Put aside the ill-conceived analysis, Jonathan Turley routinely publishes columns with easily fact-checked errors.
The post Jonathan Turley Don’t Know Much About History (Part… At Least 5) appeared first on Above the Law.
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Jonathan Turley says the darnedest things.
And while we could fill several pages critiquing his reliably nugatory legal analysis, we’re not even going to go there today. Instead we ask: Why is Turley’s work consistently riddled with egregious factual errors and why are none of his editors even attempting a basic fact check to avoid embarrassing their publications? It’s not difficult! GW Law could probably get a research assistant to do it for him.
Because he screws up facts… a lot! Remember when he offered his thoughts on Judge Pauley’s recent opinion in Michael Cohen’s case even though Judge Pauley had been dead for three years? Or when he screwed up the presidential inauguration date by a whole year? Or when he explained how Letter from Birmingham Jail author Martin Luther King Jr. had never been arrested?
When it comes to the decline in America’s test scores, maybe in this case we really can blame the teacher.
It’s on him when he screws up social media posts or spouts nonsense on cable news, but he messes up actual published work too where you’d think some gatekeeper might occasionally catch these things.
In his latest article for The Hill, Turley explains why Joe Biden’s decision to end his campaign creates a “25th Amendment fight.”
That, however, leaves the lingering question after the fall. How can Biden remain in office when he is incapable of running for the office?
Because those are two different things? One is about Biden continuing to have the juice to run the country for another six months and the other is about failing to excite voters.
In any event, he also lends his diminishing credibility to the idea that it “makes a mockery out of the democratic process” to nominate the person that primary voters knew would be expected to serve as president were Biden elected and died in office.
But, since there are people still alive who remember an incumbent presidential candidate dropping out of the race, Turley felt the need to contrast this with Lyndon Johnson’s departure from the 1968 race.
This is different than President Lyndon Johnson’s decision on March 31, 1968, that “I shall not seek, and I will not accept the nomination of my party for another term as your president.”
That was before any primaries.
NO, IT WASN’T! It was very famously after Gene McCarthy earned 42 percent of the vote to finish a too-close-for-comfort second in New Hampshire running as an anti-war candidate. It’s OK… it’s not like 1968 was an exhaustively chronicled year in American history or anything.
AND there were only 15 primaries in 1968! At the time, most states still determined national delegates through state party conventions as opposed to popular contests making this an apples to coconuts comparison anyway. This is the sort of basic political knowledge that a publication calling itself THE HILL shouldn’t be botching.
But it’s not just The Hill. The New York Post published Turley’s grand gotcha theory to bring down the Biden crime family:
In 2018, Hunter Biden’s world was collapsing.
The New York Times had run a story on one of his shady deals with the Chinese and his father, then vice president, was pulled into the vortex.
Except Joe Biden was not the vice president in 2018. It took just shy of 24 hours for the Post to figure this out. Turley’s personal blog left the error up even longer. Awkwardly, removing the “vice president” bit reduced the entire article to gibberish since it was entirely predicated on the idea that a 2018 conversation with the elder Biden amounted to abuse of office when he was then a private citizen.
On the one hand, humiliating factual errors aren’t as destructive to the national fabric as peddling professional love letters to Aileen Cannon, undermining the rule of law by recklessly fluffing low-information audiences to throw a tantrum when the Eleventh Circuit inevitably benchslaps Cannon — again — and reverses an opinion predicated on a theory so cockamamie that Clarence Thomas couldn’t even get Alito to buy into.
On the other hand… these are basic, confirmable facts. Just Google it, dude.
Succession by Defenestration: How Biden’s Withdrawal May Trigger a 25th Amendment Fight [The Hill]
Earlier: Jonathan Turley Has New Theory To Bust Hunter Biden And All It Requires Is Warping The Fabric Of Space-TimeJonathan Turley Still Can’t Figure Out Calendar, ConstitutionRemember When Martin Luther King Was Arrested? Because Jonathan Turley Sure Doesn’t!Jonathan Turley Says Judge Pauley Really Blasted Michael Cohen Yesterday, Except Judge Pauley’s Been Dead For 3 Years
