Hacker News Reader

Comment by creaghpatr | Hacker News Reader

If you are investigating or otherwise overseeing the border, would it not be useful to have a list of journalists who are actively gathering on-the-ground intel (for their jobs)? This is a weak attempt to make it look like the Obama era abuses a la Sheryl Attkinson.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2015/01/29/sharyl_at...

View on HN

But they're not just tracking them so they can reach out and seek further details as part of an investigation. They're gathering information in excess of what they would need for that purpose and using the information they have to flag them for additional screenings, detain them, and in at least one mentioned case turn them away at the border.

That was the Mexican government that turned a person away at the border, not CBP. If CBP could make the Mexican government turn away arbitrary persons at the Mexican border, don't you think they might have started with caravans from Honduras?

Databases of journalists have slightly different optics when the president has called for opening libel laws, encouraged violence against the press at his rallies, and has labeled journalists the "enemy of the people".

Reality is more far important than optics. Contextualizing it doesn't change the facts.

The reality is that a journalist for a publication critical of the president was murdered by a brutal dictator, and the president shrugged his shoulders. The facts are that Donald Trump has attacked individual journalists for writing pieces that are critical of him.

Further facts include that the president has lied about the migrant caravan in question as a way to win political support by claiming it contains middle eastern terrorist elements, and diseases like smallpox and leprosy which will be spread to Americans.

Now we learn that journalists covering the caravan are facing undue scrutiny by border agents and are being tracked and you want to simply dismiss the context?

Come now, the reality of the Khashoggi situation is that he was not a journalist at all but an an agent of Qatar and a client of the former head of Saudi intelligence, who sometimes phoned in opinion columns to the Washington Post dictated by his foreign paymasters.

So that you do not misunderstand, I'm not saying that any of this excuses Khashoggi's murder. I'm saying that it's disingenuous to suggest that those who ordered his killing were motivated be some sort of generalized antipathy to journalism.

> I'm saying that it's disingenuous to suggest that those who ordered his killing were motivated be some sort of generalized antipathy to journalism.

I'm not saying those who ordered his killing did so because he was a journalist, I'm saying Donald Trump shrugged his shoulders in part because Khashoggi wrote for the Washington Post. Donald Trump is known for holding grudges and for treating those he views as loyal differently. For instance, he suggests the federal government should de-fund disaster relief for California (didn't vote for him) wildfires while saying the government will give "A+" relief for an Alabama (did vote for him) tornado. He is a strictly transactional man. He's called out the Washington Post specifically and has looked into hurting Amazon as a way of punishing Bezos for owning the Post.

>I'm saying Donald Trump shrugged his shoulders in part because Khashoggi wrote for the Washington Post.

Or maybe he shrugged his shoulders because a foreign intelligence agent got killed by a foreign intelligence agency in a foreign country? Surely Trump, with U.S. and allied intelligence at his disposal, must have been made aware of Khashoggi's true nature.

Indeed, the German press was reporting that Khashoggi was an intelligence agent right away. It took the Post several weeks to finally admit as much, and still they've continued to spend millions of dollars (for example, on Super Bowl ads) to pretend Kashoggi was a real journalist.

Whatever you think of Trump, the Post deserves a great deal of contempt.

> Or maybe he shrugged his shoulders because a foreign intelligence agent got killed by a foreign intelligence agency in a foreign country?

For the longest time Trump refused to even consider that Saudi Arabia was responsible for the killing, so that's a stretch.

> Surely Trump, with U.S. and allied intelligence at his disposal, must have been made aware of Khashoggi's true nature.

Trump famously discounts the conclusions of our intelligence agencies and can't pay attention to the presidential daily briefing unless his name is included in big bold letters. I think it's a stretch to say that if our intelligence agencies know one thing then it's a given Trump knows it (and believes it) as well.

>For the longest time Trump refused to even consider that Saudi Arabia was responsible for the killing, so that's a stretch.

If your definition of 'refused to even consider' is raised the issue directly with the leader of Saudi Arabia, well then, sure.

> encouraged violence against the press at his rallies

Could you give a specific example of this?

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/donald-trump-incitement-vi...

^ videos of Trump encouraging violence

That had nothing to do with journalists and was specifically about protesters who attempted to disrupt a rally.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com