Tag: NBC

Trump lashes out at networks, newspapers: All I see is ‘hatred of me’


President Trump late Sunday lashed out at much of the media over their coverage of his administration’s response to the coronavirus outbreak, claiming that all he’s seen is “hatred of me.”

“I watch and listen to the Fake News, CNN, MSDNC, ABC, NBC, CBS, some of FOX (desperately & foolishly pleading to be politically correct), the [New York Times], & the [Washington Post], and all I see is hatred of me at any cost,” Trump said on Twitter. 

“Don’t they understand that they are destroying themselves?” he asked. 

Trump has regularly attacked the press since entering the White House, often referring to reporters as “fake news” and the “enemy of the people.” Last week, Trump railed against an NBC reporter, calling him “terrible,” after being asked what he’d say to Americans who are scared. 

His tirade against the group of news outlets came after a day in which several state and federal lawmakers called on the president to use his authority to help health systems being overwhelmed by a surge of patients. 

Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D) said on CNN that states were overpaying for medical equipment and were being forced to compete with each other for much-needed resources. Rather than a competition, it “should have been a coordinated effort by the federal government,” he said. 

“It’s a wild, wild West out there, and indeed [we’re] overpaying for [personal protective equipment] because of that competition,” Pritzker said. 

Trump railed against Pritzker and CNN just hours later, tweeting that they “shouldn’t be blaming the Federal Government for their own shortcomings.”

Pritzker tweeted in response that Trump “wasted precious months when you could’ve taken action to protect Americans & Illinoisans.”

“Get off Twitter & do your job,” Pritzker said. 

Speaking at a White House briefing on Sunday, Trump said that he would reject calls to ramp up production of critical medical supplies through the use of the Defense Production Act.

He said that he’s used the law as a source of leverage in negotiations with companies to persuade them to manufacture equipment, but he contended that it would nationalize industries and that he was not in favor it. The Defense Production Act does not nationalize industry, but it does allow the government to direct private businesses to make certain supplies. “We’re a country not based on nationalizing our business. Call a person over in Venezuela,” Trump told reporters. “How did nationalization of their businesses work out? Not too well.”

[The Hill]

Gruesome Video of Fake Trump Killing Media in Mass Shooting Played at One of His Resorts

At a time when our nation is facing an epidemic of mass shootings, supporters of President Donald Trump showed a violent depiction of a fake Trump massacring members of the news media using a gun and other weapons at a conference held at one of the president’s resorts, the New York Times reported Sunday night.

American Priority, a group that supports the president, hosted the conference at Trump National Doral Miami. Former White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the president’s son Donald Trump Jr. and Florida Governor Rick DeSantis were all scheduled to speak at the event. But Huckabee Sanders and a source close to Trump Jr. denied either saw the video.

Bloomberg technology reporter William Turton surfaced a video matching the description from the Times on YouTube. The video appears to have been uploaded by YouTube account TheGeekzTeam in July 2018, and the account has posted other videos doctored to make it look like Trump is violently killing his enemies. Although Turton said he has not yet been able to confirm the YouTube video was the same one played at the conference, the details in the video as described by the Times line up, although portions like the Barack Obama interview at the end of the video were not reported to have been shown.

In the video,a man with Trump’s head superimposed on his body goes into a building labeled the “Church of Fake News” where people inside are labeled with logos of major news outlets including Vox, Politico, the Washington Post, HuffPost, ABC and NBC covering their heads. Trump then opens fire, killing numerous media outlets including Vox, Politico and NPR, in addition to activist group Black Lives Matter. The fake Trump begins his rampage using a gun but later switches to a wooden stake and a knife. Also in the video are Hillary Clinton, Maxine Waters, Bernie Sanders, Barack Obama, John McCain and Rosie O’Donnell — all of them are slaughtered by the killer Trump. The mass murder ends with the president driving a wooden stake into the head of a person depicted as the church’s minister with a CNN logo covering their face as DJ Khaled’s “All I Do Is Win” plays in the background.

