Frank Bruni is tortured.
The liberal New York Times columnist says it in print: "Trump tortures us."
And
he's got an elaborate plan for journalists to prevent Donald Trump from
being reelected — to "redeem ourselves," he says — because obviously
"we" never should have allowed him to win the White House in the first
place.
Bruni is a good writer, but he seems to fundamentally
misunderstand the role of the press and the president's use of the
press. He’s an opinion guy but comes from the camp that Trump is such a
monumental threat that the news business must drop its usual standards
and expose him.
His piece comes at a time when the president is
under fire on several fronts, including the longest government shutdown
in history. The Times just dropped a piece that the FBI opened a counterintelligence probe of Trump after the Jim Comey firing, and CNN now has transcripts of the internal debate. The Washington Post just reported
that Trump shielded details of his conversations with Vladimir Putin
from top aides, in one case grabbing an interpreter's notes.
Trump,
for his part, tweeted yesterday that "the Fake News gets crazier and
more dishonest every single day," that "certain people" have "truly gone
MAD" and should take two weeks off and "chill!"
In his lengthy
piece, Bruni rails against the president's "talent for using us as
vessels for propaganda," making us "Trump's accomplice," as if no other
president or politician has done that.
He
says Trump was a "perverse gift" to the media, which would just
"present him as the high-wire act and car crash that he is; the audience
gorges on it."
Let me stop right there. While the media lavished
endless attention on candidate Trump, much of it was negative attention,
which helped him anyway. He also generated coverage by doing hundreds
of interviews, even when he was on the defensive, in stark contrast to
his GOP opponents and to Hillary Clinton.
Bruni contends that
Trump's tweets and theatrics get so much attention that voters are
"starved of information about the fraudulence of his supposed populism
and the toll of his incompetence."
Really? The papers, the TV, and
the web are filled with that stuff every day. While covering style over
substance has been a media shortcoming for decades, especially on the
tube, no sentient human being can be unaware of all the arguments
against Trump on the shutdown, the wall, the Mueller probe, Syria, White
House chaos, and on and on.
In another 2016 lament, Bruni says
"we interpreted fairness as a similarly apportioned mix of complimentary
and derogatory stories about each contender, no matter how different
one contender's qualifications." In short, why did the press spend so
much time on Hillary's private e-mail server (which by the way was under
FBI investigation) when Trump was clearly the morally deficient one?
He
quotes ex-Times editor Jill Abramson as saying the email scandal
(broken by the Times) now seems like a "small thing" and that she didn't
turn the full investigative machinery against Trump because she assumed
Clinton would win.
Bruni
somehow didn't have room for Abramson's conclusion in her forthcoming
book, "Merchants of Truth" (as I reported), that she finds the Times'
news coverage to be "unmistakably anti-Trump." Guess that was an
inconvenient fact.
Still, Bruni does give a nod to the central
flaw in his argument: "I'm not certain that more firepower would have
made a difference. For one thing, there were many exposes of Trump's
shady history. For another, he appealed to voters who largely disregard
the mainstream media and who thrilled to his exhortations that they
disregard it further."
And he retreats to this: "The real story of
Trump isn't his amorality and outrageousness. It’s Americans'
receptiveness to that." In other words, the Trump phenomenon is the
fault of those gullible voters who just aren't as smart as members of
the media elite.
Finally,
Bruni says the media must give a full introduction to Trump's
Democratic challengers, which makes sense, as long as he doesn't mean an
uncritical one. But he disputes the notion that these candidates must
be vivid enough "to steal some of his spotlight," because we — the
mighty media — "can direct that spotlight where we want."
And
that's troubling. It's actually the job of the Democratic candidates to
make the case against Trump, and find ways to drive media coverage, and
our job to cover both sides fairly and aggressively. Unless, of course,
you believe that the incumbent is so terrible that it’s the media's
mission to ensure he doesn't win again.
President Donald Trump talks to the media about the table full
of fast food in the State Dining Room of the White House in Washington,
Monday, Jan. 14, 2019, for the reception for the Clemson Tigers. (AP
Photo/Susan Walsh)
What do you feed a pack of victorious
Tigers? If you're President Trump and the Tigers in question are the
college football playoff champion Clemson Tigers, the answer is obvious.
