Tag: New York Times

The gold standards of American liberal news.

Trump Cites ‘Failing New York Times’ Article to Exonerate Himself From Russian Political Meddling

President Trump issued a…um, bizarre and contradictory statement on Monday where he slammed The New York Times while using it as proof that he wasn’t involved in Russian efforts to interfere with American political institutions.

Its possible Trump was referring to this recent Times article describing FBI’s efforts to convince Oleg Deripaska, a Russian oligarch with ties to Paul Manafort, to become an informant on the Russian government’s misdeeds. FBI officials approached Deripaska and other prominent Russian officials over the years in hopes of tracking organized crime, countering Russia’s foreign political meddling, and, eventually, gaining insight on any possible collusion between Trump and the Kremlin.

The line Trump invoked in his tweet doesn’t appear in the Times‘ article, though it does contain this somewhat-resemblant portion that makes reference to Bruce Ohr and Christopher Steele.

The contacts between Mr. Steele and Mr. Ohr started before Mr. Trump became a presidential candidate and continued through much of the campaign.

The piece says Ohr and Steele were both involved in efforts to convince Russian oligarchs to cooperate with the FBI. The campaign was reportedly unsuccessful, and Trump and his defenders have been escalating their attacks on Ohr recently in order to discredit Robert Mueller‘s investigations.

Going back to Trump’s tweet, however, reactors online felt that he sorta garbled his point by bashing the Times while – at the same time – using them as the basis for his claim against the “rigged witch hunt.” Others pointed out how American intelligence workers obviously tried to counter Russia’s objectionable behavior long before Trump became politically-relevant.

[Mediaite]

Trump rips New York Times: ‘They’re like lunatics’

President Trump on Wednesday complained that much of the press won’t give him positive coverage, singling out The New York Times as “lunatics.”

Trump told “Fox & Friends” host Ainsley Earhardt that “80 percent” of the media is fake news, and as a result is the “enemy of the people,” an insult he frequently lobs at journalists.

“If I do something well, it’s not reported. Other than in the 20 percent,” Trump said in an interview that will air Thursday.

“I mean, The New York Times cannot write a good story about me,” he continued. “They’re crazed. They’re like lunatics.”

Trump has had a long-strained relationship with the press since he hit the campaign trail in 2015. He often derides negative coverage as “fake news,” and singles out organizations including the Times, CNN, NBC News and The Washington Post.

[The Hill]

 

 

Trump compares Mueller probe to McCarthyism

President Donald Trump on Sunday compared the special counsel investigation to McCarthyism, saying Robert Mueller made the late Sen. Joseph McCarthy “look like a baby.”

“Study the late Joseph McCarthy, because we are now in period with Mueller and his gang that make Joseph McCarthy look like a baby! Rigged Witch Hunt!,” Trump tweeted.

McCarthy led a Cold War-era inquisition of alleged Communists who he claimed had infiltrated American governmental institutions. The Wisconsin Republican’s assertions, famously voiced in a speech in 1950, contributed to the paranoia and fear known as “the Red Scare.” A special Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee investigated McCarthy’s initial claims about Communists infiltrating the State Department and found them to be “a fraud and a hoax.”

Upon becoming chairman of the Senate Government Operations Committee’s subcommittee on investigations in 1953, McCarthy expanded his probes into alleged communist activity. In 1954, he began investigating the US Army. The three months of Army-McCarthy hearings shattered the senator’s image and led to his censure by the Senate.

The President’s comparison between the special counsel’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and the trials of McCarthyism was one of a series of tweets that lashed out at the probe Sunday morning. Trump directed particular ire at a Saturday New York Times report that White House counsel Don McGahn has been cooperating extensively with the special counsel.

Michael Hayden, a former director of the CIA and National Security Agency, was asked about Trump’s comparison of Mueller to McCarthy on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

“So, Joe McCarthy was a demagogue. And we haven’t heard a public syllable from Bob Mueller in more than a year,” Hayden said. “And I have got to add that McCarthy’s lawyer, Roy Cohn, became Donald Trump’s personal lawyer — lawyer and mentor for decades. I mean, the irony here is just amazing.

Cohn, who died in 1986, worked closely with Trump beginning in the 1970s. For more than a decade, Cohn represented Trump on construction deals and his lawsuit against the NFL.

The New York Times reported McGahn had participated in interviews spanning 30 hours over the last nine months. He provided “detailed accounts about the episodes at the heart of the inquiry into whether President Trump obstructed justice,” including providing information that the Mueller team otherwise would not have learned about, the Times reported, citing a dozen current and former White House officials and other individuals briefed on the matter.

