Dara Lind at Vox calls out the political press for being Trump’s chumps on immigration. (Actually she was very polite — I’m the one who is calling them chumps.)
Political reporters think they’re being skeptical of Trump. But they’re playing into the campaign’s hands.
But some political campaign reporters, who hear immigration buzzwords but aren’t necessarily familiar with how they fit together, are convinced that there’s somehow more to the plan. That’s why they seize on every comment made by a Trump surrogate, and every perceived inconsistency between one day and the next.
In general, when it comes to covering Donald Trump, it’s fair to assume that he has no idea what he’s talking about — that his ideas are inconsistent and make no sense. And that’s probably, in part, what’s motivating reporters to focus on apparent inconsistencies on Trump’s signature issue: Even on immigration, the issue that won him the nomination, he doesn’t have a firm stance.
But it’s not actually a sign of a skeptical attitude to think that Donald Trump secretly supports legalization. It’s exactly what Trump surrogates like Rudy Giuliani want the press to believe.
The fact is that you don’t have to be a specialist or even a journalist to know that Trump and his surrogates are playing games. Trump’s campaign is based entirely around aggressive anti-PC, anti-foreigner, nationalist machismo. He’s not “softening” anything and his big immigration speech in Arizona should have disabused anyone of that notion. He was quite clear in the detail but even more obviously in the attitude.
I honestly don’t understand why the press is so eager to cut him slack on this. I guess they’re being fed info from contacts within the campaign. But it defies common sense and the reality before our very eyes. Trump isn’t complicated. He says it himself:
ABC News’ David Muir asked Trump what he meant by questioning the first female major party nominee’s “stamina” and saying she doesn’t look presidential.
“I just don’t think she has a presidential look, and you need a presidential look,” Trump replied. “You have to get the job done. I think if she went to Mexico she would have had a total failure. We had a big success.”
Muir pressed Trump on whether he was “talking about aesthetics.”
“I’m talking about in general,” Trump said, before remarking that Clinton has said “horrible” things about him during the campaign.
Republican National Committee spokesman Sean Spicer defended Trump in an interview on CNN, saying he agrees that Clinton “doesn’t look and appear as someone who’s going to be president.”
Asked by host Kate Bolduan whether Trump commented on Clinton’s “look” because she’s a woman, Spicer fired back, “Oh my god, give me a break.”
“She can lob a million insults at Donald Trump and no one asks a question,” Spicer said. “She doesn’t appear to be presidential because of the actions she’s undertaken.”
Yeah right.
The latest polls show this misogynist asshole gaining on her in the polls.
Fox News host Greta Van Susteren has abruptly left Fox News after 14 years at the network.
Brit Hume will take over as the anchor for “On the Record” effective on Tuesday.
Fox News announced the departure of the long-time host in a statement released shortly after news broke of a settlement between the network and former anchor Gretchen Carlson, who had filed a $20 million lawsuit over allegations of sexual harassment from former Fox News Chairman Roger Ailes.
A network spokesman told USA Today that Van Susteren’s departure had nothing to do with the settlement.
Ailes departed the network over the summer in a move that shook up the cable news landscape.
The timing of Van Susteren’s exit raised eyebrows because of the Ailes news, and because it is unusual for a political anchor to leave just months before a presidential election.
In a statement, Van Susteren said that Fox “has not felt like home to me for a few years.”
I don’t know what the issues were of course. But you can imagine what they might be.
In front of a vast television audience, the GOP nominee could reshape perceptions of his character and readiness — if he can avoid being drawn into gaffes and personality clashes by Clinton. He will benefit from rock-bottom expectations, given controversies whipped up by his tempestuous personality and the vast gulf in experience between Trump and Clinton.
In other words, if Trump doesn’t try to urinate in Clinton’s direction or manages not to vomit all over his podium, he will have “defied expectations.” So presidential! In saying these types of things, news orgs and commentators never allow that they are the ones who decide whether the supposed defiance of expectations in question actually should lead us to lower the bar for a candidate or otherwise factor in to how we judge his or her performance. It shouldn’t.
There will be a lot of pressure on the news orgs not to play this game, but it’s reasonably possible that we’ll see a lot of it, anyway. This is going to be infuriating, so prepare your medicine of choice right now.
ChrisWallace has said his job is to be a potted plant so there probably won’t be any pushback from the moderators either. Candy Crowley seems to have lost her career for doing that.
I don’t know what Trump is going to do — he isn’t preparing in any traditional sense. But whatever it is unless he starts going on about his penis again he will be seen as beating expectations. And the dry old stick will undoubtedly be boring and dull with all that yucky information and policy and stuff so she will likely be seen as not meeting expectations. This is the game they play.