The footage, the Times said, was taken and doctored from a church massacre scene in the dark comedy “Kingsman: The Secret Service.”

Trump’s presidency has been marked by criticism of the news media, and recently he has even been vocally critical of his beloved Fox News. The president himself has shared a video depicting himself as violent toward the media, tweeting out a doctored video of him body slamming a man with a CNN logo over his head in 2017. Trump has also turned his ire toward reporters during his political rallies, spurring his supporters to taunt and threaten members of the media covering him.

When we are barely a year out from the tragic Capital Gazette shooting in Maryland that killed five of the newspaper’s staff not to mention other recent mass shootings in churches, synagogues and mosques, videos like this are particularly dangerous, especially when they are broadcast at events even loosely affiliated with the president and on property he owns.

[Rolling Stone]

Media

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ZeGUqVZwzg

Trump Rips NBC for ‘Negative’ Coverage: ‘I Made a Lot of Money’ for Them With The Apprentice

President Donald Trump sat down with C-SPAN’s Steve Scully for an interview that ended up touching on the media in a few different ways.

As Scully asked the president about his Twitter habits and whether he regrets it, Trump talked about using Twitter as a tool to communicate directly with the people and hit back at the “dishonest” news.

He called CNN “100 percent negative” and then went on a tear against NBC:

“NBC is negative. I made a lot of money for NBC with The Apprentice. It was a tremendous success at a time when they didn’t have any successes. But they forgot about that very quickly. And they wanted to extend me… I wanted to run for president, I think I’ve done a great job.”

[Mediaite]

Media

Trump Again Lashes Out at Fox News for Not Sufficiently Adoring Him

Donald Trump’s growing annoyance at his favorite news network was on display once again Sunday night, when he ripped Fox News for failing to lavish him with sufficient praise.

The tirade began early Sunday evening with tweets targetting the network’s “weekend anchors.” Watching them, Trump wrote, is worse than watching the “Trump haters” on CNN and MSNBC. He also took a swipe at the New York Times before concluding that “@FoxNews is changing fast, but they forgot the people who got them there!” That’s his way of saying he’s responsible for the network’s success and they should thank him with fawning coverage.

The reason for Trump’s outburst isn’t clear. Maybe he saw soccer fans chanting “fuck Trump” during a Fox News live shot earlier Sunday. Maybe he didn’t like seeing Democratic candidate Michael Bennet on Fox News Sunday. Maybe, as Media Matters’s Matthew Gertz suggested, Trump was inspired by the network twice citing a New York Times report about abhorrent conditions in an immigration detention center.

More difficult to explain are the tweets that came later in the evening. Trump went after Shepard Smith, his most vocal critic on Fox News, and Donna Brazile, the former chair of the Democratic National Committee, who recently joined the network. As Gertz pointed out though, Brazile hasn’t been on Fox for a week.

All of this comes as Trump is being courted by a right-wing TV network that promises to be more sycophantic than Fox News ever was. One America News has been called the “Ultimate ‘Pro-Trump’ Network” and Trump has reportedly been tuning into the network more than ever. But apparently not this weekend.

[New York Magazine]

Trump: ‘Unfair’ coverage should be tested in courts

President Trump early Sunday ripped “one sided” and “unfair” media coverage, saying it should be tested in courts.

“A REAL scandal is the one sided coverage, hour by hour, of networks like NBC & Democrat spin machines like Saturday Night Live,” he tweeted.

“It is all nothing less than unfair news coverage and Dem commercials. Should be tested in courts, can’t be legal? Only defame & belittle! Collusion?”

Trump posted the tweet after NBC’s “Saturday Night Live” pondered a world in which the president was not elected in its latest cold open.

The president also knocked the sketch comedy show after its season premiere earlier this year, saying it was “just a political ad for the Dems.”

Trump often labels negative coverage “fake news” and calls the media the “enemy of the people.”

In October, he blamed what he deemed unfair media coverage for causing “great anger” in the country.

The president said in a pair of tweets following a violent week of mail bombs and a shooting that killed 11 people at a Pittsburgh synagogue that the “Fake News Media” is “the true Enemy of the People.”

