Media obsession with Michael Cohen trumps coverage of Trump’s North Korea summit – until it ends with no deal

No matter how obsessed the media have become with President Trump’s former personal lawyer, the biggest story this past week happened on the other side of the world from Washington.
Trump met with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in a quest to denuclearize North Korea. Who knew that the typical shorthand for North Korea – NoKo – also became shorthand for the summit results.
The deadlock on the Korean Peninsula is so old that it now qualifies for Social Security. Yet the media acted like they wanted Trump to fix it with a few short meetings. Only in reality, they didn’t.
CNN had warned the summit might turn out badly even before President Trump traveled to the meeting in the Vietnamese capital of Hanoi. The news channel turned to its resident expert – the former senior adviser to President Obama’s ambassador to China. Of course, that’s also CNN national security analyst and active anti-Trumper Jim Sciutto.
Sciutto cautioned that there was a “wider concern that the president may give up too much to get a win, as it were, from these talks.”
NBC tried the same strategy, warning of attempts at peace. Anchor Lester Holt must have talked to many of the same “critics” who were “concerned about what President Trump may be willing to concede in this second summit and whether Kim could flatter him into giving up too much.”
Essentially, these journalists were setting Trump up to fail on the small chance he succeeded.
Once the talks broke down, the media sharks acted like there was blood in the water. ABC “World News” anchor David Muir took a bizarre position, asking of Trump: “Why did he put Kim Jong Un back on the world stage, allowing him to sit across from an American president without knowing what was going to happen?” So never negotiate unless you know the results?
CNN’s whiny Chief White House Correspondent Jim Acosta took to the baseball metaphors saying, “strike one in Singapore, he didn’t get a deal from Kim Jong Un,” following up with “it’s strike two in Hanoi.”
Quartz even went after the price of the trip, complaining that “the entire Donald Trump-Kim Jong Un summit looks like it may have been a costly mistake” costing $6 million. The website did a detailed cost breakdown. Counting pennies for a nation $22 trillion in debt and trying to prevent war with a nuclear power.
2. Washington Post Backtracks: It’s amazing what lawyers and a $250-million lawsuit can accomplish. The Post ran a more than 200-word “editor’s note” about the Covington High School hate crime hoax six weeks after the first story appeared.
The note read like lawyers held the Post editors hostage. Here’s some classic D.C. legal gibberish: “Subsequent reporting, a student’s statement and additional video allow for a more complete assessment of what occurred, either contradicting or failing to confirm accounts provided in that story – including that Native American activist Nathan Phillips was prevented by one student from moving on, that his group had been taunted by the students in the lead-up to the encounter, and that the students were trying to instigate a conflict.”
That’s a 68-word rationalization, with four commas and a long dash. You think the Post is just a tiny bit worried that it took six weeks to address the issue? The Post’s Twitter feed also admitted the company deleted an earlier tweet "in light of later developments."
The funny thing about suits is that people worry they’ll be taken to the cleaners.
3. Harris in Black and White: Last week, I defended CNN and NPR. This week, it’s Democrat Sen. Kamala Harris? The far-left former California attorney general was attacked on MSNBC because “the African-American community expects more from people who look like us,” at least according to Tiffany Cross of The Beat DC. She added that Harris needs to “find a prominent blue-collar, self-made, black man to be in your corner.”
The race-baiting of Harris, who is black, is not new. The Washington Post wrote just two weeks ago that “some African Americans are questioning Kamala Harris’s blackness.” Because, according to the Post: “Her father is a Jamaican immigrant; her mother is a Tamil Indian immigrant. Her husband is a white man from New York.”
That’s not good enough for MSNBC. Political contributor Jason Johnson wasn’t subtle about it either. "Let's just be candid. When you're saying she needs to have an advocate out there, it's not going to be her husband. She needs to surround herself with African-American men," he said.
I’m certain that if these quotes appeared in conservative media the left would demand someone be fired.
4. Acosta Whines … Again: If pride indeed goeth before the fall, CNN’s Jim Acosta better watch his step.
Acosta’s weekly dust-up with President Trump was fueled by the fact that Acosta did not get called to rant and rave during the news conference in Vietnam following the summit with Kim Jong Un. He accused the president of committing the grave sin of having “steered clear largely” of the White House press corps.
According to Acosta, Trump was “selecting journalists at random from the other side of the room where there were foreign journalists seated.” Gosh, a president holding a press conference about foreign policy in a foreign nation, I wonder why he might do that?
But Acosta quickly got to the heart of the matter, saying of the president: “I think that was by design. That was because he didn't want to really answer the questions about Michael Cohen.”
Again, yes, Trump was talking about the attempt to end a nuclear threat and not getting caught up in the media narrative of a convicted liar. And, in reality, Trump called on several members from the White House press corps, including reporters for The New York Times, Washington Post, CBS, ABC, NPR, Bloomberg and Fox News.
If you noticed that CNN was missing from the list, you know the real reason.
5. After the Thrill Is Gone: How does MSNBC replace fading stalwart Chris Matthews? Page 6 reports that the man who made “thrill up my leg” a national catchphrase might be exiting stage left.
To replace him MSNBC might turn to anchor Brian Williams, who made lying almost an Olympic sport. NBC suspended him without pay for six months back in 2015. Here’s what the network said at the time: “While on ‘Nightly News’ on Friday, January 30, 2015, Brian misrepresented events which occurred while he was covering the Iraq War in 2003. It then became clear that on other occasions Brian had done the same while telling that story in other venues.”
He lied. But NBC had spent too much money building Williams up, so he was just exiled to MSNBC. Now, he’s back like a bad case of the flu the network just can’t shake. Journalism in 2019.

