Tag: Fox News

Trump Quotes New York Times: ‘Fox & Friends’ is ‘Most Powerful T.V. Show in America’

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President Trump early Thursday appeared to quote The New York Times in praising Fox News’s “Fox & Friends.”

“Wow, the Failing @nytimes said about @foxandfriends ‘….the most powerful T.V. show in America,'” Trump tweeted.

“Suddenly, for no other reason than its No. 1 fan, it is the most powerful TV show in America,” reads a line from the piece, titled “Watching ‘Fox & Friends,’ Trump Sees a Two-Way Mirror.”

It also says the morning show is “easily the most-watched cable news morning show, averaging 1.6 million viewers in the year’s second quarter, following a post-Trump ratings boost.”

Trump’s early morning tweet came after a “Fox & Friends” co-host held up a copy of the Times with an ad that featured the line from the article calling the Fox News show the “most powerful TV show in America.”

“This program, the program you are watching, is, according to The New York Times, the most powerful TV show in America,” Steve Doocy said.

[The Hill]

Reality

What the Fox and Friends hosts were holding up and quoting was a $100,000 paid advertisement by Fox that ran in The New York Times. Not a quote by the New York Times.

Trump accuses James Comey of breaking the law — based on a misleading Fox News report

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President Trump’s first day back in the office after his brief trip to Europe began, as so many do, with a flurry of tweets. It seems that Trump, as he so often does, tuned in to “Fox and Friends” on Monday morning, the show on which he made regular Monday-morning phone-in appearances prior to his entry into politics. And, as he has in the past, Trump appears to have taken information out of context to level a serious charge against a political opponent.

The relevant sequence of events goes like this. In the show’s six-o’-clock hour, it ran a segment addressing a report from the Hill about memos FBI Director James Comey wrote documenting his conversations with Trump prior to being fired.

After that segment aired, the show’s social media team tweeted a clip:

The president retweeted it — following up with thoughts of his own.

In short order, adviser Kellyanne Conway was promoting the story on ABC, calling it the real bombshell of the day (unlike that story about Donald Trump, Jr.).

It’s obvious why Trump’s team embraced this idea that Comey had leaked classified information to his friend: It reinforces the president’s prior arguments that the man he fired was the real villain in their interactions. After Comey testified on Capitol Hill, Trump suggested that the testimony was a complete vindication of himself and that Comey was “a leaker.” This charge was based on the revelation that Comey had given one of those memos about his conversations with Trump to a friend to give to the New York Times. In a later tweet, Trump set the table for his enthusiasm Monday morning, asking if Comey’s use of the memos was “totally illegal?”

The “Fox and Friends” segment begins with a snippet of Comey’s testimony. A Fox News host then summarizes:

It turns out, he may actually have broken the rules. A brand-new bombshell report accuses Comey of putting our national security at risk. According to the Hill, the former FBI director’s personal memos detailing private conversations with President Trump contained top secret information.

In the tweet, that becomes “Report accuses material James Comey leaked to a friend contained top secret information.”

If Comey gave classified information to someone without security clearance to leak to the press, it’s problematic. But that’s not what the Hill’s report says.

That report says that there were a total of seven memos prepared by Comey after his nine conversations with Trump. Four of those memos are marked as classified at the “secret” or “confidential” level, officials told the Hill.

In other words, the pool of documents looks like this.

It’s true that “the former FBI director’s personal memos detailing private conversations with President Trump contained … secret information,” as the Fox report summarizes, though not, apparently, top secret material. (The levels of classifications go “confidential,” “secret” and then “top secret.”) But the wording on that Fox report is misleading. The memos contained classified information is true when considering the memos as a group. It is not true, though, that each memo contained classified information — or, at least, it’s not true that each memo was marked as being classified.

This issue came up during Comey’s June testimony, at which point Comey made clear that the memo he gave to his friend to leak, documenting a meeting on Feb. 14 of this year, was not one that included classified material.

Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.): I found it very interesting that, that in the memo that you wrote after this February 14th pull-aside, you made clear that you wrote that memo in a way that was unclassified. If you affirmatively made the decision to write a memo that was unclassified, was that because you felt at some point, the facts of that meeting would have to come clean and come clear, and actually be able to be cleared in a way that could be shared with the American people?


Comey: Well, I remember thinking, this is a very disturbing development, really important to our work. I need to document it and preserve it in a way, and this committee gets this but sometimes when things are classified, it tangled them up.


Warner: Amen.


Comey: It’s hard to share within an investigative team. You have to be careful how you handled it for good reason. If I write it such a way that doesn’t include anything of a classification, that would make it easier for to us discuss within the FBI and the government, and to hold onto it in a way that makes it accessible to us.

He also during that testimony indicated that the same didn’t hold true for all of the memos he wrote.

Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.): The memos that you wrote, you wrote — did you write all nine of them in a way that was designed to prevent them from needing classification?


Comey: No. On a few of the occasions, I wrote — I sent emails to my chief of staff on some of the brief phone conversations I had. The first one was a classified briefing. Though it was in a conference room at Trump Tower, it was a classified briefing. I wrote that on a classified device. The one I started typing in the car, that was a classified laptop I started working on.

(Note that Heinrich refers to nine memos, assuming that there was one for each of Comey’s interactions with the president.)

During his testimony, Comey refers to the memo he gave to his friend in the singular — “the memo.” There’s no indication that he asked that one of the classified memos be leaked. In fact, his testimony — under oath, remember — was the opposite.

In other words, Comey asserted that the scenario looked something like this:

The tweet from “Fox and Friends” based on the Hill report is incorrect. And so, too, is Trump’s tweet. If there was classified information in the memo that Comey asked his friend to leak to the Times, that’s not yet been reported.

Which is not to say that Comey’s behavior was without concern. FBI agents sign an agreement prohibiting unauthorized disclosures of certain types of material. The Hill’s report notes that the FBI apparently considers Comey’s memos to have been government documents, not his own personal memos as he asserted on Capitol Hill. The repercussions of that aren’t clear.

This is not the first time that Trump has seen a misleading bit of information on “Fox and Friends” and made the problem worse. In March, the show looked at data on the release of prisoners from Guantanamo, which Trump then used to attack President Barack Obama. One might have thought that Trump would have learned his lesson at that point.

But it appears that the opportunity to hammer his political opponents is often too urgent in his mind to ensure that he’s doing so accurately.

[Washington Post]

Update

Fox News issued a rare correction, stating they were wrong. No retraction yet from the President of the United States of America.

Eric Trump: Democrats Are ‘Not Even People’

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President Trump’s son Eric Trump on Tuesday said Democrats are “not even people” to him after their obstruction of his father’s agenda.

“I’ve never seen hatred like this,” he said on Fox News’s “Hannity” Tuesday night. “To me, they’re not even people. It’s so, so sad. Morality’s just gone, morals have flown out the window and we deserve so much better than this as a country.”

“You see the Democratic Party, they’re imploding. They’re imploding. They became obstructionists because they have no message of their own.”

Trump additionally criticized the Democratic National Committee’s (DNC) leadership without directly naming Chairman Tom Perez.

“You see the head of the DNC, who is a total whack job,” he told host Sean Hannity. “There’s no leadership there.”

“They lost the [2016 presidential] election that they should have won because they spent seven times the amount of money that my father spent.”

Democrats have tried capitalizing on liberal dissatisfaction with Trump’s administration and its agenda despite Republicans controlling the White House and both chambers of Congress.

Rep. Al Green (D-Texas) has emerged as a vocal critic of Trump and is reportedly readying the articles of impeachment that mark the first official step of any congressional bid to remove a sitting president.

Green’s criticisms focus on Trump’s controversial firing of former FBI Director James Comey last month amid the bureau’s probe of Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential race.