“There is great anger in our Country caused in part by inaccurate, and even fraudulent, reporting of the news. The Fake News Media, the true Enemy of the People, must stop the open & obvious hostility & report the news accurately & fairly,” Trump wrote.

“That will do much to put out the flame of Anger and Outrage and we will then be able to bring all sides together in Peace and Harmony,” he added.

Trump in September repeated his suggestion that NBC’s “license” should be challenged. In a tweet, he attacked the network’s “journalistic standards” following reports that it had passed on a damning exposé about Harvey Weinstein.

“NBC FAKE NEWS, which is under intense scrutiny over their killing the Harvey Weinstein story, is now fumbling around making excuses for their probably highly unethical conduct,” the president wrote.

“I have long criticized NBC and their journalistic standards-worse than even CNN. Look at their license?” he added.

Broadcasting licenses are granted to individual stations instead of networks like NBC,  however.

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai repeatedly said last year that the FCC would not revoke those licenses on the basis of a station’s content.

Satire is also protected by the First Amendment.

[The Hill]

Trump Responds to Chuck Todd Op-Ed on Anti-Media Rhetoric: I Fought the Press and ‘WON’

Donald Trump attacked Meet the Press host Chuck Todd tonight on Twitter after the NBC correspondant penned an op-ed condemning anti-press rhetoric, as the president told the NBC News reporter that he “won” in the fight against the media.

“Sleepy Eyes Chuck Todd of Fake NBC News said it’s time for the Press to stop complaining and to start fighting back,” the president tweeted at around 11:00 p.m. on Tuesday night. “Actually Chuck, they’ve been doing that from the day I announced for President. They’ve gone all out, and I WON, and now they’re going CRAZY!”

In Todd’s piece for the Atlantic, the reporter called out the late Roger Ailes and Fox News for fanning the flames of anti-media hatred:

“From the very beginning, Ailes signaled that Fox News would offer an alternative voice, splitting with the conventions of television journalism. Take the word balanced. It sounded harmless enough. But how does one balance facts? A reporting-driven news organization might promise to be accurate, or honest, or comprehensive, or to report stories for an underserved community. But Ailes wasn’t building a reporting-driven news organization. The promise to be “balanced” was a coded pledge to offer alternative explanations, putting commentary ahead of reporting; it was an attack on the integrity of the rest of the media. Fox intended to build its brand the same way Ailes had built the brands of political candidates: by making the public hate the other choice more.”

Todd also named Rush Limbaugh, Matt Drudge, Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingraham, and other conservative media figures as being part of a “new kind of campaign” designed “to destroy the legitimacy of the American news media.”

[Mediaite]

Trump Calls Access Hollywood Tape ‘Illegal,’ Claims He Prepped Lawsuit Against NBC After It Leaked

President Donald Trump claimed NBC broke the law by recording his infamous Access Hollywood tape in which he can be heard bragging about groping women without their consent, as he told the Daily Caller today that it “was illegal what they did.”

Trump said that he believes NBC’s release of the “grab ’em by the pussy” tape was “worse than CNN with Harvey Weinstein,” though it appears that the president meant to say NBC instead of CNN, as the Peacock Network is still in hot water for botching one of the biggest Harvey Weinstein sexual misconduct stories last year.

“NBC is very dishonest in its reporting of me,” Trump added — though, he would not call for the NBC chairman Andy Lack’s job, nor would he demand NBC lose it’s licensing. “[Lack] runs an organization which as far as its reporting on me is very dishonest.”

He went on to call into question the legitimacy of the tape, which was released just weeks before the end of the 2016 presidential race.

“There’s even questions about the tape, there’s many things going on.” Trump said — claiming that it was both “done in a trailer secretly” and “illegal.”

“I had a lawsuit prepared, a lawsuit that was prepared to be filed against NBC because they leaked that tape,” he added.“I had a lawyer hired to bring a suit right after the election ended, but one problem arose. I won the election.”

Trump concluded his thoughts on the subject by saying that he couldn’t sue them because he “won the election,” so there were no damages caused to him.

