Lawrence O'Donnell Blows Up At New Republic's Julia Ioffe Over Snowden

[Tx4obama]

Lawrence O'Donnell Blows Up At New Republic's Julia Ioffe Over Snowden

Lawrence O’Donnell opened his show Wednesday night taking on President Obama‘s plans to skip a planned meeting with Vladimir Putin. The conversation was quickly derailed as New Republic writer Julia Ioffe disputed O’Donnell’s assertion that Russia has complete and total control over Edward Snowden‘s actions. O’Donnell repeatedly and exasperatedly jumped in to lecture Ioffe about how Putin in fact does have that much power over Snowden, telling her, “Let’s not be ridiculous about this!”

-snip-

Full article here: http://www.mediaite.com/tv/lawrence-blows-up-at-new-republics-julia-ioffe-over-snowden-are-you-crazy-of-course-putins-controlling-him/

[leveymg]

1. This is part of the reason I'm not completely comfortable with Larry O. He's still a WH flack if

you scratch the surface, and would really like to go back working there, so he's not about to burn any bridges. Several of the MSNBC people are like that.

[Marr]

2. Yep.

He's a very 'party insider' sort of guy.

[Quantess]

20. He works for MSNBC

Duh! (not you)

Has anyone seen Cenk Uygur on MSNBC lately? Hmmm I wonder why not...

[leveymg]

24. There's no doubt that is the policy laid down by MSNBC suits

who manage the network as an extension of the mainstream Democratic leadership. Cenk is not that mainstream, nor am I. Duh!

[Timma]

3. Very sad

As much I want to like O'Donnell, he continues to disappoint. In addition to what leveymg says above (that he's a basically a white house flack), I'm afraid O'Donnell really believes what he has said about Snowden and that he is just out of his depth on the issue.

[Pharaoh]

4. yup

he is definitely just being a dick in this clip....

[JI7]

5. she sounds like an idiot

talking about snowden getting the death penalty and trying to make it as if putin doesn't have much power.

[Tx4obama]

6. I agree. O'Donnell won the argument/debate by a landslide.

[Timma]

10. Of course

he won, or seemed to win -- it's his show, he was asking the questions (or at least one or two were questions), shouting, belittling, etc. -- and she, as a polite guest and young reporter who presumably would like to be invited back or at least on to other shows, had to remain deferential and let him interrupt and loudly make unsupported assertions. He was so obnoxious though that she even broke that unwritten code of civility at one point and asked him (rhetorically because he either didn't hear or ignored her) if he had been to Moscow and reported from the streets {paraphrasing}.

Even though I'm not familiar with her background or work, I have a sense that in a real debate, she'd be the one winning by a "landslide", mixed as that metaphor may be.

[Tx4obama]

11. She was unprepared and did not know the facts.

The three felony charges filed against Snowden do not involve the 'death penalty'.

She sounded like she was tossing out talking points that she had read in a comment section on the internet.

[CtDemoFarmer]

31. Yeah, just because she worked in Russia doesn't mean she knows more that Lawrence...

Putin is so powerful that I'm sure he even schedules the street cleaners. Nothing happens in Russia without having Putin say so, or at least that was Lawrence's point. I'm sure Lawrence is the expert on internal politics in Russia and everything else.

[NoMoreWarNow]

34. That wasn't her point

She was saying the Russian media created the death penalty idea and that formed public opinion on the matter. And further that Putin likely didn't create particular media script. Seems reasonable to me.

[harrylimelives999]

7. Agreed

Snowden is a Russian Intelligence asset now, to say he's not under Putin's thumb is absurd.

[NoMoreWarNow]

35. That wasn't her point at all.

[Life Long Dem]

40. Yeah, just look at Manning

Oh wait a minute... Manning got a fair trial.

[SleeplessinSoCal]

8. Fascinating to see how Snowden has become the splinter in the Progressive Movement

Nothing like an annoying and painful splinter under the finger you keep banging on things. To deny that Snowden (familiar with foreign affairs) opted to go to Russia and he not know full well how Putin rules, would be futile. Putin is a thug and a murderer of journalists on top of everything else. Yet, we are having these fights that are tearing apart the momentum that we had to get us past the next election to hopefully get back on track before being derailed in November 2010.

As for this issue, I fear that the MIC is so multi-national and behemoth-like that it sustains our entire economy. And that has become a big lever over us the future to such an extent that it can ever be discussed openly. There's got to be a really traumatic reason for every president aging so quickly, other than politics and pressure.