"We
ordered American fast food, paid for by me. Lots of hamburgers, lots of
pizza," Trump told reporters Monday evening after returning to the
White House from New Orleans. "We have some very large people that like
eating, so I think we're going to have a little fun."
Clemson, led by head coach Dabo Swinney,
won their second national championship in three seasons on Jan. 7 by
blowing out the top-ranked Alabama Crimson Tide 44-16 in Santa Clara,
Calif. With the win, Clemson completed the first 15-0 colege football
season since the 1897 Penn Quakers.
Guests attending a reception for the Clemson Tigers grab fast food
sandwiches in the State Dining Room of the White House in Washington,
Monday, Jan. 14, 2019. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)
The players were greeted by a White House smorgasbord
unlike any other. Silver trays held stacks of wrapped burgers from
Wendy's. Also on offer were boxed burgers from McDonald's, including Big
Macs. White House cups bearing the presidential seal held French fries
White
House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said much of the White House
residence staff has been furloughed due to the ongoing partial
government shutdown, ""so the president is personally paying for the
event to be catered with some of everyone's favorite fast foods."
Guests attending a reception for the Clemson Tigers grab fast food
sandwiches in the State Dining Room of the White House in Washington,
Monday, Jan. 14, 2019. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)
Pizzas, some topped with olives and tomatoes, also
were on the menu. Silver bowls held the condiments, and stacks of white
plates sat nearby. Several young men were spotted eating multiple
burgers at the standup tables dotting the East Room.
The president is a noted fast food fan, particularly McDonald's and Wendy's.
“I’m
a very clean person. I like cleanliness, and I think you’re better off
going there than maybe someplace that you have no idea where the food’s
coming from. It’s a certain standard,” he said in a 2016 interview.
“I think the food’s good,” he added.
The
Clemson team's visit is its second since Trump took office. The Tigers
last visited in June 2017 after their championship run the previous
season.
Swinney has nominated this season's undefeated Tigers as
the best college team ever. Trump called them a "great team, an
unbelievable team."
Guests attending a reception for the Clemson Tigers grab fast food
sandwiches in the State Dining Room of the White House in Washington,
Monday, Jan. 14, 2019. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)
Trump has routinely sparred with professional
athletes during his two years in office. College football has managed to
avoid such political controversies, with last year's champion Alabama
also visiting the White House.
Amid the longest government shutdown in
the country’s history, President Donald Trump may not win the battle
over who’s to blame, argued The Federalist publisher Ben Domenech.
Last
month, President Trump told Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Senate
Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., that he’d be “proud” to shut down
the government over border security. On Monday, he took to Twitter and
claimed that it was the Democrats fault.
However, in a recent ABC
News/Washington Post poll, 53 percent of Americans blame Trump and
Republicans for the partial government shutdown while 29 percent blame
Democrats. Only 13 percent say both are equally responsible.
On
the Special Report “All-Star” panel Monday night, Domenech, along with
Fox News politics editor Chris Stirewalt, and Georgetown Institute of
Politics executive director Mo Elleithee all weighed on who the current
state of the political showdown.
“I think the
president needs to lean more into the argument about what the Democrats’
position really is, which is that they believe this wall is immoral
because they now believe that borders are immoral or at least a
significant portion of their base does. Put them in that position and
lean into that argument more because I think this internal conventional
wisdom question about who’s to blame for the shutdown he’s not going to
win.” — Ben Domenech, publisher of The Federalist
Domenech began by expressing that the “Who’s to blame?” question regarding the shutdown is the “wrong question to be asking.”
“This
is not about the money. This is about sending a message, a message in
this case by the president to his base that ‘Yes, I am after two years
of sort of not dealing with this promise, the biggest promise that I
made, going to deal with this’ and the message from Democratic
leadership to their base that they’re not going to show up in Washington
and have their first act to be to bend over to this president on his
signature issue,” Domenech told the panel.
“I think the president
needs to lean more into the argument about what the Democrats’ position
really is, which is that they believe this wall is immoral because they
now believe that borders are immoral or at least a significant portion
of their base does. Put them in that position and lean into that
argument more because I think this internal conventional wisdom question
about who’s to blame for the shutdown he’s not going to win.”
