Category: Attack the Press

Trump Defends Kavanaugh After NYT Report: ‘Should Start Suing People’ or DOJ ‘Should Come to His Rescue’

President Donald Trump took to Twitter this morning defending Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh after a new report in The New York Times.

The Times reported on another allegation of sexual misconduct against Kavanaugh yesterday:

A classmate, Max Stier, saw Mr. Kavanaugh with his pants down at a different drunken dorm party, where friends pushed his penis into the hand of a female student. Mr. Stier, who runs a nonprofit organization in Washington, notified senators and the F.B.I. about this account, but the F.B.I. did not investigate and Mr. Stier has declined to discuss it publicly. (We corroborated the story with two officials who have communicated with Mr. Stier.)

Mr. Kavanaugh did not speak to us because we could not agree on terms for an interview. But he has denied Dr. Ford’s and Ms. Ramirez’s allegations, and declined to answer our questions about Mr. Stier’s account.

There’s now renewed outcry over Kavanaugh and calls for additional investigation, including from 2020 candidate Julián Castro:

President Trump defended Kavanaugh on Twitter this morning, saying people are lying about him to “scare him into turning Liberal,” even suggesting he “should start suing people for liable [sic], or the Justice Department should come to his rescue.”

Trump previously misspelled “libel”


Brett Kavanaugh should start suing people for liable, or the Justice Department should come to his rescue. The lies being told about him are unbelievable. False Accusations without recrimination. When does it stop? They are trying to influence his opinions. Can’t let that happen!

Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 15, 2019

[Mediaite]

Trump lashes out at MSNBC’s Joy Reid, claims she has ‘NO talent’

President Trump on Saturday lashed out at MSNBC’s Joy Reid, saying that the TV host has “NO talent.”

“Who the hell is Joy-Ann Reid? Never met her, she knows ZERO about me, has NO talent, and truly doesn’t have the ‘it’ factor needed for success in showbiz,” Trump tweeted.

“Had a bad reputation, and now works for the Comcast/NBC losers making up phony stories about me. Low Ratings. Fake News!” he continued.

It was not immediately clear what prompted the president to go after Reid ahead of her Saturday morning show, though the MSNBC host had criticized recent remarks by Trump while guest hosting “All in with Chris Hayes” on Friday night.

The Hill has reached out to MSNBC for comment.

The MSNBC host and a hashtag for her show, #AMJoy, trended on Twitter Saturday after the president’s post, with members of the program appearing to take the president’s tweet in stride.

“Great job getting us trending, #reiders! Can we get our #AMJoy hashtag even higher? Let’s do it!” the

Trump’s tweet Saturday morning came hours after Reid appeared on the network and highlighted a number of recent remarks by the president.

In a segment on Trump’s visit to Baltimore for the House GOP retreat, she mocked his “Mike Pounce” gaffe and said he “went on to treat the gathered Republicans to some smoking hot beauty tips” while discussing his remarks on lightbulbs. 

She also said that he sounded “like a desperate man” when he said “whether you like me or not it makes no difference because our country will go to Hell if any of these people get in.”

Reid has been critical of the president in the past, releasing a book about Trump earlier this summer titled “The Man Who Sold America.”

She said in a tweet earlier this month that Trump “has turned the presidency into a travel agency servicing the Trump Organization and its properties and golf clubs around the world.” 

Trump’s tweet attacking the MSNBC host Saturday morning came after he sent another tweet saying “A Very Stable Genius!” and offering thanks for the comment, though he did not provide any more information on the remark or attribute it.

[The Hill]

Trump Encourages New ‘Activist’ AT&T Investor to Stop ‘Fake News Emanating’ From CNN

President Donald Trump lauded the news that an activist hedge fund has a multi-billion dollar stake in AT&T — and called for them to “put a stop to all of the Fake News” presented by CNN and its anchors.

In a pair of — at best, ethically questionable — tweets Monday morning, the president raged against CNN, following news of Elliott Management disclosing a $3.2 billion stake in communications giant AT&T, which owns CNN.