[SunSeeker]

9. Geez, she kept saying we "downed" the Bolivian plane...

and he didn't even call her that because she was saying SO MANY ridiculous things, like that Putin does not control media outlets his government OWNS. Pathetic. The only thing she could have said about Snowden that would have been more ridiculous was gush about her fantasy of having mojitos on the beach with Eddie, like a certain prolific Snowden worshiping poster did on this board.

[Timma]

12. Wrong

I believe she used the word "downed" three times in the clip.

The first usage was in the passive voice, as in the plane was downed (and she did not say "by the US&quot .

In the second she said the US and its allies downed the plane, which is quite accurate. Unless one naively believes the US wasn't urging or encouraging whichever countries downed it to down it.

And the third usage was same as the first: ie, in the passive voice, with no attribution.

- - -

"Second", I think it's pathetically naive to equate ownership with 100% control. Is that true in the US media? Do the owners of MSNBC fully control what all of the hosts say?

Looking now at her background, I'd trust her assessment of Russia MANY TIMES OVER O'Donnell's.

[SunSeeker]

13. No, naive is suggesting Putin does not control media his government OWNS.

Putin is not an MSNBC exec. He is a fucking dictator.

And no one downed the plane. The pilot asked to land in Austria after he expressed concerns about the accuracy of a fuel indicator on the plane. There was a tape of his conversation with the tower. Sure, some European countries did not grant him flyerover rights, but that is not "downing" a plane. Downing implies shooting down or escorting down by fighter jets, etc. And she knew she had overstated it, because, as you point out, she eventually changed her language.

[leveymg]

25. The network suits do have 100% control over hirings and firings, if not content. e.g., Olberman

The execs are dictators, and have power over MSNBC staffing and broadcast standards that Putin could only dream of having in Russia.

In a way, the media in the US (including the "liberal" media, such as MSNBC) is very unfree, as it is corporate-owned and actively exercises control over content by firings - liquidate the Left-deviationists, as was once said.

[Timma]

14. Her beautiful smackdown response

and full explanation of what she was not allowed to say:

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/114234/lawrence-odonnell-yells-julia-ioffe-about-putin-and-snowden

As I suspected, he's not even close to being in her league.

[Tx4obama]

15. She is digging herself a deeper hole by saying more things that are NOT true.

[SunSeeker]

16. No kidding. Like her assertion that Putin is not oppressing...

I mean, this quote from her "smackdown" (or, to those of us in the reality-based world, her delusional blog rant) could not be more self-contradictory and ridiculous:

I am not a Putin apologist. I think he and his people do bad things, like kill people and fleece the country for its wealth. But neither do I think he's oppressing the Russian masses.

[MADem]

17. Sure, everything's huky dory... so long as we don't count those oppressed 'gay masses.' nt

[SunSeeker]

18. or journalists or democratic activists or anyone who disagrees with him...nt

[JI7]

19. is that an actual quote from her ?

<I am not a Putin apologist. I think he and his people do bad things, like kill people and fleece the country for its wealth. But neither do I think he's oppressing the Russian masses.>

those exact words ?

she seemed totally uninformed. even later on in the interview when they moved away from snowden she still seemed to be looking for talking points to repeat rather than actually understand and answer what they were discussing.

[SunSeeker]

42. Yes--her written "response" to O'Donnell in New Republic. nt

[MrMickeysMom]

21. Oh, please... talk about saying things that are NOT true...

This is what she said in PRINT, since LO's infantile rant basically can't be distinguished from O'Reilly's yelling ...

Vladimir Putin is not omnipotent. He does not control everything that happens in the Russian Federation, a vast and often inhospitable landmass that spans 10 time zones.

Similarly, Barack Obama does not have total control over the minutiae of the United States of America.

Putin does not orchestrate, he reacts. Putin is no chess player. He is a knee-jerk, short-sighted little tyrant. Don't give him credit where credit isn't due.

Americans, especially Americans who have never been to Russia, overestimate the abilities of both Putin and the Russians. Because, I mean, come on. Tank!

The Russians did not create the Snowden situation; Julian Assange and the U.S. government did. Assange insinuated himself into the situation and sent Snowden to Ecuador (the country granting him asylum) through Russia (his great friend).

The Obama administration trapped Snowden in Russia. The U.S. unsealed the charges before it had Snowden in custody, revoked his passport, then downed the plane of the president of a sovereign state over other sovereign states because it thought Snowden was on board. The only place, by design, where Snowden could go was back to the U.S. Where he was charged with espionage, for which the maximum punishent is death.

Russia is a brutal place where whistleblowers are harassed and killed, but Russia, unlike the U.S., has no death penalty. And it is only because the Russians made a stink about it, that Eric Holder was forced to come out and assure the Russians that Edward Snowden won't be put to death. This happened over a month after Snowden's arrival in Moscow, and after the charges of espionage were unsealed.

