Tag: fake news

Trump Twitter-Rages About Pardons and At Media

President Donald Trump was up bright and early Saturday morning, attacking the media for reporting that Attorney General Jeff Sessions discussed Trump campaign issues with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak before the 2016 election.

The report was based on intelligence sources, which upset the president who called it a “INTELLIGENCE LEAK,” while attacking the “Amazon Washington Post.”

No content with that, Trump then accused the New York Times of aiding “the single most wanted terrorist, Al-Baghdadi” — but without providing any details.

“The Failing New York Times foiled U.S. attempt to kill the single most wanted terrorist,Al-Baghdadi.Their sick agenda over National Security,” Trump tweeted.

Trump later tweeted that he has “complete power” to issue pardons, writing, “While all agree the U. S. President has the complete power to pardon, why think of that when only crime so far is LEAKS against us.FAKE NEWS.”

[Raw Story]

Reality

Let’s take every one of Trump’s claims and review each one and review the outright lies and falsehoods.

Comey illegally leaked classified information

Trump is repeating a false claim made by Fox News, that Comey gave classified memos to his friend to leak to the press. This was so untrue that Fox News issued a rare correction stating they were wrong. Trump is simply repeating this already debunked assertion.

New York Times foiled U.S. attempt to kill Al-Baghdadi

CBS thinks they were able to figure out what this was about. While Mr. Trump did not provide any evidence for his accusation, the tweet came about 20 minutes after a segment about leaks aired on Fox News’ “Fox and Friends.” At one point, the chyron read “NYT FOILS U.S. ATTEMPT TO TAKE OUT AL-BAGHDADI.”

So Trump was just again parroting what he saw on Fox News.

A President has complete power to pardon

Amidst the Russia investigation, Donald Trump is looking to see if he can legally pardon his family and even pardon himself.

This excellent podcast from The Brookings Institution discusses the political legitimacy and risks associated with a President going full authoritarian on his powers to pardon.

In short, a president can pardon himself except during an impeachment, has pardoned their own family in the past, and a pardon has never been overturned by the courts.

However, looking into pardoning yourself and doing things like investigating Robert Mueller, who is investigating you, gives an immediate impression that you’re guilty as hell.

Trump Rages at Media for Reporting Previously Undisclosed Meeting with Putin

President Donald Trump scolded the media Tuesday night in a pair of tweets defending his apparently hourlong, previously undisclosed meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin earlier this month.

The meeting took place at the G-20 economic summit in Hamburg, Germany, hours after the two leaders met in a highly publicized formal meeting that lasted for more than two hours.

News of the second conversation, which occurred at a private dinner at the G-20 Couples’ Dinner, reignited concerns over Trump’s relationship with Russia.

“Fake News story of secret dinner with Putin is ‘sick.’ All G 20 leaders, and spouses, were invited by the Chancellor of Germany. Press knew!” Trump said on Twitter.

“The Fake News is becoming more and more dishonest! Even a dinner arranged for top 20 leaders in Germany is made to look sinister!” he tweeted seven minutes later.

However, as several journalists pointed out, the existence of the private dinner was never in question. Coverage of the conversation focused on its unusual length and the fact that there is no government record of it. Trump did not use an American translator during the interaction, instead relying on Putin’s translator.

Ian Bremmer, president of geopolitical risk firm Eurasia Group, said other attendees were shocked by the conversation.

“Pretty much everyone at the dinner thought this was really weird, that here is the president of the United States, who clearly wants to display that he has a better relationship personally with President Putin than any of us, or simply doesn’t care,” Bremmer told the New York Times. “They were flummoxed, they were confused and they were startled.”

The White House released a statement saying “all the leaders circulated throughout the room and spoke with one another freely.”

“There was no ‘second meeting’ between President Trump and President Putin, just a brief conversation at the end of a dinner,” the statement continued. “The insinuation that the White House has tried to ‘hide’ a second meeting is false, malicious and absurd.”

[Business Insider]

Reality

The specter of an inexperienced president, engaged alone in a lengthy, private exchange with the cunning and seasoned leader of an adversarial nation defies every rule of diplomacy and good sense. Such scenarios play to the advantage of the other side — leaving ours prone to manipulation.