‘I also fly & use A/C,’ Ocasio-Cortez tweets after report alleges ‘Green New Deal’ hypocrisy

U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez responded Saturday night after a published report excoriated the freshman congresswoman for pushing her Green New Deal initiative while still traveling on airplanes and using ridesharing services -- instead greener travel methods such as public transportation.
The piece mentioned the New York Democrat’s call in January for more sustainable energy solutions: "The world is going to end in 12 years if we don’t address climate change,” she said at the time.
"But the woman who boasts of a “razor-sharp BS detector” seems to have trouble sniffing out her own,” the New York Post reported. “Since declaring her candidacy in May 2017, Ocasio-Cortez’s campaign heavily relied on those combustible-engine cars — even though a subway station was just 138 feet from her Elmhurst [Queens] campaign office. She listed 1,049 transactions for Uber, Lyft, Juno and other car services, federal filings show. The campaign had 505 Uber expenses alone.”
Instead of embracing cheaper, less green travel methods, Ocasio-Cortez logged 66 airline transactions during her 2018 campaign while only using Amtrak 18 times, according to the Post.
Cortez responded on Twitter, arguing that "living in the world as it is isn't an argument against working towards a better future."
“I also fly & use A/C," Ocasio-Cortez wrote. “The Green New Deal is about putting a LOT of people to work in developing new technologies, building new infrastructure, and getting us to 100% renewable energy.”
The Green New Deal is an economic stimulus package designed to address income inequality, health care and climate change. The concept – modeled after President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal package through public works programs – could be funded through a 70 percent tax on America’s top earners.
Ocasio-Cortez has been a fierce advocate for addressing climate change. She recently questioned whether young couples should have children given the devastating consequences facing Earth unless an unprecedented effort is made to reduce carbon gas emissions by 2030.

Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib Cartoons

Rep. Ilhan Omar comment was 'vile anti-Semitic slur,' top foreign-affairs Dem says

