The Weiner revolution

If internet news sites are where the big picture goes to die, then daily newspapers are surely at least a hospice home for big pictures and nuance. So the announcement that Hillary Clinton’s emails are once again being investigated by the FBI, a setback for sure and a possible bump for the Trump campaign, is played in all three major dailies as the possible start of a major comeback for Donald Trump.

Nobody is more excited by the prospects of Trump galloping back from his several-point deficit to take the election than Israel Hayom, which has been pumping for the indecorous tycoon all along, though the other two major dailies — Haaretz and Yedioth Ahronoth — can’t help but get swept up by Weiner fever.

Calling the new scandal an earthquake — unfortunate timing considering the latest temblor in Italy — the paper devotes its first seven pages to the affair (and another Clinton “scandal”).

In its news story, the paper declares the announcement by FBI Director James Comey on the probe to be the much-ballyhooed “October surprise” waited on by the voting public, managing to downplay Trump’s various sexual assault scandals at the same time.

“At the start of October, the tape of Donald Trump speaking nastily about women made headlines as the ‘October surprise’ of the 2016 elections. But the last week of October, the head of the FBI dropped a political bomb that could be remembered as the real ‘October surprise’ of the elections,” the paper writes.

The paper’s Boaz Bismuth, in a full-page column, repeats his mantra that it’s not over until it’s over. Though the column is headlined with a reference to Clinton’s trustworthiness, or lack thereof, he seems more concerned with handicapping whether Trump can take advantage of the affair to clinch the win.

“This affair came just as Trump closed the gap in the polls. Even before the announcement, a Washington Post/ABC poll showed the gap between the two candidates shrinking to just 2 percent nationwide in Hillary’s favor, which shows a dead heat when factoring in the margin of error of 3%,” he writes. “Hillary wants to end the affair and return to the White House, this time as president, but there have been unprecedented surprises in this election and anything could turn topsy-turvy.”

“Look, see how for Hillary a comedy has become a tragedy,” he adds, making a pun out of the fact that Comey in Hebrew is the adjective “comic.”

Nobody is laughing in the other two papers, not at the wiener jokes that proliferate in tabloid Yedioth and not at Haaretz cartoonist Amos Biderman’s knee-slapper of Trump emerging from a coffin to announce to a shocked Clinton “Honey, I’m back.” (Seriously, the guy should do sitcoms.)

The broadsheet’s Chemi Shalev, also clearly with Halloween on the brain thanks to his posting in the US, writes that Comey’s announcement is all bark with no bite, though that matters little now.

“The reverberations from Comey’s bombshell stopped Clinton’s momentum in its tracks. Like ‘The Walking Dead,’ Clinton’s nemesis, which was supposed to have been dead and buried, rose from the grave like a zombie to stalk her once again,” he writes. “The news that the email probe was being relaunched, even though it was either exaggerated or premature, transformed the agenda of the election campaign. It allowed Donald Trump to move from defense to offense and it recast Clinton from near-certain winner to almost-possible loser. It invigorated Trump supporters and discouraged Clinton voters. An election that had already been called for Clinton was, suddenly, at least ostensibly, wide open.”

Things are even more grim (if that’s possible) in Yedioth, where a two-page column by Nahum Barnea declares that it’s open season for a witch hunt against Clinton (alongside a picture of her looking sad as can be).

Though he uses similar language as Israel Hayom (“Comey dropped a bomb,” “This is an ‘October surprise'”), Barnea’s column takes on a decidedly more somber tone, starting with his description of Trump supporters at a rally in New Hampshire “dancing, singing and going crazy with happiness.”

“This was a happiness of schadenfreude, blunt, evil and low. According to polls, more than 80 percent of Americans wish for the moment that this election will be behind them. This schadenfreude is the only joy that a witch hunt like this can provide,” he writes. “Shame gets added to the electoral damage. The few details that have emerged collectively show a particularly sordid affair. From Hillary’s point of view, this is no less embarrassing than the Monica Lewinsky scandal.”

If Americans want a preview of what a media-hating Trump presidency might look like, they could cast an eye toward Israel, where papers preview a political fight over a new public broadcaster with some mudslinging of their own.

Israel Hayom — long seen as a mouthpiece of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — reports that Netanyahu’s Likud party backs closing a planned new public broadcaster because it’s become a mouthpiece of Yedioth owner Arnon Mozes and his leftist friends.

“Something that was supposed to be a public state broadcaster has turned into broadcaster for Noni Mozes and the left,” a Likud source is quoted saying. “Most of the key staffing positions have been miraculously filled by leftists and associates of Mozes.”

Mozes, or at least the staffers at his paper Yedioth, certainly do care a lot about the fate of the broadcaster, judging from a column by Ben-Dror Yemini in which he says that with the decision of whether to shutter the station, “Israeli democracy is on the table.”

“Anyone who wants to close the station doesn’t want to save an agora. He doesn’t want a free and balanced press. He doesn’t even want a right-wing press. He wants a subservient press,” he writes, going off the old claims that the broadcaster should be closed because it’s a money pit.

Haaretz’s Mr. Hot Take himself Rogel Alpher takes the faux-shocking position of agreeing with Netanyahu on closing the broadcaster, not because it’s supposedly stocked with lefties, but rather because it’s funded by the state.

“Only privately run media outlets are capable of furthering a clear political agenda. That’s what’s happened at Jewish heritage broadcaster Channel 20; at Haaretz; on the Walla website; and at the daily Israel Hayom,” he writes. “Israel needs more private media outlets. Why not just scrap all public broadcasting, including Army Radio (an anomaly that should stop immediately) and Reshet Bet radio? ‘Public’ is not a synonym for quality. ‘Public’ is a synonym for ‘official.’ And officialdom in broadcasting is a real ill.”