Trump reportedly urged Comey to halt the investigation of his former national security adviser Michael Flynn ahead of his ouster.

The president’s decision roiled Washington as the FBI’s probe includes possible collusion between Russia and Trump’s campaign.

[The Hill]

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Trump Defends Carter Page, Whom He is Not Supposed to Know

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Over the weekend, the Wall Street Journal reported that “a team of lawyers” may soon review Donald Trump’s social-media missives as the White House tries to grapple with the Russia scandal.

If that was the plan, it doesn’t appear to be going well. This morning, for example, the president published some tweets about the controversy that didn’t do Trump World any favors:

“So now it is reported that the Democrats, who have excoriated Carter Page about Russia, don’t want him to testify. He blows away their case against him & now wants to clear his name by showing ‘the false or misleading testimony by James Comey, John Brennan…’ Witch Hunt!”

Trump was apparently watching a Fox News segment this morning, which led to this little outburst.

And that’s a shame, because the president’s tweets are problematic for a variety of reasons.

For example, Trump, apparently quoting a letter Page sent to lawmakers seemed to argue this morning that the former directors of the FBI and the CIA delivered “false or misleading testimony” while under oath. That’s a pretty dangerous thing for a president to allege publicly without any evidence.

What’s more, Trump’s tweet follows Page’s claim that his interview with the House Intelligence Committee has been delayed, but it’s unclear if that interview had ever been scheduled in the first place.

But perhaps the most salient detail is Trump’s insistence that Carter Page has information that “blows away” the Democrats’ “case against him” in the Russia scandal. This, of course, leads to an awkward question: how exactly would the president know that?

A year ago, during the presidential campaign, Trump personally singled out Page, by name, as one of only a handful of people who were advising him on matters of foreign policy. That became highly problematic: the FBI has investigated Page as a possible agent of Russia.

The more controversial Page became, the more eager Team Trump became to put distance between Page and the president. Sean Spicer told reporters during the transition period, for example, “Carter Page is an individual whom [Trump] does not know.” The Washington Post added this morning people close to the president have insisted that Trump and Page “never met.”

And yet, there was the president this morning, not only defending Page, but making the case that Page has important, exculpatory information. I’ll look forward to the explanation as to how and why Trump has reached this conclusion.

[MSNBC]

President Trump Attacks ‘Lunatic,’ ‘No-Talent,’ ‘Dumbest Person’ in TV

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President Donald Trump says he thinks CNN’s Chris Cuomo looks like a “chained lunatic” on television. CNN’s Don Lemon is “perhaps the dumbest person in broadcasting” and CBS Late Show host Stephen Colbert is a “no-talent guy” who talks “filthy.”

Those were just some of the comments Trump offered over dinner Monday night when asked about the media he consumes as President of the United States. But he did little to hide his frustration, explaining that he had been surprised that the journalistic criticism had gotten worse after the campaign. He also said he had been working on tuning out news that is critical of him.

“I’ve been able to do something that I never thought I had the ability to do. I’ve been able not to watch or read things that aren’t pleasant,” he said, maintaining that he no longer watches CNN or MSNBC. “And it keeps you young.”

There was little doubt, however, that he remained acutely aware of what reporters and correspondents were saying about him. He has large flat-screen televisions set up in the Treaty Room in the White House residence and in his private dining room in the West Wing. He continues to have stacks of newspapers and magazines delivered to his office suite in the West Wing.

“Washington Post, New York Times, they’re really, really dishonest,” he said, before directly addressing the TIME reporters he had invited for dinner. “You people are quite dishonest in all fairness.” He said he used to watch MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough but no longer does. He also claimed to have helped CNN president Jeff Zucker, an old friend and business colleague, get his job at the network.

The one network he praised was Fox News, saying he watches their shows and is responsible for its ratings bump.