The top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee said Friday that a recent comment by freshman U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., who also serves on the panel, represented a "vile anti-Semitic slur," according to reports.
U.S. Rep. Eliot Engle, D-N.Y., chairman of the House panel, then called on Omar to apologize for her remark, which was made at an event in Washington earlier this week.
“I want to talk about the political influence in this country that says it is OK for people to push for allegiance to a foreign country,” Omar, who is Muslim, said, in an apparent reference to Israel. "I want to ask why is it OK for me to talk about the influence of the NRA, of fossil fuel industries, or big pharma, and not talk about a powerful lobbying movement that is influencing policy."
Engle issued his rebuke of her comment late Friday, saying it they amounted to a "vile anti-Semitic slur." Conservative critics had panned the remark earlier.
Added Engel, who is Jewish: “I welcome debate in Congress based on the merits of policy, but it’s unacceptable and deeply offensive to call into question the loyalty of fellow American citizens because of their political views, including support for the U.S.-Israel relationship. Her comments were outrageous and deeply hurtful, and I ask that she retract them, apologize, and commit to making her case on policy issues without resorting to attacks that have no place in the Foreign Affairs Committee or the House of Representatives.”
Omar also said at the event that she feared her religious affiliation would get in the way of meaningful discussions.
“What I’m fearful of [is] that a lot of our Jewish colleagues, a lot of our constituents, a lot of our allies, go to thinking that everything we say about Israel to be anti-Semitic because we are Muslim,” she said. “But it’s almost as if, every single time we say something regardless of what it is we say … we get to be labeled something. And that ends the discussion.”
The event, called "Progressive Issues Town Hall," was held at Busboys and Poets, a D.C. restaurant. Omar was joined by three fellow Democrats in Congress: Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, Pramila Jayapal of Washington state and Mark Pocan of Wisconsin. It was moderated by the venue's owner Andy Shallal, who echoed Omar's sentiment.
“I know that’s a very sensitive topic and I know it’s an issue that has been out there and it’s used oftentimes to quiet people, to disparage them, to isolate them,” Shallal said, according to the New York Times.

Billboard mocking CNN appears outside of network’s Hollywood headquarters

The billboard appeared opposite CNN's Hollywood headquarters (pictured). (istock)

A group of conservative street artists hijacked a billboard in Hollywood on Friday morning and took aim at CNN, which so happened to be across the street.
Known as The Faction, their latest project slammed CNN and its president Jeff Zucker for its coverage of this week’s summit in Hanoi, Vietnam between President Donald Trump and North Korean Dictator Kim Jong Un.
The billboard, which referred to CNN as “Communist News Network,” dawned the phrase “Keep Korea divided” with an asterisk that read “because OrangeManBad.” It also featured an image of Jeff Zucker, whose title was “CEO, CNNPC,” a reference to the “non-playable character” meme which has depicted liberals as robotic.
“When Trump speaks glowingly of Kim Jong Un it's a tactic,” an anonymous member of The Faction told The Hollywood Reporter. “Zucker and his journo-activists know this, but are more than willing to try to torpedo the summit — the future of the long-suffering North and South Korean people be damned.”
The anti-CNN sign lasted roughly seven hours before it was taken down and an advertisement for a marijuana dispensary was properly restored.
The second summit between Trump and Kim ended earlier than expected as the two leaders couldn’t agree on the terms of an agreement.
CNN dedicated virtually no coverage to the summit on Wednesday as they kept focus on the fiery congressional testimony of former Trump attorney Michael Cohen.

Chief Justice Roberts’ recent votes raise doubts about 'conservative revolution' on Supreme Court

Chief Justice John Roberts' recent votes aligning with the Supreme Court’s liberal wing have raised questions about whether a widely anticipated "conservative revolution" on the nation's highest court will materialize anytime soon.
On Wednesday, Roberts sided with a 5-3 majority decision to send a case concerning a death row inmate back to a lower court. In February, Roberts was the key vote in temporarily blocking a Louisiana law that would have placed restrictions on abortion clinics.
And in December, Roberts voted to block President Trump from rejecting asylum to any immigrants who had crossed the U.S.-Mexico border illegally.
The controversial nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to succeed Justice Anthony Kennedy was widely expected to be the beginning of a more rightward shift for the court. But Roberts’ recent voting pattern seems to indicate otherwise.
Nominated in 2005 by President George W. Bush, Roberts, 64, quickly established himself as a solidly conservative judge. From his nomination through the 2016-17 term, Roberts sided with his liberal colleagues only four times – most notably in upholding the Affordable Care Act in 2012.
Still a proponent of protecting the institutional integrity of the court, Roberts rebuked President Trump’s description of a judge in November who ruled against Trump’s new migrant asylum policy as an “Obama judge.”
“We do not have Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges,” Roberts said after Trump's remark. “What we have is an extraordinary group of dedicated judges doing their level best to do equal right to those appearing before them."
Roberts added: “That independent judiciary is something we should all be thankful for.”
Erwin Chemerinsky, a law professor at the University of California at Berkeley, told Bloomberg that Roberts’ recent voting record may indicate that he is taking his role as the median justice “very seriously” and that the recent period was “perhaps the beginning of his being the swing justice.”
“But I would not come to that conclusion too quickly,” Chemerinsky added.

