Conservative Blogger
Tuesday, January 15, 2019
Pundit says media should expose Trump in 2020 campaign
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.
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.
Trump serves burgers, fries and pizza to college football champions Clemson
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.
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."
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."
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.
Instead of blaming Dems for shutdown, Trump should put focus on their ‘open borders’ ideology: Ben Domenech
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.
“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.”
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.”Domenech began by expressing that the “Who’s to blame?” question regarding the shutdown is the “wrong question to be asking.”
— Ben Domenech, publisher of The Federalist
“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.”
Socialist Workers Party's 2016 presidential candidate running for Dallas mayor: report
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.
“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.
Monday, January 14, 2019
Wife of federal worker wins the lottery amid shutdown crisis
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.
Trump mocks Elizabeth Warren with Wounded Knee reference over Instagram livestream
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.
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