“Great news that an activist investor is now involved with AT&T,” Trump wrote. “As the owner of VERY LOW RATINGS @CNN, perhaps they will now put a stop to all of the Fake News emanating from its non-credible “anchors.” Also, I hear that, because of its bad ratings, it is losing a fortune … But most importantly, @CNN is bad for the USA. Their International Division spews bad information & Fake News all over the globe. This is why foreign leaders are always asking me, “Why does the Media hate the U.S. sooo much?” It is a fraudulent shame, & all comes from the top!”

As flagged by Matthew Gertz of Media Matters, Mornings With Maria on Fox Business covered the AT&T news approximately 30 minutes before Trump’s tweet.

Further, as noted by Maggie Haberman of The New York Times, Trump’s tweet coincided with a CNN report on how a spy was pulled out of Russia in 2017 over fears of the president handling classified intelligence.

CNN VP of communications Matt Dornic has responded, via Twitter — touting the network’s most recent monthly Nielsen numbers, which were bolstered by two mammoth ratings nights for the Democratic presidential debates:

[Mediaite]

After hate-watching MSNBC prison reform special, Donald Trump attacks Chrissy Teigen and John Legend

As a televised town hall hosted by Lester Holt wound down Sunday night on MSNBC, President Donald Trump posted a rambling series of tweets claiming that he had not received enough credit for his work on criminal justice reform as he took aim at the “boring musician” John Legend and “his filthy mouthed wife” Chrissy Teigen. 

“When all of the people pushing so hard for Criminal Justice Reform were unable to come even close to getting it done, they came to me as a group and asked for my help,” the president tweeted. “I got it done with a group of Senators & others who would never have gone for it.” 

Trump was referring to the First Step Act, legislation designed to shorten the mandatory sentences for some federal drug offenses, which was signed into law with bipartisan support in December. However, criminal justice advocates question the current commitment to the implementation of the law. It seeks $75 million a year for five years for prison education and job-training, but Trump’s 2020 budget priorities only showed $14 million to finance its programs. 

“I SIGNED IT INTO LAW, no one else did,” Trump continued Sunday. “Guys like boring musician @johnlegend, and his filthy mouthed wife, are talking now about how great it is—but I didn’t see them around when we needed help getting it passed.” 

It should be noted that in the “Dateline” episode that preceded Sunday’s town hall, Holt did credit Trump for the First Step Act. Though, as Holt pointed out, “That doesn’t affect more than 90 percent of the U.S. prison population, which is locked up in state and local facilities.” 

While Legend, who uses his platform to advocate for prison reform, was part of the town hall, Teigen was not mentioned during the broadcast. However, if you have been remotely active on Twitter since the beginning of Trump’s presidency, you’re already aware that the commander-in-chief has a proclivity to start — and maintain — crude Twitter feuds with celebrities and members of the media, especially women. 

The habit is frequent enough that it has populated numerous listicles such as “Trump’s Most Ridiculous Twitter Feuds In 2017” and “Donald Trump vs. Everyone: His 20 Best Media Feuds.” 

Chrissy Teigen ended up on Trump’s online enemies list during the 2016 election after she voiced her disdain for his politics on Twitter. In July 2017, the president blocked Teigen after she tweeted that “no one likes you.” 

As of last night, Trump still has Teigen blocked. Nonetheless, he still appeared to be nursing a grudge. 

“lol what a p**sy ass b*tch. tagged everyone but me. an honor, mister president,” Teigen responded. “[T]he absolute best part of his tweet is I literally didn’t speak in the special, nor was I mentioned. I’m cackling at the pointless addition of me because he cannot not be a bitch.” 

As of Monday, the Twitter landscape overwhelming reflected the content of Teigen’s response, with the following topics trending: #foulmouthedwife, #PresidentPAB, #PABOTUS and #TeamChrissy.

Meanwhile, Legend issued a more subtle retort to Trump. 

“Imagine being president of a whole country and spending your Sunday night hate-watching MSNBC hoping somebody–ANYBODY–will praise you,” the musician tweeted. “Melania, please praise this man.  He needs you.” 

