A resource for journalists and for shutting down your crazy uncle.
President Donald Trump plugged the Fox News Saturday line-up over the holiday weekend, touting the evening programming as a “good night of television.”
The president started by telling folks to tune into Mark Levin‘s show, which featured an hour-long conversation with Byron York vigorously defending Trump and making it abundantly clear collusion did not take place.
[Mediaite]
President Trump, reiterating his firm belief that Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation had been a political and unsuccessful witch hunt, tweeted out the New York Post’s front page and its bold, declarative headline: “TRUMP CLEAN.”
The page showed Trump smiling alongside the phrases, “No crimes committed,” and “Dem hoax destroyed.”
[Fox News]
President Trump on Wednesday took aim at top officials at the FBI as well as Hillary Clinton and the Democratic National Committee (DNC), accusing them of conspiring to undermine his 2016 campaign and eventual presidency.
Trump tweeted that the dossier authored by former British intelligence agent Christopher Steele on behalf of Fusion GPS, a political intelligence firm, and provided to the FBI by Steele had been a “total fraud on your President and the American people!”
“Wow! FBI made 11 payments to Fake Dossier’s discredited author, Trump hater Christopher Steele. @OANN @JudicialWatch The Witch Hunt has been a total fraud on your President and the American people!” he wrote.
“It was brought to you by Dirty Cops, Crooked Hillary and the DNC,” Trump continued.
Trump and his allies have argued for years that the dossier authored by Steele on the president’s ties to Russia, which has not been fully verified, was the impetus for the FBI’s initial investigation of the Trump campaign begun under the Obama administration, which Trump has claimed led to illegal spying on his campaign.
The president’s reelection campaign echoed those claims over the weekend, falsely telling supporters in a fundraising email that Attorney General William Barr had revealed “unlawful” surveillance on the Trump campaign.
“Attorney General William Barr said what the president has thought all along: He believes “unlawful spying did occur” against Donald J. Trump’s presidential campaign,” read the fundraising email.
Barr told a Senate Appropriations subcommittee hearing last week that he believes “spying” did occur on the Trump campaign, but made no determination as to whether or not it was conducted legally.
“I think spying did occur,” the attorney general said. “But the question is whether it was adequately predicated and I’m not suggesting it wasn’t adequately predicated, but I need to explore that.”
“I am not saying that improper surveillance occurred. I’m saying that I am concerned about it and looking into it. That’s all,” he added.
[MSN]
President Donald Trump posted a video criticizing freshmen Rep. Ilhan Omar, using footage of the Twin Towers burning on 9/11 to denounce her recent comments about the attacks.
The video was criticized by Democrats, who accused the president of using out-of-context comments and video of one of America’s most horrific and devastating terrorist attacks to slam a political foe.
The 43-second video, which Trump pinned to the top of his Twitter account, is set to dramatic music and shows the Twin Towers burning, New Yorkers covered in debris and the aftermath of the 2001 attack at the Pentagon. It is coupled with footage of Omar’s recent comments, referencing the attacks as, “something” done by “some people.”
Omar has been heavily criticized by conservatives for the remarks, including by members of Congress and a Fox News host who questioned her allegiance to the United States.
Democrats have argued the comments were taken out-of-context and Omar was attempting to differentiate terrorists from all Muslims.
Trump’s video shows Omar’s comments repetitively then switches to a black screen with the words “some people did something?” The video then shows the moment one of the jetliners crashed into one of the towers and people running in fear as the buildings collapsed.
The video ends with the words “September 11, 2001. We remember” stretched across the screen.
Democrats accused the president of jeopardizing Omar’s life with the post, arguing the content was geared to incite Trump followers. A New York man was arrested last week after allegedly threatening to kill Omar, one of the two first Muslim women elected to Congress, by putting a “bullet in her (expletive) skull.”
Fellow freshman Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who has also been a target of Trump and other Republicans, called on fellow lawmakers to denounce the president and his attack on Omar.
“Members of Congress have a duty to respond to the President’s explicit attack today,” she wrote on Twitter. “@IlhanMN’s life is in danger. For our colleagues to be silent is to be complicit in the outright, dangerous targeting of a member of Congress. We must speak out.”
Along with the call to fellow lawmakers, Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., posted a photo of a display at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. The photo showed a quote at the museum from a theologian who was imprisoned during Adolf Hitler’s rule in Germany.
President Donald Trump seemed delighted on Thursday when he posted a screen-shot from Lou Dobbs‘ Fox Business show supposedly showing his approval polling is at 55%.
There’s just one little problem: the number is way off, and his actual approval rating according to that poll is a paltry 43%.
The Fox Business host spent a good portion of his show repeatedly fawning over a new poll from the Georgetown Institute of Politics and Public Service on Trump and the economy. Dobbs framed the poll’s findings with the graphic above, saying Trump enjoys “soaring approval” from 58% of voters for his performance on the economy, and an impressive 55% from voters overall.
Here’s what the poll actually says:
While President Trump’s overall unfavorable rating has remained steady at 55 percent since he announced his candidacy in 2015, 58 percent of voters approve of the job he has done on the economy.
To be clear: Trump’s disapproval is 55%, according to that poll. His approval rating, meanwhile, is 43%. That means his numbers are underwater by 12%.
Mo Elleithee, director of Georgetown Politics and a frequent Fox News guest, corrected the president on Twitter:
Whoopsies.
Watch above, via Fox Business.
UPDATE: Fox Business issued an on-air correction to the poll on Thursday morning.
From FBN’s Blake Burman:
It’s been a quite start to the day for President Trump, though he did send out a tweet this morning from the Lou Dobbs show last night on Fox Business. That tweet featured a poll that was not entirely accurate, which Fox Business would like to correct. According to a poll from Georgetown University, 58 percent of respondents approved of the president’s handling of the economy. That portion of the graphic was right. However, the graphic also showed that 55 percent of the respondents approve of the president, that number is not correct. The 55 percent number was those who have an unfavorable impression of President Trump.