Trump lashed out at The New York Times in a series of tweets Sunday.

“The Failing New York Times wrote a story that made it seem like the White House Councel [sic] had TURNED on the President, when in fact it is just the opposite – & the two Fake reporters knew this,” Trump tweeted. “This is why the Fake News Media has become the Enemy of the People. So bad for America!”

He continued: “Some members of the media are very Angry at the Fake Story in the New York Times. They actually called to complain and apologize – a big step forward. From the day I announced, the Times has been Fake News, and with their disgusting new Board Member, it will only get worse!”

Shortly after Trump’s criticism, the Times tweeted that it “stands behind the reporting of our Pulitzer-Prize winning reporters @nytmike and @maggieNYT.”

The two reporters are often called out by the President because of their extensive and well-sourced White House reporting, which he sees as overly critical.

[CNN]

Reality

First, Donald Trump’s mentor was lawyer Roy Cohn, who was previously mentored by Joseph McCarthy.

Second, McCarthy was a demagogue who architected the “Red Scare” which relied on baseless allegations and conspiracy theories to generate fear and when pressed for evidence to support his false claims, McCarthy refused and attacked his critics including the press.

Sound familiar?

Trump Lashes Out At NYT’s Bombshell McGahn Report, Calls It ‘Fake News’

President Donald Trump fired off several angry Tweets on Sunday aimed at discrediting a report that White House counsel Donald McGahn is cooperating with the Russia investigation to protect himself, with Trump insisting that it is “just the opposite.”

“I have demanded transparency so that this Rigged and Disgusting Witch Hunt can come to a close,” Trump tweeted. “I allowed [McGahn] and all others to testify ― I didn’t have to. I have nothing to hide.”

Trump also said “some members of the media” were angry about the Times’ report and have called to “complain and apologize.” He did not identify who those members are

His outburst came the day after The New York Times reported that McGahn is extensively cooperating with special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into possible links between Trump’s campaign and Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and whether the president has obstructed justice. McGahn, according to the Times story, has voluntarily provided Mueller’s team a wealth of information about Trump’s behavior, beyond what might be expected from someone in his position.

Any suggestion that McGahn has turned on him is false, Trump insisted on Sunday.

″In fact it is just the opposite,” he tweeted. “This is why the Fake News Media has become the Enemy of the People. So bad for America!”

The Times reported that McGahn’s cooperation in the investigation began in part because the president’s initial team of lawyers insisted that Trump had nothing to hide and they wanted the investigation to end quickly.

But according to sources close to McGahn, cited in the Times’ report, both McGahn and his lawyer, William Burck, were confused by Trump’s willingness to allow him to speak so freely to the special counsel. Trump’s attitude reportedly led McGahn to suspect that the president was setting him up to take the blame for any possible illegal acts of obstruction.

Nixon administration attorney John Dean, who pleaded guilty to conspiracy to obstruct justice during the 1970s Watergate scandal, told Slate on Saturday that McGahn did the “right thing” to cooperate “extensively” with Mueller’s investigation.

McGahn is “doing exactly the right thing, not merely to protect himself, but to protect his client. And his client is not Donald Trump; his client is the office of the president,” said Dean, who was White House counsel under Richard Nixon.

Trump, in his tweets on Sunday, referred to Dean as a “rat.”

Although Dean was part of the White House-led efforts under President Richard Nixon to cover up the crimes committed Watergate scandal, his decision to testify to Congress about it was crucial to exposing the affair and causing Nixon to resign from office 44 years ago.

[Huffington Post]

Trump says WH lawyer McGahn isn’t ‘a John Dean type ‘RAT”

President Donald Trump insisted Sunday that White House lawyer Don McGahn isn’t “a John Dean type ‘RAT,'” making reference to the Watergate-era White House attorney who turned on Richard Nixon.

Trump, in a series of angry tweets, blasted a New York Times story reporting that McGahn has been cooperating extensively with the special counsel team investigating Russian election meddling and potential collusion with Trump’s Republican campaign.

“The failing @nytimes wrote a Fake piece today implying that because White House Councel Don McGahn was giving hours of testimony to the Special Councel, he must be a John Dean type ‘RAT,'” Trump wrote, misspelling the word “counsel,” as he often does. “But I allowed him and all others to testify – I didn’t have to. I have nothing to hide……”

The New York Times said in a tweet that it stands by the story.