Spokespeople for MSNBC and CBS said the networks had no comment on the president’s criticism. A CNN spokesperson said, “His comments are beneath the dignity of the office of the President.” Trump’s claims about CNN’s Zucker have been repeatedly refuted by the executives involved.

Here’s an extended excerpt of his conversation with TIME:

For instance I don’t watch CNN. I don’t watch MSNBC. Scarborough used to treat me great. But because I don’t do interviews and stuff and want to … He went the other way. Which is fine. He’s got some problems. But I don’t watch the show anymore. It drives him crazy. I don’t watch the show.

I do watch Fox in the morning, and their ratings have gone through the roof because everyone knows I’m watching Fox. But they’re pleasant. And if I do something wrong they report on it. I don’t mean they – if I do something wrong. But it’s really, honestly it’s the most accurate.

CNN in the morning, Chris Cuomo, he’s sitting there like a chained lunatic. He’s like a boiler ready to explode, the level of hatred. And the entire, you know the entire CNN platform is that way. This Don Lemon who’s perhaps the dumbest person in broadcasting, Don Lemon at night it’s like – sometimes they’ll have a guest who by mistake will say something good. And they’ll start screaming, we’re going to commercial. They cut him off. Remember?

I’ve seen things where by mistake somebody they bring in a guest and it turns out to be a positive. And they go, I mean they get just killed. The level of hatred. And poor Jeffrey Lord. I love Jeffrey Lord. But sometimes he’s sitting there with eight unknown killers that nobody ever heard of. And CNN actually is not doing nearly as well as others. They’re all doing well because of me. But it’s not doing as well as others that are doing better actually. But Fox treats me very fairly. MSNBC is ridiculous. It’s just bad.

It’s an ability I never thought I’d have. I never thought I’d have the ability to say, they’re doing a big story on me on CNN and I won’t watch it. And it’s amazing, it doesn’t matter. But it really, the equilibrium is much better. As far as newspapers and things, I glance at them. They’re really dishonest. I mean they’re really dishonest.

Trump also brought up The Late Show host Stephen Colbert’s blistering and crude May 1 monologue, in which the comedian delivered an oral-sex joke about the president and Russian President Vladimir Putin:

You see a no-talent guy like Colbert. There’s nothing funny about what he says. And what he says is filthy. And you have kids watching. And it only builds up my base. It only helps me, people like him. The guy was dying. By the way they were going to take him off television, then he started attacking me and he started doing better. But his show was dying. I’ve done his show. … But when I did his show, which by the way was very highly rated. It was high—highest rating. The highest rating he’s ever had.

(h/t Time)

Trump: Don’t Blame Me When I Quote Fox News

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Donald Trump does not like taking responsibility for White House screw-ups. He’ll blame anyone else he can think of—even his friends at Fox News.

On Thursday, White House press secretary Sean Spicer set off an international incident when he suggested that British intelligence might have spied on Trump during the campaign in response to a request from President Barack Obama. Spicer made this remark while once again trying to defend his boss, who two weeks ago tweet-claimed—without offering any evidence—that Obama had “wiretapped” him at Trump Tower during the 2016 election. Since then the GOP chairs of the congressional intelligence committees (and many others) have declared there is no proof to back up Trump’s reckless charge, which apparently was based on a Breitbart news story that itself was based on a statement (or rant) by right-wing radio talker Mark Levin.

The obvious conclusion is that an angry Trump had tweeted out fake news falsely accusing his predecessor of criminal activity. But Spicer has continued to contend that Trump’s allegations had a factual basis of some sort. And at the Thursday briefing he cited Fox News analyst Andrew Napolitano, who claimed on that network that Obama had used the United Kingdom’s Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ)—the British NSA— to eavesdrop on Trump with “no American fingerprints on this.” (Napolitano is no credible source. Like Trump, he has appeared on the radio show of conspiracy theorist Alex Jones. In 2010, Napolitano told Jones’ audience that it’s “hard for me to believe” that World Trade Center Building 7 “came down by itself” and that the 9/11 attacks “couldn’t possibly have been done the way the government told us.”)