Rashida Tlaib's campaign paid her $17,500 in salary after Election Day, in possible violation of FEC rules: report

U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., is facing questions after campaign records revealed she paid herself $17,500 as a salary after the midterm elections, in what appeared to be a violation of campaign finance rules, a report said.
Tlaib, a firebrand freshman Democrat from Detroit, has been facing scrutiny over her connections to radical anti-Israel activists and a profane call to impeach President Trump.
She caused uproar on Capitol Hill earlier this week by insinuating that Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C. -- her colleague on the House Oversight and Reform Committee -- had used Trump family friend Lynne Patton, an African-American, as a racist “prop” during former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen’s appearance before the panel. (Later, Tlaib and Meadows were seen sharing an embrace on the House floor, after apparently resolving their differences.)
Yet the latest filings with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) may land the radical congresswoman into hot water with questions on whether her campaign broke the rules after making salary payments to Tlaib after Election Day last year.
Tlaib’s campaign began paying her a salary of about $4,000 every month since May 2018 up until the general election Nov. 6 – a perfectly legal practice if the campaign chose to do so. But according to the filings, as first spotted by the Washington Free Beacon, Tlaib also paid herself $2,000 on Nov. 16 and a whopping $15,500 on Dec. 1 – weeks after the election was over, in an apparent violation of FEC statutes.
The FEC rules state that a general election candidate is allowed to dip into campaign coffers to give himself or herself a salary only up to the election date. The candidate can no longer draw a salary after the election date, or because of other reasons that ended the campaign.
“If the candidate loses the primary, withdraws from the race, or otherwise ceases to be a candidate, no salary payments may be paid beyond the date he or she is no longer a candidate,” the rules state.

“If the candidate loses the primary, withdraws from the race, or otherwise ceases to be a candidate, no salary payments may be paid beyond the date he or she is no longer a candidate.”
— Federal Election Commission rules

'RADICAL' DEMS ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ, RHASIDA TLAIB EMBRACE THEIR REPUTATIONS, SLAM PRESIDENT TRUMP
A Tlaib ally, U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., grabbed headlines last year after saying that due to the rules that prohibit the use of campaign funds to pay a salary after the election date, she would have trouble finding an apartment in Washington, D.C. until she began receiving a paycheck for her work in Congress.
“I have three months without a salary before I’m a member of Congress. So, how do I get an apartment? Those little things are very real,” Ocasio-Cortez told the New York Times at the time.
Tlaib’s office didn’t respond to Fox News’ request for a comment and clarification of the nature of the salary payment.
An FEC spokesperson told the Washinton Free Beacon that candidates are allowed to make payments to themselves after the election -- but only for activities that happened during the election period.
An election law and government ethics lawyer also told the outlet that Tlaib may have deflated her monthly payments during the campaign for political purposes while “knowing full well that she would make up any difference at the end by giving herself a lump sum payment.”
“That would let her skirt negative publicity, of the sort that Alan Keyes generated when he paid himself a sizable salary. An after-the-fact, lump-sum payment cuts against the purpose of the rule, which is to help the candidate pay for daily living expenses while campaigning,” the lawyer added.