Trump’s original legal team had encouraged McGahn and other White House officials to cooperate with special counsel Robert Mueller, and McGahn spent hours in interviews.

Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, said in an appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that Trump didn’t raise executive privilege or attorney-client privilege during those interviews because his team believed — he says now, wrongly — that fully participating would be the fastest way to bring the investigation to a close.

“The president encouraged him to testify, is happy that he did, is quite secure that there is nothing in the testimony that will hurt the president,” Giuliani said.

McGahn’s attorney William Burck added in a statement: “President Trump, through counsel, declined to assert any privilege over Mr. McGahn’s testimony, so Mr. McGahn answered the Special Counsel team’s questions fulsomely and honestly, as any person interviewed by federal investigators must.”

Trump, in his tweets, continued to rail against the Mueller investigation, which he has labeled a “witch hunt.”

“So many lives have been ruined over nothing – McCarthyism at its WORST!” Trump wrote, referencing the indiscriminate and damaging allegations made by Sen. Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s to expose communists.

“Study the late Joseph McCarthy, because we are now in period with Mueller and his gang that make Joseph McCarthy look like a baby! Rigged Witch Hunt!” he later tweeted.

Dean was White House counsel for Nixon, a Republican, during the Watergate scandal. He ultimately cooperated with prosecutors and helped bring down the Nixon presidency, though he served a prison term for obstruction of justice.

Dean, a frequent critic of the president, tweeted Saturday night in response to the Times story: “McGahn is doing right!” He later wrote, “Nixon, generally very competent, bungled and botched his handling of Watergate. Trump, a total incompetent, is bungling and botching his handling of Russiagate. Fate is never kind to bunglers and/or botchers! Unlike Nixon, however, Trump won’t leave willingly or graciously.”

Critics of the president have recently compared his decision to target the security clearances of critics and those involved in the Russia investigation to the “enemies list” created by the Nixon White House to keep track of political opponents they intended to target with punitive measures.

[PBS]

Trump Charges ‘Free Press’ With ‘Collusion.’ As Predicted.

In Trump’s world, there’s nothing wrong with “collusion” unless it’s being committed by Hillary Clinton… or the media.

The president woke up on Thursday to news that nearly 350 different newspapers across the country had all published editorials denouncing his attacks against the media. The project, spearheaded by The Boston Globe, called on papers to tackle the issue in their own words.

“We propose to publish an editorial on August 16 on the dangers of the administration’s assault on the press and ask others to commit to publishing their own editorials on the same date,” Marjorie Pritchard, deputy managing editor of Globe, wrote in a memo to editorial boards last week.

“We’re being portrayed as a domestic enemy rather than a loyal fellow countryman whose profession is to hold the powerful accountable,” she added in an interview with The New York Times. “This whole project is not anti-Trump. It’s really pro-press.”

Unsurprisingly, Trump didn’t see it that way.

The first tweet on the issue came just before 9 a.m. “THE FAKE NEWS MEDIA IS THE OPPOSITION PARTY. It is very bad for our Great Country….BUT WE ARE WINNING!” Trump tweeted defiantly.

Then, about 15 minutes after Fox News first reported on the editorials, Trump lashed out at The Boston Globe directly. After highlighting the paper’s financial struggles, the president accused the Globe of being “in COLLUSION with other papers on free press.” He added, “PROVE IT!” though it was unclear who he was speaking to or what he wanted proven.

For good measure, Trump added a dismissive message about “true FREEDOM OF THE PRESS.”

Of course, Trump’s reaction to the project could not have been more predictable.

So much so that, writing for The San Francisco Chronicle, editorial-page editor John Diaz predicted it.

In a piece explaining why his paper would not be participating in the “coordinated editorial campaign,” Diaz expressed several concerns about the project, including this one:

“It plays into Trump’s narrative that the media are aligned against him. I can just anticipate his Thursday morning tweets accusing the ‘FAKE NEWS MEDIA’ of ‘COLLUSION!’ and ‘BIAS!’ He surely will attempt to cite this day of editorials to discredit critical and factual news stories in the future, even though no one involved in those pieces had anything to do with this campaign.”

[The Daily Beast]

Trump Goes On Anti-Media Tweetstorm, Attacks Reporting He Says Puts Lives ‘At Risk’: ‘Very Unpatriotic!’

President Donald Trump is going on yet another Twitter tirade about the media, this time attacking certain reporting as “very unpatriotic!”

To recap: Trump tweeted this morning that he recently met with New York Times publisher A.G. Sulzberger and talked about the “fake news.” Sulzberger shot back by saying he specifically told the President he’s concerned about his “dangerous” attacks on the media.