Roger Ailes, the former CEO of Fox News who left the company amid accusations that he sexually harassed women, has indicated that he and his wife might sue New York magazine, the magazine confirmed Monday.
“New York Media and Gabriel Sherman were contacted by Charles Harder on behalf of Roger and Elizabeth Ailes, asking that we preserve documents related to the Ailes, for a possible defamation claim,” a spokesperson for the publication told POLITICO in a statement. “The letter sent by Harder was not informative as to the substance of their objections to the reporting.”
Harder, who is the same attorney who represented Hulk Hogan in the invasion of privacy lawsuit that bankrupted Gawker Media, is also representing Melania Trump in a defamation lawsuit against The Daily Mail and a Maryland blogger. Ailes has reportedly been advising Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, who has said he would strive to “open up” libel laws if he were elected president.
Ailes has plenty of money, by the way. He was already richer than God and Murdoch reportedly agreed to 60 million plus as a settlement. Murdoch’s sons might regret they didn’t fight that harder when the empire they’re inheriting from those two hideous men is subject to Trump’s new regime.
Come on people. Are we really going to take a chance that this idiotic throwback might become the leader of the United States of America? Really?
They won’t even give him stairs, proper stairs to get out of the airplane. You see that? They have pictures of other leaders who are … coming down with a beautiful red carpet. And Obama is coming down a metal staircase,” Trumps said Monday at the beginning of a roundtable with labor leaders in Brook Park, Ohio.
“I’ve got to tell you, if that were me, I would say, ‘You know what, folks, I respect you a lot but close the doors, let’s get out of here,’” he added. “It’s a sign of such disrespect.”
It scares the living hell out of me that he’s as close as he is. What in the world are we thinking?
And by the way, it’s good to see the press dripping out their Judicial Watch-Citizens United fed non-stories as we get closer to the election. Excellent timing. They must be so proud.
That tweet from Chris Cilizza of the Washington Post’s The Fix blog is cleverly framed to be about the voters’ view of this campaign. Both candidates do have high unfavorable ratings among the public (as does the congress and pretty much every other institution, including the press.) However, that jaded comment by a member of the media illustrates something important. Some members of the press are not just commenting on a reality, they are pushing the theme of two equally unpalatable candidates and it just isn’t true.
The main problem for Clinton is that people think she is a congenital liar. When asked what it is she lied about most people can’t point to anything specific they just know she’s dishonest and corrupt. The fact that she’s been dogged by political enemies and investigated by special prosecutors, the media and the congress with unlimited budgets and every possible means of getting to the truth and has been exonerated doesn’t seem to register. Indeed, the fact-checkers all find her to be more honest than virtually anyone in politics while Donald Trump, by contrast, lies more than he tells the truth.
In order to understand how this came to be, you have to go back to a column from 1996 in the New York Times by vicious right wing columnist William Safire who first dubbed her a “congenital liar.” All the crimes he accused her of committing and lies he insisted she told later proved him to be the liar (or badly misinformed) but it didn’t matter. For many reasons, not the least of which was simple sexism, it was set in stone that this feminist, lawyer first lady was devious, calculating and power mad — Madame DeFarge and Evita rolled into one. The political press has filtered their coverage of her through that lens ever since.
As Amanda Marcotte documented in this piece the current “lock her up!” fever, that burning desire to see her her humiliated and imprisoned (or in some cases executed for treason) is not new. And it’s no less disturbing now than it was then. It’s fed by the press’s insatiable appetite for juicy right wing tidbits doled out piece by piece, each story building on itself to create a narrative of crisis and criminality despite there being no evidence of it being true.
The assumption in the “Clinton Foundation scandal” is that the mere possibility of “impropriety” is a form of corruption despite there being absolutely no proof that any favoritism or transaction actually took place. (The fact that every politician in Washington from President Obama to lowly congressman have contacts every day with people who give them money for their campaigns directly doesn’t put any of that in perspective for some reason.) She alone is being held liable for the systemic big money problem that infects our system from top to bottom.
Much of the criticism in general is focused on the New York Times which seems to have a strange institutional vendetta against both Clintons. It’s hard to understand why this would be true over so many years but perhaps Jonathan Allen explained it best in this brutally honest piece called “Confessions of a Clinton reporter: The media’s 5 unspoken rules for covering Hillary.” This, I think can fairly be said to apply across the board, not just to the Times:
The Clinton rules are driven by reporters’ and editors’ desire to score the ultimate prize in contemporary journalism: the scoop that brings down Hillary Clinton and her family’s political empire. At least in that way, Republicans and the media have a common interest.
