Conservative Blogger
Friday, May 6, 2016
The media's credibility gap: Now the pundits predict Trump will lose to Hillary
Now this is fascinating: All the pundits who got Donald Trump so wrong are now telling us how hard it will be for him to win a general election, or holding forth on what he needs to do this fall.
As if they had not just been part of the greatest journalistic misfire in modern political history.
The press, in other words, is facing a credibility gap.
Now that doesn’t automatically mean that the prognosticators are wrong this time. But it suggests the need for a little humility.
It’s undoubtedly true that Trump faces an uphill battle against Hillary Clinton. Any Republican would have to grapple with a daunting Electoral College map that has come to favor the Democrats, which is why they have won the popular vote in five of the last six elections.
As Chris Cillizza has pointed out, if Hillary wins the 19 states (plus D.C.) that have voted Democratic in the last six presidential elections, plus Florida, she’s got more than 270 electoral votes. And if she doesn’t win Florida, there are several other combinations of states that could put her over the top.
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Trump has high negatives (especially among women and Hispanics), but he managed to bring those numbers down during the primaries.
Trump has no political experience, but he engages in asymmetrical warfare of the kind that can drive opponents crazy—especially a less-than-nimble candidate like Clinton.
Trump is strongly opposed by pundits on the right and the left, but he turned that to his advantage this year by running against them and an unpopular media establishment.
Just to give you the flavor, here’s a National Review piece yesterday by David French:
“The party of Lincoln is in ruins. A minority of its primary voters have torched its founders’ legacy by voting for a man who combines old-school Democratic ideology, a bizarre form of hyper-violent isolationism, fringe conspiracy theories, and serial lies with an enthusiastic flock of online racists to create perhaps the most toxic electoral coalition since George Wallace…
“Trump is the destroyer of conservatism, and he will taint all who take his side.”
And here’s a Salon story yesterday by Simon Malloy, who admits that he was among the many commentators who was “completely wrong about Trump”:
“The widespread dismissal of Trump 2016 stands out as one of the more significant media failures of the past year, and it’s good that at least a few people are willing to circle back and figure out why they blew it…
“Already we’re seeing high-profile reporters and pundits who are grubbing for access to Trump by sugarcoating or rationalizing his belligerence and bigotry. The urge to provide Trump the same deference and treatment one would a mainstream politician will be strong. But that gives the Republican nominee more credit than he’s due, and it pushes to the background everything that makes Donald Trump the malignant political force that he is.”
Trump, for his part, is reaching out to the party establishment and trying to mend fences, with mixed success. Some Republicans are softening their opposition to him, while others are with Paul Ryan in withholding their support, or George W. Bush and George H.W. Bush in making clear they will never support him. This could have something to do with Jeb, but also with Trump’s criticism of the Iraq war and divorcing himself from the Bush brand of Republicanism.
Maybe, in some way, these establishment snubs help underscore that Trump is a different kind of Republican.
The billionaire faces the challenge of setting up a national campaign apparatus and fundraising operation. But the more fundamental question is whether his positions will have far less appeal outside the narrower bandwidth of Republican contests.
On hot-button issues like immigration, probably so. But keep in mind that Trump is also running as a businessman who knows something about creating jobs and is opposed to the kind of trade deals that have hurt many working-class voters.
He is also running as a Republican who is vowing to protect entitlement programs and is downplaying the importance of social issues.
The press just hasn’t had to deal with this kind of GOP nominee in a very long time. And that’s why Trump could win over what used to be called Reagan Democrats, or at least their kids.
Oh, and Hillary has pretty high negatives as well.
Still, his ambition of putting in play such traditionally Democratic states as New York and Pennsylvania may prove to be unrealistic, and so the electoral math may still be against him.
Now the press is getting caught up in VP talk. Will Trump pick Kasich, Rubio or Christie? Will he go for a female governor? We don’t know—right now, he doesn’t know—so it’s sheer speculation at this point.
But the press should be careful about judging the fall campaign based on the usual political assumptions. Trump, you may have noticed, has spent the last year smashing those assumptions.
Howard Kurtz is a Fox News analyst and the host of "MediaBuzz" (Sundays 11 a.m. and 5 p.m. ET). He is the author of five books and is based in Washington. Follow him at @HowardKurtz. Click here for more information on Howard Kurtz.
RNC head says Trump, Ryan to meet next week
Republican National Committee Chair Reince Priebus said Thursday that presumptive GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump and House Speaker Paul Ryan would meet next week in an effort to clear the air after Ryan said he was "just not ready" to back Trump in the general election this fall.
