Category: Authoritarian

White House to order federal agencies to end NYT and WaPo subscriptions

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The White House plans to order all federal agencies not to renew their subscriptions to the New York Times and the Washington Post, two papers that President Trump has repeatedly attacked for their critical coverage of his administration, the Wall Street Journal reports.

The big picture: The White House said on Tuesday that it would cancel its own subscriptions to the Post and the Times, after Trump complained that they were “fake” during an appearance this week on Fox News’ “Hannity.” White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham said in an email to the Journal: “Not renewing subscriptions across all federal agencies will be a significant cost saving — hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars will be saved.”

Between the lines: Axios’ Sara Fischer notes that the Post and the Times each make around $20 million annually by selling political and issue ads (mostly issue ads) that are geared toward reaching policy makers and opinion leaders at key D.C. institutions, including the White House and federal agencies. Hundreds of copies of the two newspapers are distributed to the White House and agencies.

  • These are expensive ads, and they’re typically the only types of ads with pricing that can’t be negotiated or bartered down.
  • In fact, the Times touts its reach into the White House when selling ads. It even created a separate D.C. edition of its paper printed out of Springfield, Virginia, just to make it cheaper to target federal agencies with ads that could be locally inserted.

The bottom line: This move, if the White House follows through on it, will have an advertising impact on the newspapers at a time when the issue advocacy market is really hot.

[Axios]

Kellyanne Conway threatens to investigate reporter’s personal life in unhinged interview

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Trump White House counselor Kellyanne Conway threatened to investigate a reporter’s personal life during an unhinged interview with the Washington Examiner.

The trouble began after Examiner reporter Caitlin Yilek received a call from Tom Joannou, who serves as Conway’s personal assistant, to complain about a story she’d written that included mentions of husband George Conway, who has become a prominent critic of President Donald Trump.

Joannou asked Yilek if the conversation could be off the record, and she agreed. However, shortly after the two started talking, Kellyanne Conway herself grabbed the phone and started haranguing Yilek.

Because she had only agreed to stay off the record with Joannou, the conversation with Conway was now on the record.

The Trump adviser railed against Yilek for writing about her husband and claimed that he was only now making a name for himself because of her relation with the president.

“Let me tell you something, from a powerful woman,” Conway said. “Don’t pull the crap where you’re trying to undercut another woman based on who she’s married to. He gets his power through me, if you haven’t noticed. Not the other way around.”

Later in the interview, Conway threatened to launch investigations into Yilek’s personal life.

“Listen, if you’re going to cover my personal life, then we’re welcome to do the same around here,” she said. “If it has nothing to do with my job, which it doesn’t, that’s obvious, then we’re either going to expect you to cover everybody’s personal life or we’re going to start covering them over here.”

Read the whole interview at this link.

[Raw Story]

Trump’s Syria strategy: Get out, but “keep the oil”

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A U.S. military convoy withdrawing from Syria for Iraq today was pelted with fruit and stones by Kurdish civilians who accuse the superpower they once saw as their protector of leaving them in peril. 

Driving the news: “We never agreed to protect the Kurds for the rest of their lives,” President Trump responded back in Washington. He said the U.S. would keep small detachments in Syria at the request of Israel and Jordan and to “protect the oil,” but there was otherwise “no reason” to remain.

  • “We want to keep the oil, and we’ll work something out with the Kurds. … Maybe we’ll have one of our big oil companies to go in and do it properly,” Trump said.
  • He also insisted a ceasefire announced from Turkey last week by Vice President Pence was holding despite “some skirmishes.” 

What to watch: The deal expires tomorrow night and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has vowed to resume his offensive if the so-called “safe zone” he’s demanded isn’t cleared of Kurdish fighters. Erdogan will be meeting tomorrow with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

  • According to Brett McGurk, who resigned as Trump’s counter-ISIS envoy over a planned withdrawal last December, it’s now “in the hands of Putin” whether “an epic humanitarian catastrophe” unfolds in Syrian border cities like Kobane that had been held by Kurdish forces.