The
Federalist publisher later added that there’s “no incentive” for the
president to back down in this political battle and that it will take “a
lot more time and a lot more pain” before both sides can compromise.
Mo
Elleithee noted that Democrats are currently winning in the “PR wars”
since most Americans are blaming Trump and the GOP that they’re sticking
to their stance that the government must be reopened in order to move
on with talks over the border.
Meanwhile, Chris Stirewalt told the
panel that Republicans should have had a “tailor-made” response to
Democrats who were vacationing in Puerto Rico last week amid the
shutdown but that never happened and that their argument is getting
repetitive.
“There are great avenues that Republicans could be
following to keep the pressure on Democrats, but they do not. We hear
the same thing over and over again. ‘There’s a crisis at the border.
There’s a crisis at the border.’ And everybody agrees, but we’re still
talking about the same thing,” Stirewalt said. “Democrats are at $1.6
billion, Republicans are at $5.7 billion, and no one has budged in
either direction. The Republicans haven’t gone down, the Democrats
haven’t gone up, and here we sit.”
Allyson Kennedy, 68, who was a 2016 presidential candidate, is running for mayor of Dallas, a report said on Monday.
(U.S. Census Bureau)A 2016 presidential candidate from the Socialist Workers Party is running for mayor of Dallas, a report said Monday.
Allyson
Kennedy, 68, who was on the ballots in seven states as the Socialist
Workers Party candidate in 2016, said she wants to replace term-limited
Mayor Mike Rawlings, the Dallas Morning News reported.
“When
we get out and share our message, it resonates with a lot of people in
our society right now,” Kennedy said, according to the paper. “And I
think that’s because the system we have in place — at all levels of
government — serves the needs of a tiny minority.”
Kennedy, who
said she moved to Dallas in early 2018, faces seven other candidates in
the mayoral race, the Morning News reported.
She is a native of
Indianapolis, where was part of the first wave of female coal miners in
the U.S., the report said. She's been involved with trade-union
organizing for forty years, including for mine workers.
Kennedy also said she currently works at a Walmart, according to the paper.
There was a gold lining for one family negatively affected by the government shutdown.
Carrie
Walls, the wife of a federal worker who isn’t getting a paycheck
because of the impasse, picked up a $100,000 check and a brand-new SUV
after winning the Virginia lottery.
As 800,000 government workers
lamented missing pay Friday, Walls, who served in the Air Force for 13
years, collected the top prize in the Virginia Lottery’s Ford Expedition
Plus $100K promotion, the state lottery announced.
“I cried,” Walls told the Virginia Lottery of the moment she knew she won. “I couldn’t believe it.”
The
Ashburn, Va., woman said the $100,000 is especially timely because her
husband, John Walls, who works at the Federal Emergency Management
Agency, is currently furloughed. John is also an Air Force veteran,
according to his Facebook.
In a picture posted by the state
lottery, Carrie Walls, 35, can be seen beaming in the driver’s seat of a
shiny white SUV, brandishing a check almost as wide as the car’s front
door. She’s planning on using the winnings to take her family to Disney World in Orlando, Fla., she said.
Walls bought the golden scratch-off on Dec. 4, two weeks before the shutdown began, and won out of 554,000 entries.
The
odds of scratching to win the top prize in Ford Expedition Plus
$100,000 are 1 in 1,387,200. The odds of winning any prize in the game
are 1 in 4.16.
President Trump mocked Massachusetts Democratic Sen. Elizabeth
Warren, who cracked open a beer on-camera and took some questions from
her followers on New Year’s Eve in a spontaneous livestream posted on
Instagram that channeled similar social-media efforts of the young and
hip. (AP)
President Trump mocked Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass.,
over her New Year's Eve Instagram livestream Sunday night, saying that
the video would have been a "smash" if it had been done "from Bighorn or
Wounded Knee instead of her kitchen."
Warren, 69, who had
announced her candidacy for the White House earlier in the day, cracked
open a beer and took some questions from her social media followers in
an apparent attempt to channel the social media efforts of younger
Democratic pols like Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Beto O'Rourke.
