Oops! Another 'walls closing in' narrative about Trump hiding phone records with a 7-hour 'gap' falls apart
A couple days ago, the press was wildly celebrating the demise of Donald Trump over Jan. 6 matters. Reporters breathlessly claimed there was a seven-hour stretch of congressionally subpoenaed phone records that was missing from the White House transcripts on Jan. 6. It had to have been removed. There had to be a cover-up! It's the cover-up that'll getcha. The walls were once again closing in on Trump. Gotcha.
They made fools of themselves with tweets like these:
Nixon - 18.5 minutes of records buried in a coverup.
— Renew America Movement (@RenewAmerica) March 29, 2022
Trump - 457 minutes of records withheld, deleted or circumvented in a coverup. https://t.co/gT2LnPfqZe
Nixon only erased 18 min. “Possible coverup”: Trump's Jan. 6 call logs have a mysterious 7-hour gap https://t.co/odwJgFAFV3
— Toby Berry טובי (@TobyBerry6325) March 29, 2022
It’s usually the coverup, not the crime, that trips people up. A 7 hour gap = coverup.
— Claire McCaskill (@clairecmc) March 30, 2022
Jan. 6 White House logs given to House show 7-hour gap in Trump calls - The Washington Post https://t.co/tkCMqNQQc7
This "influencer" was a little late on the uptake but got rolling with parroting the narrative, too:
It's like Nixon but 25 1/2 times worse!https://t.co/n9BxadcpPN
— The Mary Sue (@TheMarySue) April 1, 2022
This bluecheck got all excited about the imaginary "burner phones":
.@hunterw reported back in November that some of the organizers of the Jan 6 rally used burner phones for their “high level” communications with Trump’s team — including Trump’s family and Chief of Staff Mark Meadows. https://t.co/21EWZXnMcA
— Noah Shachtman (@NoahShachtman) March 29, 2022
La Streisand, of course, went to town:
Nixon only was missing 18.5 minutes in the Watergate tapes. Trump is missing 7 hours from the day of the attempted coup. Coverup? https://t.co/HsZpSd3c2x
— Barbra Streisand (@BarbraStreisand) March 29, 2022
Bob Woodward got all pious and intoning:
Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post Associate Editor Bob Woodward joins MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell to discuss the "astonishing" seven hour and 37 minute gap on Trump's call log from January 6, noting one lawmaker said it looks like "a possible coverup."https://t.co/gFGHuHq6H1
— Scoot 😷 🌻 🇺🇦 (@ImpeachmentHour) March 31, 2022
...probably with a little nostalgia. After all, aren't the gaps part of how he took down Richard Nixon in the Watergate scandal as a cub reporter at the Washington Post, and then got a movie of his "heroics" made about it, starring Robert Redford?
Worse than Watergate, they hollered.
Except that...oops, they actually found all of the tapes. There was no gap.
CNN tried to put a pretty face on it.
So the “7 hour gap” that led the news all week and was designed to make it look like a Trump coverup on 1/6 is now admittedly garbage. The narrative the news creates matters. The quest to find truly unbiased and fair news continues. It’s not easy. https://t.co/Ur12MBuGW2
— Alex Triantafilou (@ChairmanAlex) April 1, 2022
CNN tried to pretty it up as an argument that an alternative means of communications was used, but the hard reality is, there were no missing tapes, no gaps, and no cover-up. None.
Bzzt, foiled again. The media clowns breathlessly reported that they had "gotten" Trump at long last, but the whole thing collapsed in two days like a bad soufflé.
This is interesting because it's far from the first time this kind of excitement, hype, buildup, and gotcha sentiment has gripped the mainstream media. They thought they had Trump with the Steele dossier. They thought they had him with the "whistleblower" and impeachment. They thought they had him with the Russia Russia Russia collusion narrative. They thought they had him on the Mueller report. They thought they had him on taxes. Every last one of these overhyped cases fell flat, turning out to be the opposite of their stated narrative. As a result, they got egg all over their faces, failed to wipe it off, and once again got more egg on their faces, with their desperate, credulous, idiotic attempts to claim Trump's hide in some invented scandal that facts always break to bits.
Well, they look like fools again, once more playing the role of Wile E. Coyote, done in by their own credulousness and Trump Derangement Syndrome. Wasn't it Eric Hoffer who once said extreme hatred makes poor prognosticators? Those who hate insanely can never follow facts or make forecasts because they simply are blinded by their hate and rage.
That brings us back to the media and their latest beclowning.
Here's a good tweet summing up the likely aftermath of this pathetic show:
That’s the sound of Tweets being deleted. pic.twitter.com/Lnn5cCvFaf
— Max Abrahms (@MaxAbrahms) April 1, 2022
Poof! Poof! Poof! Let the deletings begin.
Image: Twitter screen shot.