"I think it's going to work out," Priebus told Fox News' Sean Hannity. "In some cases people are not going to be instantly on board, and I now that can be frustrating for some people. But i think everyone has to ... allow a little bit of the steam to get out and get everybody settled down. And I think this is going to come together."
Priebus spoke hours after Ryan confirmed CNN that he was "just not ready" to support or endorse Trump. The Wisconsin Republican suggested that he wants the real estate mogul to do more to unify the party first, but added that he hoped to support Trump.
Trump fired back in a statement, saying, "I am not ready to support Speaker Ryan's agenda."
"Perhaps in the future we can work together and come to an agreement about what is best for the American people," the statement continued. "They have been treated so badly for so long that it is about time for politicians to put them first!"
Preibus told Hannity he had spoken to both Trump and Ryan Thursday and said both men were "committed to sitting down and actually talking this out."
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Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton’s campaign also has been eager to point out any rifts in the party, and quickly blasted out a message claiming Ryan had joined the “growing list of conservatives rebuking Trump."
Also Thursday, the Associated Press reported that Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner will not endorse Trump in the general election and will not attend the convention. Sen. Mark Kirk, R-Ill., who is expected to face a tough re-election fight against Democratic Rep. Tammy Duckworth, has said he is also skipping the convention.
Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, a Republican chief executive in a traditionally Democratic state, declined again Thursday to endorse a GOP candidate, despite the departures this week of Ted Cruz and John Kasich that left Trump the last man standing.
"I said I was not going to get involved, and I would not endorse any candidate and that I was going to stay focused on Maryland," Hogan told reporters, according to The Washington Post. "And I’m not going to take any more stupid questions about Donald Trump."
By contrast, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, who endorsed Cruz ahead of this week's primary, has said he will back Trump, telling TV station WTHI "I look forward to supporting our presumptive nominee. I think Donald Trump will do very well in the Hoosier State."
Fox News confirmed Thursday that 2012 Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney – a vocal Trump critic -- has no plans to attend the convention, while former Presidents George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush both have confirmed they will not attend either. A source close to former Senator and 1996 Republican nominee Bob Dole said he would “briefly” attend the convention but primarily to attend a lunch hosted by his law firm.
"This was a very contentious primary," Priebus said. "I think it's going to take a little bit of time, but I think for the most part this is going to come together. Maybe not 100 percent, but i think we're going to get very close to that and i think people will fall in line."
State Dept. pushes back on Guccifer claims of breaching Clinton server
The State Department joined the Hillary Clinton campaign Thursday in pushing back on Romanian hacker Guccifer’s claims that he successfully breached the former secretary of state’s personal server.
Marcel Lehel Lazar, who goes by the moniker "Guccifer," told Fox News that he accessed Clinton’s server “like twice,” claiming that for him, “it was easy.”
Asked about the claims at Thursday’s press briefing, State Department spokesman Mark Toner said he’s not aware of such an incident.
“We don’t have any reason to believe that it might be true,” he said.
At the same time, Toner repeatedly stressed he did not want to comment on the security of the server, citing ongoing investigations. Asked if he’s in a position to even know whether Lazar’s claims are true, Toner again said he did not want to comment.
The Clinton campaign issued a more definitive denial.
In response to Lazar’s claims, the Clinton campaign issued a statement Wednesday night saying, "There is absolutely no basis to believe the claims made by this criminal from his prison cell. In addition to the fact he offers no proof to support his claims, his descriptions of Secretary Clinton's server are inaccurate. It is unfathomable that he would have gained access to her emails and not leaked them the way he did to his other victims.”
However, Lazar provided extensive details about his hacking, in interviews from the Virginia jail where he is being held.
The 44-year-old Lazar said he first compromised Clinton confidant Sidney Blumenthal's AOL account, in March 2013, and used that as a stepping stone to the Clinton server. He said he accessed Clinton’s server “like twice,” though he described the contents as “not interest[ing]” to him at the time.
“I was not paying attention. For me, it was not like the Hillary Clinton server, it was like an email server she and others were using with political voting stuff," Guccifer said.
The hacker spoke freely with Fox News from the detention center in Alexandria, Va., where he’s been held since his extradition to the U.S. on federal charges relating to other alleged cyber-crimes.
While Lazar's claims cannot be independently verified, three computer security specialists, including two former senior intelligence officials, said the process described is plausible and the Clinton server, now in FBI custody, may have an electronic record that would confirm or disprove Guccifer’s claims.
