February 19, 2022 --

Bret Stephens has made it clear, in his weekly colloquy with fellow Times propagandist  Gail Collins -- if not earlier, that he no longer has respect for correct use of language, but then, as he has abandoned journalism for propaganda, how could he?  In his "Conversation", February 15, with Collins, he denounced the Republican National Committee's censure of GOP turncoats Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger as "insane, fascistic [sic], demented, self-important and self-destructive...."

Only a warped, politically twisted mind, consumed by hate -- or perhaps just acknowledging he knows what side his bread is buttered on -- could apply the inapplicable to the just action of the RNC in the matter of Cheney and Kinzinger.

Having taken notice of Stephens' invidious description of the RNC censure, there is no point in further calling his blatherings to the attention LPR's readers,  any more than there would be in recounting, time and again, the use of foul language by a precocious five-year old.  Continual attention could only delight the miscreant, who should best be ignored.

(One does wonder, though, how Senator Mitt Romney, uncle of RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel, regards the "fascistic" label applied Stephens effectively applied  to his niece.) 

This same February 15, The Wall Street Journal's lead editorial, "Trump Really Was Spied On," wrote of a court filing by special counsel John Durham indicating that Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign spied on the Trump campaign to falsely accuse
Donald Trump of working with the Russians -- and that this effort continued into the Trump presidency. 

 (A February 15 Times article, dismissed the report as old news, misinformation, and too involved for ordinary minds to follow.)

The Journal's concluding paragraph on the Durham development stated:  "[T]he unfolding information underscores that the Russian collusion story was one of the dirtiest tricks in U.S.political history. Mr. Durham should tell the whole sordid story."

But is that all there is to this "sordid story" -- a political dirty trick?   What could be the purpose of continuing on into the Trump presidency to press the lie that Donald J. Trump was a Putin asset if not to create a political firestorm to drive him from the White House as the Obama administration succeeded, in Ukraine, February 2014, in creating political chaos, sowing discord to drive the legitimate president, Viktor Yanukovych, from office. What happened in Ukraine, eight years ago, was a coup, apparently carried out because Yanukovych resisted blandishments to get Ukraine to face West. What the Clinton campaign attempted, in 2017, was a coup to oust President Trump -- based on the lie that Trump as a Putin puppet. 

The left reacted to Trump's election in creating, proudly, a "Resistance" to his presidency.  The media treated this "Resistance" in a figurative sense.    The Durham filing calls for literal understanding of the "Resistance" to the Trump president.   It is to be expected that what the Journal properly calls "the whole sordid story" includes the part that created the Big Lie of a "Jan. 6 Insurrection" as desperate act of diversion away from the Durham investigation and  what the country experienced in 2017 -- an attempted coup by the deep state to overturn the 2016 presidential election, probably out of fear that President Trump would indeed "drain the swamp."