New York Times Cartoons

The disgusting “mainstream media” is helping the Deep State oust Trump and should be considered an enemy of democracy

On a near-daily basis now, the disruptive, discredited, fake news corporate media breathlessly reports every single thing President Donald J. Trump says or does as some sort of new scandal rising to the level of impeachment.
The latest “crisis” is supposedly related to a memo former FBI Director James Comey wrote following a meeting in February with the president in the Oval Office, in which it is claimed that Trump asked him to drop the bureau’s investigation into former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn.
Not that this is odd or anything, but the contents of the memo were read to a New York Times reporter; the memo itself wasn’t provided in full, so there is no context, no way of knowing if it’s even real, and no way of discerning where it actually came from.
And it’s a Comey memo, they say? It shows Trump was attempting to obstruct justice, say Democrats and their media? Well then, why didn’t Comey report any intimidation? He is required by statute to report any interference like that to House and Senate intelligence committees and yet he didn’t do that. And never mind that acting FBI Director Andy McCabe told a congressional committee last week that there has been no interference from the White House on any of the FBI’s investigations.
But hey, it was the latest leak of sensitive information that is part of the rising flood of leaks coming out of the administration these days, so the Left-wing establishment media must dutifully publish as gospel and then repeat it ad nauseam, even when they’re wrong.
What about former President Obama and his administration? Did the same standards apply? Hardly.
One of the media’s hyperventilated charges last week was that Trump provided Russian diplomats with “classified information” during their recent meeting in the Oval Office (a claim Russian President Vladimir Putin is even mocking). The White House vehemently denied it, citing three officials who were in the room at the same time as the president when the interactions took place.
But on at least two occasions in the past few years, the Obama regime actually did compromise classified information – in exposing the CIA station chief in Afghanistan and giving Russia intelligence it later used against us in Syria.
The resulting media outcry? It didn’t happen. Calls for impeachment? Nada.
As to Trump’s alleged “obstruction of justice,” Obama indicated in a public forum more than once he didn’t think Hillary Clinton did anything wrong in using an unsecured private email server to send and receive classified information, a blatant violation of national security statutes. According to former U.S. prosecutor and National Review columnist Andrew McCarthy, because of those very public statements, which clearly telegraphed Obama’s desire not to have the Democrats’ presidential nominee indicted, it set a precedent that cannot now ensnare Trump:
April 10, 2016, President Obama publicly stated that Hillary Clinton had shown “carelessness” in using a private e-mail server to handle classified information, but he insisted that she had not intended to endanger national security (which is not an element of the relevant criminal statute). The president acknowledged that classified information had been transmitted via Secretary Clinton’s server, but he suggested that, in the greater scheme of things, its importance had been vastly overstated.
On July 5, 2016, FBI director James Comey publicly stated that Clinton had been “extremely careless” in using a private email server to handle classified information, but he insisted that she had not intended to endanger national security (which is not an element of the relevant criminal statute). The director acknowledged that classified information had been transmitted via Secretary Clinton’s server, but he suggested that, in the greater scheme of things, it was just a small percentage of the emails involved.
Case dismissed.
He went on to note that “a cynic” could conclude that the president signaled the FBI and Justice Department his desired outcome, and that is the outcome he and Democrats got. Yet no outrage from the same discredited media that is excoriating Trump and calling for his ouster.
It should be crystal clear by now that the Washington establishment media is not just an enemy of Donald J. Trump, it is an enemy of the people – at least, Americans in a majority of electoral districts that voted for him.
But the media is also an enemy of our democracy for so willingly going along with the Democratic Party’s inability to accept defeat at the ballot box whenever it occurs. They had already pre-ordained Clinton as the next queen…er, president – and they expected to be feting her well into the year after being inaugurated Jan. 20.
It didn’t happen. So Alt-Left Democrats and their allies in the establishment media have concocted fake narrative after fake narrative to “explain” why Clinton lost – the Russians stole the election; or – until Trump fired him – Comey’s ‘interference’ did it. Anything other than admitting she was the worst candidate to come along in generations. She was corrupt, she was uninspiring and frankly, her last name is Clinton, which is offputting to many. She got the same consideration from tens of millions of Democrats as Jeb Bush got from Republicans, only her party conspired to ensure she got the nomination.
As Natural News founder/editor Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, noted earlier today, a political coup has been launched against a legitimately elected president. And the “mainstream” media is part of the lynch mob.