Trump
revived one of his favorite nicknames for Warren and even jabbed at her
husband, saying he should have been "dressed in full Indian garb."
“Best
line in the Elizabeth Warren beer catastrophe is, to her husband,
‘Thank you for being here. I’m glad you’re here’" The president said in a
follow-up tweet. "It’s their house, he’s supposed to be there!”
In
the video, the liberal firebrand had a craving for alcohol: “Hold on a
second — I’m gonna get me a beer,” she said, as she walked out of view
of the camera.
“Um, want a beer?” she then asked as her husband, Bruce Mann, briefly entered the room. ELIZABETH WARREN DRINKS BEER, GIVES 2020 THOUGHTS IN INSTAGRAM LIVESTREAM
“No,
I’ll pass on a beer for now,” he responded. Then, matter-of-factly from
across the camera as he left the kitchen, he offered a quick
farewell: ”Enjoy your beer.”
Trump often has derided Warren for her claim of having Native American ancestry. In October, Trump demanded Warren
apologize for claiming Native American heritage as part of what he
called a “fraud” against the public, mocking her recently released DNA
test as ”bogus.”
The test results revealed Warren likely has trace
amounts of Native-American ancestry. While she used the results to
counter allegations she lied about that ancestry to get ahead in
academia, Trump and other Republicans highlighted how diluted that
ancestry was revealed to be. WARREN ADMITS SHE'S NOT 'A PERSON OF COLOR' DURING COMMENCEMENT SPEECH
At a rally
in July, Trump joked that he would pull out a heritage kit during a
hypothetical presidential debate with Warren, and slowly toss it at her,
“hoping it doesn’t hit her and injure her arm, even though it only
weighs probably two ounces.”
Warren visited the early primary state of New Hampshire Saturday to deliver a message of economic populism and clean government.
This
was Warren’s first visit to New Hampshire since launching her
exploratory committee for the 2020 campaign. Besides advocating for
reforms to health care, student debt, and the minimum wage, Warren
touched on breaking news with a call for an end to the ongoing partial
federal government shutdown, which is now the longest in American
history.
President Donald Trump on Sunday coined a new nickname for Amazon founder Jeff Bezos
and praised the "far more accurate" National Enquirer reporting that
revealed Bezos' alleged affair at the expense of Bezos' own outlet, The
Washington Post.
"So sorry to hear the news about Jeff Bozo being
taken down by a competitor whose reporting, I understand, is far more
accurate than the reporting in his lobbyist newspaper, the Amazon
Washington Post," Trump tweeted. "Hopefully the paper will soon be
placed in better & more responsible hands!"
Bezos, 55, announced his divorce from wife MacKenzie Bezos on Wednesday, and news of the billionaire's relationship with former television anchor Lauren Sanchez broke.
The
Amazon CEO, worth a reported $136.4 billion, has reportedly been dating
Sanchez, 49, for four months. The National Enquirer — a tabloid
newspaper whose parent company had a practice of buying the rights to negative stories about Trump with no intention of publishing them — exposed the alleged relationship, and claimed to have followed the pair undercover for months.
Last
month, federal prosecutors announced they had reached a
“non-prosecution agreement” with American Media, Inc. (AMI), which
publishes the Enquirer. As part of the agreement, AMI admitted it paid
$150,000 to former Playboy model Karen McDougal for the rights to her
story about having a sexual relationship with Trump "to suppress
[McDougal's] story so as to prevent it from influencing the election.”
Prosecutors say the payment to McDougal was orchestrated by Trump's then-personal attorney, Michael Cohen, at Trump's direction.
Trump
was reportedly close pals with AMI CEO David Pecker, who had
pushed Trump for years to run for president and used the Enquirer
to promote Trump's campaign. But Pecker flipped on Trump to cooperate
with the feds and avoid being charged with campaign-law
violations. Federal prosecutors in New York granted Pecker immunity in August in exchange for information in the investigation into hush-money payments by Cohen.
A lawyer for Bezos told the tabloid that Bezos "supports journalistic efforts and does not intend to discourage reporting about him."
Trump
is often critical of the Post and criticizes unfavorable coverage which
he dubs "fake news." Bezos bought the Post as an individual in 2013 and
Amazon.com Inc. was not involved.
