P.J.,” is positioned to have extraordinary influence, or at least access, in a potential Harris administration.

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Powell Jobs is a person who can help depose a President of the United States. Think about that for a moment. 

The women spent the next two decades traveling among the same Silicon Valley elite. They have attended each other’s family events: Ms. Powell Jobs was one of about 60 people to attend Ms. Harris’s wedding to Mr. Emhoff in 2014, and Ms. Powell Jobs invited Ms. Harris to the wedding of her son, Reed, this year in Hawaii, which Mr. Emhoff attended. They even shared the same celebrity dermatologist.

Even as Ms. Harris’s career took her to Sacramento and Washington, they have gone on personal trips together, with Ms. Harris at times flying on Ms. Powell Jobs’s private plane. They have prioritized one-on-one meals when they’ve found themselves in the same city: They have been spotted together at Quince, the San Francisco hot spot, and were once seen chatting with Rupert Murdoch at the high-end restaurant Nobu Malibu.

And she owns the controlling interest in The Atlantic. And she isn't shy about using the power she has to shape The Narrative™. She, sitting right next to Kamala Harris, says as much. Her aspiration is to elevate who and what she likes and denigrate those who she doesn't, and The Atlantic is one of her most powerful tools to do so. 

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That's fine. We live in a free-speech world and I wouldn't want to change that for a second. If Laurene Powell Jobs wants to take a once-prestigious magazine and turn it into a lying propaganda rag, that is her right. Just as it is our right to call them out on their lies and point out that they are scum less pleasant to be around than the muck I scrape off my shoes after walking through a pigpen. 

I have to find a better metaphor than pig excrement, I suppose. How about dog vomit? 

You get the idea. 

The decline of The Atlantic is a perfect example of David Burge's perfect description of the Left. Take something that once deserve to be respected, gut it, and use the appearance of respectability conveyed by the brand to gain unearned authority.

Think academia as an example. Or The Science™. It is all the same tactic.

I subscribed to The Atlantic for years, and it still occasionally prints some truly excellent articles. But when it comes to anything that Powell Jobs cares about it is worse than Pravda. Jeffrey Goldberg, who wrote the scurrilous article, was either credulous to the point of idiocy or, more likely, doing the bidding of his master. 

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Darren Walker, the president of the Ford Foundation, found himself at an intimate dinner in Washington last fall, along with Ms. Powell Jobs, Ms. Harris and Doug Emhoff, Ms. Harris’s husband.

The women, he recalled, seemed especially at ease. “It was the vice president’s residence,” he said, “but they were sitting on the sofa like longtime girlfriends.”

Over fish and African vegetables, Mr. Walker said, they chatted about art and recounted stories of their recent travels to Africa.

...

Politicians often use the word “friend” to describe patrons who can power their campaigns and careers. Neither Ms. Harris nor Ms. Powell Jobs, who both zealously guard their privacy, would comment for this story. But in interviews, three dozen people with insight into their bond described a genuine friendship built on a shared political philosophy, an interest in art and culture and their mutual trials as women in the public spotlight.

Not that he isn't a paid-up member of the transnational elite who hate Trump, but how little self-respect can you have to allow something so ridiculous be printed under your byline?

Goldberg has lost all sense of morality. He attacks a Gold Star family because, well, Trump. He quotes anonymous sources, misquotes people who are on the record, attacks the family who dispute his story, misquotes the lawyer for that family, and preens about being a truth teller. 

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As I said, muck off my shoes after going through a pigpen. He is that bad. Here is what one of his "sources" on the Vanessa Guillen story. She calls him a liar, and she is obviously right. 


If you want to know why The Atlantic is hoax-central, it's not hard to understand. Powell Jobs is the paymaster, and Powell Jobs has been working to make Kamala Harris president for years. She has the power to displace PRESIDENTS, according to, not me, but The New York Times. 

In 2017, Ms. Powell Jobs consented to a rare interview onstage at a tech conference hosted by the journalist Kara Swisher, who would become a New York Times opinion writer. She brought Ms. Harris along and made the interview a twofer.

It was the beginning of the Trump administration, but Ms. Swisher was already looking ahead to the next election. When she jokingly asked Ms. Powell Jobs if she was planning to run for president in 2020, Ms. Powell Jobs quickly turned the question into an opportunity to promote Ms. Harris, then a newly elected senator from California.

“Well, one of us should,” Ms. Powell Jobs replied. She pointed at Ms. Harris and said, “I vote for her.”

So when you read anything about Kamala Harris or Donald Trump, consider the source. It isn't really the author whose name is on the story; it is Kamala Harris' patron who made that story happen. 

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Ed Morrissey 10:00 PM | November 20, 2024
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