More online ugliness: NY Times writer compared Trump and Hitler

Sarah Jeong

'MediaBuzz' host Howard Kurtz weighs in on the increasing difficulty of defending the New York Times for hiring Sarah Jeong, a writer with a history of racist and anti-Trump tweets, while Facebook, Apple and other tech giants are perfectly comfortable banning Alex Jones.
Their cases could not be more different. But it's getting increasingly difficult to defend the New York Times for hiring a writer with a history of racist and anti-Trump tweets, while Facebook, Apple and other tech giants are perfectly comfortable banning Alex Jones.
The debate around Sarah Jeong, the Times' newest editorial writer, initially focused on her Twitter postings denigrating and mocking white men. But critics have found equally troubling tweets since then.
First there was the discovery of "F--- the police" and "cops are a--holes." How does a major American newspaper defend that?
The Times, and Jeong herself, initially said she regrets the white men-are-"bull----"-and-"dogs" tweets, but was imitating the online hate she was drawing as an Asian-American woman.
I didn't buy the explanation, but felt a bit of sympathy for Jeong as the latest victim of a social media mob demanding her firing. As is all too common in these matters, conservatives have led the charge against Jeong, just as liberals have spearheaded the online opposition against such conservative writers as Kevin Williamson (hired and then quickly unhired by the Atlantic over his past comments such as equating abortion and murder).
But the latest Jeong tweets, noted by The Washington Times, are as beyond the pale as attacks on white men and police officers.
Jeong has tweeted that "Trump is Hitler," "Trump=Hitler," "trump is basically hitler," and "Was Hitler as rapey as Donald Trump?"
How is it even remotely acceptable to compare the president of the United States to a Nazi who was one of history's greatest mass murderers? The Times would never hire a writer who hurled charges like that against a Democrat. So there is a reeking double standard here.
The paper, which declined comment yesterday, has said, among other things, "we had candid conversations with Sarah as part of our thorough vetting process, which included a review of her social media history." The view at the Times is that there's an orchestrated campaign against Jeong by people with an agenda and the company doesn't want to fan the flames. That's understandable, but the toxic nature of the tweets has ensured that this is not a one-day story.
One contrast: When the editorial board recently hired and unhired writer Quinn Norton, it was over tweets that were hostile to gays, not white people in general. So there is a line for the Times—it's just that, somehow, Jeong didn't cross it.
In the aforementioned Atlantic, National Review's Reihan Salam tries to explain the Jeong world view:
"Many of the white-bashers of my acquaintance have been highly-educated and affluent Asian American professionals. So why do they do it?"
He says it’s often glorified trolling, "the most transgressive thing you can get away with saying without actually getting called out for it. In this sense, it's a way of establishing solidarity: All of us in this space get it, and we have nothing but disdain for those who do not. And some may well be intended as a defiant retort to bigotry."
Salam argues that especially for Asian-Americans, "embracing the culture of upper-white self-flagellation can spur avowedly enlightened whites to eagerly cheer on their Asian American comrades who show (abstract, faceless, numberless) lower-white people what for."
That still seems to me like an intellectual way of justifying not a "defiant retort to bigotry," but plain old bigotry.
Andrew Sullivan says that "#cancelblackpeople probably wouldn't fly at the New York Times, would it? Or imagine someone tweeting that Jews were only 'fit to live underground like groveling goblins' or that she enjoyed 'being cruel to old Latina women,' and then being welcomed and celebrated by a liberal newsroom. Not exactly in the cards.”
As a member of a minority group, Sullivan says, Jeong is deemed "incapable of racism," and that's why she "hasn't apologized to the white people she denigrated or conceded that her tweets were racist. Nor has she taken responsibility for them."
As for Alex Jones, I'm getting a lot of pushback from conservatives who say it's an assault on the First Amendment for Facebook, YouTube, Apple and Spotify to ban him from their hugely popular platforms. But it has nothing to do with the First Amendment, as these are private companies who are deciding what content they will allow.
There is a free speech question, of course, and Facebook and Twitter have in the past discriminated against conservatives, and they acknowledge they have a problem. But the case against Jones isn't based on his political views; it’s aimed mainly at his propagation of conspiracy theories, such as that the horrific Newtown school massacre never happened.
Jones still has an online show; his speech hasn’t been suppressed, though it's been curtailed by these Big Tech giants. But it would be a mistake to cast the Infowars founder, who blames a "yellow journalism campaign," as being punished for just being on the right.
And yet it's not hard to understand why conservative critics can't believe that Sarah Jeong emerged unscathed.
Howard Kurtz is a Fox News analyst and the host of "MediaBuzz" (Sundays 11 a.m.). He is the author "Media Madness: Donald Trump, The Press and the War Over the Truth." Follow him at @HowardKurtz. Click here for more information on Howard Kurtz.

