Anatomy of a (near) smear
Happily, it blew up in their pinched, smarmy faces. THIS time, at any rate.
Pete Hegseth’s lawyer, Sen. Cotton slam West Point for sharing false info about defense pick’s admission in possible privacy violation
Pete Hegseth’s lawyer and Sen. Tom Cotton slammed West Point on Wednesday for falsely claiming the defense secretary-designate was never accepted into the nation’s top military academy — in potential violation of federal privacy laws, according to letters exclusively obtained by The Post.Attorney Tim Parlatore and Cotton (R-Ark.) fired off a pair of letters to the US Military Academy’s superintendent, expressing concern that a public affairs officer shared “false information” with a journalist that could have blocked President-elect Donald Trump’s defense pick from confirmation.
“Not only did Mr. Hegseth apply, but he was accepted as a prospective member of the class of 2003,” Parlatore said in a letter to West Point Superintendent Lt. Gen. Steven Gilland, disclosing a copy later tweeted by his client of the offer of admission in 1999.
“Perhaps there’s an honest mistake here, though I can’t imagine what it might be,” the Arkansas Republican said. “But I also can’t imagine this action was authorized or known to the West Point leadership.”
A West Point spokesperson later told The Post, “A review of our records indicates Peter Hegseth was offered admission to West Point in 1999 but did not attend. An incorrect statement involving Hegseth’s admission to the U.S. Military Academy was released by an employee on Dec. 10, 2024.”
“Upon further review of an archived database, employees realized this statement was in error,” the rep said. “Hegseth was offered acceptance to West Point as a prospective member of the Class of 2003. The academy takes this situation seriously and apologizes for this administrative error.”
Investigative nonprofit ProPublica, which bills itself as a “nonpartisan, careful and independent,” was reporting a piece on Hegseth’s links to West Point when it got the erroneous statement from the prestigious academy. The story never ran after the publication eventually received a copy of Hegseth’s admission letter.
“So: No, we are not publishing a story,” ProPublica editor Jesse Eisinger posted in a lengthy thread on X Wednesday. “This is how journalism is supposed to work. Hear something. Check something. Repeat steps 1 and 2 as many times as needed. The end.”
Well, actually, no, not quite, Bucko. I has questions, and so does David Strom.
Where the story gets really interesting is how the editor of ProPublica has responded to criticism about the entire affair. Obviously, people are upset that the organization was prepared to slander Hegseth, ambushed him, called him a liar, and demanded he prove his integrity so quickly in the midst of everything else he is doing. After all, if the story were real they could have waited a day without being scooped–nobody else was chasing this non-story.
The editor, though, sees the whole affair in a different light: it was a journalism success story!
Think about the circumstances, though: a reporter at ProPublica was fed a bogus story, was given false information by a West Point official, accused a nominee of being a liar, and when miraculously, Hegseth was able to swat down the story within the ridiculously short time allotted, dropped the story and shrugged.
Both Eisinger and Justin Elliot don’t seem at all concerned that both their source, whoever he is, and the spokesperson for West Point LIED TO THEM to slander Pete Hegseth.
That seems like an interesting story, doesn’t it? And since the source lied, he or she has no expectation of journalistic anonymity. As for the West Point spokesman, HIS lying about the next Secretary of Defense should be a scandal and investigated. Why is somebody employed by the Department of Defense trying to slander the future Secretary of Defense?
Doing so, by the way, is a crime.
We see this all the time. Think of the thousands of lies published about Russiagate, and no reporter has outed a source that lied to him. The deal when it comes to anonymity is that it is granted assuming that the information is genuine–otherwise, the reporter is publishing falsehoods with no accountability at all to anybody. If you are lied to, then the lie should be the story and the liar outed.
But it doesn’t work like that because the reporters WANT to print the lies, and anonymous sources are a convenient way to get the lie out there.
Well, as long as the lies harm the right (in Their estimation) people, at any rate. Had the intended target been one of Their Own, it would never have even come up; there would have been no hit-piece story in the first place, and we’d never even have heard about this little kerfuffle at all. The real question here has to be: exactly what in the actual fucking fuck is going on with West Point, anyhow? Treasonous Commie cadets openly, boastfully propounding (and I quote), “Socialist revolution”; DEI and Wokester ideology rife in both faculty and cadet corps; racial tensions escalating rapidly; long-upheld codes of conduct, scholarship, and personal honor roundly flouted—nope, this is most definitely NOT your grandfather’s US military academy. Not anymore, it isn’t.
Perhaps it’s unreasonable to expect that, America itself having been infiltrated, undermined, and sabotaged by the Enemy Within, the Point might somehow remain immune to the vicissitudes nettling the broader society it is but a small part of, unscourged by the Leftist menace. Historically one of America That Was’s most renowned and venerated institutions (Ring-Knocker superciliousness notwithstanding), it looks as if West Point, too, has finally fallen—been taken down, more like—and that’s tragic beyond words.
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