This problem has deep roots in our political culture and it’s potentially creating a serious crisis in 2016. If Donald Trump were to pull out a win the ramifications will be extreme. And he could. Nate Silver and the 538 gang of statisticians don’t give him good odds but they do not believe it’s impossible:
[Our model] shows Trump as having gained about 2 points over two weeks. If Trump keeps gaining 1 percentage point a week, he’ll beat Clinton by a couple of percentage points on Nov. 8. Hence, Clinton should probably not be picking out the White House drapes just yet.
Anyone who is sanguine about Trump losing needs to rethink their position. And the press needs to do a serious gut check about how they’re conducting their campaign coverage. As Paul Krugman wrote in his Monday column, “America and the world can’t afford another election tipped by innuendo.”
It’s time for Donald J. Trump to say some new, outrageous thing, some bright, shiny thing, something the press can cuddle and play with for days on end, something that will take and keep their attention far, far from Trump scandal number the eleventy-leventh. Like this scandal that’s been quietly steaming for months while the press obsesses over the latest non-revelation about Hillary Clinton’s emails:
Donald Trump on Monday dismissed questions about his failure to disclose an improper $25,000 contribution to a political group connected to Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, who was at the time considering whether to open a fraud investigation against Trump University.
“I never spoke to her, first of all; she’s a fine person beyond reproach. I never even spoke to her about it at all. She’s a fine person. Never spoken to her about it. Never,” Trump said Monday while speaking to reporters in Ohio. “Many of the attorney generals turned that case down because I’ll win that case in court. Many turned that down. I never spoke to her.”
The $25,000 gift, paid by the Donald J. Trump Foundation, violated federal rules that prohibit charities from making donations to political candidates. Trump and his team also failed to disclose the large gift to the Internal Revenue Service, instead reporting that the donation was given to an unrelated group with a similar name — effectively obscuring the contribution.
Bondi eventually declined to open a fraud investigation into Trump University’s dealings in Florida. The fact that a consultant for Bondi’s reelection directly contradicts Trump’s account — telling the AP Bondi solicited funds directly from Trump — seems not to have created much press ripple. And Donald, exactly how many attorneys general turned down prosecuting cases against you? In addition to the one in Texas.
Quid? Meet Quo.
This is the same Trump who boasted a year ago that when politicians call, he gives, and when he wants, he gets. They have no choice, he declared. Because he gave. If the quo is not stated, it is at least implied, and it’s clearly there in Trump’s mind:
Paul Waldman has had about enough of the double standard for covering Trumpish scandals:
At this point we should note that everything here may be completely innocent. Perhaps Bondi didn’t realize her office was looking into Trump University. Perhaps the fact that Trump’s foundation made the contribution (which, to repeat, is illegal) was just a mix-up. Perhaps when Trump reimbursed the foundation from his personal account, he didn’t realize that’s not how the law works (the foundation would have to get its money back from Bondi’s PAC; he could then make a personal donation if he wanted). Perhaps Bondi’s decision not to pursue the case against Trump was perfectly reasonable.
But here’s the thing: We don’t know the answers to those questions, because almost nobody seems to be pursuing them.
For instance, there was only one mention of this story on any of the five Sunday shows, when John Dickerson asked Chris Christie about it on “Face the Nation“ (Christie took great umbrage: “I can’t believe, John, that anyone would insult Pam Bondi that way”). And the comparison with stories about Hillary Clinton’s emails or the Clinton Foundation is extremely instructive. Whenever we get some new development in any of those Clinton stories, you see blanket coverage — every cable network, every network news program, every newspaper investigates it at length. And even when the new information serves to exonerate Clinton rather than implicate her in wrongdoing, the coverage still emphasizes that the whole thing just “raises questions” about her integrity.
The sheer volume of Trump corruption stories is incredible. They're all covered for a few days and then dropped: https://t.co/oM1BeVwcX9— Paul Waldman (@paulwaldman1) September 5, 2016
Ah, yes. “Raises questions.” The optics are bad. Eric Boehlert of Media Matters spoke to the press obsession with “optics” and the Clinton Foundation:
The meandering foundation story has become a case study for the Beltway media’s double standard: holding Clinton to a higher mark that’s based on optics, not on facts. Unable to prove misconduct or anything close to it (just ask the AP), the press relies on the comfy confines of “optics” and the “appearance” of conflict to allow them to attack Clinton and the foundation.
For Clinton, it’s a can’t-win proposition. If the press says the story looks bad, even if there’s nothing to suggest it actually is bad, she gets tagged with an optics problem. And because journalists are the only ones handing out the grades, they get to decide how bad it looks.
