Which movie is the real one, if such a thing exists?

From Trump and Ukraine: What We Know by Scott Adams. A refreshing and useful reminder.

Take away all the invective, anger, shouted accusations, pouting, feigned outrage, etc. and what exactly is that we know or at least can agree on early in any clearly political news cycle? Adams' advice:

If you’ve followed the Ukraine phone-call news, you might have noticed reality branching into two completely different movies. In one, President Trump was doing his job of protecting the republic by asking an allied country to help out on an important legal investigation. The other movie involves Orange Hitler bullying a foreign country into meddling in our elections by “digging up dirt” on a political opponent.

Which movie is the real one, if such a thing exists? I’d like to offer a rule of thumb for evaluating political news: If a fact is reported the same by both the left-leaning and the right-leaning press, it’s probably a fact. If not, wait and see.

It’s also smart to wait a week or two before you make up your mind, as the fog of war often makes early reporting unreliable. But after the fog clears, if all sides agree on a fact, it’s probably a fact. Or at least it’s credible, even if future reporting debunks it.

For the specific case example he is using, identifies where the movies diverge but also identifies the facts upon which both sides have consonance of view.

If you strip out the parts of the Ukraine story we can’t yet know to be true, you still know enough to have a responsible opinion. Vice President Biden was handling the Ukraine portfolio while his son had a financial interest in Ukraine, and that is enough of a conflict to merit an investigation. We all agree that the sitting president is responsible for protecting the integrity of American elections and generally keeping foreign interference in U.S. politics to a minimum. That’s what Mr. Trump was doing on the Ukraine phone call. (For those of you who say such matters should be handled at lower levels of government, my experience in corporate America tells me nothing much gets done until the bosses talk and agree. I assume government is similar.)

All sides can also agree that Mr. Trump was serving his own re-election interests by asking Ukraine to investigate Mr. Biden. But we also agree our political system allows that—even encourages it—so long as the president is also clearly pursuing the national interest. Before the Democratic primary, would it be good for the country to know more about Joe Biden’s relationship with Ukraine? Democrats should appreciate finding out soon if there is anything of concern, because I assume they don’t want to go into the general election with a candidate who has some surprises in his Ukrainian closet.

Adams is an entertainer in many ways but he is also a pretty rare public intellectual. Not so much because he knows more but because he usually thinks more creatively.