[Salon]

Trump Threatens to Ban Washington Post Reporters From White House Over Critical Reporting

President Donald Trump and his administration have a tendency to rage at media coverage. Few single reports have drawn such intense acrimony as the Washington Post’s recent story on Trump’s “lost summer,” which reported on a season “defined by self-inflicted controversies and squandered opportunities.”

The piece prompted a rare rebuke in the form of an op-ed, written by White House communications staffers Stephanie Grisham and Hogan Gidley, for the Washington Examiner on Friday.

Trump — who has spent most of his time focused on hurricane maps this week — took aim at the two authors of the Post report, Ashley Parker and Philip Rucker, in a tweet sent out Saturday morning.

“The Washington Post’s @PhilipRucker (Mr. Off the Record) & @AshleyRParker, two nasty lightweight reporters, shouldn’t even be allowed on the grounds of the White House because their reporting is so DISGUSTING & FAKE,” Trump wrote, before touting one of his accomplishments: “Also, add the appointment of MANY Federal Judges this Summer!”

As CNN’s Brian Stelter points out, Trump’s threat to ban the two reporters from the White House is “notable because his admin has tried booting individual reporters twice now, and lost in court both times, as recently as this week.”

He’s referring to CNN political analyst and Playboy reporter Brian Karem, whose press pass was revoked after a verbal spat with Seb Gorka on the White House lawn — until a judge ordered the White House to restore it this week. CNN’s Jim Acosta also sued the White House after it suspended his press pass, which was also restored.

The op-ed from Trump’s comms team criticizing the Post has faced media criticism in its own right. After all, in the piece Grisham and Gidley accuse the Post of failing to report on accomplishments that the Post reported on thoroughly. In an inadvertent display of the Post’s necessity, their piece even links to the paper’s coverage of a topic they complain the paper didn’t cover.

Watch Rucker defend his reporting on MSNBC Friday below:

[Mediaite]

Trump called Fox News correspondent into Oval Office to argue he wasn’t wrong about Alabama

Fox News senior White House correspondent John Roberts had just finished his 3 p.m. live shot on Thursday when President Donald Trump beckoned him into the Oval Office. 

The President had one argument to make, according to an internal Fox email Roberts sent about the meeting provided to CNN.

“He stressed to me that forecasts for Dorian last week had Alabama in the warning cone,” Roberts wrote. “He insisted that it is unfair to say Alabama was never threatened by the storm.”

Roberts’ analysis of the meeting was that the President was “just looking for acknowledgment that he was not wrong for saying that at some point, Alabama was at risk — even if the situation had changed by the time he issued the tweet” on Sunday morning, in which he said the state “will most likely be hit.” The President also provided Roberts with graphics to make his points.

Roberts referred CNN to Fox News’ public relations department when asked for comment, which did not immediately respond to CNN’s request for comment.

The White House also did not immediately respond to CNN’s request for comment. Trump has defended his tweet multiple times throughout the day on Twitter, repeatedly slamming the media for covering his statements and his use of an apparently altered chart showing the storm’s path extending into Alabama.

“Just as I said, Alabama was originally projected to be hit. The Fake News denies it!” Trump tweeted on Thursday, along with graphics from the National Weather Service from last week — days before his tweet — showing Alabama had a small chance of experiencing some effects from Dorian. By the time Trump tweeted, those forecasts had changed.

A White House aide familiar with the Oval Office meeting with Roberts said that Trump also voiced his displeasure about Fox News anchor Shepard Smith’s skeptical reporting about the Alabama map.

The President summoned Roberts “to hit back at Shepard Smith,” the White House aide said.

Roberts claimed in his email that he pointed out to the President that by the time of his tweet warning Alabama and other states of the storm — 10:51 am ET on Sunday — Dorian’s projected trajectory had moved much farther east and was no longer including any part of Alabama.

The President “seemed to agree that the forecast track had moved — but he was adamant that at some point, Alabama was at risk,” Roberts wrote. “He also reminded that on occasions in the past, forecast tracks have changed dramatically.”