New York Times doesn’t appear to require actual documented proof anymore when it comes to reporting on Trump

The Old Gray Lady is sure getting a lot older these days, especially for millions of Americans who are simply turning off the news or tuning it out because the media’s irrational hatred of President Donald J. Trump has completely warped whatever objectivity — and credibility — it had left.
This is especially true of The New York Times, whose editors have obviously decided that reporters no longer need actual documented proof of claims made in their stories about Trump; that the spoken word by “officials,” who shall always be nameless, is good enough.
Twice now in less than a week the Times has run pieces based on information that was read to their reporters from someone who is either serial-leaking highly sensitive information out of Trump’s White House, or who is serving as a tool of the Deep State which continues to try to push Trump out of the Oval Office. Not once in either of those cases did the Times actually see the document purporting to support what was being read to reporters, presumably over the phone.
The first story dealt with allegations that Trump asked then-FBI Director James Comey to drop the bureau’s investigation into the president’s first national security advisor, Michael Flynn. We’re being told that what Trump allegedly asked was detailed in a memo Comey wrote following the meeting; there is no other context, and no one other than Comey and some “associates” of his, has actually seen said memo, if it even exists:
Mr. Comey shared the existence of the memo with senior F.B.I. officials and close associates. The New York Times has not viewed a copy of the memo, which is unclassified, but one of Mr. Comey’s associates read parts of it to a Times reporter.
The second story was published Friday, as Trump left the country on a multi-day tour that takes him to Saudi Arabia, Israel and Europe. It dealt with allegations that he told Russian diplomats he met last week in the Oval Office that Comey was a “nut job” who was “crazy” and putting “great pressure” on him “because of Russia.” That, too was read to Times reporters:
“I just fired the head of the F.B.I. He was crazy, a real nut job,” Mr. Trump said, according to the document, which was read to The New York Times by an American official. “I faced great pressure because of Russia. That’s taken off.”
You know, once upon a time if a reporter had filed a story — even at the Times — without documentation to back up claims when said documentation apparently existed, he or she would likely face a reprimand and/or unemployment. The Times publishing these kinds of allegations based only on what someone was reading to its reporters is just despicable.
And wholly dishonest.
For the second story, to be fair, White House spokesman Sean Spicer did not deny the words that were read to reporters, just the context in which the reporters portrayed what was read to them.
“By grandstanding and politicizing the investigation into Russia’s actions, James Comey created unnecessary pressure on our ability to engage and negotiate with Russia,” Spicer said. “The investigation would have always continued, and obviously, the termination of Comey would not have ended it. Once again, the real story is that our national security has been undermined by the leaking of private and highly classified conversations.” (Related: Wait A Sec… You Mean James Comey Wrote A Memo To HIMSELF, Then “Leaked” It To The NYT?)
Yet another “government official” quoted by the Times said the words Trump chose were part of negotiating with the Russian officials — Foreign Minister Sergey V. Lavrov and Russian Ambassador to the U.S., Sergey Kislyak:
The idea, the official suggested, was to create a sense of obligation with Russian officials and to coax concessions out of Mr. Lavrov — on Syria, Ukraine and other issues — by saying that Russian meddling in last year’s election had created enormous political problems for Mr. Trump.
Indeed, the leaks are the problem. How are Americans supposed to believe such accounts when the outlets reporting them have been so wrong so many times before? And as for reading documents to reporters, anyone can make up the contents of a “memo” or “transcript” and call it valid and real, even when it’s not. Plus, in the case of Trump’s meeting with the Russian officials, there were no American officials present other than National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, and a lower-ranking national security aide.
So where did these accounts come from? Who actually said what? And why are Americans just supposed to blindly believe these accounts when it’s obvious the Establishment press is gunning for Trump?
Welcome to establishment journalism in the Age of Trump, when innuendo and claims phoned in now pass as responsible reporting.

Left-wing media attempting “a coup against our right to govern ourselves”