Political hatred has gone wild - Americans need to work together

Former Sen. Bob Smith, R-N.H. once left the Republican Party because he said it wasn’t conservative enough. The late Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., ran unsuccessfully against President Jimmy Carter for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1980 because he didn’t think Carter was liberal enough.
And yet – hard as it is to believe today – Smith and Kennedy were good friends, despite holding political views that were polar opposites.
Kennedy, known as the “lion of the Senate,” went out of his way to make Smith feel welcome and appreciated when Smith became a senator. The two would sit together at Senate gatherings, with Kennedy cutting across a room full of his colleagues – many of them fellow Democrats – just to chat with conservative Republican Smith.
By the time Smith left the Senate in 2002, he and Kennedy had worked together on a host of issues.
We bring up this anecdote not to engage in wistful nostalgia, but to point out that America does better when the two sides of the aisle talk to each other, respect each other, and even like each other. America does best when Americans recognize that people from the other party still want what’s best for the nation – they just have a different route to get there.
That, unfortunately, does not describe our current political environment. Democrats and Republicans today demonize and attack each other with ferocity. Oftentimes, it’s not enough to say members of the other party have the wrong ideas – members of the other party are portrayed as evil, incompetent and out to do harm to America.
This escalation of political opposition into political hatred doesn’t benefit anyone. For the good of the nation, Americans must start to see the good in each other.
Time was that what we are calling for here was not controversial. The Reagan administration is a prime example.
In the 1980s, Republican President Ronald Reagan and Democratic House Speaker Thomas P. “Tip” O’Neill of Massachusetts were about as far apart politically as you could get. O’Neill was a liberal New Deal Democrat who favored big government spending, funded by high taxes. Reagan was a conservative Republican who favored small government and low taxes.
While O’Neill believed government was able to solve problems, Reagan famously said in his first inaugural address in 1981: “In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.”
Yet President Reagan and Speaker O’Neill genuinely liked each other. They could gently make fun of each other, like friends do, as when President Reagan said that he knew a Valentine’s Day card was from Speaker O’Neill because “the heart was still bleeding.”
As President Reagan said, they were friends “after 6 p.m.” – that is, when the cameras were off and they could speak to each other as people, not politicians from opposing parties.
Reagan and O’Neill got a lot of good things done for the American people because of their friendship. Together, they helped negotiate a ceasefire – which eventually led to peace accords – to end the bloody violence in Northern Ireland. They worked together to curb Soviet aggression across the globe, including in Afghanistan.
Oh, and they worked together to pass President Reagan’s signature achievement, the 1986 tax reform legislation that simplified the U.S. tax code, lowered income taxes, eliminated tax shelters and broadened the tax base. It remains a nearly universally admired piece of legislation – one that had a tremendous positive impact on the economy. America won because Democrats and Republicans talked to each other and put country first.
Perhaps this cooperation is why President George H.W. Bush, a Republican, awarded O’Neill the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1991.
While Democratic and Republican politicians attack each other with angry rhetoric today, polls show most American agree on some issues.
For example, our nation’s infrastructure is in disrepair – and Americans agree we need to fix it. Similarly, Americans agree we need a greater focus on career and technical education, and agree we should expand the earned income tax credit. We want less crime, less disease, more jobs, a more secure world and greater prosperity. We all want our children to have the opportunity to get a good education and good jobs.
What’s holding us back isn’t popular opinion or the issues themselves. It is the vitriol of our political discourse. We can only take on the issues we all agree on when we tamp down our rhetoric and see the good in each other.
Yes, there are outliers – people who can’t be reasoned with and who will not respect us regardless of any olive branch extended. Some bigots hate people because of their race, religion or ethnicity and will never accept their ideas. Some people holding far-left or far-right views see any compromise as a sign of weakness and will never give an inch.
Those exceptions, however, make emphasizing our shared values and shared goals all the more important. If our political “discourse” becomes little more than shouting at each other with hatred, our nation will not survive. Those of us still capable of listening to the other side must extend our hands. A coherent, respectful center will push extremists further to the fringe.
America has become an angry place, a place where demonizing the other side has become the rule. But that anger needs to stop. We must put down our vicious tweets and blog posts and pick up a six-pack or a cup of coffee and talk with someone of a different political persuasion.
We might find out we actually like each other. And we – like Ronald Reagan, Ted Kennedy, Bob Smith and Tip O’Neill – might do some good for the country we all love.

