Maybe someone can explain this to the news media, because they either don't understand it or don't care about it:
When you get information from anonymous sources, sometimes what they give you is rubbish. And why not? They're not attaching their names to it. They won't get in trouble for doing it because you're going to protect their identities. So they'll give you things, you'll run with it, and later you'll look like fools because what you were given was worthless.
That's what happened to the Associated Press this morning when they ran with a memo written in late January by Secretary of Homeland Security John Kelly. The memo supposedly talked about calling up 100,000 National Guard troops to help round up illegal aliens for a mass deportation.
Now, there was something written by Kelly. That's true. It did not ever mention the number 100,000 or any other specific number with respect to how many National Guard troops would be needed for the task. But this is all academic anyway, because it was like a lot of internal memos that get written for internal consumption. It was an idea. It was never seriously considered. It is not going to happen. It was never going to happen.
So the AP story claiming it was under serious consideration was total Bolshevik. It is fake news:
But DHS spokeswoman Gillian Christensen said the memo, dated Jan. 25, was an early draft document that was not seriously considered.
"The department is not considering mobilizing the National Guard,'' Christensen said in a statement to USA TODAY.
The memo was first reported Friday by the Associated Press, which drew an angry response from the White House. Press secretary Sean # said the AP report was "100% not true."
“It is false,” he said. “It is irresponsible to be saying this.”
Now there are some in the political class who are saying this isn't fake news because the memo really exists and it was really written. That does not excuse the story from being fake news, because the AP presented the memo as something other than what it really is. It is not an idea under serious consideration. It was one person's thought thrown in the hopper, probably among many others, and ultimately rejected for all kinds of reasons.
When you obtain a document from an anonymous source who won't lend his or her name publicly to the story, you have to realize that means no one can hold your source accountable for being wrong or misleading in what you're being told. Readers also can't judge the veracity of the information by the credibility of the source, because we don't know who it is. We just have to trust the AP.
Now, the AP thought it had the goods because it had a memo written by a cabinet-level official. But just because Kelly wrote the memo doesn't mean the policy idea it contemplated is, or ever was, under serious consideration. It's not. End of story. There is no story.
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I am sure every administration has gamed out many scenarios for how it might deal with a variety of issues. Many of these scenarios are rejected out of hand because they are implausible in any number of ways. They are never shared with the public precisely because that would give the public a false impression about the intentions of the administration. But what's happening in the Trump Administration is that all kinds of holdover staff members are violating this confidentiality in order to help the press make the administration look bad.
The AP is guilty of horrendous reporting here. A good reporter would have first verified that the memo is under serious consideration. But that would have required getting confirmation - or being denied it - from official sources instead of relying on cowardly underlings who hide behind anonymity. Your reporting would be more accurate, but it wouldn't be as effective in hurting Trump, which is the real goal of the AP and the rest of the MSM.
Today, once again, they look like completely dishonest fools. Because that's exactly what they are.