Behind the scenes: I asked McGurk today whether he’d ever heard Trump express interest in what would become of Syria after the ISIS caliphate was defeated.

  • “He talked about defeating the ISIS caliphate, he takes credit for it, but beyond that I don’t think he has much of a significant concern,” McGurk said, speaking at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.
  • While the U.S. had several stated objectives in Syria that required long-term commitments — including remaining until Iran was out and the peace process finalized — McGurk said he never heard Trump himself vocalize them.
  • “In fact, he basically says, ‘the Russians and anybody else can do what they want,’” McGurk continued
  • Why it matters: “If the president isn’t fully bought into a policy, particularly when it comes to war and peace … when there’s a crisis he’s not going to really have anyone’s back.”

Trump did express interest in what would happen to Syria’s oil. McGurk said he explored the issue with Rex Tillerson, who was then secretary of state and previously ExxonMobil CEO.

Reality check: “I think [Tillerson’s] phrase was, ‘That’s not how oil works,’ McGurk said, noting that the oil legally belongs to the Syrian state.

  • “Maybe there are new lawyers, but it was just illegal for an American company to go and seize and exploit these assets.”

The bottom line: “We don’t want these resources to get in the hands of terrorists or others, but maybe Trump should have thought about this before he basically made a decision that unraveled the tapestry that had been working relatively well,” McGurk said.

[Axios]

Trump says he doesn’t want NYT in the White House

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President Trump said Monday that he doesn’t want to have copies of The New York Times in the White House anymore and suggested he would terminate the subscription.

“We don’t even want it in the White House anymore,” Trump told Fox News’s Sean Hannity in an interview that aired Monday night. “We’re going to probably terminate that and the Washington Post.”

Trump also claimed that the Times apologized to its readers for its poor coverage of him, echoing his previous assertions about a letter the newspaper sent to its subscribers following the 2016 presidential election.

The Times has forcefully pushed back on Trump’s accusations as false. The Times’s publisher wrote in the letter to readers that news outlets underestimated Trump’s support among U.S. voters and described his victory as “unexpected.” The letter thanked subscribers and did not include an apology.

Trump, who regularly criticizes the media for unfair coverage of his White House, broadly described the media as “corrupt” during the exchange with Hannity. He also took a shot at CNN’s Anderson Cooper, accusing the anchor of lobbing a question to former Vice President Joe Biden about his son Hunter Biden’s business dealings during last Tuesday’s Democratic presidential debate.

“I watch this crazy Anderson Cooper during the debate apologize for having to ask the question,” Trump told Hannity.

Cooper has faced some criticism from Republicans for the way he framed a question during last week’s debate. He introduced the question by saying that Trump had “falsely accused” Hunter Biden of impropriety while serving on the board of a Ukrainian energy company and said there was “no evidence of wrongdoing” by either Biden. 

Trump’s allies, including his sons Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr., have claimed Hunter Biden profited off of his father’s official position by obtaining lucrative business deals abroad. Trump and his personal attorney Rudy Giuliani have also accused Joe Biden of corrupt behavior in his dealings with Ukraine as vice president, without providing specific evidence of it.

House Democrats have launched an impeachment inquiry focused on a July 25 phone call during which Trump encouraged Ukraine’s leader to look into the Bidens. 

[The Hill]

Donald Trump’s Televised Cabinet Meeting Was Another Nutty Episode

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oes it even matter any more that, on Monday, El Caudillo del Mar-a-Lago had another televised nutty in the White House? Does it matter more that, in the course of his televised nutty, the president* expressed virulent contempt for the Constitution he swore to preserve, protect, and defend. I mean, I was sitting there when he did it. I had to sit through that awful Roger Corman film of an inaugural address. Did I do that for naught?

Anyway, on Monday, the president* unburdened himself of the following thought-like objects.

On the war on terror:

“I’m the one who did the capturing. I’m the one who knows more about it than you people or fake pundits.”

On the whistleblower:

“I happen to think there probably wasn’t an informant. You know, the informant went to the whistleblower, the whistleblower had, you know, second-and-third-hand information. So was there actually an informant? Maybe the informant was Schiff!”