Yet here was the White House depending upon a conspiracy theorist to charge that Obama enlisted the Brits to conduct illegal surveillance against Trump. The GCHQ went into a tizzy. Breaking with its tradition of almost always staying silent on public controversies, the British spy agency released a statement that said, No way! It called the allegation Spicer embraced “ridiculous.”  (British journalists were shocked to see any response from the super-secretive GCHQ.) And British officials told reporters they had privately received some form of apology from White House officials.

Yet on Friday afternoon, at a short press conference with German leader Angela Merkel, Trump indicated that he believed there was nothing to apologize for. Asked by a German reporter about the wiretapping allegation, he made a reference to “fake news” without addressing the matter. When a second German reporter pressed Trump on the issue, Trump first made a joke that he had something in common with Merkel. (The NSA had listened in on her cell phone.) Then he dismissed the significance of Spicer’s citation of the Fox News report: “We said nothing. All we did was quote…a talented lawyer on Fox.” The German reporter, Trump said, “shouldn’t be talking to me. You should be talking to Fox.”

Fox News, for its part, wasn’t sticking to Napolitano’s crazy story. Following the press conference, Fox anchor Shep Smith reported the network “has no evidence of any kind” to support the notion that Obama (with or without the Brits) had spied on Trump.

To sum up, the White House was citing phony information from Fox that Fox wouldn’t stand by. And now Trump was basically saying, You can’t hold me and my White House accountable for what we say. If someone says it on Fox News, that’s good enough for us. In other words, they report, we repeat.

This is a stunning statement and admission from a president: There is no need for me to confirm anything before tossing it out from the bully pulpit. It may not be a big news flash at this point, but Trump was eschewing any responsibility for White House statements. This is apparently Trump’s standard: If an assertion appears on Breitbart or on Fox News—if a conspiracy theory is spouted by a right-wing talk show—then it can be freely cited by the president of the United States without any consequence. With this stance, Trump has fully embraced his position as fake-newser-in-chief.

(h/t Mother Jones)

Trump Hits Obama Again, This Time With False Claims About Gitmo Detainees

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President Trump early Tuesday incorrectly blamed the Obama administration for releasing 122 “vicious” prisoners from the Guantanamo Bay detention center.

“122 vicious prisoners, released by the Obama Administration from Gitmo, have returned to the battlefield. Just another terrible decision!” Trump wrote.

Trump posted the tweet 31 minutes after Fox News tweeted about a U.S. airstrike that killed a former detainee in Yemen.

“Former Gitmo detainee killed by a U.S. airstrike in Yemen; at least 122 former Gitmo detainees have re-engaged in terrorism” the “Fox & Friends” account tweeted just after 6:30 a.m.

But according to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, 113 of the 122 former detainees who have re-engaged in terrorism were released before January 2009, when former President Barack Obama took office.

The former detainee recently killed in the U.S. airstrike, Muhammad Tahar, was transferred to Yemen in December 2009, according to Department of Defense files compiled by the The New York Times.

Trump during his presidential campaign said he would “load” the detention center “with some bad dudes.” Obama during his own presidential campaign had promised to close the facility.

(h/t The Hill)

This is What Propaganda Looks Like

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At a campaign-style rally in Melbourne, Florida (on his way to his 3rd vacation in 3 weeks) as his proof to support his xenophobic and anti-immigration policies, Donald Trump made a claim that Sweden experienced a terrorist attack the previous day in direct result of accepting an influx of refugees escaping war.

However it turned out, there was no terrorist attack in Sweden or anywhere else in Europe that day, Trump simply misinterpreted something he saw on television and presented it as fact.