As recently as this week, Clinton said neither she nor her aides had been contacted by the FBI about the criminal investigation. Asked whether the server had been compromised by foreign hackers, she told MSNBC on Tuesday, “No, not at all.”
Recently extradited, Lazar faces trial Sept. 12 in the Eastern District of Virginia. He has pleaded not guilty to a nine-count federal indictment for his alleged hacking crimes in the U.S. Victims are not named in the indictment but reportedly include Colin Powell, a member of the Bush family and others including Blumenthal.
Lazar also told Fox News that during his flight to the U.S. from Romania on or about March 31, he was accompanied by an FBI agent and a State Department official. He said he talked to the FBI and “wrote up eight pages of notes” during the flight, stressing that “I have nothing to hide.”
Lazar told Fox News that, while imprisoned in Romania where he was serving a seven-year sentence, he met several times with U.S. agents from the FBI, Secret Service and Treasury.
Presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump reacted to the report Thursday, calling the claim by Guccifer "very serious."
"If it's true it’s very serious," Trump told Fox News' Bret Baier. "It’s not a question of him. It’s what she did and why did she do it?"
Documents show State Department missed target date for special Benghazi unit
The State Department missed its own target date last year for the establishment of a special unit to review Benghazi documents, documents obtained by Fox News show.
The previously unpublished documents, generated by the House select committee that is investigating the 2012 terror attacks, detail how Rep. Trey Gowdy, the panel’s Republican chairman from South Carolina, began working behind the scenes early last year to help the department secure over $4 million in “reprogrammed” funds set aside by Congress for such a unit.
According to agreements worked out between Republican staff on the committee and top aides to Secretary of State John Kerry, including chief of staff Jonathan Finer, the document review unit was supposed to be “operational” in June 2015.
Yet the State Department, prompted by inquiries from Fox News, now acknowledges it missed that target date. “The Congressional Document Production unit began staffing up in mid-2015,” said State Department spokesman Mark Toner in an email late Thursday, “and is now fully operational.”
The records obtained by Fox News also show repeated refusals by Kerry’s aides, including Finer, to account for what happened to the appropriated funds when Gowdy’s staff made repeated inquiries about the matter back in mid-2015.
Gowdy told Fox News he sought the additional funding “so they could speed up document production to Congress and we could finish the investigation faster.”
Top administration officials, including white House spokesman Josh Earnest, have accused the committee of prolonging the investigation for “political” reasons – specifically, to try to damage Clinton’s presidential candidacy.
In his email to Fox News, Toner acknowledged that Gowdy and his staff had indeed “supported” the request for additional funding.
This prompted Gowdy, in an emailed statement of his own, to say he “appreciates” the Obama administration “finally confirming the Benghazi Committee went the extra mile to complete its investigation as soon as possible by helping the State Department get extra funding.”
According to the internal committee files, the State Department’s document review unit was supposed to encompass twelve full-time employees, including at least three lawyers, “case managers” to oversee responses to specific document requests, and an IT professional.
The State Department conveyed to the committee last year that it intended to use some of the U.S. personnel evacuated from Yemen last year to staff the unit, according to the documents.
On Thursday, Toner said the use of the personnel from Yemen was “never necessary” – but did not spell out why the evacuated personnel were considered superfluous when the department was having trouble meeting its own target date of mid-June for the unit to become operational.
Asked at Wednesday’s press briefing if he could attest that the reprogrammed funds had actually been spent for the intended purpose, Toner said he was “fairly certain” that they “would have been.”
Co-chaired by Rep. Elijah Cummings, the Democrat from Maryland, the Benghazi committee has spent two years investigating the terrorist attacks on U.S. facilities on September 11, 2012 that killed America’s ambassador to Libya at the time, J. Christopher Stevens, and three other Americans.
The committee unearthed the fact that then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, now the frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination, used a private email server for all of her official email correspondence. Among the emails subsequently made public was one that showed Clinton giving her daughter an account of the attacks that differed sharply from the false narrative about them that the secretary of state, and other top administrations officials, were pressing publicly.
Toner noted that the department has already provided close to 100,000 pages of documents to the committee, which is expected to produce its final report next month.
Washington-based attorney Mark Paoletta, who spent a decade as the Republican chief counsel to a House investigating subcommittee, told Fox News the Obama administration is “notorious” for “slow-rolling” investigative panels like the Benghazi committee. He cited Clinton’s private email server as evidence of this pattern.
“How can you seriously say that you’re being transparent,” Paoletta said in an interview with Fox News, “when the secretary of state is running a private server and has deleted over 30,000 of those documents before anyone even knows that it’s in existence?”
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