Well, um, he’s still doing it (not that he ever stopped).

And not only that, but Trump is now accusing reporters of putting lives at risk by reporting on “internal deliberations of our government”:

You will also notice that Trump, hours after revealing his meeting with Sulzberger, is back to attacking the Times again.

The Times report on this meeting features Sulzberger making one very serious point to the President:

Mr. Sulzberger recalled telling Mr. Trump at one point that newspapers had begun posting armed guards outside their offices because of a rise in threats against journalists. The president, he said, expressed surprise that they did not already have armed guards.

[Mediaite]

Trump calls press the ‘Enemy of the People’ after claiming he confronted publisher of New York Times over ‘fake news’

On Sunday morning, Donald Trump tweeted that he met with the publisher of the New York Times and confronted him over what the president calls “fake news,” adding that the free press is becoming the “Enemy of the People.”

According to Trump, “Had a very good and interesting meeting at the White House with A.G. Sulzberger, Publisher of the New York Times. Spent much time talking about the vast amounts of Fake News being put out by the media & how that Fake News has morphed into phrase, ‘Enemy of the People.’ Sad!”

Earlier in the morning Trump bizarrely boasted that he had higher polls number than even President Abraham Lincoln — who served when there was no polling

You can see the tweets below:

[Raw Story]

Trump attacks NYT over breastfeeding story

President Donald Trump on Monday attacked a New York Times story that reported how his administration attempted to weaken a World Health Assembly resolution to promote breastfeeding, saying women shouldn’t be denied access to formula.

The president’s tweet was spillover from a feud over a proposed breastfeeding resolution earlier this year at the WHA, the decision-making body of the World Health Organization. The U.S. opposed the resolution so strongly it threatened trade measures against the country that introduced it, according to the Times.

“The failing NY Times Fake News story today about breast feeding must be called out. The U.S. strongly supports breast feeding but we don’t believe women should be denied access to formula. Many women need this option because of malnutrition and poverty,” Trump said in a tweet.

According to the Times, the resolution was written to encourage breastfeeding and to limit “inaccurate or misleading” marketing for breast milk substitutes. The resolution, introduced by Ecuador, did not bar the use of formula.

When attempts to soften language in the resolution were unsuccessful, the U.S. stunned the global community by threatening retaliatory trade measures against Ecuador and the withdrawal of military aid, according to the Times report.

Ecuador backed off, as did a number of countries that said they feared the same retaliation. The resolution was later introduced by Russia. At that point, the U.S. did not fight back, the Times noted.

The lead agency involved in the resolution negotiations, the Department of Health and Human Services, denies the U.S. made any trade sanction-related threats. HHS spokesperson Caitlin Oakley touted the country’s “long history” of support for breastfeeding in a statement Monday afternoon.

“Recent reporting attempts to portray the U.S. position at the recent World Health Assembly as ‘anti-breastfeeding’ are patently false,” Oakley said. “The United States was fighting to protect women’s abilities to make the best choices for the nutrition of their babies. Many women are not able to breastfeed for a variety of reasons, these women should not be stigmatized; they should be equally supported with information and access to alternatives for the health of themselves and their babies.”

The Times defended its reporting in a tweet to the president, and provided a link to the story in question.

“Our report is accurate. You can read it here,” the Times said.

[Politico]

Trump calls on Twitter to boot NY Times and Washington Post since they are banning ‘fake accounts’

President Donald Trump on Saturday again lashed out at his enemies in the media in a Twitter rant where he urged the company to delete the accounts of The New York Times and Washington Post.

“Twitter is getting rid of fake accounts at a record pace. Will that include the Failing New York Times and propaganda machine for Amazon, the Washington Post, who constantly quote anonymous sources that, in my opinion, don’t exist,” Trump wrote.

The president, whose businesses have repeatedly declared bankruptcy, also predicted that both newspapers would be, “out of business in 7 years!”

The company has been repeatedly urged to ban President Trump for violating the company’s terms of service.

In January, the social media company updated its policies to protect President Trump’s account.

“Blocking a world leader from Twitter or removing their controversial Tweets, would hide important information people should be able to see and debate,” Twitter claimed.

Two days later, demonstrators gathered at the company’s San Francisco headquarters to protest the announcement.

The protesters projected criticism on the facade of Twitter’s building, with messages stating Chief Executive Office Jack Dorsey is “complicit” and asking the question, “would Twitter ban Hitler?”

[Raw Story]

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