Harry J. Kazianis, a Republican, (@grecianformula) is director of defense studies at the Center for the National Interest and executive editor of The National Interest.
Neal Urwitz, a Democrat, is a public relations executive in Washington.

Trump-backed Troy Balderson takes narrow lead against insurgent Dem challenger in Ohio House special election, claims victory

Buoyed by a dramatic last-minute rally by President Trump, Republican State Senator Troy Balderson appeared to be inching closer to beating back a challenge by insurgent Democrat Danny O’Connor in Ohio's special election for a vacant House seat Tuesday.
A victory in the race for the Ohio's historically conservative 12th Congressional District would deny Democrats the major upset they had sought ahead of the November midterm elections. The winner takes the seat previously held by Republican Pat Tiberi, who resigned in January to take another job.
Speaking to cheering supporters Tuesday night, Balderson said O'Connor ran a "hard race" and claimed victory. And in a tweet Tuesday night, Trump wrote that Balderson had won a "great victory during a very tough time of the year for voting."
But O'Connor has not conceded, and said in a statement released shortly before midnight that "we don't know the results quite yet."
The race remains too close to call. Balderson maintains a slim one-percentage point lead with all precincts reporting, but there are at least 3,435 provisional ballots left to be reviewed and 5,048 outstanding absentee ballots. That's enough for O'Connor to potentially pick up enough votes to force a mandatory recount.
Unofficial Ohio state election totals showed Balderson with 101,574 votes and O'Connor with 99,820 -- a mere 1,754 vote difference.
State officials said that boards of elections cannot begin counting those additional ballots until the 11th day after the election, August 18.
The mood at O'Connor's campaign headquarters at the Ohio Civil Service Employees Association in Westerville had been optimistic early Tuesday evening as results intially indicated he was significantly ahead in Ohio's 12th Congressional District. Trump won the district by 11 percentage points in 2016, and it has had a Republican representative for the last three decades.
The race was one of several key contests on Tuesday, but it has garnered outsized attention because several polls showed no real daylight between the candidates in traditionally deep-red district -- which some, including Ohio Gov. John Kasich, has said "does not bode well" for the GOP in the upcoming November midterm elections.
Also, while Kansas, Missouri, Michigan, and Washington state were holding primaries on Tuesday, only Ohio was sending someone to Congress immediately.
Despite the apparent win by Balderson, 57, on Tuesday, the candidates will square off again in less than 100 days in November's general election. But O'Connor is expected to have much less of a fighting chance -- and outside funding -- in the fall.
Trump Tuesday night predicted on Twitter Balderson will "win BIG" in November's general election.
Late Tuesday, as it became clear Balderson had a lead with all precincts reporting, O'Connor sounded a determined but somber note in a speech at his campaign headquarters.
"This is a grassroots campaign powered by small donations and people who want the future for their community," he said. "We won’t rest; we will keep fighting through to November."
FOUR OTHER STATES HEAD TO THE POLLS ON TUESDAY -- WHAT ARE THE KEY RACES?
A state Republican party official told Fox News that officials there were "cautiously optimistic" Balderson would prevail early in the evening, citing high turnout in areas like rural Muskingum County that nearly ran out of paper ballots.
Trump may have played a significant role in the reportedly high turnout in the Ohio contest by staging a freewheeling rally in suburban Columbus on Saturday night. In a sweltering auditorium, Trump said House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., "controls Danny O’Connor, whoever the hell that is."
In his tweet Tuesday night, Trump wrote, "When I decided to go to Ohio for Troy Balderson, he was down in early voting 64 to 36. That was not good. After my speech on Saturday night, there was a big turn for the better."
Described by campaign operatives as a "Whole Foods" district, the largely suburban region features a more affluent and educated voter base than the typical Trump stronghold.
Balderson touted Trump's help, saying Monday that the president "definitely brought major excitement, and they were excited to see him up here."