And it is highly unusual for a president to have such a conversation without, at a minimum, his own translator to avoid any misinterpretation on either side.

Trump defends Donald Trump Jr. in Sunday morning tweetstorm

President Donald Trump defended his eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., on Twitter Sunday morning amid mounting questions about his son’s meeting with a Russian lawyer during the 2016 campaign, implying a media double standard in its treatment of Hillary Clinton.

“HillaryClinton can illegally get the questions to the Debate & delete 33,000 emails but my son Don is being scorned by the Fake News Media?” Trump wrote.

The President’s latest tweet on the matter comes as questions continue to swirl about the June 2016 meeting, which included at least eight people, including Trump Jr., Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, then-campaign manager Paul Manafort and the Russian lawyer, sources familiar with the meeting told CNN. Trump Jr. took the meeting on the premise that he would get information from the lawyer that would be damaging to Clinton’s campaign, according to emails Trump Jr. posted on Twitter last week.

The meeting has put fresh scrutiny on the actions of Trump’s family and campaign officials as federal investigators probe whether the campaign colluded with Russians in Moscow’s attempt to influence the 2016 election in Trump’s favor.

The President also commended ex-campaign adviser Michael Caputo for publicly denying knowledge of any alleged contacts between the campaign and Russia after testifying privately to the House intelligence committee Friday.

“Thank you to former campaign adviser Michael Caputo for saying so powerfully that there was no Russian collusion in our winning campaign,” Trump tweeted.

Caputo, a former top adviser to Donald Trump’s campaign with strong ties to Russia, said at a press conference after his testimony that “there was absolutely not discussion of Russia” in the Trump campaign while he was there.

“I spent my time in front of the committee detailing the fact that I had no contact with Russians, that I never heard of anyone with the Trump campaign talking with Russians, that I was never asked questions about my time in Russia, that I never even spoke to anyone about Russia, that I never heard the word ‘Russia,’ and we did not use Russian dressing,” Caputo told reporters. “There was absolutely no discussion of Russia on the Trump campaign ’til the day I left.”

Caputo resigned from the campaign on June 20, 2016 after celebrating the dismissal of then-campaign manager Corey Lewandowski with a tweet that said, “Ding Dong the witch is dead.” Manafort replaced Lewandowski as chairman.

Trump also continued his broadside of the news media in his Sunday morning tweets, claiming without providing evidence that news agencies use phony unnamed sources in their stories.

“With all of its phony unnamed sources & highly slanted & even fraudulent reporting, #Fake News is DISTORTING DEMOCRACY in our country!” Trump tweeted.

[CNN]

Trump Rips ‘AmazonWashingtonPost’ as Fake News

President Trump on Wednesday attacked The Washington Post and its owner, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, for its coverage of him and his administration.

“The #AmazonWashingtonPost, sometimes referred to as the guardian of Amazon not paying internet taxes (which they should) is FAKE NEWS!” the president tweeted Wednesday morning.

The president is escalating his attacks on the news media as he struggles to advance his agenda in Congress and grapples with the wide-ranging probe into whether his associates colluded with Russia in its efforts to influence the 2016 presidential election.

Trump’s broadside against the Post came after it published an article revealing that fake Time magazine covers with Trump’s photo hung at several of his properties.

It also ran a piece headlined “Who’s afraid of Trump? Not enough Republicans — at least for now.” It details the president’s strained efforts to get wavering GOP senators behind the Senate plan to repeal and replace ObamaCare.

He also went after The New York Times earlier Wednesday over a similar piece.

“The failing @nytimes writes false story after false story about me. They don’t even call to verify the facts of a story. A Fake News Joke!” he tweeted. “Some of the Fake News Media likes to say that I am not totally engaged in healthcare. Wrong, I know the subject well & want victory for U.S.”

In his Post tweet, Trump appeared to reference Amazon’s past efforts to keep online purchases tax free. But the retailer does collect sales tax on purchases across the U.S.

Breaking with practice of past presidential nominees, Trump refused to release his tax returns during the 2016 campaign.

[The Hill]

Trump on CNN Retraction: ‘What About All the Other Phony Stories They Do?’