South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham told "Fox News Sunday" that he is "hell-bent" on ensuring that the next Supreme Court vacancy -- whether it is ailing Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's seat or otherwise -- is filled by a conservative, regardless of what outrage follows from the left.
Graham,
the new chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, emphasized
that former Democratic Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid eliminated the
Senate filibuster for federal appellate judicial nominees in 2013.
Republicans later retaliated by eliminating the filibuster for Supreme
Court appointments, meaning that a simple majority -- rather than a
60-vote supermajority -- is sufficient to confirm new Supreme Court
nominees.
"My Democratic colleagues felt when they were in charge
we should confirm judges by a majority vote," Graham told Fox News'
Chris Wallace. "They changed the rules to accommodate President Obama.
They tried to stack the court. They never thought [Hillary] Clinton
would lose. So what you’re gonna have is Harry Reid’s and Chuck
Schumer’s desire to stack the court on their Democratic watch has come
back to haunt them."
Ginsburg will miss next week’s Supreme sessions
and work from home, but her recovery from early-stage lung cancer
surgery remains "on track" and no further treatment is needed, the court
announced Friday. The 85-year-old’s absence this past week from oral
arguments -- her first since joining the bench -- after her surgery in
December sparked speculation about a possible departure and led to
low-key planning by the White House for that scenario.
Following
the contentious confirmation hearings of now-Associate Justice Brett
Kavanaugh, which were marked by a series of lurid, uncorroborated sexual
misconduct allegations, Graham asserted that there would be "pushback
from the left" regardless of whom Trump nominates.
"If there is an
opening, whether it’s Ginsburg or anybody else, I will urge the
president to nominate a qualified conservative and hopefully those
people will get through – that person will get through," Graham
continued. "And I expect it to be along party lines, and this is what
happens when you change the rules. This has come back to bite ' em. I
predicted it would. And we’ll see. I hope Justice Ginsburg serves for a
long time. But if there’s an opening on this court, I’m going to be
hell-bent to put a conservative to replace whoever steps down for
whatever reason."
Pressed by Wallace as to whether it was appropriate to nominate a conservative to replace a liberal icon like Ginsburg, Graham again said liberals have only Reid to blame -- and he suggested Kavanaugh's treatment meant that all bets are off.
"They
should’ve thought of that before they changed the rules," Graham
responded. "They tried to destroy conservative judges. I voted for
[Sonia] Sotomayor and [Elena] Kagan, understanding what I was getting,
so this decision by Reid and Schumer may come back to haunt them, but I
am dead set on making sure it is a conservative nominee. And elections
have consequences. The rules of the Senate were changed not by me, by
them, and we had to do it on the Supreme Court because they would not
give us any votes to nominate anybody. And Kavanaugh was a fine man,
they tried to destroy him. All this is going to come back to haunt them
one day."
He added: "We don't need one Democrat to replace a
liberal justice. And the reason that that's the case is because of what
Harry Reid did. What he set in motion."
Separately, Graham
asserted that President Trump is still ready and willing to make a deal
with congressional Democrats to end the ongoing partial federal
government shutdown, although the window is rapidly closing.
Graham
suggested that the White House would likely approve a compromise that
extended protections afforded to Temporary Protected Status (TPS)
recipients who fled natural disasters, in exchange for funding for
Trump's proposed border wall.
On the 20th day of a partial government shutdown, federal
employees rally at the Capitol to protest the impasse between Congress
and President Donald Trump over his demand to fund a U.S.-Mexico border
wall, in Washington, Thursday, Jan. 10, 2019. (AP Photo/J. Scott
Applewhite)
"I just talked to him about thirty minutes ago -- he
says, 'Let's make a deal,'" Graham told host Chris Wallace. "The plan is
to do a deal. He is willing, in my view, to do wall-plus. Funding for
the wall that we desperately need, that's been done in the past -- see
if we can do a deal around the TPS recipients. There's about 400,000.
They're going to lose their legal status soon. He's willing to extend
that."