However, the president did not provide any evidence to back these claims and did not explain why the recording was “illegal.”

[Mediaite]

Trump Tweets About Firing ‘Enemy of the People’ Jeff Zucker and Andy Lack

President Donald Trump has started his day on social media by attacking two cable news outlets known for their consistent critical coverage of the White House.  Trump tweets talking trash on negative coverage has become standard operating procedure under this administration, but tweets discussing (even suggesting!) the firing of presidents of CNN and MSNBC is a new bar that Trump had to surpass.

Trump opened with another attack on cable news outlet CNN, but his latest salvo takes a personal attack at CNN President Jeff Zucker. Seemingly upset with what he sees as the  “hatred and extreme bias” shown by CNN’s coverage, President Trump suggested that parent company AT&T (which recently acquired Time Warner) fire Zucker to save “credibility.”

Trump tweeted:

Not finished, Trump trained his focus on NBC News and its president Andy Lack:

And in case his Twitter followers didn’t get the gist of what he had just tweeted, he stuck the landing with:

There is no denying that much of MSNBC and CNN’s primetime programming has taken a critical look at the White House, but a long-standing journalistic tradition is speaking truth to power. There have been rumors surrounding Lack’s dismissal, however, it’s worth noting that MSNBC is enjoying terrific ratings under the Trump administration. In fact, just last week MSNBC was the highest rated cable news network in primetime, and Morning Joe enjoyed its greatest ratings week ever.

Trump’s animus towards CNN has existed for some time, but his recent pique is almost certainly focused on recent reports in which Michael Cohen’s lawyer Lanny Davis admitted that he has not been truthful as an anonymous source in a CNN report about Trump knowing about the Trump Tower meeting. CNN has stood by their report citing other sources that have confirmed.

The President of the United States is arguably the most powerful position in the world, and for the commander-in-chief to use his power to suggest the firing of Zucker and Lack because of negative coverage is a stunning turn of events that should not be dismissed nor accepted as a “new normal.”

Are the powers-that-be at AT&T and Comcast (parent companies at CNN and NBC News respectively) likely to take President Trump’s negative rhetoric seriously? Most certainly not, and nor should anyone. But therein lies a much bigger problem than the negative coverage of the Trump administration: we have a sitting president that no one takes seriously.

[Mediaite]

Trump Falsely Accuses NBC’s Lester Holt Of Getting ‘Caught Fudging’ Russia Interview

President Donald Trump has accused NBC Nightly News anchor Lester Holt of “fudging” an interview that NBC aired more than a year ago. “When Lester Holt got caught fudging my tape on Russia,” Trump said in a tweet early Thursday morning, providing no evidence to support his claim, “(NBC News was) hurt badly!”

Trump seems to be referring to a May 2017 interview, aired just two days after the president fired FBI director James Comey. In the interview, Trump called Comey “a showboat,” and appeared to reject an official White House explanation for the firing, telling Holt “the Russia thing” was on his mind when he decided to fire Comey. “I just said to myself, I said, ‘you know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made up story, it’s an excuse by the Democrats for having lost an election that they should have won.'”

The interview was sensational enough at the time to be mocked by NBC’s Saturday Night Live, in which Holt, played by Michael Che, thinks he has finally caught the president, only to discover that nothing Trump says matters. “Wait, did I get him? Is this all over? No, I didn’t? Nothing matters? Absolutely nothing matters anymore.”

The real interview aired on Nightly News, and NBC News published an extended version online. Trump offered no explanation of how NBC might have “fudged” the interview, in which the most explosive words came from the president’s own mouth. From the time the interview aired until today, no one has accused Holt of altering the interview–and he was never “caught” or “hurt badly” as a result.

Trump’s attack on NBC came amid a Twitter rant about the media, including personal attacks on the bosses at NBC News and CNN. Trump, who has repeatedly–and falsely–claimed that CNN chief Jeff Zucker was about to be fired, on Tuesday urged AT&T to dismiss Zucker, who recently extended his contract with the network. Trump said, “Little Jeff Z has done a terrible job, his ratings suck, and AT&T should fire him to save credibility!”