President Trump blasted CNN early Tuesday after the network retracted a story published last week tying a top Trump ally to a Russian investment bank.

“Wow, CNN had to retract big story on ‘Russia,’ with 3 employees forced to resign,” Trump tweeted.

“What about all the other phony stories they do? FAKE NEWS!”

The president’s comments come after three CNN staffers resigned following the network’s retraction.

Thomas Frank, the author of the story, Eric Lichtblau, an editor in the CNN investigative unit that ran the story, and Lex Haris, who oversaw the unit, have all left CNN, the network reported Monday.

The retracted story connected Anthony Scaramucci, a top proponent of Trump, to a Russian investment fund run by a bank controlled by the Kremlin.

“In the aftermath of the retraction of a story published on CNN.com, CNN has accepted the resignations of the employees involved in the story’s publication,” a spokesman said Monday.

An internal CNN investigation reportedly found normal editorial processes weren’t followed in the stories editing and publication.

Trump often hits on CNN and refers to stories from the network as “fake news.”

Trump early Tuesday also retweeted a modified image of the network’s logo that refers to CNN as FNN, or the Fake News Network.

[The Hill]

Reality

So if Trump wants to play the morality game, when is he or his staff going to resign over the phony stories he pushed? Because by the time of this article we’ve cataloged 312 complete lies from Trump since his campaign began.

Some examples of phony stories by Trump include:

  • Claiming his inauguration crowd sizes were the largest of all-time.
  • Claiming Barack Obama “wiretapped” him.
  • Claiming he had “tapes” of his private conversation with James Comey where he asked to drop the FBI’s Russia investigation.
  • Claiming at various rallies and in interviews for over four months that he donated $1 million dollars to veterans charities, cutting a check only when a journalist uncovered his lie.
  • Claiming he did not personally know reporter Serge Kovaleski, after telling people “Now the poor guy, you should see this guy,” then mocked his disability.
  • Claiming “thousands and thousands” of people in New Jersey cheered during the 9/11 terror attacks.
  • Claiming President Barack Obama was born in Kenya.

You can take the high road and resign at any time.

 

 

 

 

 

 

‘That’s Just Fake!’: Sean Spicer Implodes While Sparring with Reporters About ‘Fake News’

White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer got into a heated debate with reporters on Tuesday when they confronted him with President Donald Trump’s accusations about them producing “fake news.”

When asked by a reporter to list an example of “fake news,” Spicer pointed to one tweet by a BBC reporter that incorrectly claimed that Trump was not wearing a translation earpiece while talking with foreign leaders over the weekend.

When the BBC reporter realized his mistake, he issued a public correction less than two hours later, although this wasn’t enough to stop Spicer from chastising him regardless.

“On Friday, the president was having a great discussion at the G7 and someone from the BBC, and ultimately an incoming reporter for the New York Times retweeted that the president was being rude by disrespecting the Italian prime minister,” Spicer complained. “When in fact, you all in all of the meetings watched the president with that one earpiece that’s been used by all the other presidents… That’s just fake!”

Reporters in the room pushed back, however, by noting that the one reporter’s false tweet did not generate any stories at major newspapers and was quickly corrected.

“I was asked to give an example, and I did it,” a testy Spicer shot back.

When another reporter again pointed out that one false tweet from a BBC reporter didn’t drive news coverage for the president’s trip, Spicer chided them for saying the tweet wasn’t a big deal.

“Well, thank you, I appreciate it, you get to decide what is big and what is not,” Spicer said sarcastically. “A lot of things have been pushed out based on unnamed unaccountable sources that is very troubling.”

[Raw Story]

Media

On first day back, Trump lashes out at “fake news media”

Hours after returning from his first trip abroad as president, President Trump tweeted Sunday about “fake news media” and White House leaks.

“It is my opinion that many of the leaks coming out of the White House are fabricated lies made up by the #FakeNews media,” Mr. Trump said in a series of tweets.

“Whenever you see the words ‘sources say’ in the fake news media, and they don’t mention names… it is very possible that those sources don’t exist but are made up by fake news writers. #FakeNews is the enemy!” he tweeted.