Graham added that Trump would be willing to offer work
permits to recipients of the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood
Arrivals (DACA) program for those brought to the U.S. illegally as
children -- a compromise the White House had backed
last summer. However, Graham noted, Trump's planned rescission of the
DACA program is working its way through the appellate court process, as
several federal judges have ruled
that the White House violated federal administrative law by ending DACA
without offering legally sufficient notice or justification. (The Trump
administration has primarily argued that DACA was unconstitutionally
enacted by Obama's unilateral order.)
"The
DACA recipients, they’re all tied up in court, but I think he would
give them work permits for three years, one-time renewable, if he could
get wall funding." Graham said. "I don’t want to speak for the
president. I don’t want to lock him in. But I’m confident what I just
described with a few other things would be a deal acceptable to the
White House and a lot of Democrats, and I’m just so frustrated we can’t
get in a room and hammer it out."
Graham on Friday urged Trump to
invoke his presidential emergency powers to immediately begin
construction of the wall without congressional approval. The White
House last week directed the Army Corps of Engineers
to look at possible ways of funding border security, including
potentially through the reallocation of unspent disaster relief funds,
in a possible sign the administration is moving in that direction.
"What's [Trump] supposed to do, just give in? He's not gonna give in." — South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham
The
South Carolina senator told Wallace he's not worried about Democrats
similarly invoking a state of emergency to bypass Congress, both because
they would have a weaker legislative argument and because Republicans
would likely be more willing to compromise to achieve a compromise
solution.
Challenged by Wallace for his criticism of President
Obama's use of executive authority to enact DACA as "presidential
overreach," Graham responded that no emergency was declared to enact
DACA. Should the White House move forward with an emergency declaration,
it has a handful of legal routes to take. The National Emergencies
Act grants the president broad authority to declare emergencies, and
several federal laws then could clear a path for the White House to move
ahead with building a wall.
One statute, 33 U.S. Code § 2293 - "Reprogramming
during national emergencies," permits the president to "apply the
resources of the Department of the Army’s civil works program, including
funds, personnel, and equipment, to construct or assist in the
construction, operation, maintenance, and repair of authorized civil
works, military construction, and civil defense projects that are
essential to the national defense."
Another law, 10 U.S. Code §
2808 - "Construction authority in the event of a declaration of war or
national emergency," permits the secretary of defense, in a
presidentially declared emergency, to use "funds that have been
appropriated for military construction" for the purpose of undertaking
"military construction projects."
Graham
said reasonable Democrats -- including Delaware Democratic Sen. Chris
Coons, who spoke to Wallace later on "Fox News Sunday" and suggested he
is open to negotiation on the border wall -- would be willing to make a
deal without forcing Trump to use those emergency powers. ("I agree with
the advice that Lindsey Graham just gave to the President which is that
he should reopen the government and we should spend several weeks
negotiating over what we can all agree on," Coons said. "I personally
don’t think that a border wall is .... immoral.")
But, Graham
said, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi -- who has called the wall an
"immorality" -- has unreasonably cut off negotiations by saying she
would not give more than one dollar to Trump's wall under any
circumstances.
"Every Democrat that I've worked with for about 10
years now has agreed to funding for barriers/walls on Obama's watch, on
Bush's watch, and all of a sudden it's a bad thing on Trump's watch,"
Graham told Wallace. "What's [Trump] supposed to do, just give in? He's
not gonna give in."
Graham concluded with his own possible
last-minute fix to the partial federal government shutdown, which became
the longest in the nation's history on Wednesday.
"I would urge
him to open up the government for a short period of time, like three
weeks, before he pulls the plug," Graham said. "See if we can get a
deal. If we can’t at the end of three weeks, all bets are off. See if he
can do it by himself through the emergency powers. That’s my
recommendation. But I think the legislative path is just about shut off
because Nancy Pelosi, the leader of the House, said ‘Even if you open up
the government, I’ll give you one dollar for the wall.’ As long as
that’s the case, we’re never gonna get a legislative package, no matter
what the Senate does."
On the 20th day of a partial government shutdown, federal
employees rally at the Capitol to protest the impasse between Congress
and President Donald Trump over his demand to fund a U.S.-Mexico border
wall, in Washington, Thursday, Jan. 10, 2019. (AP Photo/J. Scott
Applewhite)