As the President’s homeland security and counterterror adviser Rear Adm. Peter Brown claimed in a statement issued late Thursday afternoon, Roberts said that in his visit to the Oval Office he learned that Trump on Sunday had been shown a graphic showing Hurricane Dorian proceeding north through Florida and touching the southeastern tip of Alabama with tropical storm force winds.

A White House source told CNN on Thursday that Trump personally directed Brown to issue the statement. Brown reports to national security adviser John Bolton but Bolton did not ask Brown to release the statement, the source said.

[CNN]

Trump defends Alabama forecast using old Dorian map with disclaimer

In a Wednesday afternoon tweet, President Trump shared a week-old hurricane graphic showing the various model runs for Dorian before it had even slammed into the Bahamas.

“This was the originally projected path of the Hurricane in its early stages. As you can see, almost all models predicted it to go through Florida also hitting Georgia and Alabama. I accept the Fake News apologies!” Trump said in the tweet, referencing the flak he has taken for having warned Alabama against the hurricane.

As the South Florida Water Management District plot shows, the president is correct to say early forecasts did acknowledge Dorian could have swept across the Florida Peninsula toward southeast Alabama.

However, meteorologists, journalists, and politicians have condemned the president for providing outdated information. He first warned Alabama could be hit “harder than anticipated” on Sunday, days after it became clear Dorian would instead ride along the East Coast away from Alabama.

The National Weather Station in Birmingham even put out a tweet after Trump first mentioned Alabama, asserting the state would not see “any impacts” from Dorian because it was projected to remain too far east.

As for his latest tweet, Trump did not mention that the hurricane model plot was dated Aug. 28 and his first warning for Alabama was on Sept. 1.

And what’s more, below the graphic is a disclaimer that says, “NHC Advisories and County Emergency Management Statements supersede this product. This graphic should compliment, not replace, NHC discussions. If anything on this graphic causes confusion, ignore the entire product.”

[Washington Examiner]

Reality

Here is the NWS map at the time of Trump’s tweet on September 1st.

White House Posts Twitter Video Responding to WaPo Report on Trump’s ‘Lost Summer’

With fall upon us, the Washington Post put out a report this past weekend on President Donald Trump‘s “lost summer.”

Per the Post:

What followed [July 4th] was what some Trump advisers and allies characterize as a lost summer defined by self-inflicted controversies and squandered opportunities. Trump leveled racist attacks against four congresswomen of color dubbed “the Squad.” He derided the majority-black city of Baltimore as “rat and rodent infested.” His anti-immigrant rhetoric was echoed in a missive that authorities believe a mass shooting suspect posted. His visits to Dayton, Ohio, and El Paso after the gun massacres in those cities served to divide rather than heal.

Trump’s economy also began to falter, with the markets ping-ponging based on the president’s erratic behavior. His trade war with China grew more acrimonious. His whipsaw diplomacy at the Group of Seven summit left allies uncertain about American leadership. The president returned from his visit to France in a sour mood, frustrated by what he felt was unfairly negative news coverage of his trip.

Trump himself responded to the Post on Monday:

And now the official White House Twitter account has posted a video responding to that Washington Post report. It starts by asking, “Did the Amazon Washington Post take the summer off?”

It displays a big FAKE NEWS graphic before going through a list of the president’s accomplishments during the summer, touting, for example, a number of executive orders he signed and the success of the G7 summit.

White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham shared the video and added, “The WH provided @washingtonpost more than TWO DOZEN examples of all @realDonaldTrump has done over the summer, but they chose to put out a hit piece full of opinion rather than fact.”

[Mediaite]

Trump refused to back down from his claim that Hurricane Dorian could hit Alabama, even after the National Weather Service said it was false

US President Donald Trump has refused to back down from his claim that Hurricane Dorian was forecast to hit Alabama, even as the National Weather Service on Sunday rejected the president’s assertion.

In a tweet Monday, Trump focused his attack on the ABC White House correspondent Jonathan Karl, who had reported on the network’s “World News Tonight” show that Trump on Sunday had “misstated the storm’s possible trajectory.”

“I suggested yesterday at FEMA that, along with Florida, Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina, even Alabama could possibly come into play, which WAS true,” the president tweeted Monday.