And then, the piece de resistance, in which Alexander Hamilton and James Madison become operatives of The Deep State…

“You people with this phony emoluments clause.”

I know he burbled on about George Washington and Barack Obama and Netflix and how unprecedented it is that he’s not taking a salary. (Herbert Hoover didn’t, nor did JFK.) But I think I briefly went to another place when he said that thing about the Emoluments Clause. How about the Bill of Rights? How about the powers of Congress? How about the impeachment provisions? What other parts of the Constitution does he consider “phony”?

[Esquire]

Trump just called the Constitution’s emoluments clause ‘phony’

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Who cares about emoluments? Not President Trump, that’s for sure.

During a Cabinet meeting Monday, Trump defended his now-reversed decision to host the 2020 Group of Seven Summit at the Trump National Doral Miami resort. While on a tangent, the president hand-waved the Emoluments Clause, which prohibits the federal government from receiving gifts or titles from foreign states without the consent of Congress. Trump described it as “phony,” making it unclear if he’s aware that it’s in the Constitution of the United States.

He also reportedly argued he wouldn’t have profited off the summit, world leaders deserved the best hospitality possible, and other presidents “ran their businesses” while in office, which actually hasn’t been the case since former President Andrew Johnson left office.

[The Week]

Trump Lashes Out at Coverage of Awarding G7 to Resort He Owns, Also Extolls Resort’s ‘Tremendous Ballrooms’

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President Donald Trump reacted angrily Saturday to criticism of his administration announcing it would hold a summit of foreign leaders at a resort Trump owns.

“I thought I was doing something very good for our Country by using Trump National Doral, in Miami, for hosting the G-7 Leaders,” Trump said Saturday night.

Trump went on to praise the features of his resort like “tremendous ballrooms” and claimed again that he would not “profit” from the summit.

Trump also highlighted Doral’s proximity to Miami International Airport as a positive, but Chuck Todd and David Fahrenthold pointed to that as a negative on Friday, both of them agreeing it was a security risk for the high-profile event.

“Doral is right on the Miami airport flight paths,” Todd said. “I think one of my reporters told me there’s like 20 different flight paths that are going to have to be diverted.”

“This is such a security nightmare to put it in the middle of a neighborhood where you’re going to have the neighbors coming and going,” Fahrenthold said.

[Mediaite]

Mulvaney Acknowledges Quid Pro Quo In Trump Ukraine Call, Says ‘Get Over It’

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The acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney admitted on Thursday that President Donald Trump withheld foreign aid in order to get Ukraine’s help in the U.S. election.

“We do that all the time with foreign policy,” Mulvaney responded when a reporter pointed out that withholding funding from Ukraine “unless the investigation into the Democrats’ server happens” is a “quid pro quo.”

“Get over it,” he added later. “There’s going to be political influence in foreign policy. … That is going to happen. Elections have consequences.”

[Huffington Post]

Trump Claims ISIS Fighters in Syria Were Released From Prison ‘Just For Effect’

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President Donald Trump has claimed that ISIS fighters who escaped from jail in northern Syrian were released “for effect” to compel U.S. re-entry into the region.

During his Oval Office press spray with Italian President Sergio Mattarella, Trump called the withdrawal of troops from Syria “strategically brilliant,” even as America’s Kurdish allies have come under attack by the Turkish military’s invasion.

After insulting the Kurds, Trump handed the fight against ISIS off to Syria and Russia, saying “you have a lot of countries over there that hate ISIS as much as we do…So they can take care of ISIS.”

“We have them captured. The United States captured them,” Trump continued. “Some were released just for effect to make us look a little bit like ‘oh gee, we have to get right back in there.’ You have a lot of countries over there that have power and that hate ISIS very much, as much as we do.”

Trump concluded by saying “we’re in a very strategically good position,” before blaming the criticism for his decision on the “fake news” media once again.

“I know the fake news doesn’t make it look that way but we’ve removed all of our 50 soldiers but much less than 50 soldiers.”

[Mediaite]

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

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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]

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