While the President of the United States creating fake news is indeed a problem, there is something else problematic this is surrounding the President’s lies. And that is the rush of pro-Trump media sites to create news reports in order to support the already debunked false claims of the President. There is a word for this, “propaganda.”

propaganda – noun – Information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote a political cause or point of view.
–Oxford English Dictionary

The meaning of propaganda has been watered down recently, because it gets thrown around too easily in social media in an attempt to discredit a news story someone doesn’t like, so when we see it actually occurring we may not recognize that it is happening.

But watch pro-Trump news sites like Breitbart and Fox News scramble every time Trump makes a ridiculous or unsubstantiated claim, even long after facts are presented that absolutely refute what was said. Like when they still stand up and say “No, the President was really telling the truth!!! Sweden is a living hell!!!”

It’s their job to “cover” for him, to make the case that, “Trump said X but he really means Y,” or just to outright lie for him.

We saw this all throughout his campaign. Trump would say things like he wants to ban all Muslims or Obama founded ISIS, and these sites would trip over themselves to find a way to make him appear less controversial, look for quotes out of contexts to support their cause, or to say he really didn’t literally mean what he said.

But Trump did eventually institute a Muslim ban with an executive order and also later came back and said I’m not joking, Obama is the literal founder of ISIS.

That, is propaganda.

A Little Background

To highlight how this is happening, we’ll first walk through the series of events surrounding Trump’s false Sweden claims, then we’ll take a look at an actual propaganda article from Fox News.

First, Trump Shouted a Lie

During his rally, Donald Trump referred to several countries that have taken in a disproportionate number of refugees and that have recently been the target of attacks.

“You look at what’s happening in Germany. You look at what’s happening last night in Sweden. Sweden! Who would believe this? Sweden, they took in large numbers, they are having problems like they never thought possible.”

However the claim sent pundits and political observers scrambling to find evidence of any such incident in Sweden — and they came up empty.

There was, of course, no terrorist or refugee-related incident in Sweden the previous day, as Swedes helpfully pointed out.

Then Trump Claimed a Lie Was Never Made

So Trump offered clarification on his remarks over Twitter, saying it was from a Fox News story he just watched earlier that day:

The Fox News segment Trump was referring to was an interview between host Tucker Carlson and documentarian and media personality Ami Horowitz that aired Friday night. Horowitz presented a clip from a film documenting alleged violence committed by refugees in Sweden, and the segment extensively referenced an alleged crime surge in Sweden and its links to immigrants.

To top things off, that Fox News segment itself was fact-checked and found to be full of errors and misleading statements.

Then Trump Accused Media of Attacking Him

In response Trump sent out a tweet accusing journalists, who he has recently labeled “an enemy of the people“, of saying large scale immigration in Sweden is not a problem. And the “real news” is the influx of migrants from other countries is causing a crime wave.

Trump, again, is trying to push his claim that immigrants are causing crime without providing any evidence.

Now Let the Propaganda Begin!

Enter the right-wing pro-Trump network Fox News, who recently published this article titled, “Trump may have been unclear, but Sweden experiencing a migrant crime wave“.

The Fox News article makes the case that Trump was actually telling the truth because a single police investigator in Orebro, Sweden named Peter Springare wrote a super-racist Facebook post a few weeks prior which claimed his five-day caseload was, “Mohammed, Mahmod, Ali, again and again.”

Springare’s post listed five rapes, three assaults, a pair of extortions, blackmail, an attempted murder, violence against police and a robbery. According to Springare, the suspects were all from Muslim-majority countries – Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Somalia and Turkey – save for one Swedish man nabbed in a drug-related case.

Just to be clear, Fox News’ proof was just one guy’s experience over less than a week, and taking him at his word no less. Seeing that Sweden employs about 29,000 police officers who report on crimes year-round, that is a really small sample size they are holding up in order to make your case.

Springare’s post actually made national news in Sweden… on how stupid his claims were. It was even debunked by the Swedish Prime Minister.