Trump is also wrong about CNN’s ratings. Details released this week by Nielsen show the network had near record ratings in August and posted its second-best ratings in total day in the history of cable news’ original network. Daytime ratings were the third highest for CNN in 23 years, and all of CNN’s prime-time shows posted near-record high ratings, with Cuomo Prime Time, which just launched in June, delivering the network’s third highest August rating on record in the 9 p.m. hour.

And yet, Trump said, “the hatred and extreme bias of me by CNN has clouded their thinking and made them unable to function.” The president said the problem extended to other networks, with “NBC News being the worst. The good news is that Andy Lack(y) is about to be fired(?) for incompetence and much worse.”

Again, Trump neither explained his wild allegations nor defended his false claims, insisting only that “I just cannot state strongly enough how totally dishonest much of the Media is. Truth doesn’t matter to them, they only have their hatred and agenda.”

[Forbes]

Media

Here is the interview in full.

Rudy Giuliani says ‘truth isn’t truth’

Rudy Giuliani, President Donald Trump’s attorney, said Sunday that “truth isn’t truth” when explaining that he won’t let special counsel Robert Mueller rush Trump into testifying because he doesn’t want investigators to trap the President into a lie.

“When you tell me that, you know, he should testify because he’s going to tell the truth and he shouldn’t worry, well, that’s so silly because it’s somebody’s version of the truth. Not the truth,” Giuliani told NBC’s Chuck Todd on Sunday morning during “Meet the Press.”

“Truth is truth,” Todd said in response.

“No, no, it isn’t truth,” Giuliani said. “Truth isn’t truth. The President of the United States says, “I didn’t …”

“Truth isn’t truth?” Todd interjected. “Mr. Mayor, do you realize, what … I think this is going to become a bad meme.”

“No, no, no … don’t do this to me,” Giuliani said.

“Don’t do ‘truth isn’t truth’ to me,” Todd continued.

“Donald Trump says I didn’t talk about [former national security adviser Michael] Flynn with [then-FBI Director James] Comey. Comey says you did talk about it. So tell me what the truth is,” Giuliani said.

This isn’t the first time in recent days that Giuliani has spoken about the truth and facts this way. During an appearance on CNN’s “Cuomo Prime Time” on Tuesday evening, Giuliani told CNN’s Chris Cuomo that facts are in the eye of the beholder.

“If fact [checking] is anything, we’ve never had anybody with the level of mendacity that he has. Not even close,” Cuomo said of Trump.

“It’s in the eye of the beholder,” Giuliani responded.

“No, facts are not in the eye of the beholder,” Cuomo said.

“Yes it is — yes they are. Nowadays they are,” Giuliani asserted.

The President’s outside legal team for the special counsel investigation, which is headed up by Giuliani, replied to Mueller’s proposal for terms of possible presidential testimony earlier this month, but the former New York mayor wouldn’t disclose the details of his team’s response.

Trump has said he is willing to speak with Mueller’s team, but his legal team has expressed opposition to that possibility because they believe the special counsel’s investigators could take what Trump says, if it differs from what others have laid out, as a lie.

“They have two pieces of evidence,” Giuliani said to Todd on Sunday morning, explaining his stance. “Trump says I didn’t tell them, and the other guy says that he did say it. Which is the truth? Maybe you know because you’re a genius.”

On Sunday afternoon, former FBI Director James Comey appeared to respond to Giuliani’s “truth isn’t truth” comment via Twitter.

“Truth exists and truth matters. Truth has always been the touchstone of our country’s justice system and political life. People who lie are held accountable. If we are untethered to truth, our justice system cannot function and a society based on the rule of law dissolves,” Comey tweeted.

Giuliani has been speaking about Comey in the news lately. Last week, Giuliani told CNN’s Jake Tapper that if the President sits down for questioning by special counsel Mueller, Trump will say he never discussed easing up on a probe of former national security adviser Flynn with Comey.

[CNN]

1 2 3