Tag: CNN

What Is Up With Jeffrey Lord Comparing Trump to MLK?

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CNN paid contributor, and Donald Trump surrogate, Jeffrey Lord made a very interesting and newsworthy statement during the usually stale morning news cycle, that President Donald Trump compares to the Reverend and Doctor Martin Luther King Jr.

During an appearance on CNN’s New Day program, Lord said Trump should be thought of as the “Martin Luther King of health care.”

In case you missed it, here is the entire exchange:

Fellow CNN commentator Symone Sanders, a Democratic activist, fired back immediately. saying, “Jeffrey, you do understand that Dr. King was marching for civil rights because people that looked like me were being beaten? Dogs were being sicked on them. Basic human rights were being withheld from these people merely because the color of their skin. So let’s not equate Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., a humanitarian and Nobel Peace Prize winner, to the vagina-grabbing President Donald Trump.”

Jeffrey Lord went on later that day to defend his statements on both Anderson Cooper‘s and Don Lemon‘s nightly show, again making the same racially insensitive statements.

Notably the African-American commentators were upset, and rightfully so. Lord was comparing Donald Trump, who even his own supporters agree he’s not the Pope, to someone who fought for equal justice which opened up opportunities for them and, quite frankly, who all of America owes a great debt to.

But the problem with Jeffrey Lord is that he isn’t just a tone-deaf partisan hack, but also his arguments are always just total crap, and this recent controversy is a perfect example. So rather than focus on the comparison of the morality of two historical personalities, as was much of the discussion on CNN, I would like to focus on the exact argument Lord is trying to make.

Jeffrey Lord’s Position

What Jeffrey Lord was trying to argue, which he also laid out in a CNN opinion piece, is in his fight for civil rights Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. used a tactic of suffering in order to bring to light to the rest of the population a great injustice of inequality.

Donald Trump, is now threatening to refuse to subsidize healthcare to the poorest Americans, who would undoubtedly experience suffering. And just as the endless stream of beatings of black Americans by their government on the nightly news in the 60’s brought about social change and legislation, Jeffrey Lord believes that so too would images of today’s poor dying without access to healthcare thereby forcing the Democrats to join Trump in his fight to repeal the big bad Obamacare, which he believes everyone is suffering under because it is mandated by the government.

(Even though the Obamacare individual mandate was originally a Republican idea.)

Why He is Wrong

On one point Jeffrey Lord is correct, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and his followers did use a tactic of non-violent disobedience which regularly involved the suffering of African-Americans, sometimes even creating situations that put themselves in a position to suffer. The resulting attention from people witnessing such an obvious injustice, such as armed state police beating defenseless non-violent citizens, would cause the rest of the population start to question the legitimacy of national policies, and forced their representatives in Congress to make legislative changes.

This part is not controversial, Dr. King was very clear he was following a civil disobedience playbook that was very successfully used by Mahatma Gandhi.

Along with marches and hunger strikes, Gandhi staged many mass protests that put him and his followers in harms way from a repressive British government that was ruling India at the time.

On example during the Dharasana Satyagraha protests, which was a protest against the British salt tax, was a non-violent raid of the Dharasana Salt Works. During the march there was a very real possibility that violence would be used against them, but they marched anyway.

Watch:

(I know this was a re-enactment from the 1982 movie Gandhi, but this is how it actually went down as reported.)

When Dr. King organized his March to Selma, he and his fellow protesters knew the threat of personal harm was a possibility, as they had been attacked and bombed many times before, but they chose to march anyway.

Watch:

Look at those clips, what did you notice?

Each protester VOLUNTEERED to receive their beating. Each person VOLUNTEERED to walk forward, look another man right in the eyes, and accepted the pain and suffering from physical harm they knew was coming.

What Jeffrey Lord fails to recognize in his shit argument is there is no growing mass movement of people under Obamacare volunteering to suffer so it can be repealed. This is President Donald Trump threatening to FORCE the suffering of 24 million people by removing the affordability of their healthcare, just so he can bring Democrats to the table for a deal to remove healthcare for that same 24 million people.

(Seriously whoever bought into this idea Trump was this master deal maker?)

In Conclusion

There is a clear difference between volunteering for suffering to fight an injustice and forcing people to suffer.

This fight for equality is something that is so fundamental to Dr. Martin Luther King’s own beliefs, Jeffrey Lord severely misses King’s point.

