Category: Attack the Press

White House Blocks Major News Organizations From Press Briefing

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 Again Calls Media ‘Enemy of the People’

President Trump turned his speech before a conservative convention into a full-throated attack on journalism Friday, saying some reporters make up unnamed sources for “fake news” and again describing them as “the enemy” of the American people.

“A few days ago I called the fake news the enemy of the people, and they are — they are the enemy of the people,” Trump told the annual Conservative Political Action Conference.

While praising some reporters as honest, and pledging fealty to the First Amendment, Trump claimed that “the fake news media doesn’t tell the truth.” He said reporters should not be allowed to use anonymous sources, and “we’re going to do something about it.”

The president did not elaborate on what that “something” might be, beyond general criticism.

It was the latest in a series of attacks that, critics said, are designed to undermine coverage of Trump’s troubles in office, including investigations into possible links between his campaign associates and Russians during last year’s presidential election.

The sustained attacks show “how worried he is about the repeated reports of chaos, incompetence, and potential wrongdoing inside his administration,” said Matthew Miller, a spokesman for President Barack Obama’s Justice Department. “His problem, though, is with the facts, not the media, and he’s only making his problem worse the more he runs away from it.”

In his speech to the annual gathering of conservative activists known as CPAC, Trump also thanked them for their support and touted an agenda that includes tax cuts, regulatory rollbacks, a military build-up, a still-to-be-defined replacement for Obama’s health care law, and “border security” that includes travel restrictions from Muslim countries and a proposed wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.

“Our victory was a win for everyone who believes it’s time to stand up for America, to stand up for the American worker and to stand up for the American flag,” Trump said.

The crowd also lapped up his attacks on the media, which came on the same day that he and aides disputed a CNN story that White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus spoke to the FBI about media reports on the investigation into Russian efforts to influence the 2016 election.

In assailing anonymous sources and so-called “fake news,” Trump discussed specific stories and news organizations in general terms, at one point describing CNN as the “Clinton News Network.”

The White House also deploys anonymity from time to time. Less than two hours before Trump criticized the use of anonymous sources and said all sources should be named, an administration official provided a briefing on condition he not be identified.

Some analysts said Trump’s constant attacks on the press are designed to undermine the public’s faith in institutions in general and the media in particular, as well as to generate doubt about negative stories regarding the administration.

Liz Mair, a Republican consultant involved in a “Never Trump” campaign last year, said attacking the media at a forum like the Conservative Political Action Conference is the easiest way for Trump to unite conservatives who might otherwise oppose him over issues like entitlement spending, free trade, and limited government.

“CPAC has been trying to normalize Trump as a ‘conservative’ for years now, but the fact is, Trump continues to have precious little in common, philosophically, with Burke, Kirk, Reagan, Goldwater or Thatcher,” Mair said.

William McRaven, the retired admiral who planned the 2011 raid that killed Osama bin Laden, said this week that Trump’s attacks on the media may also be undermining democracy itself.

“The president said the news media is the enemy of the American people,” McRaven, now chancellor of the University of Texas system, said in a speech. “This sentiment may be the greatest threat to democracy in my lifetime.”

Trump first made the “enemy” claim in a tweet a week ago, and he criticized coverage of that incident during his remarks Friday at CPAC.

“In covering my comments, the dishonest media did not explain that I called the ‘fake news’ the enemy of the people,” he said. “The ‘fake news.’ They dropped off the word ‘fake.’ And all of a sudden the story became the media is the enemy.”

In that Feb. 17 tweet, Trump said: “The FAKE NEWS media (failing @nytimes, @NBCNews, @ABC, @CBS, @CNN) is not my enemy, it is the enemy of the American People!”

Trump said he is not “against the media,” and “there are some great reporters around,” but there are also “terrible, dishonest people” in the business.

“I love the First Amendment — nobody loves it better than me,” Trump said at one point. “Nobody — I mean, who use its more than I do?”

(h/t USA Today)

Media

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nAJhcc5ke7k

Trump Attends Private Mar-a-Lago Event Without Telling Press Corps

President Trump attended a private fundraiser at his Mar-a-Lago resort on Saturday evening, without informing the press corps that follows him and reports on his movements.

Trump made an unexpected stop at a fundraiser for Boston’s Dana-Farber Cancer Institute held at his resort in Palm Beach, Fla., the Washington Post reported.

The event was not on his schedule.

A video posted on Instagram shows Trump arriving at the private fundraiser, where he was met with cheers. More than 800 people attended the event, deputy press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters Sunday.

Trump has visited Mar-a-Lago for three straight weekends. Last weekend, Trump and Japanese Prime Minster Shinzo Abe scrambled to respond to a North Korean missile test while guests in the public dining room looked on.

Memberships for Trump’s resort have doubled to $200,000 a year since Trump won the election.