“They made a big deal about this when in fact, under certain original scenarios, it was in fact correct that Alabama could have received some ‘hurt.’ Always good to be prepared! But the Fake News is only interested in demeaning and belittling. Didn’t play my whole sentence or statement. Bad people!”

The NWS office in Birmingham, Alabama, on Sunday had unambiguously rejected the president’s assertion that Alabama was in the storm’s path.

On Sunday morning, Trump tweeted: “In addition to Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama, will most likely be hit (much) harder than anticipated.”

The NWS tweeted a response just 20 minutes later: “Alabama will NOT see any impacts from Dorian. We repeat, no impacts from Hurricane Dorian will be felt across Alabama. The system will remain too far east.”

The veteran meteorologist James Spann also rejected the president’s claim, tweeting Sunday: “Alabama will not be impacted by Dorian in any way.”

The White House has not responded to a request from Business Insider on the source of the president’s claim.

Despite the NWS’ correction, Trump continued to claim on Sunday that Alabama could be hit, once in remarks to reporters on the South Lawn of the White House and later in remarks at a meeting with officials from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

In its latest update on the storm, the National Hurricane Center said early Tuesday that Dorian was stationary just north of the Bahamasbut that a sharp turn northward could cause it to directly hit the coast of Florida.

Florida, Georgia, and the Carolinas have all declared states of emergency in response to the storm, with mandatory evacuations affecting more than 1 million people in coastal areas.

[Business Insider]

After criticism by Paul Krugman, Trump just lashed out at American labor on Labor Day

For a newspaper that he constantly describes as “failing” and “Fake News,” Donald Trump pays an awful lot of attention to The New York Times.

A series of tweets by the paper’s Nobel Prize-winning economics columnist Paul Krugman referenced an article in the newspaper on how Trump’s establishment of “Opportunity Zones” — part of the Republican tax bill that gave billions in tax cuts to the already wealthy while offering pittances to everyone else — primarily benefited Trump’s associates and benefactors in a swampy mass of corruption as usual.

Krugman’s strong indictment of the Trump administration’s tax policies — coupled with The New York Times’ exposure of the dark underbelly of billionaire tax evasion schemes — was enough to set the president off on an epic Twitter rant, one not likely to earn him the Nobel Prize in economics that his critic already possesses.

With growing predictions of an impending economic recession looming, Trump defended his economic policies with the usual parcel of lies he offers in defense of his economic stewardship to his gullible followers.

Nothing says “truthiness” like a quote praising Trump from Fox News, at least in the president’s own eyes.

Trump went directly after Krugman in his next tweet.

Trump’s criticism of Krugman’s economic advice would certainly carry more weight if the figures he used in his tweet were anything close to the reality of the stock market performance.

No, the stock market hasn’t grown “over 50%” since Trump took office. The S&P 500 was up around 29% since the beginning of the president’s term until mid-August of this year — a figure that compares negatively to the index’s performance of a 46% gain at the same point in the Obama presidency.

Yet, any rise in the market during the Trump administration also ignores the fact that only slightly more than 50% of Americans actually own any stocks whatsoever and that the richest 10% of households controlled 84% of the total value of the stock market.

Trump says that anyone following Krugman’s advice would be doing “VERY poorly,” but their opinions about that advice will change dramatically when the poor market fundamentals caused by Trump’s trade wars and tariff impositions lead to an inevitable market collapse and wipe out the paper wealth that was generated during his term.

Unfortunately for America and the global economy, Trump is the one who doesn’t “get it.” With the U.S. Treasury bond yield curve still inverted — a historical sign that a market crash is imminent as investors flee the stock market to the safety of government bonds — chances are good that the US will enter a recession before the 2020 elections are held.

At that point, no amount of tweeted lies by Donald Trump will help reverse the economic damage his policies have caused. The smart money is following Krugman’s advice while the rich continue to exploit Trump’s tax policies to siphon money from government services that the rest of us depend on while driving up government debt to make their case to cut back or even eliminate those services.

[Occupy Democrats]

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