I am sure Jeffrey Lord is an intelligent man, I am sure as the fan he claims to be, he has read Dr. King’s book Stride Toward Freedom, where all of this is clearly explained to the reader.

So Lord has to know his statement was incompatible with Dr. King’s own explanation of his tactics, but was willing to twist logic to fit his own narrative. There is a word for this, “liar.”

CNN should let this man go, fire him, get rid of him, send him on a “planned vacation“, whatever it takes. Jeffrey Lord does nothing to add to the national conversation except at times like these, when we are astonished that he can make really bad arguments over and over and over and over again.

Jeffrey Lord a dark stain on a venerable news station, the same way the hiring of Corey Lewandowski, who was working at CNN while still working and being paid as a member of Donald Trump’s campaign.

CNN has to recognize this isn’t balance, it’s bullshit.

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

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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.”

White House Blocks Major News Organizations From Press Briefing

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CNN and other news organizations were blocked Friday from a White House press briefing.

There was no immediate explanation from the White House.

The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and Politico were also excluded from the meeting, which is known as a gaggle and is less formal than the televised Q-and-A session in the White House briefing room.

The Associated Press and Time magazine boycotted the briefing because of how it was handled. The White House Correspondents Association is protesting.

The conservative media organizations Breitbart News, The Washington Times and One America News Network were allowed in.

Hours earlier, at the Conservative Political Action Conference outside Washington, President Trump mocked and disparaged the news media. He said that much of the press represents “the enemy of the people.”

“They are the enemy of the people because they have no sources,” Trump said. “They just make them up when there are none.”

He also said reporters “shouldn’t be allowed” to use unnamed sources.

(h/t CNN)

Trump son-in-law tells Time Warner of CNN concerns

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President Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner, recently met with CNN’s parent company Time Warner and mentioned the cable news network’s coverage of the administration as slanted.

During the meeting at the White House, Kushner expressed concerns about what the administration considers is CNN’s unfair coverage of the President to Gary Ginsberg, Time Warner’s executive vice president of corporate marketing and communications, two persons familiar with the situation said. One of the persons said that topics of the discussion included Israel and Kushner made a joking reference to CNN’s perceived anti-Trump coverage.

Trump disparaged CNN during his press conference Thursday while taking a question from CNN’s senior White House correspondent Jim Acosta noting “the hatred coming from other people on your network.”

The president has made clear his disdain for CNN. A month ago, during Trump’s first full press conference after being elected, he called CNN a peddler of “fake news” because the network had produced a story reporting that the U.S. intelligence officials had presented Trump and President Obama with a “dossier” of unverified, but potentially compromising information about the president-elect that Russian operatives claimed to have.

What makes the CNN-Time Warner situation so sticky is AT&T’s pending $85.4 billion acquisition of Time Warner. During the campaign, Trump criticized the merger because the resulting company would have too much market power. “AT&T is buying Time Warner, and thus CNN, a deal we will not approve in my administration,” he said in October.

However, post-election meetings with administration officials left AT&T executives with confidence about passage, The Financial Times reported in December, citing persons familiar with the situation.

Trump and AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson did not discuss the merger when they met last month, the company said. But Stephenson last week told CNBC he expects the deal to pass Justice Department scrutiny and close by the end of the year. And the subject of the merger reportedly did not arise during Kushner’s recent meeting with Time Warner, according to The Wall Street Journal, which first reported the meeting.
AT&T, Time Warner and CNN declined comment on the meeting.
But two CNN analysts — Republican strategist and commentator Ana Navarro and Van Jones, a former adviser to President Obama — responded to the report on Twitter. Navarro noted that Kushner “who’s supposed to achieve Middle East peace, is complaining about me to CNN,” in a tweet.
Jones used some lyrics from Drake’s song Energy — “Got a lotta people tryna drain me of this energy.” — then added, “But y’all know @CNN has our backs. Do you? RT if yes! (@jaredkushner, u can RT, 2!).”
Both sides in this situation should tread carefully, says John Coffee, a law professor and and director of the Center on Corporate Governance at Columbia Law School. “Time Warner is extremely vulnerable to pressure in this context — although the slightest application of pressure would backfire explosively,” he said. “Trump really cannot afford another fiasco right now when his administration keeps stumbling over itself. Thus, we may be witnessing another self-inflicted wound that is about to occur.”