The blizzard of lies and distraction blowing through Washington is not just any routine stuffstorm, but a calculated attempt to bring down a president – our president, not the establishment’s president. And more than that, it’s an attempt to ensure that we never again have the ability to disrupt the bipartisan D.C. cabal’s permanent supremacy by inserting a chief executive who refuses to kiss their collective Reid.
This is a coup against us. It’s a coordinated campaign by liberals and their allies in the bureaucracy and media to once and for all ensure their perpetual rule over us. We need to fight it, here and now, so we don’t have to fight it down at the bottom of this slippery slope.
It’s brazen. It’s bold. It’s insulting to our intelligence. They aren’t even trying to hide their lies anymore. Truth is irrelevant; this is a choreographed dance routine and everyone has his moves. Call it Breakin’ 2: Electric Leakaroo, except instead of trying to save the community center they’re trying to save their power and prestige.
To buy the media narrative on this latest Russian nonsense, you must believe:
1. That whatever was revealed was super-secret, though we don’t know exactly what it was. When in doubt, assume it’s on par with the nuclear codes!
2. That there was no good reason to share this info with Russia, like coordinating our fight against our joint enemy or to prevent another Russian airliner massacre. Because why would we want another power fighting ISIS or civilians not to be blown out of the sky?
3. That LTG McMaster, who literally wrote the book on soldiers standing up to misbehaving civilian leaders and displayed immense personal courage in battle, turned chicken and sat there silently as Trump monologued about this unknown mystery info of doomsday-level import.
4. That LTG McMaster lied on camera. Twice. And that Secretary of State Tillerson lied too.
5. That random anonymous sources in an intelligence community that hates Trump with a burning passion must be believed without question, though we don’t know their identities or their motives.
6. That these anonymous randos must be believed, even though they were not actually in the room to, you know, actually hear what happened. The traditional bar on hearsay is apparently now just a bourgeois conceit.
7. That when the Washington Post and the rest of the media publishes classified stuff (including intelligence provided by allies) leaked by anyone not named “Donald Trump,” it’s awesome.
8. That the Washington Post and the rest of the media, which has been wrong over and over again in their reporting, are not wrong again.
9. That the Washington Post and the rest of the media are objective and have no anti-Trump bias, even though they are literally cheering the hits on the president.
10. That there are unicorns.
The latest pseudo-scandal is that Trump doesn’t think Mike Flynn did anything wrong, and told James Comey so back in February. So basically, Trump expressed the same view he had of the whole Flynn nonsense to Comey as he has expressed to every interviewer. Comey did nothing, and said nothing (even when testifying to Congress) for nearly three months, because it was nothing. The Russian snipe hunt continued throughout unabated. That off-hand comment was a pretty poor attempt at obstruction of justice since it didn’t obstruct anything – to the limited extent these Russian witch hunts can be confused with “justice” at all.
Continue reading at TownHall.com

Trump nominates Callista Gingrich as ambassador to Vatican

President Donald Trump plans to nominate Callista Gingrich as ambassador to the Vatican, the White House said in a statement on Friday.
She is the wife of former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich and produces documentary films on public policy and history.
The announcement came as Trump embarked on Friday on his maiden foreign trip as president, which will include a visit to the Vatican.

Brainless Democrat Cartoons

Why Fox News is Losing Viewers

The audience for cable news shrank in 2010, according to a Pew Research Center report, with viewership for the dominant Fox News declining by 11 percent, CNN plummeting by 37 percent, and MSNBC down 5 percent. "It's not that people are not watching cable," says Amy S. Mitchell, deputy director of the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism. "They're just not turning to news as much." The trend was particularly deflating for Fox News, which had been on a ratings growth spurt since 2007. Is this the end of Fox's meteoric climb in the ratings, and, if so, why?
Yes, viewers are finally getting wise: The experts are chalking this up to competition from the internet, says Ellen at News Hounds, but that's only part of it. Online news has been around for years. The main reason for the cable news networks' troubles — particularly those of the unfair and unbalanced Fox News — is that what they offer is not really news. "It's more about infotainment or political theater." 
"Fox and other cable news networks lose big chunks of audience"
Wait, Fox is still trampling CNN and MSNBC: Fox News isn't the one with the ratings problems, says Fox host Bill O'Reilly in the Boston Herald. Last month in primetime, we were the second highest rated channel on cable, behind only the USA network. "MSNBC came in 26th, CNN 29th. Not good for them." They could both could use "a program host who is filled with tiger blood." Charlie Sheen, MSNBC needs you.
"Low-rated shows need lowlife Charlie Sheen"
The world isn't supplying enough actual news: There just isn't enough real news out there to fill "three always-on news networks," says Doug Mataconis at Outside the Beltway. Devoting an entire cable channel to news "started out as a great idea by Ted Turner," but it "has turned into something far different." The conservative Fox, and its liberal mirror-image MSNBC, are just "blowhard stations" cranking out "propaganda." No wonder people are finding something better to do with their evenings.