Students at Harvard Medical School demanded the Saturday fundraiser be held elsewhere last month. The students’ demands came right after Trump issued a controversial executive order on immigration and refugees, which the students argued threatened practicing doctors.

The cancer institute ended up holding the event since “contracts have been signed, and a large number of people have committed to attend,” the institute said in a statement.

(h/t The Hill)

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

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)

 

Trump Tweets: The Media is the ‘Enemy of the American People’

President Trump blasted the media as “the enemy of the American people” in a tweet Friday, calling out several outlets specifically.

“The FAKE NEWS media (failing @nytimes, @NBCNews, @ABC, @CBS, @CNN) is not my enemy, it is the enemy of the American People!” he wrote.

He had posted and then quickly deleted a slightly different version of the tweet just a few minutes earlier, which omitted ABC and CBS. He also included the word “SICK!” at the end of the original post.

The tweet came one day after Trump held an adversarial and lengthy news conference, in which he berated the media as “very fake news” and dismissed news reports about his and his associates’ ties to Russia as a “ruse.”

About an hour later, he posted a second tweet criticizing the media’s coverage of the press conference.

“‘One of the most effective press conferences I’ve ever seen!’ says Rush Limbaugh. Many agree.Yet FAKE MEDIA calls it differently! Dishonest,” Trump wrote.

Trump has long had an antagonistic relationship with the press, and often labels news stories he sees as unfavorable as “fake news.” Trump’s campaign issued a survey to supporters on Friday, asking them to gauge the trustworthiness of the media.

The news outlets singled out in Trump’s Friday afternoon tweet are not new targets for the president. He has often lambasted CNN and The New York Times, referring to them as “failing” and out of touch with voters.

In a rare interview with The New York Times last month, Chief White House Strategist Steve Bannon, the former chair of the far-right Breitbart News, called reporters the “opposition party” and said “the media should be embarrassed and humiliated and keep its mouth shut and just listen for a while.”

“They don’t understand this country,” Bannon said. “They still do not understand why Donald Trump is the president of the United States.”

Trump echoed Bannon’s comments shortly after, telling “The Brody File” that “the media is the opposition party in many ways.”

(h/t The Hill)

 

 

 

Trump Says Flynn Was Treated Unfairly, A Day After Spicer Said He Was Fired Because of a Lack of Trust

President Trump  criticized the intelligence community and the media Wednesday for the news reports that ultimately led to national security adviser Michael Flynn’s resignation Monday night, less than four weeks into his White House tenure.

“I think he’s been treated very, very unfairly by the media — as I call it, the ‘fake media,’ in many cases — and I think it’s really a sad thing that he was treated so badly,” Trump said at a news conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. “I think in addition to that, from intelligence, papers are being leaked, things are being leaked.”

Trump added that the leaks were a “criminal action, criminal act.”

The president was responding to a question from the Christian Broadcasting Network about whether he thinks that recent reports concerning Russia — that Flynn misled government officials, including now-Vice President Pence, about conversations Flynn had with the Russian ambassador involving sanctions, as well as news that members of the Trump campaign had repeated contact with Russian intelligence officials — could undermine the goal of preventing a nuclear Iran.

His response, in which he defended Flynn as a “wonderful man,” added confusion to the White House’s account of Flynn’s dismissal and conflicted with his press secretary’s assertion that Trump fired Flynn.

“People are trying to cover up for a terrible loss that the Democrats had under Hillary Clinton,” Trump said. “I think it’s very, very unfair what’s happened to General Flynn, the way he was treated, and the documents and papers that were illegally — I stress that — illegally leaked. Very, very unfair.”

On Tuesday, White House spokesman Sean Spicer emphasized that Trump asked Flynn to resign because he could no longer be trusted, particularly after misleading Pence about discussing with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak sanctions put in place by the Obama administration.

“The evolving and eroding level of trust as a result of this situation and a series of other questionable instances is what led the president to ask for General Flynn’s resignation,” Spicer said during his press briefing.

Spicer told reporters Wednesday afternoon that he didn’t see a need to “square” his earlier comments with the president’s praise of Flynn of earlier in the day.

“The president is very clear that Gen. Flynn has served this country, both in uniform and here, with distinction,” he said. “There’s a clear difference between his commitment to caring about this country and the trust the president had to execute those jobs.”

Trump’s comments at the news conference followed a blitz of angry tweets Wednesday morning over Flynn’s departure and what Trump said were leaks from intelligence agencies.

The direct slam against the leaks suggested deepening struggles within the Trump White House as it faces growing questions — and possible congressional probes — about how and when the president and other top officials dealt with the disclosures that Flynn conducted private outreach with Russia’s ambassador before Trump took office. Intercepts showed that Flynn discussed U.S. sanctions in a phone call with the ambassador — a conversation topic that Flynn first denied and then later said he could not recall.