(h/t USA Today)

 

Spicer: White House ‘disgusted by CNN’s fake news’

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White House press secretary Sean Spicer on Friday blasted CNN for its reporting on an unverified dossier alleging that the Russian government has compromising information about President Trump.

“We continue to be disgusted by CNN’s fake news reporting,” he told the news network when contacted about its latest report Friday.

CNN said Spicer later called the network back to add to his criticism.

“It is about time CNN focused on the success the President has had bringing back jobs, protecting the nation, and strengthening relationships with Japan and other nations,” Spicer said. “The president won the [2016] election because of his vision and message for the nation. This is fake news.”

CNN reported earlier Friday that it had confirmed some of the communications between foreign nationals detailed in the 35-page dossier with multiple current and former U.S. intelligence and law enforcement officials.

The items that were corroborated related solely to conversations between foreign nationals. But sources would not verify which specific conversations were intercepted or their content due to the classified nature of U.S. intelligence gathering programs.

The dossier contains about 12 discussions between senior Russian officials and other Russian individuals, it said. CNN could not determine if any those talks discussed then GOP-presidential nominee Trump.

CNN’s sources did affirm some of the described conversations took place on the same dates and from the same locations as listed in the dossier.

U.S. intelligence officials emphasized the conversations were solely between foreign nationals, including those in or tied to the Russian government, and intercepted during routine intelligence gathering.

Two officials told CNN some of the individuals whose conversations were captured were “heavily involved” in collecting information to discredit 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.

CNN added that officials could not decide whether the Kremlin possesses any compromising information relating to Trump.

BuzzFeed first published the controversial document, which has not been substantiated, before Trump’s Jan. 20 inauguration.

Trump blasted BuzzFeed as a “failing pile of garbage” in January over the dossier, which alleges Russia’s government has acquired compromising financial and personal information about him.

The president also began slamming CNN as “fake news” during the same press conference after it reported intelligence officials had briefed him over its unsubstantiated contents.

(h/t The Hill)

Media

CNN’s Report

Sean Spicer’s Response

CNN Fact Checks Trump Lie Within Seconds Of His Twitter Attack On Chris Cuomo

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President Trump on Thursday blasted CNN, saying host Chris Cuomo didn’t ask Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) during an earlier interview about the Connecticut senator’s “long-term lie” of serving in the Vietnam War.

“Chris Cuomo, in his interview with Sen. Blumenthal, never asked him about his long-term lie about his brave ‘service’ in Vietnam,” the president tweeted.

“FAKE NEWS!”

Cuomo immediately addressed Trump’s tweet on the air, with the network re-broadcasting the beginning of Cuomo’s interview with Blumenthal, when Cuomo asked Blumenthal about misrepresenting his military record in the past.

In response to the question, Blumenthal defended his statements that Judge Neil Gorsuch, Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, expressed concern to him about the president’s attacks on federal judges.

“Really, the first point that I made in the interview,” Cuomo said on CNN.

“The president, with all due respect, is once again off on the facts. And that’s not something that any of us have any desire to say on a regular basis, but it keeps being true,” Cuomo continued.

“Fake news is the worst thing that you can call a journalist. It’s like an ethnic disparagement. We all have these ugly words for people. That’s the one for journalists.”

Cuomo said the president keeps doubling down when the facts “don’t favor his position.”

“Once again, he doubles down when he’s wrong,” he said.

Trump has repeatedly said he doesn’t watch CNN, but his tweet came shortly after the Blumenthal interview aired Thursday morning.

Trump was referring in his tweet to a controversy during Blumenthal’s 2010 Senate campaign.

In 2010, Blumenthal held a press conference during which he said he had misspoken about his service in the Vietnam War. He was in the Marine Corps Reserves for six years during the war. He said during the news conference in 2010 he meant to say “during Vietnam” but instead said he served “in” Vietnam.

“On a few occasions I have misspoken about my service, and I regret that and I take full responsibility,” Blumenthal said at the 2010 press conference, according to a Washington Post report. “But I will not allow anyone to take a few misplaced words and impugn my record of service to our country.”

A report last year found that Trump has received five deferments from the military draft during the Vietnam War. He was granted one medical and four education deferments, which kept him out of the conflict.

(h/t The Hill)

Media

CNN Shoots Down Sean Spicer’s Latest Lie About Kellyanne Conway

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CNN’s corporate public relations department rebutted White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer just 12 minutes after he falsely claimed that the network had “retracted” its claim about the “credibility” of Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway.