On Sunday night, Mr. Trump followed up by tweeting that the “fake news media” disparges his use of social media “because they don’t want America to hear the real story!”

The president unleashed his apparent frustration as he faces a slew of challenges upon returning home from his nine-day trip to Europe and the Middle East.

[CBS News]

 

 

 

 

 

Trump Blasts ‘Fake News’ CNN’s Polls, CNN Fact-Checks Him Live

President Donald Trump attacked CNN, one of his favorite media targets, Monday morning for continuing to conduct polls even though “their election polls were a WAY OFF disaster.”

Trump and other officials from his White House have been frequent critics of polling, emboldened by the president’s surprise victory that went against the predictions of nearly every 2016 poll. CNN, in a poll conducted several weeks before the election with the market research firm ORC International, released a poll showing Democrat Hillary Clinton with a 5-point lead over Trump nationwide.

“Just heard Fake News CNN is doing polls again despite the fact that their election polls were a WAY OFF disaster. Much higher ratings at Fox,” Trump wrote on Twitter, offering a plug for his preferred cable network, Fox News, where he is the recipient of generally favorable coverage.

While Trump’s social media post indicated that CNN had taken a hiatus from polling following the election, the cable network has actually continued to conduct regular polls. One survey, conducted earlier this month, showed deep divisions over key provisions in the Affordable Care Act but strong bipartisan support for a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants who meet certain requirements.

A CNN poll conducted in January and released just before Trump’s inauguration showed diminishing confidence among respondents in his transition team and one released in early February began tracking his presidential approval rating.

(h/t Politico)

Update

Mediaite reports CNN immediately fact checked Trump on air. Chris Cuomo took notice of Trump’s tweet, and Poppy Harlow reminded Trump on air that “they’re not our polls, they’re Gallup polls.”

“It’s very different to poll people’s opinion of a sitting president as to how they may go vote,” Harlow said. Rucker expressed hope that Trump was watching, to which Cuomo dryly responded, “oh, he’s watching.”

Trump Accuses German Reporter of Citing ‘Fake News’

President Donald Trump bristled at a question from a German reporter Friday afternoon who asked about his “America first” trade policies and disdain for the media, remarking that the reporter must have been reading “fake news.”

“Mr. President, ‘America first,’ don’t you think this is going to weaken also the European Union?” the reporter asked at Trump’s bilateral press conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel. “And why are you so scared of diversity in the news and in the media, that you speak so often of ‘fake news’ and that things after all, in the end, cannot be proven, for example the fact that you have been wiretapped by Mr. Obama?”

“Nice friendly reporter,” Trump replied amid scattered laughter in the White House’s East Room. He did not directly address the reporter’s question about his disdain for the media, nor did he address a portion of that same reporter’s question to Merkel, which referenced past comments from the chancellor about walls coming down in seeking her thoughts on Trump’s policies.

The president did insist that he is “not an isolationist” but that he will insist, as he did on the campaign trail, that the U.S. is treated fairly in the international marketplace and does not fall victim to the pitfalls he blamed for job losses across the country.

“The United States has been treated very, very unfairly by many countries over the years and that’s going to stop. But I’m not an isolationist. I’m a free trader but I’m also a fair trader and our free trade has led to a lot of bad things happening,” Trump said, noting America’s significant trade deficit and the accompanying accumulation of debt. “We’re a very powerful company — country. We’re a very strong, very strong country. We’ll soon be at a level that we perhaps have never been before.”

“I am not an isolationist by any stretch of the imagination,” the president continued. “I don’t know what newspaper you’re reading, but I guess that would be another example of, as you say, fake news.”

(h/t Politico)

Trump Staffers Plant Alternative Facts to Stop Him From Tweeting Them

Several days have passed since the last news story appeared filled with hair-raising reports from inside the White House attesting to Donald Trump’s utter unfitness for office. The latest dispatch from the child monarchy of Donald Trump comes via Politico’s Tara Palmeri, who conveys the methods used by Trump’s staffers to manipulate his delicate and damaged psyche.