"We won’t rest; we will keep fighting through to November."
- Democratic House candidate Danny O'Connor

Vice President Mike Pence also campaigned on Balderson's behalf, saying he has been on board with the president's agenda.
O'Connor has dominated Balderson on the local airwaves. His campaign spent $2.25 million on advertising compared to Balderson's $507,000, according to campaign tallies of ad spending. The Republican campaign arm and its allied super PAC were forced to pick up the slack, spending more than $4 million between them.
Kasich, a leading voice in the GOP's shrinking anti-Trump wing, once represented the district in Congress.
At times, the race has centered on Trump's tax cuts as much as the candidates. O'Connor and his Democratic allies have railed against the tax plan, casting it as a giveaway for the rich that exacerbates federal deficits and threatens Medicare and Social Security.

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West Hollywood City Council voted to remove Trump's Walk of Fame star

West Hollywood City Councilmembers (left to right) Lauren Meister, Lindsey Horvath, John Heilman, John D’Amico, John Duran

The Hollywood Chamber of Commerce has said in the past that it would never remove stars because of a backlash.

City council votes to remove Trump's star

Could not do this kind of damage in a few minutes, where were the police?

West Hollywood councillors have voted “unanimously” to remove Donald Trump’s star from the city’s Walk of Fame.
The marker, which was unveiled in 2007, has been vandalised several times since the US president took office and was almost completely destroyed in July in a pickaxe attack.

At a meeting on Monday evening, West Hollywood City Council opted to recommend to the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce that the star should be removed.
“West Hollywood City council unanimously passes resolution asking the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce to remove the Donald Trump star on Hollywood Walk of Fame,” said West Hollywood mayor John Duran on Twitter, announcing the decision.
However, the chamber has previously said it would never remove a star from the famous walk, arguing they represent the history of the entertainment industry in America.
It has refused to pull up slabs celebrating actor Kevin Spacey and comedian Bill Cosby, who have both been exposed during the Hollywood sexual harassment scandal.
Papers produced by council staff on the matter said a number of “disturbing” instances of Mr Trump’s behaviour towards women had emerged during and after the 2016 presidential election campaign.
It went on to list several other examples of the president’s behaviour the council found objectionable, including separation of children from their parents at the Mexico border and withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement.

Donald Trump’s Hollywood star is back - with 24/7 police protection

“Having a ‘star’ on the Walk of Fame is a privilege that is highly sought after by those in the entertainment industry,” the report said.
“Allowing Mr Trump to continue to have a star in light of his behaviour towards women, particularly in the #timesup and #metoo movements, should not be acceptable in the Hollywood and entertainment industry communities.”
The star, one of more than 2,600 placed along Hollywood Boulevard and Vine Street, was granted to Mr Trump in recognition of his work with the Miss Universe Pageant, but he was by the time of its installation also staring in hit reality show The Apprentice.

