Yesterday I came across an item in the New York Times, where they followed up on the Washington Post’s reporting on Postmaster General Louis DeJoy’s employee political contribution shenanigans. The Times found that a lot of this activity had occurred in 2014, when now North Carolina Senator Thom Tillis was running against the Dem incumbent, the late Senator Kay Hagan – and the reporting indeed confirms that these contributions were written directly to Tillis’ campaign.
I considered posting it as an article here, but stopped myself when we thought it was kind of weak sauce. I continued scrolling through Twitter and we see all these news sites saying “Tillis linked to DeJoy employee contributions” almost implying that there’s hard proof that the sitting North Carolina senator, running for re-election, is potentially in serious trouble with the law.
And I realized that implication is complete horseshit.
NEW: NC Senator @ThomTillis was a major beneficiary of DeJoy’s scheme forcing employees of his logistics company to donate to GOP candidates.
Tillis’ campaign brought in tens of thousands of dollars.
Vote @CalforNC & send Thom packing. #DemCastNChttps://t.co/vi3Z19Q3mK
— Nick Knudsen 🇺🇸 (@NickKnudsenUS) September 7, 2020
Of course Thom Tillis is a spineless, corrupt twat. All Republicans in Congress are (save for Mitt Romney – and maybe Ben Sasse and Lisa Murkowski can redeem themselves eventually if they try hard enough). But what in the world says Tillis is “linked” to the scam? He took the contributions, but what else there to go on? Nothing. It means jack shit. It’s not incorrect to use the word “linked” to describe the situation, but it sure as hell is not newsworthy to bring it up like there’s any real implication on the race. Anyone who thinks Tillis is going to lose a single vote over this should pick up a revolver and blow their brains out.
Now is it notable when Tillis’ opponent picks up on it and challenges Tillis to return thos shady donations? Hell yes, which is why we posted Cal Cunningham’s press release on the matter, which further outlined the actual shady links between Tillis and that scumbag DeJoy. Now THAT is newsworthy, because it gives Cunningham some serious ammo in the fight to turn the Senate blue.
Which brings me to my overall point, however poorly I’m elucidating it: We’re not here to get your hopes up unless our hopes are up. We’re not here to make you laugh unless we’re laughing too. We’re not here to share commentary or analysis that we think you’ll find insightful unless we found it insightful ourselves. We will never incite outrage unless we’re outraged first. We don’t pretend anything is interesting unless we’re interested in it too.
TLDR: We will never get you to click on something that we wouldn’t click on ourselves.
Call that the National Zero pledge of sufficient quality.
Cheers,
Spartan and Jack
National Zero