Coverage of President Trump dominates the media, and most of it’s negative

Donald Trump dominates the elite media's news coverage, with much of the coverage negative, "setting a new standard for unfavorable press coverage of a president," according to a new study of the press via Harvard University.
The study from the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy exhibits a firm if still intriguing grasp of the obvious when it comes to a certain slice of press coverage.
Indeed, as tends to be the case with such dissections, it analyzes coverage by those media that academia (and the press itself) tend to be most drawn to: The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post, the primary newscasts of CBS, CNN, Fox News and NBC. It includes Europe's Financial Times, BBC and Germany’s ARD.
There's nothing about a vast array of other outlets, especially news outlets, that tend to have far greater audiences, especially in local markets. How much time have they devoted to Trump and what's been the editorial thrust?
Still, to the extent that a narrow slice sets influential news agendas, the report is useful as it scrutinizes coverage of Trump's first 100 days and finds he was "the topic of 41 percent of all news stories — three times the amount of coverage received by previous presidents."
"Trump has received unsparing coverage for most weeks of his presidency, without a single major topic where Trump’s coverage, on balance, was more positive than negative, setting a new standard for unfavorable press coverage of a president," reads the report by Thomas Patterson, a respected government and press analyst.
"Fox was the only news outlet in the study that came close to giving Trump positive coverage overall, however, there was variation in the tone of Fox’s coverage depending on the topic."
Patterson's larger historical analysis offers the helpful reminder that bashing the media is not a new phenomenon for a president. There's a long history and, while the report argues that Trump is different by being so public and so obviously relishing a fight, it notes how others, notably Richard Nixon, threatened the press with serious injury (in Nixon's case, the never-executed threat of yanking broadcast licenses).
The report portrays a media that was initially solicitous to Trump, later more critical and, now, distinctly combative. And, all along, he was fascinating and clearly a positive influence on ratings and circulation, especially on the digital side of elite newspapers.
"Our studies of 2016 presidential election coverage found that Trump received more news coverage than rival candidates during virtually every week of the campaign. The reason is clear enough. Trump is a journalist’s dream."
"Reporters are tuned to what’s new and different, better yet if it’s laced with controversy. Trump delivers that type of material by the shovel full. Trump is also good for business. News ratings were slumping until Trump entered the arena. Said one network executive, '[Trump] may not be good for America, but [he’s] damn good for [us].'"
The report serves as a window, too, onto the mentality of journalists — in ways that might ruffle Fox News and other exemplars of conservative conventional wisdom in portraying the "mainstream" press as driven by liberal bias.
"Although journalists are accused of having a liberal bias, their real bias is a preference for the negative."
Patterson harkens to the Vietnam War and Watergate eras in arguing that an anti-political mindset overrode personal political ideology and has remained in place.
"Journalists’ incentives, everything from getting their stories on the air to acquiring a reputation as a hard-hitting reporter, encourage journalists to focus on what’s wrong with politicians rather than what’s right."
And there's this interesting empirical tidbit: "Of the past four presidents, only Barack Obama received favorable coverage during his first 100 days, after which the press reverted to form."
Trump coverage has accelerated what had been a norm, it appears, setting what the report deems "a new standard for negativity." And that's despite the disproportionate amount of the time that Trump himself is quoted, which is seemingly unusual in a world in which politicians tend to bitch that their low esteem partly reflects the press not airing or giving space to their own declarations.
Reliance on Trump's own comments aside, "Of news reports with a clear tone, negative reports outpaced positive ones by 80 percent to 20 percent. Trump’s coverage was unsparing. In no week did the coverage drop below 70 percent negative and it reached 90 percent negative at its peak."
The report also takes subject categories, such as immigration and the economy, to assess how they've been handled.
There are some differences — immigration was overwhelmingly harsh, economic coverage not nearly as much — but one common denominator is that while most of the elite press was negative, Fox News was less so (interestingly, The Wall Street Journal resembled the others more than it did Fox).
At the same time, the elite media caricature of Fox as unremitting Trump shill gets its comeuppance under this more empirical lens (that also includes interesting results on the dominance of Republican newsmakers in commenting upon Trump).
Yes, Fox gave Trump favorable coverage but not overwhelmingly so. By this analysis, the "split was 52 percent negative to 48 percent positive." Liberals' assumption that Fox is handmaiden to the White House Press Office needs more than one asterisk.
No surprise, Fox coverage differed as a function of the topic at hand, with some very negative, some very positive. And, "As was true at the other outlets, Fox’s reporters found few good things to say about the public and judicial response to Trump’s executive orders banning Muslim immigrants or the collapse of the House of Representatives’ first attempt to repeal and replace Obamacare."
"Fox’s reporting on Trump’s appointees and Russian involvement in the election was also negative in tone."
The report ultimately demurs from concluding if the press has been unfair. But it seems to strain to straddle a fence that includes its own deep suspicions (perhaps typical in academic halls these days) about Trump and the arguable implication that negative coverage is warranted.
"If a mud fight with Trump will not serve the media’s interests, neither will a soft peddling of his coverage. Never in the nation’s history has the country had a president with so little fidelity to the facts, so little appreciation for the dignity of the presidential office, and so little understanding of the underpinnings of democracy."
Yes, it agrees, the credibility of the press is low. But, it also underscores, "the Trump presidency is not the time for the press to pull back" even while conceding, "the sheer level of negative coverage gives weight to Trump’s contention, one shared by his core constituency, that the media are hell bent on destroying his presidency."
It concludes with brief reference to one seeming legacy of 2016 campaign coverage: the press missing the concerns of "Main Street."
"The lesson of the 2016 election has been taken to heart by many journalists. Since Trump’s inauguration, the press has been paying more attention to Main Street. But judging from the extent to which Trump’s voice has dominated coverage of his presidency, the balance is still off."
Of course, that might also apply to elite academics, too.