On Monday, 24-year-old Austin Mikel Clay was charged with vandalising the star last month and could face up to three years behind bars if found guilty.
The marker has become something of a battleground for Mr Trump’s supporters and opponents during his presidency, coming under attack multiple times.
In October 2016, a man was filmed hitting the star with a sledgehammer, while it has also been spray-painted and spat on.

Big Tech bans Alex Jones: Drawing a line between commentary and conspiracy

"Inforwars" host Alex Jones.  (Tamir Kalifa/Austin American-Statesman via AP, File)

After years of deflection and foot-dragging, the major tech companies are finally having to take steps toward policing their own content.
They have reached this point kicking and screaming, under great public pressure, after clinging for years to the fiction that they are just public utilities and that people can use their pipes for pretty much anything.
But now they have united, for a brief moment at least, against a major conspiracy theorist.
Facebook, Apple, YouTube and Spotify have all taken action against Alex Jones.
They are deathly afraid of being accused of political bias, sometimes for good reason. Both Facebook and Twitter have both grappled with incidents of discrimination against conservatives, which may have made them gun-shy about banning (as opposed to shadow-banning) some folks.
But almost in unison, the tech giants teamed up against Jones, who runs Infowars.
Candidate Donald Trump appeared on Jones' online show in 2015, and yesterday Jones tweeted a video defense with the headline: "EMERGENCY: President Trump Must Defend the First Amendment."
Facebook said it has taken down some Jones pages "for glorifying violence, which violates our graphic violence policy, and using dehumanizing language to describe people who are transgender, Muslims and immigrants, which violates our hate speech policies."
Apple said it removed the "Alex Jones Show" and other podcasts from iTunes and its podcast app. The company said it "does not tolerate hate speech, and we have clear guidelines that creators and developers must follow to ensure we provide a safe environment for all of our users."
Google’s YouTube dropped the ax on Jones' channel, telling The Washington Post that it terminates users who violate "our policies against hate speech and harassment or our terms prohibiting circumvention of our enforcement measures."
And Spotify banned Jones altogether after earlier removing some podcasts, telling the Post: "We take reports of hate content seriously and review any podcast episode or song that is flagged by our community."
I know Jones has a lot of fans—remember the controversy swirling around his interview with Megyn Kelly—but he's also a guy being sued by Sandy Hook parents for saying that the horrible massacre at that Connecticut school was a hoax.
Jones apologized last year, in careful language, for spreading the phony Pizzagate conspiracy theory, saying he'd been given inaccurate information.
That’s not "conservative." That's at odds with reality.
Jones texted the Post that being banned by the tech companies was "a counter-strike against the global awakening."
"We've seen a giant yellow journalism campaign with thousands and thousands of articles for weeks, for months misrepresenting what I've said and done to set the precedent to de-platform me before Big Tech and the Democratic Party as well as some Republican establishment types move against the First Amendment in this country as we know it," he said.
Separately, Jones called The New York Times a "globalist intelligence agency" and said that the "evil, wicked sociopaths" who work for major media outlets were teaming up to take down Infowars.
I confess I'd like to know how the four tech companies happened to take action on the same day. Perhaps they concluded there was safety in numbers. They seemed to have an ally in Drudge, whose banner headline was "APPLE REGULATES HATE."
But this is just a skirmish. Just recently, Mark Zuckerberg got himself into trouble by saying he saw no reason to ban pages by Holocaust deniers.
There is a fine line between banning hate and bullying on one hand and censoring controversial political opinions on the other. These battles will play out in a hyperpartisan political atmosphere. But for now, Apple, Facebook, Google and Spotify have all agreed there is one person who falls on the wrong side of that line.
Howard Kurtz is a Fox News analyst and the host of "MediaBuzz" (Sundays 11 a.m.). He is the author "Media Madness: Donald Trump, The Press and the War Over the Truth." Follow him at @HowardKurtz. Click here for more information on Howard Kurtz.

