President Trump: The NEW one and only politics thread

Meanwhile, in the glamorous life....

 

Boy, this could be one hell of a Sophie's Choice, if one of their sources fucked them.

1. Say nothing, and your career basically is over.
2. Out your source, and your career could be over because sources may never trust you again.

Glad I don't have to make that decision.

 

Basically, BuzzFeed has two choices:
1. Put every card you have on the table for full public view.
2. Close up shop.

I don't see much of an inbetween.

 

I don’t read Buzzfeed unless linked there not because I have any real reason but just because it’s not on my list for news. So, I’m not sure I’m in a position to say how bad this is for the site. But holy shit.

To come at Trump with an impeachable offense they needed to have it stone cold, undeniably right, undeniable proof. Maybe they’ll be proven right in the long run — I have no doubt Trump wanted Cohen to lie, and have no problem believing he signaled for him to —but if they can’t prove themselves right in the next 12-24 hours the people on this story could do irreparable harm to the entire organization.

 

Which could cause them to close up shop anyway. Why would a source ever trust them again?

 

Hang the source from the highest tree.

If that means no trial-balloon-floating trolling jackoffs trust you again, so what?

 

You only burn a source who burns you.

But if they burn you, you burn their ass to the ground.

 

Nice in theory. But if that were true, it'd happen a lot more often than never.

 

I'm not completely talking about burning the source by directly naming names.
Surely they have to have a copy of an email or some kind of smoking gun piece of paper.
That's what you present. Otherwise, the world figures you just sat around and made up the entire thing out of thin air.

 

As long as you're not fucking your source by publishing a canary trap.

 

They had to know when they published it was going to come down to hero or zero and had a plan to cover themselves.

 

Or the reporter is back on the booger sugar and decided to cut corners.

But even so, Ben Smith should know better. He's not green.

And I have to assume this story was lawyered within in inch of its life.

Maybe I'm wrong for assuming anything these days.