If Fox News wanted to be honest and provide quality reporting, they would have presented their viewers with actual data from the The Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention, known there as Brå.

If we take into account the, preliminary figures for 2016 which show that offenses against individual persons was up slightly, but still at the same levels as recent years, we can clearly see crime in Sweden has remained largely the same, even as more immigrants are living in the country.

What Fox News did was take the racist ramblings of ONE police officer over the course of a few days (without any evidence) and hold that up to ALL police officers in Sweden over the course of a decade and say, “these two are equal.”

They are not equal.

Fox News was dishonest with their viewers by ignoring the vast body of evidence that disagreed with their conclusions in order to push a false narrative to their viewers that Donald Trump really knew what he was talking about.

That, is propaganda.

 

References

http://www.businessinsider.com/trump-doubles-down-on-sweden-claims-2017-2

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2017/02/19/sweden-has-no-idea-what-trump-meant-when-he-said-you-look-at-whats-happening-in-sweden/?hpid=hp_hp-top-table-main_wv-sweden-843am%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&tid=a_inl&utm_term=.f33bb4247e96

 

 

 

 

The White House Cited the Quebec Mosque Attack by White Supremacist to Justify Trump’s Policies

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U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration is citing the Sunday attack on Muslims in Quebec City as an example of why his own policies are needed.

“We condemn this attack in the strongest possible terms. It’s a terrible reminder of why we must remain vigilant, and why the president is taking steps to be proactive, rather than reactive, when it comes to our nation’s safety and security,” press secretary Sean Spicer said at his daily briefing on Monday.

Spicer did not specifically identify the policies he was referring to.

But the “proactive, rather than reactive” language is similar to the rhetoric Trump and his allies have used in defending his “temporary” ban on refugees and by visitors from seven Muslim-majority countries, which has caused a worldwide uproar.

Spicer used similar words when asked directly about the travel ban later in the briefing, saying Trump was not going to “wait and react.”
“There is nothing nice about searching for terrorists before they can enter our country. This was a big part of my campaign. Study the world!” Trump himself wrote on Twitter earlier Monday.

The Quebec City massacre killed six Muslims who were attending a mosque for evening prayers. Trump’s policies have been condemned by Muslim groups and many others around the world as discrimination against Muslims.

Trump spoke to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau earlier on Monday.
Spicer said Trump offers “his condolences as well as his thoughts and prayers to the victims and their family and to all Canadians.”

He noted that Trudeau was “cautious to draw conclusions of the motives at this stage of the investigation.” He said “the president shared those thoughts.”

(h/t Toronto Star)

Kellyanne Conway: Reporters Who ‘Talked Smack’ About Trump Should Be Fired

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Kellyanne Conway, senior adviser to President Donald Trump, on Sunday continued the administration’s attack against the media by claiming that network television reporters and commentators who “talked smack” about Trump before the election should be fired.

“Not one network person has been let go. Not one silly political analyst and pundit who talked smack all day long about Donald Trump has been let go,” Conway said on “Fox News Sunday.” “I’m too polite to mention their names, but they know who they are, and they are all wondering who will be the first to go. The election was three months ago. None of them have been let go.”

She added that the networks should be “cleaning house,” firing “these people who said things that just weren’t true.”

Conway accused the media of focusing too much attention on her attempt last week to defend press secretary Sean Spicer flagrantly lying to reporters — by claiming he was stating “alternative facts.”Trump and his administration spent much of his first week in office antagonizing the media. In his first White House press briefing on Monday, Spicer spent several minutes on what he deemed “demoralizing” coverage, and continued to defend his lying by claiming that “we can disagree with the facts.”

In an interview with the New York Times on Wednesday, chief strategist Steve Bannon, who previously ran Breitbart, a site that traffics in white nationalism, called the media “the opposition party” and said it should be silenced.

“The media should be embarrassed and humiliated and keep its mouth shut and just listen for a while,” Bannon said.

(h/t Huffington Post)

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