In a statement to The New York Times and other publications earlier this week, CNN said that it had refused to interview Conway on a recent Sunday morning program due to “serious questions about her credibility.”

On Tuesday, Spicer falsely insisted that CNN had “retracted” that claim.

“Frankly, my understanding is that they retracted that,” Spicer told reporters at Tuesday’s White House press briefing. “They walked that back or denied or however you want to put it, I don’t care.”

“Kellyanne is a very trusted aide of the president,” he added. “I think for any characterization otherwise is insulting. If they choose not to work with someone, that’s up to them.”

Within 12 minutes, CNN had posted a statement refuting Spicer’s claim.

“CNN was clear, on the record, about our concerns about Kellyanne Conway to the New York Times and others,” a statement posted to Twitter read. “We have not ‘retracted’ nor ‘walked back’ those comments. Those are the facts.”

(h/t Raw Story)

Media

White House Ices Out CNN

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The White House has refused to send its spokespeople or surrogates onto CNN shows, effectively freezing out the network from on-air administration voices.

“We’re sending surrogates to places where we think it makes sense to promote our agenda,” said a White House official, acknowledging that CNN is not such a place, but adding that the ban is not permanent.

A CNN reporter, speaking on background, was more blunt: The White House is trying to punish the network and force down its ratings.

“They’re trying to cull CNN from the herd,” the reporter said.

Administration officials are still answering questions from CNN reporters. But administration officials including White House press secretary Sean Spicer and senior counselor Kellyanne Conway haven’t appeared on the network’s programming in recent weeks.

Spicer, speaking at an event at The George Washington University on Monday, denied that CNN is being frozen out, pointing out that he’s answered CNN’s questions in the regular daily briefings.

But, he added “I’m not going to sit around and engage with people who have no desire to actually get something right.”

The last time an administration official appeared on CNN’s Sunday public affairs show “State of the Union” was Jan. 8 when Conway was interviewed. She also appeared on CNN the following Wednesday with Anderson Cooper, the day of then President-elect Trump’s news conference at which he derided CNN for airing a report that intelligence officials had briefed both Trump and then-President Barack Obama that the Russians might have negative information about Trump. At the news conference, the president-elect refused to take a question from CNN correspondent Jim Acosta, who shouted out to Trump to answer his question since Trump was attacking his news organization.

After his inauguration, Trump has continued blasting CNN as “fake news.”

Since then, Conway, Spicer, chief of staff Reince Priebus and even Vice President Mike Pence have made the rounds on the major Sunday shows with the notable exception of CNN’s “State of the Union.”

“State of the Union” anchor Jake Tapper said on his show and via Twitter that the White House has declined his invitations to appear.

“We invited the Trump White House to offer us a guest to provide clarity and an explanation of what the president just did, especially given so much confusion, even within its own government by those who are supposed to carry out this order,” Tapper said on Sunday as he introduced a segment about the Executive Order banning visitors from some countries and putting a hold on the United States’ refugee policy. “The Trump White House declined our invitation.”

Tapper had made a similar announcement the previous Sunday.

Last week, New York magazine reported that Trump’s feud with CNN has roots in his relationship with CNN President Jeff Zucker, a former NBC president who brought Trump’s television show “The Apprentice” to the network. Trump, the magazine reported, has told White House staffers that he feels personally betrayed by Zucker and that Zucker should tilt CNN programming more favorably toward him because of their long relationship.

In an interview with New York magazine, Zucker said he’s not worried about getting access to Trump.

“I think the era of access journalism as we’ve known it is over,” Zucker said. “I think our credibility is higher than ever, and our viewership is higher than ever, and our reporting is as strong as ever.”

“One of the things I think this administration hasn’t figured out yet is that there’s only one television network that is seen in Beijing, Moscow, Seoul, Tokyo, Pyongyang, Baghdad, Tehran, and Damascus — and that’s CNN,” he noted.

Part of the effort to ice out CNN may be related to ratings.

CNN “Reliable Sources” host Brian Stelter wrote in one of his recent newsletters that an aide in “Trumpworld” told him that his ratings would likely be hurt “because no Trump administration officials had agreed to be interviewed.” Stelter said in that newsletter that his ratings were in fact his highest since last November’s election coverage at 1.3 million viewers.