If a Russian Edward Snowden ended up in JFK Airport, there is no way in hell we'd turn him over to the Russians. Not in a hundred years, and not ever.

You can't back Putin into a corner and leave him no options. If you are a world leader worth your salt, and have a good diplomatic team working for you, you would know that. You would also know that when dealing with thugs like Putin, you know that things like this are better handled quietly. Here's the thing: Putin responds to shows of strength, but only if he has room to maneuver. You can't publicly shame him into doing something, it's not going to get a good response. Just like it would not get a good response out of Obama.

The Obama administration totally fucked this up. I mean, totally. Soup to nuts. Remember the spy exchange in the summer of 2010? Ten Russian sleeper agents—which is not what Snowden is—were uncovered by the FBI in the U.S. Instead of kicking up a massive, public stink over it, the Kremlin and the White House arranged for their silent transfer to Russia in exchange for four people accused in Russia of spying for the U.S. Two planes landed on the tarmac in Vienna, ten people went one way, four people went the other way, the planes flew off, and that was it. That's how this should have been done if the U.S. really wanted Snowden back.

However, the decision to blow off the Moscow summit was a good one. See yesterday's post.

I am not a Putin apologist. I think he and his people do bad things, like kill people and fleece the country for its wealth. But neither do I think he's oppressing the Russian masses. He is their most extreme and natural, their most post-Soviet manifestation.

[leveymg]

27. This one ^^^^^^^^^^^

[NoMoreWarNow]

37. yeah, that was good.

O'Donnell can be very good, and other times an arrogant Democratic shill. What a shame.

[freedom fighter jh]

22. "The Last Word" Indeed

You can win any argument if you cut your opponent off every time she tries to complete a sentence.

[Madmiddle]

23. Odonnel is a lousy

wannabe journalist. Him and Scarborough should get married. Together they could raise littl hacks just like them. Secondly MSNBC moved to the latest spot because nobody watches at that time anyway, so the damage he does causes the least amount of harm.

[bonniebgood]

26. Larence O reallly turned me OFF. He acted like a jerk. He reminded

me of ED. get mad if someone say you are wrong.

[Benton D Struckcheon]

28. Stop being naive, people.

His "lawyer" works for the FSB: that's Russia's security service, the successor to the KGB. The man has gone over, and I'm quite sure that was the plan from the beginning.
I await a Wikileaks doc dump on Russia. I'm sure I'll be waiting a very very long time.

[Evergreen Emerald]

29. This is why I love Lawrence O

He cuts right through the BS.

[CtDemoFarmer]

32. More like he shovels the most BS, espescially when someone disagrees with him.

He clearly is a egotistical bully and follows the company line.

[Evergreen Emerald]

33. I disagree.

He is well learned and very experienced in the ways of politics. He simply knows more than that greenbehindtheears reporter who obviously had an agenda.

Where some see "bully" I see a person who has had enough of the through-the-looking-glass spin redefined as "reality."

[NoMoreWarNow]

39. she was introduced as an expert on Russia

then O'Donnell proceeded to act like he knew more than her. Pretty silly if you ask me.

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/114234/lawrence-odonnell-yells-julia-ioffe-about-putin-and-snowden

[Thinkingabout]

30. When you get caught without the facts during the time you are having a moment of glory then don't

expect to have time to make your point when you are not presenting the facts. O'Donnell was prepared, knew the facts, she should have been prepared and the correct facts.

[NoMoreWarNow]

38. She had the facts. They were just not the facts O'Donnell wanted.

[Thinkingabout]

41. She did not have the facts, she had the facts she wanted to tell, two different things.

[NoMoreWarNow]

44. so you think she is an agent of Russia or something?

and when did O'Donnell become such an expert on Russia?

[Thinkingabout]

45. She did not have her facts together, I never said she was an agent of Russia, perhaps

You have such information. LOD researches before his shows, maybe she would have come across better if she had researched facts and nit the talking points used too many times, like Romney did in the debates.

[wtmusic]

36. A stupid, meaningless discussion

from both ends.

[ForgoTheConsequence]

43. O'Donnell is the Bill O'Reilly of MSNBC.

A hot headed, elitist, sexist asshole who pretends to be working class. When he's losing a debate he just raises his voice.


A simple minded show, on a simple minded network, for simple minded people.


If you watch this crap you're no better than the morons who watch Faux News. Its entertainment media, not news.

[burnodo]

46. O'Donnel simply didn't like what she was saying

and acted like Laura Ingraham with Steve Leser *GASP*