The thrust of the story revolves around the constant struggle to prevent Trump from tweeting out angry or false things that degrade his standing with the public by opening up a window into his mind. Palmeri, who spoke with six former Trump campaign officials, discovered that their method for controlling the president is based on a combination of his pathologies:

1. Media criticism makes Trump irrationally angry. The president’s habit of firing off replies to critical media outlets is well known, but Palmeri provides more details of his vulnerability to psychic distress when presented with criticism:

One Trump associate said it’s important to show Trump deference and offer him praise and respect, as that will lead him to more often listen. And If Trump becomes obsessed with a grudge, aides need to try and change the subject, friends say.

2. Trump does not control his own print-media diet. Other than a handful of legacy newspapers and magazines that he reads in print, the rest of the president’s news diet is spoon-fed to him by his staff:

He rarely reads anything online, instead preferring print newspapers — especially his go-to, the New York Times — and reading material his staff brought to his desk.

3. Trump does control his own television-media diet. He surfs cable for hours, a habit that can feed into his self-destructive mental state:

Leaving him alone for several hours can prove damaging, because he consumes too much television and gripes to people outside the White House.

4. Trump’s staff manipulates him by presenting him with favorable “news.” Trump tweets his own message out of a belief that his allies are not defending him with sufficient vigor, so he can he dissuaded from doing so if he sees favorable coverage in the printed-out news collection handed to him:

“He saw there was activity so he didn’t feel like he had to respond,” the former campaign official said. “He sends out these tweets when he feels like people aren’t responding enough for him.”…

“If candidate Trump was upset about unfair coverage, it was productive to show him that he was getting fair coverage from outlets that were persuadable,” said former communications director Sam Nunberg.

5. If there was not enough favorable coverage available, Trump’s aides would plant favorable stories in conservative media. Palmeri reports several such examples of planted stories in the right-wing media:

During another damage control mission, when former Miss Universe Alicia Machado took to the airwaves to call out Trump for calling her “Miss Piggy” and “Miss Housekeeping,” the communications team scrambled to place a story in conservative friendly outlets like Fox News, the Washington Examiner, the Daily Caller and Breitbart.

“Alternative media” describes media that will report the Trump administration’s “alternative facts.” The Washington Examiner and Fox News contain a mix of legitimate reporting with conservative propaganda. Infowars is a fever-swamp conspiracy site run by Alex Jones, who promotes hoaxes like “Pizzagate,” insists the Sandy Hook shooting was faked, is suspicious of fluoridated water, and so on. Jones is barking mad. Breitbart and the Daily Caller lie in the middle ground between normal, conservative, Fox News–crazy, and Alex Jones–crazy. (Jim Rutenberg recently noted the overlap between Jones’s conspiratorial beliefs and Trump’s, but the administration refused to tell him that Trump followed Jones’s claims. Now Palmeri has confirmed it.)

And so Trump’s staff essentially outsources the job of circulating pro-Trump alternative facts to the right-wing media in order to dissuade the president from doing it himself and thereby tarnishing his brand. The president is therefore not only the subject but also the object of his own staff’s propaganda campaign.

Palmeri also reports a fascinating detail about the efforts to confirm Neil Gorsuch. The nominee’s comments to Senator Richard Blumenthal expressing dismay with Trump’s attacks on the judiciary were planned, out of the calculation that demonstrating Gorsuch’s independence from Trump and willingness to oppose his attacks on the judiciary would ease his path to confirmation. “White House officials anticipated that Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch would distance himself from Trump’s attack and thought the planned comments would help the nominee’s bid, said a person with knowledge of the conversations,” she reports. Alas, Trump was not privy to the plan and, filled with rage, fired off a series of tweets attacking Blumenthal:

Trump himself didn’t like Gorsuch’s “disheartening” and “demoralizing” critique. He fired off a tweet criticizing Sen. Richard Blumenthal, the Connecticut Democrat who repeated the comments, digging up a past controversy over the senator’s military record and accusing him of incorrectly characterizing Gorsuch’s comments. Afterwards, Blumenthal and other Democrats criticized Trump and said the president’s comments would hurt his nominee’s chances. Asked if aides and advisers liked the tweet, one White House official said sarcastically: “What do you think?”

(h/t New York Magazine)

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