Cortez Darling of the Democrats Cartoons

Despite Trump-Kim summit collapse, US-North Korea relations not back in ‘crisis mode’: Eric Talmadge

Denuclearization talks between President Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un will continue despite the abrupt end to this week's summit, Associated Press Pyongyang bureau chief Eric Talmadge insisted Thursday.
Negotiations between the two leaders collapsed earlier in the day in Hanoi, Vietnam, where Trump had hoped to assure that North Korea would end its nuclear and missile programs while Kim was looking to convince the U.S. to remove economic sanctions against his country. The points were considered critical to any potential agreement.
During Thursday's "Special Report" All-Star panel in Hanoi, Talmadge and Daily Mail deputy U.S. political editor Geoff Earle weighed in on the political fallout of this week’s summit -- and speculated on how Trump and Kim would go forward.
Talmadge began by expressing that North Korea was “certainly surprised” and “disappointed” by the outcome of the summit and held a historic news conference afterward to get its message out.
“The North Koreans came out with a really 'big ask' right from the beginning, and so it’s not really surprising that it didn’t work out,” Talmadge said about North Korea’s desire to have all sanctions lifted. “We should keep in mind that Kim also vowed to maintain his moratorium on missile launches and nuclear tests and that’s a really big deal. So we don’t need to go right back into crisis mode. We can continue talks and I think the door was left open for that. So that’s an important outcome.”
Earle shared a bit more pessimism, telling the panel that President Trump “invested a lot in his personal diplomacy” and “doesn’t have anything to show for it.”
The Daily Mail editor added that Trunp’s walk away from the summit was a “classic negotiation tactic,” but added that North Korea was still “trying to make a bid here.”

Omar, Tlaib say critics charge 'anti-Semitism' against them as way to end debate over Israel's policies (BS)

Both are Muslims.

Democratic Reps. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., left, and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan. (Associated Press)

Two outspoken freshmen congressional Democrats appeared at a progressive town hall this week, where they accused some of their Jewish colleagues of leveling anti-Semitism charges following their criticisms of Israel in order to shut down any debate over that U.S. ally's policies.
Speaking at the Busboys and Poets restaurant in Washington, U.S. Reps. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan also touched on a variety of other issues.
“It is about the Benjamins!,” an audience member shouted at one point, referring to Omar’s now-deleted tweet linking U.S. congressional support for Israel to Jewish influence and lobbying. She apologized after a firestorm of criticism from both Republicans and Democrats.
“I want to talk about the political influence in this country that says it is OK to push for allegiance to a foreign country,” Omar stated afterward, according to New York magazine.
Omar, 37, an immigrant from Somalia, and Tlaib, 42, a Palestinian-American from Detroit, have been criticized since taking office in January over their comments about Israel, support for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement and remarks that some have deemed anti-Semitic.
Tlaib in January was accused of invoking an anti-Semitic slur when she criticized legislation designed to punish companies that participate in the BDS movement, which aims to pressure Israel through economic means.
The moderator began the discussion by asking what “we as a community here can do to support you criticizing Israel for some of the war crimes that it has done so that it’s not seen as ‘you’re anti-Semitic’? Because you’re not criticizing the religion, you’re not criticizing Jewish people, you’re criticizing the government policies,” according to Jewish Insider.
“What I’m fearful of — because Rashida and I are Muslim — that a lot of our Jewish colleagues, a lot of our constituents, a lot of our allies, go to thinking that everything we say about Israel to be anti-Semitic because we are Muslim,” Omar said.
“To me, it’s something that becomes designed to end the debate because you get in this space of – yes, I know what intolerance looks like and I’m sensitive when someone says, ‘The words you used Ilhan, are resemblance of intolerance.’ And I am cautious of that and I feel pained by that," she continued. "But it’s almost as if, every single time we say something -- regardless of what it is we say -- … we get to be labeled something and that ends the discussion. Because we end up defending that and nobody ever gets to have the broader debate of what is happening with Palestine.”

"It’s almost as if, every single time we say something -- regardless of what it is we say -- … we get to be labeled something and that ends the discussion.
— U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn.

Omar elaborated that she doesn’t equate her Jewish colleagues' criticism of Palestinians as Islamophobic and that longtime members of Congress fought against apartheid in South Africa but still turn against her and Tlaib when they bring up support for Palestinians.
“So I know many [members of Congress] were fighting for people to be free, for people to live in dignity in South Africa… So I know that they care about these things. But now that you have two Muslims who are saying, here is a group of people that we want to make sure that they have the dignity that you want everybody else to have, we get to be called names and we get to be labeled as hateful. No, we know what hate looks like!”
The restaurant made news when a waitress was given a $450 tip on a $72.60 bill by a group of Trump supporters following his inauguration.