Review: PBS Frontline – Trump’s Showdown

Tonight I was checking out the PBS channel on the Roku ( it requires a ‘login’) and saw a show about Trump:
October 2, 2018 on Frontline. Called Trump’s Showdown.

A very well crafted “Hit Piece” that does not so much overtly slander as it does bias via loaded words, interviews primarily with antagonists, edits supporters to the 1/2 sentence that fits their agenda, and selectively reports.

So why watch it? Because it does cover the timeline of the Deep State Attack on POTUS Trump from the start until very recently. I’d not realized Rosenstein’s role in firing Comey, for example. I suspect I was too busy still basking in the win afterglow to be paying much attention at the time. Trump was in, Comey was out, I was happy. Seems Rosenstein had been requested to write a memo (mostly saying how Comey had treated Hillary badly) and that was the first given cause for the firing. Then Rosenstein was not happy being the fall guy and Trump announced it was going to happen anyway, and at his direction. So that gives some interesting perspective to the present issues with Rosenstein.

That’s one example. But the whole thing is full of good detail. Like the fact that Comey would whip out the laptop as soon as he got to the car to “memorialize” meetings with Trump. (Note to self: NEVER have a meeting with anyone from the FBI or DOJ without recording it… otherwise their “memorial” will be held to be the only truth…) Comey would include “quotes” from Trump that he felt were particularly telling / useful… Slimy weasel comes to mind. I know, SOP for FBI guys, but still.

While the whole thing is clearly, if slickly, biased anti-Trump; it does give an insight into how the Russian Collusion Frame-up was executed. (Just ignore words and phrases like “White House chaos” and “Trump angrily…” and such loaded language. Listen to the facts even if you must wade through the ocean of slander… “Remember that a stroll through the ocean of most men’s souls will barely get your feet wet.” – Deteriorata.

You also need to fill in some of the omissions. Like the omission that Hillary’s Gang did the set-up to get the lady Russian Lawyer into a meet with the Trump Team – they conveniently leave out the set-up actions of the DNC & Fellow Travelers. Or the omission that the Steele Dossier was paid for by the same folks and that the FISA warrant was based on fabricated crap set-up “confirmations” from planted news stories.

As long as you can bring that desperately needed context of reported fraud by the DNC, Hillary, and related players; it is a decent timeline and record of just how the “take down” was supposed to go, and some of the ways Trump managed to blunt it. It is also worth watching as an exemplar of how to do a propaganda hit piece just before the midterms… Not so much by blatant lying as by highly selective and superbly spun narrative for effect. All with dark ominous music in the background to give you that creepy “stalking a perp in a dark alley” feeling…

It also managed (despite trying not to) to give an understanding of the Sessions / Trump dynamic (though couched in terms of emotional explosions and out of control Trump…). Given that the war being waged by the DOJ on Trump has been a sword in his side from the start; it becomes much more clear why Sessions ought never to have recused and then could have avoided this whole Mueller fiasco.

In the end, seeing just how much flat out legal crap and political assault has been thrown at Trump, from the beginning, I’m astounded at how much he has gotten done despite it; and how he has kept his spirits up. I suspect the campaign rallies are what keeps him charged up (styled as “campaign style” by Frontline despite there being a formal legal declaration of the 2020 campaign). Trump has made good progress at dumping some of the worst Deep State folks from the top of organizations, but he’s got a LOT more to do, given the way the TLAs were / are after him.

One sidebar is how sanctimonious the Deep Staters feel about their “get Trump” effort. All for the good of the nation, don’t you know… /sarc; But that is what comes across from the tone of voice of the various “Former Foo” interviewees. It’s all ~”we tried to save him from himself and tried to save the country from him” all along the way.

Another thread is how much their efforts damaged what could have been good relations with Russia. Near as I can tell, that was part of the goal. Putin tossed out Soros and is a Russian Nationalist. No way the Globalists can live with that. The last thing they would want is the USA & Russia being friendly and teaming up as 2 sovereign nations against the Globalist’s efforts to rebuke the Nation State and destroy it. Then, given the degree to which China has clearly penetrated the Democrats (DiFi & her Agent Staffer… as one example) one must believe there were “agents of influence” pushing them toward spoiling things for Russia. But of course that context you must bring to the hit piece.

Then, finally, it is worth the watching just to see how incredibly biased they are. Yes, I know, few but the Far Left watch PBS / Frontline anymore anyway, so it isn’t going to be changing a lot of minds. Still, as a “reinforce the stereotypes in your base” ploy, it’s likely effective. Were there ever a good example of why PBS ought to get no government money, this is it. “Meddling” in the midterms with an expensive crafted for effect hit piece, playing political advocate with public money. (Yes, I know it’s only a fraction of their funding now, and that a lot more comes through “foundations” controlled by Leftists – but then the question is why ought they be “charities” if they are doing political funding, eh?)

With that, here it is.

Below is a link to an online copy:

It asks if some nearby PBS station is “your station” (so credits can be assigned one guesses – folks out of the USA may need to pick some station at random from a dropdown list if it doesn’t pick one for you) and has a modestly annoying pop up asking to put you on their email schedule SPAM list (click the X to make it go away), then you get the “play” triangle and can watch it:

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/trumps-showdown/

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