But the journalism malpractice doesn’t end there. It extends to the fact that the press doesn’t apply the same visual test to Republican nominee Donald Trump, whose far-flung business dealings would represent an actual, even historic, conflict of interest were he to be elected president.
Also, note that high-profile Republicans have run foundations in the past, accepted big donations, and never been hounded by the press regarding supposed optics violations.
What’s so strange about the current “appearance” phenomenon is that the narrative often runs right alongside media concessions about the lack of evidence proving Clinton wrongdoing.
So, is this Bondi affair an actual case of pay-for-play with Trump getting a fraud investigation quashed for a donation? “Gee, Phil, that really doesn’t pass the smell test,” said no one on a Sunday bobblehead show about Trump’s illegal donation to Bondi. But when it comes to the inevitable “throw something against the wall to see what sticks” controversy raised against Clinton by Trump’s new deputy campaign manager, David Bossie, it will be Clinton Rules 1, 2, and 3.
Waldman concludes with a list of a dozen Trumpish cases of “corruption, double-dealing, and fraud” that get brief mention in the press, then it’s back to full-tilt coverage of whatever editors decide “looks bad” for Clinton:
That’s important, because we may have reached a point where the frames around the candidates are locked in: Trump is supposedly the crazy/bigoted one, and Clinton is supposedly the corrupt one. Once we decide that those are the appropriate lenses through which the two candidates are to be viewed, it shapes the decisions the media make every day about which stories are important to pursue.
When will the press finally stop “raising questions” for which the only answer is more innuendo and quit fixating on the “optics” of whatever it is alleged Hillary Clinton didn’t do (that she should have known better not to look like she did when she didn’t) and actually squeeze out some balance with their balance?
In “working the refs,” conservatives like to hammer on the fact that members of the press tend to lean left. They have trained the press to counter those accusations with closer scrutiny of Democrats’ appearances of improprieties than Republicans’. But there is another dynamic at work, born of the same leftish skew among members of the press. We expect our own to adhere to a higher standard than conservatives. We don’t expect the right to live up to those standards, and they don’t disappoint us when they don’t. But when appearances (even false media ones) suggest people like the Clintons have fallen short, we’re on a hair trigger for throwing them under the bus. Dirty tricksters on the right know this and exploit it as a weakness. And like George McFly, we keep falling for it.
Trump: "These are not the droids you're looking for." Media: "These are not the droids we're looking for."https://t.co/MkapUXdVTG— (((Jeff Tiedrich))) (@jefftiedrich) September 5, 2016
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has run an unusually cheap campaign in part by not paying at least 10 top staffers, consultants and advisers, some of whom are no longer with the campaign, according to a review of federal campaign finance filings.
Those who have so far not been paid, the filings show, include recently departed campaign manager Paul Manafort, California state director Tim Clark, communications director Michael Caputo and a pair of senior aides who left the campaign in June to immediately go to work for a Trump Super PAC.
The New York real estate magnate and his allies have touted his campaign’s frugality, saying it is evidence of his management skills. His campaign’s spending has totaled $89.5 million so far, about a third of what Democratic rival Hillary Clinton’s campaign has spent.
But not compensating top people in a presidential campaign is a departure from campaign finance norms. Many of the positions involved might typically come with six-figure annual paychecks in other campaigns.
“It’s unprecedented for a presidential campaign to rely so heavily on volunteers for top management positions,” said Paul Ryan, an election lawyer with the campaign finance reform advocacy group Campaign Legal Center.
The Trump campaign said the Reuters’ reporting was “sloppy at best” but declined to elaborate.
One of the 10 who were unpaid, Michael Caputo, told a Buffalo radio station in June after he resigned from the campaign, that he was not volunteering. Rather, he said he just had not gotten paid. Caputo confirmed to Reuters on Thursday that the Trump campaign has still not paid his invoices.
You’ll note that he’s paying for his wealthy children’s travel and expenses though. First things first.
Campaign employees should know that if he loses they will not paid. That’s how he rolls. If you don’t “do the job right” in his view you don’t deserve t get paid for your work. He’s done that through his entire career. That’s what most of those thousands of lawsuits are about. The man is a con artist. He doesn’t honor his commitments.
It’s hard to feel sorry for these top people. They should know what they’re getting into. But the small time vendors around the country who are going to get screwed are another story. It’s a damned shame.
Brian Tashman of Right Wing Watch tweeted out this old treatise against civil rights from the 50’s, noting “almost verbatim to anti-LGBT groups’ arguments about why states should defy marriage equality: persecution complex.”
Actually, there are still plenty of people making the same argument about race as well…