[Mediaite]
In a stunning about-face, State Department officials said that President Donald Trump is cutting off all direct assistance to the so-called Northern Triangle countries of El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala.
“At the Secretary’s instruction, we are carrying out the President’s direction and ending FY [fiscal year] 2017 and FY 2018 foreign assistance programs for the Northern Triangle,” a State Department spokesperson told ABC News, referring to U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. “We will be engaging Congress as part of this process.”
These three countries are the primary source of migrants to the U.S., but for years the U.S. has worked with them to stabilize their political environments and economies and end violence and corruption so that migrants wouldn’t leave in the first place.
Trump hinted at the cuts earlier on Friday, telling reporters,”I’ve ended payments to Guatemala, to Honduras, and to El Salvador. No money goes there anymore.”
While the president has threatened these cuts before, this time the administration is actually following through.
Trump said the funds totaled $500 million, but it wasn’t clear Friday if that figure was accurate. The State Department announced in December that the U.S. would mobilize $5.8 billion in public and private american investment to these three countries.
“We’re not paying them anymore because they haven’t done a thing for us,” he added.
[ABC]
Donald Trump tweeted a clip of Fox News host Jesse Watters complaining about news outlets covering the White House unfavorably, and declaring that Trump “has every right to say that fake news is the enemy of the American people.
Trump continues to serve as Fox News Social Media Intern-in-Chief by posting clips from the network whose own Twitter feed has gone dark for months. On Tuesday evening, he promoted a clip from The Five, which featured Jesse Watters going on a rant about how the press covers Trump.
Watters began by accusing media companies of having a “profit motive” for “crusading” against Trump by, for example, having “reporters up Trump’s you-know-what 24/7.”
News outlets have dedicated multiple reporters to White House coverage for many decades, forming a press “corps,” if you will.
He went on to say that the presidents of CNN and MSNBC “hate this president, and they’re going on a 24-hour news cycle against him.”
Cable news networks have been covering the news 24 hours a day for several decades, as well, a format pioneered by CNN.
Watters then accused the social media networks of “deplatforming conservatives,” then rattled off some of Trump’s approval numbers probably, predicted Trump is “probably on the way to winning a second term,” but bitterly observed that “the media calls this guy a lying mentally ill racist who needs to be imprisoned or impeached.”
“It is so unfair and disgusting what is happening right now, he has every right to say ‘fake news’ is the enemy of the American people.”
Trump thanked Watters, and added “could not have said it any better myself!”, perhaps because Trump has actually said so himself dozens of times:
[Mediaite]
President Donald Trump shared videos today from Lou Dobbs‘ Friday night Fox Business show from guests praising his veto of the resolution against his national emergency declaration at the border.
Trump first shared video of former ICE director Thomas Homan telling Dobbs, “One of the greatest presidents of my generation did exactly what he should have done.”
He also shared video from Diamond & Silk’s appearance, in which the outspoken pro-Trump duo not only defended him, but blasted the Republican senators who voted to block the emergency declaration as “the new swampettes.”
He also shared video from Diamond & Silk’s appearance, in which the outspoken pro-Trump duo not only defended him, but blasted the Republican senators who voted to block the emergency declaration as “the new swampettes.”
And after addressing the vote in the House to release the Mueller report, the president also shared a clip from Fox News’ Outnumbered of Kennedy going off on Hillary Clinton:
[Mediaite]
President Donald Trump quoted a Fox News appearance by his daughter-in-law to defend himself from an onslaught of document requests issued by House Democrats against his family and associates.
The president tweeted out a quote from Lara Trump’s appearance the previous evening on Sean Hannity’s program, where she said the widening congressional investigations into possible criminal wrongdoing simply showed Democrats feared her father-in-law.
“Democrats are frantic to throw something else at the president,” Lara Trump, a re-election campaign adviser to her father-in-law, who then tweeted out her remarks. “That’s why you saw those 81 subpoenas. It’s ridiculous. Just because you’re still upset over an election that happened 2 1/2 years ago, you should not be allowed to ruin people’s lives like this.”
The recipients have until March 18 to comply with the requests, and the committee plans to issue subpoenas if the requested documents aren’t turned over.
In his latest Fox & Friends live-tweeting session, President Donald Trumpapplauded former Greenpeace president Patrick Moore for saying the planet’s climate crisis is “fake news” and “fake science.” This comes after Trump echoed a segment of the show where one of his former campaign staffers called on Jews to abandon the Democratic Party.
Moore was invited onto Fox & Friends because he called Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortes (D-NY) a “pompous little twit” for her latest defense of the Green New Deal. Sure enough, he used his segment to call the proposal “completely ridiculous” and push his denial of climate change.
Moore went on to bash the majority of the scientific community for their concerns about climate change, saying Greenpeace has been “hijacked by the extreme left” to sell “sensationalism, misinformation, and fear.” He also suggested that global warming could be a good thing, saying that burning fossil fuels and releasing more greenhouse gases will “fertilize” the planet, resulting in a net positive for the environment.
As it were, Greenpeace has responded to Trump, saying that contrary to Moore’s claim, he did not co-found the organization, and they essentially renounced him ever since he started operating as a lobbyist and an advocate for polluters and corporate energy industries.
It’s worth noting the Trump Administration released a report from multiple federal agencies last year that determined global climate change could have extreme long-term consequences for the United States. Then again, Trump has made his skepticism of man-made climate change perfectly clear in the past, so his parroting Moore could just be confirmation bias on his part.
[Mediaite]