Once again Byron York is busy blowing meaningless, hazy air through a dog whistle. (“Why Democrats don’t want public to know origins of Ukraine probe,” Nov. 23, 2019.) This time the tune he plays is about how the Democrats are hiding a devious whistleblower who refuses to wear a MAGA hat to work. (Nah. Scratch the MAGA hat part. Though, following Byron York’s tactic of innuendo, it “might” be true.)
The Whistleblower Protection Act of 1989 was enacted to protect federal employees who disclose “Government illegality, waste, and corruption” from adverse consequences related to their employment. York avoids recognizing this as if it was a scholarship to Trump University.
He also ignores the record that shows both the inspector general for the intelligence community and the acting director of national intelligence having said the whistleblower followed legal procedure. And, contrary to Republican/Trump claims, the law does not require a whistleblower to present firsthand information, it only requires a reasonable belief of a violation.
Face it, Republican/Trump diehards, the whistleblower is no longer crucial in the ongoing impeachment and coming trial of the president. His/her patriotic duty has been carried out. Law and order, in this case the checks and balances written into the U. S. Constitution, now take over. I ask Republican/Trump citizens: You do believe in law and order and the U. S. Constitution, don’t you?
York’s signature style of randomized misdirection stands out in this column. The man apparently gets his exercise throwing spaghetti against blank walls hoping some of it will stick, be scraped off later, and devoured by his readers.
Dismissed, discounted and dishonest conspiracies are mentioned in the column, but not examined. He pops in more names and labels than you can find on two pages of the Indiana ISTEP test: the Trump-Russia probe, the Steele dossier, the Carter Page wiretap, the Crossfire Hurricane investigation. But York’s recipe is patronizingly designed for the so-called “low-information” voters. He does not include the hearty sauce of detailed factual substance, let alone stabs at larger truths.
Byron York’s column is just more of the Republican/Trump Ukraine cover-up fog machine at work. York and “Fox and Friends [of Trump]” are busy fueling the engine of this disinformation mechanism. Alarmingly, millions take it in and are taken in by it.
From the Republican/Trump perspective, we should forget about the damning evidence delivered by Trump appointed diplomats and career National Security Council experts given over the past two weeks. Taken under oath before the House Intelligence Committee, their testimony counts for little in York’s view. He’s working to create a castle of confusion and doubt out of a grain of sand — the whistleblower. But what he is really doing is throwing sand in the eyes of his readers.
— Gary Daily, Terre Haute