Gerard Baker writes the "Free Expression" column, Tuesdays, in the Wall Street Journal.  (Previously, he was the paper's editor-in-chief, from March 2013 to June 2018).  His June 15 column, "Toobin, 1619 and the Journalistic Reign of Error," is worth noting.

The "Toobin" part of the title refers to the disgraced CNN correspondent on legal matters, Jeffrey Toobin, who was suspended by CNN for Zooming himself performing a lewd act.  Remarking on Toobin's recent reinstatement by CNN, Mr., Baker observed: 

The medium is no longer the message. The new reality is that the mission is the message. As long as your work furthers the mission, no failure in behavior, no error in reporting or editing, no corruption of the truth or the evidence will go unrewarded.

He alluded to "1619" to make the point that a Pulitzer prize went to the "1619 Project, notwithstanding its historical inaccuracies (notably concerning the role of slavery as a significant factor in the creation of the United States)."  Mr. Baker regarded the Pulitzer for the "1619 Project" as a case of subordinating "documentary historical evidence" to "the mission."  He sees the Pulitzers as comparable, now, to the "Hero of the Soviet Union–like ribbons for full-time advocacy of approved causes[.]"

Mr. Baker then turned to the recent government report clearing up the original media reports that protesters in Lafayette Square were forcibly cleared out to make room for a Trump photo-op outside St. John's Church (that had been targeted by some protesters for burning).  Here, as in other examples of "politically tendentious falsehoods" promoted by media outlets, Mr. Baker indicated that "the mission" was, quite simply, the destruction of Donald J. Trump and his presidency.  He pointed out: "The Lafayette Square fable was one in a long line of stories we were forced to consume during an election year."

Left unstated by Mr. Baker (the reader is left to infer this by his own lights) is the logical conclusion that President Trump's defeat in 2020 was what the rush to get "fake news'' zapping him was all about.  At this point, however, for reasons only this former Wall Street Journal editor-in-chief knows, Mr. Baker turned tail and not only ran from underscoring what the left's "mission" is all about; he ended his column by making common cause with that mission.

Gerard Baker, while acknowledging that the media tell lies about Donald J. Trump, agrees with the media horde "that Mr. Trump is spreading a 'big lie' about a stolen election."  Mr. Baker's column ends with this:

The tragedy is that they [the leftist media] don't understand the main reason he is able to propagate his own fictions is because no one outside their own circle believes theirs.

No, Mr. Baker, the pathetic reality is that you are unwilling to allow that a Deep State that was prepared to propagate one anti-Trump fiction after another is prepared to conspire — yes conspire — to use its unreported and underhanded powers to rig an election to ensure that the accident of 2016 did not recur in 2020.  So many questions about 2020 abound: the interference with Republican poll-watchers, the midnight ballot dumps, the overnight halt in vote-counting, the election rules changes by individuals when the changes are to originate with the legislatures, the refusal of courts, during the immediate election aftermath, to rule on the merits in cases alleging wrongful election procedures.

Quite simply, if lies have been propagated about Mr. Trump, starting with the egregious fiction about colluding with Russia, continuing with Wuhan Virus–gate, and, now, with Lafayette Square–gate, why should the Wall Street Journal agree to the biggest "fable" of all — what "the mission" is all about, and continues to be all about: the total destruction of Trump and Trumpism (which is shorthand for "government of, by and for the people")?  In the final analysis, what could better serve this "mission" than the successful tampering with election procedures that are part of the legacy we inherited from the Founders.

One gets the unwelcome sense that Election-gate was a conspiracy too big (for the perps) to fail.  And they accuse Republicans of undermining democracy in America?  Talk about your "projection"!

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