Trump legal team drafting letter about 'reluctance' to answer obstruction questions

Rudy Giuliani

Sebastian Gorka

President Trump’s legal team said Monday they are preparing to send special counsel Robert Mueller a letter that would largely turn down a meeting that would include any “questions related to obstruction of justice,” sources told Fox News.
Trump attorneys are expected to send their response to Mueller as early as today.
Last week, a source said that Trump’s legal team would consider allowing questions regarding obstruction if they were in written form.
“In a perfect world, we’d have a few written questions about the obstruction issue, and oral questions about Russia/collusion,” the source said.
Rudy Giuliani, the top lawyer on Trump’s legal team, however, told Fox News “we have real reluctance about allowing any questions regarding obstruction of justice.”
The Washington Post was first to report the letter after an interview with Giuliani on Monday, who said the letter is not intended to decline Mueller’s request, rather he hopes to “continue the negotiations.”
Talks between Trump’s lawyers and the special counsel investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election have restarted in recent days, and it is not clear a deal will be struck, The Associated Press reported. Trump has publicly expressed a desire to be interviewed, but his lawyers have repeatedly objected to the investigators’ proposals.
Trump attorneys say both sides have exchanged proposals for conditions for such a Trump interview.
The negotiations come amid a backdrop of Trump’s escalating attacks on the probe, including his blunt declaration that his attorney general should terminate “right now” the federal probe into the campaign that took him to the White House, a newly fervent attack on the special counsel investigation that could imperil his presidency. Trump also assailed the trial, just underway, of his former campaign chairman by the special counsel’s team.
“The president still hasn’t made a decision, and we’re not going to make a final decision just yet,” Giuliani told the paper.
Sebastian Gorka, a Fox News national security strategist, told ‘Hannity’ that there is “zero evidence” connecting the president to Russia.
“And I’m going to say now on the record, they will never find any because there isn’t any,” he said.

Trump renews 'biting sanctions' against Iran, warns countries doing business with Tehran

In this photo released by official website of the office of the Iranian Presidency, President Hassan Rouhani addresses the nation in a televised speech in Tehran, Iran, Monday, Aug. 6, 2018. Iranian President Hassan Rouhani struck a hard line Monday as the U.S. restored some sanctions that had been lifted under the 2015 nuclear deal. (Iranian Presidency Office via AP)

President Trump on Tuesday called the sanctions against Iran that went into effect at midnight "the most biting sanctions ever imposed,” and warned that countries that do business with Tehran will not do business with the U.S.
Trump signed an executive order on Monday to restore some of the sanctions that were lifted under the 2015 nuclear deal during the Obama administration, targeting transactions that involve U.S. dollars, as well as the country’s automotive sector, the purchase of commercial planes and metals including gold.
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani responded Monday, "If someone has knife in the hand and seeks talks, he should first put the knife in his pocket."
Rouhani said he has no pre-conditions for opening talks with the U.S. as long as the Islamic Republic gets paid back for decades of American “intervention in Iran.”
"If the U.S. government is ready to negotiate about paying compensation to the Iranian nation from 1953 until now," Rouhani said. "The U.S owes the Iranian nation for its intervention in Iran."
Rouhani appears to be referencing the CIA-backed mission to overthrow Iran’s elected prime minister to secure the shah’s rule in 1953, a similar sentiment touted by many of his predecessors.
A senior administration official told Fox News these restored sanctions are designed to constrict the revenue Iran uses to fund “terrorists, dictators, proxy militias, and the regime’s own cronies.”
Additional sanctions will resume on Nov. 4, targeting Iran's oil industry and banking sector.
Rouhani also said the country can rely on China and Russia to supplement its oil and banking sectors amid the U.S. imposed sanctions.
Trump, who has repeatedly vowed to withdraw the U.S. from a nuclear deal that he called “a horrible, one-sided deal that should have never ever been made,” has said he is open to negotiating with Iran.

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