(Dobbs) How Soon We Forget About Other News That Also Ought To Consume Us

Ukraine, Gaza, Sudan, Epstein, and much much more.

Jul 3

Some of the hardest decisions you have to make as a journalist are not what you can cover with the resources you have, but what you can’t cover. You have to decide what stories you can fit into whatever space you have for your daily news feeds, and what stories you have to leave out. And what information you can include in each story you write, and what you have to exclude.

Every news story you read or watch has come out of decisions like these.

I find myself more and more unhappy with the results.

Iran has consumed us. Donald Trump’s crusade to redesign parts of the nation’s capital have consumed us. And lately, his blatant and unapologetic corruption has consumed us…. as it should.

But how soon we forget about other news that also ought to consume us. News that gets left behind for stories about the peeling paint and noxious green algae in the Reflecting Pool in Washington DC, whose rebirth Donald Trump botched.

News like the war in Ukraine. Early yesterday morning, Russia let loose in the nation’s capital, Kiev, with the biggest blitz of missiles and drones that it has staged in the almost four-and-a-half years of the war. President Zelensky said that Russia hit sites across the city, “most of them ordinary residential buildings.” Early reports put the death toll in the mid 20s, but as I know from covering wars, as rescue and recovery teams do their work, that number will rise.

According to the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, casualties from the war— killed, injured, and missing— now top two million people. That breaks down to between 525,000 and 625,000 Ukrainians, and because Vladimir Putin keeps callously pouring more soldiers into the meat grinder, a staggering 1.4 million Russians.

As CNN has reported, that eclipses the infamously brutal World War II battle of Stalingrad.

Who’s winning? On some days, each side comes away with what it defines as gains in the war. The good news is, although still outmanned and out-armed, sometimes Ukraine’s drone attacks, increasingly deep into Russia, give the underdog the advantage. Earlier this week, to try to deal with damage to Russia’s fuel production and supplies, Putin held an emergency meeting of his advisors and the Kremlin declared a state of emergency. Ukraine’s attacks have even struck fear in the hearts of Moscovites.

Yet in the world of Putin, although this war is the biggest in Europe since World War II, the whole thing is still just a “special military operation.” According to The New York Times, he attributes shortages of fuels and other supplies as “unscheduled maintenance at refineries.”

“Unscheduled maintenance?” You bet. It’s what you have to do when Ukrainian drones have set your refineries on fire.

Then there’s the Gaza Strip. Yesterday marked 1,000 days since Hamas terrorists attacked in Israel and Israel started striking back. More than 70,000 have died, and almost two million survivors there still inhabit tents and cook over open fires in utter misery. Almost no work has started so far to clear the unimaginably dense rubble and begin the staggering task of rebuilding. As Newsday reports, “Much more needs to be done so that even a semblance of normality can come back, and we are far, far away from this.”

And normality won’t likely start anytime soon. A ceasefire has been in place for more than half a year now, but it is violated regularly by both sides. Just earlier this week, an Israeli airstrike on a Palestinian tent camp, allegedly to kill four fighters from Hamas, killed three more civilians, including two little sisters, ages 14 and 4.

We haven’t heard anything, by the way, about President Trump’s once vaunted “Board of Peace.” Another failed promise by the would-be peacemaker in the White House.

Then there’s Sudan, a war to which we have paid scant attention in the first place. But it grinds on, so barbaric that on Wednesday Amnesty International declared one side in the war, the Rapid Defense Forces, guilty of “crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing.” Actually, both sides deserve that condemnation. Since the war broke out more than three years ago, which is strictly a battle for who ultimately rules Sudan, an estimated 150,000 people have been slaughtered. And experts say that in a backward place like that, where tracking and reporting tools are rudimentary, the real toll is probably much higher.

As Amnesty said in its report, “The war in Sudan is a war on civilians.”

And oh, by the way, how much have you heard recently about the Epstein Files? There was a blip a week ago when private equity billionaire Leon Black, who paid Epstein $158 million for what his firm has called “bona fide tax, estate planning and other related services”— yes, $158 million worth— went to Washington to testify before the House Oversight Committee about his relationship, but when he thought things were getting too hot during questions about his non-disclosure agreements, he upped and walked out.

But before he did, his story was no different than everyone else’s who ever dealt with Jeffrey Epstein: “I knew Jekyll. I didn’t know Hyde.” It reminds me of the German soldiers who claimed after the Second World War, “I only drove an ambulance on the Russian front.”

Personally I don’t much care about investigating Leon Black’s ties to Epstein. That’s just nibbling around the edges. I care about investigating Donald Trump’s.

But in the flood of news about Iran and the reflecting pool and the billions that Trump has made off the presidency as if the White House is nothing more than a profit center, no one’s asking, “What have we learned about Epstein and Trump and the poor girls who were victims of the financier’s sick schemes?”

So far, next to nothing.

Meanwhile there’s still Iran, which in no way is the success he pretends it is. It is a rollercoaster of declarations to stop firing on one another, to declarations to keep firing until the other side cries uncle. And the Strait of Hormuz, while more ships this week have gotten through, is still a minefield that keeps other ships trapped.

So Trump keeps trying to distract us. Last Sunday he drove around DC, getting a firsthand look at all the so-called “beautification” projects he has undertaken, and others he still plans to tackle. He is plenty proud of them. “They are truly beautiful,” he wrote that afternoon, “even nicer than the day they were built.”

In an interesting Washington Post analysis of the president’s words in speeches, social media posts, and interviews during the month of June, he mentioned his pet projects four out of every five days. “For the past three months,” The Post reported, “Trump has talked about his construction projects at a greater frequency than topics such as health care and wages.”

Does this sound like a leader trying to finish up a war? No, it sounds more like there’s no war going on at all.

And his White House propaganda office is doing the same thing, distracting us, with statements on the firehose of stories about his and his family’s corrupt financial gains. Here are two statements put out by his people on Wednesday alone:

“Neither the President nor his family has ever engaged— or will ever engage— in conflicts of interest…. All actions by President Trump and his administration are taken in the best interest of the American people.”

“The only special interest guiding the Trump administration’s decision-making is the best interest of the American people.”

They must have a carton of cookie cutters over there to answer all queries about Trump’s dubious dealings.

[Salon] How Soon We Forget About Other News That Also Ought To Consume Us

(Dobbs) How Soon We Forget About Other News That Also Ought To Consume Us

Ukraine, Gaza, Sudan, Epstein, and much much more.