It’s hard to tell whether “State of the Union” ratings have been affected by the lack of Trump officials, considering it’s less than two weeks since theinauguration. While far behind the broadcast shows and “Fox & Friends” on cable news, the past two weeks of “State of the Union” have seen higher ratings than on Jan. 8, the most recent time a Trump official appeared. They’ve also won the demo (the key age group advertisers use) over the past two weeks, and last Sunday the show had 1.25 million viewers during the 9 a.m. broadcast, and 1.42 million viewers in the noon rebroadcast.

It’s not unusual for an administration to tangle with certain outlets. The Obama administration, at times, had a rocky relationship with Fox News and limited its officials from appearing on its programs. Former Obama White House Communications Director Anita Dunn told The New York Times in 2009 that they were going to treat Fox “the way we would treat an opponent.”

“As they are undertaking a war against Barack Obama and the White House, we don’t need to pretend that this is the way that legitimate news organizations behave,” she said at the time.

A former official in the Obama administration acknowledged that they had their “battles with Fox,” and that there may have been some times where “we sent people on other networks and not on Fox.” But as a general rule, the official said, officials would go on the network.

“I think, in my hazy recollection is it would be unusual to do all [the networks] except one. What drives that is sometimes amount of time available to the person doing them,” the official said. “If they are stiffing CNN intentionally, that is different than what normally happens.”

A spokesperson for Fox News did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

A CNN spokeswoman declined to comment.

(h/t Politico)

Update

On Wednesday, the day after this article was published, the White House made Dr. Sebastian Gorka, a Deputy Assistant to the President for national security available for an interview.

CNN Fires Back at Trump on Inauguration Ratings Winner

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CNN fired back late Tuesday at President Trump, who said more people tuned in to watch his inauguration on Fox News than “FAKE NEWS” CNN.

“According to Nielsen cumulative numbers, 34 million people watched CNN’s inauguration day coverage on television. 34 million watched Fox News,” read the message tweeted from CNN Communications. “There were an additional 16.9 million live video starts on CNN Digital platforms. Those are the facts.”

The response followed a tweet from Trump’s personal account praising Fox News for “being number one in inauguration ratings.”

Earlier this week, White House press secretary Sean Spicer defended his claim that Trump had the largest inauguration audience ever.

Spicer said Saturday that Trump had “the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration, period, both in person and around the globe.”

“It’s unquestionable,” Spicer said this week, doubling down on his initial claim, though not providing specific numbers.

“And I don’t see any numbers that dispute that when you add up attendance, viewership, total audience in terms of tablets, phones, on television. I’d love to see any information that proves that otherwise.”

(h/t The Hill)

 

 

 

Trump Spokesman Threatened to Expel CNN’s Jim Acosta

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CNN’s Senior White House Correspondent Jim Acosta said Donald Trump’s spokesman Sean Spicer threatened to expel him from Trump Tower if he attempted to ask another question after a contentious exchange with the president-elect during Wednesday’s news conference.

“After I asked and … demanded that we have a question, Sean Spicer, the incoming press secretary, did say to me that if I were to do that again I was going to be thrown out of this press conference,” Acosta told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer and Jake Tapper, speaking on “Inside Politics.”

Spicer’s threat came after Acosta pressed Trump to take a follow-up question after the president-elect assailed CNN for publishing a report Tuesday night on classified documents presented to President Obama and Trump which included allegations that Russian operatives claimed to possess compromising personal and financial information about Trump.

“Mr. President -elect since you are attacking our news organization can you give us a chance,” asked Acosta.

“Not you,” interjected Trump.”[Y]our organization is terrible … I am not going to give you a question … You are fake news.”

“Mr. President-elect that is not appropriate,” Acosta chided towards the end of the exchange.

Speaking later with Tapper and Blitzer, Acosta said he felt obligated to push Trump to answer a follow up question given the attack on CNN.

“I felt it was only fair that if our news organization is going to be attacked that we get a chance to ask a follow up question about what Donald Trump was talking about,” he said.

Trump did later take a question from CNN’s Jeremy Diamond.

(h/t CNN)

Update

Spicer flat out denied that he ever threatened to remove Acosta, again accusing CNN of “false reporting.”

And then, less than an hour later, he appeared on Fox to brag about… threatening to kick Acosta out of the presser for being “disrespectful” to Trump (by asking him a hard question).

Spicer:

“I went over to him. I informed him that, as I said, I thought his behavior was rude, disrespectful, and inappropriate and if it happened again, I would have him removed.”

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