Trump’s ire over the insider tips to journalists also contrasted with his indirect praise of the disclosure of leaked internal emails from the Clinton campaign made public by WikiLeaks during the lead-up to the election.

Trump tried to brush off the mounting pressures on his administration as a diversion by opponents, even though senior Republican lawmakers have indicated that investigations into Russian contacts will be expanded. On Tuesday, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said it was “highly likely” that the events leading to Flynn’s departure would be added to a broader probe into alleged Russian meddling in the U.S. presidential election.

“This Russian connection non-sense is merely an attempt to cover-up the many mistakes made in Hillary Clinton’s losing campaign,” Trump tweeted Wednesday.

The president was referring to recent stories by the New York Times and The Washington Post. Both outlined questionable — and potentially illegal — contact between his aides and Russia.

An article posted by the New York Times late Tuesday reported that members of his presidential campaign team, as well as other Trump associates, were repeatedly in contact with senior Russian intelligence officials during the campaign. And several articles by The Post reported that Flynn had misled administration officials, including Pence, about his discussions with the Russian ambassador to the United States over sanctions before Trump was sworn in.

(h/t Washington Post)

 

White House Reporter Accuses Trump Aide Omarosa Manigault of Bullying Her

A longtime White House reporter says that President Trump’s aide Omarosa Manigault “physically intimidated” her when they got into an argument in the West Wing last week, according to The Washington Post.

The reporter, April Ryan of the American Urban Radio Networks, said that the former star of “The Apprentice” intimidated her in a way that could have invited involvement by the Secret Service.

“She stood right in my face like she was going to hit me,” Ryan told the Post. “I said, ‘You better back up.’ . . . She thought I would be bullied. I won’t be.”

She added that Manigault made verbal threats and claimed that she was one of several black journalists that the White House has “dossiers” on, the Post reports.

The report said there were others who witnessed their argument, which the report said was tied to emails that Manigault sent Ryan during the election race last year. In one email, she sent a link to a story that listed names of journalists that Hillary Clinton’s campaign supposedly wanted to influence, which included Ryan.

“This story suggests that as a reporter, you are (or were) a paid Clinton surrogate,” Manigault wrote in the email, according to the Post. “I pray this is not true! This could be hurtful to your legacy and the integrity of your work.”

Minutes later, Manigault reportedly sent a second email: “Protect your legacy!! You have worked too hard to have people question your ethics as a journalist. People talking trash about the reporters on that list having NO integrity. It’s hurtful to hear people say those things about you.”

The report said that the two women used to be friends and Manigault even asked Ryan to be a bridesmaid in her upcoming wedding, but Ryan has declined that offer.

(h/t CBS News)

White House Grants Press Credentials to a Pro-Trump Blog

The Gateway Pundit, a provocative conservative blog, gained notice last year for its fervent pro-Trump coverage and its penchant for promoting false rumors about voter fraud and Hillary Clinton’s health that rocketed around right-wing websites.

Now the site will report on politics from a prominent perch: the White House.

The Trump administration has granted press credentials to Lucian B. Wintrich, the Washington correspondent for Gateway Pundit, to attend White House press briefings and ask questions of the press secretary, Sean M. Spicer.

Mr. Wintrich, an artist and writer who has collaborated with Milo Yiannopoulos, the polarizing editor at Breitbart News, attended President Trump’s news conference with the Canadian prime minister, Justin Trudeau, on Monday. He was joined by the owner of Gateway Pundit, Jim Hoft, who posted on Twitter, “President Trump just spoke about tossing criminal migrants and I wanted to stand up and cheer!!”

In a telephone interview from the West Wing, Mr. Wintrich, 28, said he would “be reporting far more fairly than a lot of the very left-wing outlets that are currently occupying the briefing room.” He added, “We will be doing a little trolling of the media in general here.”

Asked what kind of trolling his fellow White House correspondents might want to prepare for, Mr. Wintrich paused. “I don’t want to give too much away,” he said. “We have some pretty solid stuff planned.”

Bloggers and pundits have been granted access to White House briefings in previous administrations, and Mr. Spicer in recent weeks has taken questions from conservative talk-radio hosts and reporters at local broadcast affiliates. But the inclusion of Gateway Pundit has raised concerns that the Trump administration, which has called the news media “the opposition party,’’ is favoring outlets more sympathetic to its views.

On Monday, some journalists complained after Mr. Trump took questions at his news conference only from a local broadcast journalist and a reporter from The Daily Caller, a conservative news site. Neither reporter asked about one of the day’s top stories, the status of Mr. Trump’s national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn.

Several inquiries to the White House were not returned on Monday.

Gateway Pundit has been cited by the Fox News anchor Sean Hannity, The Drudge Report, Sarah Palin and other popular conservative personalities and outlets. Last month, the site drew criticism for disseminating a false report that a Washington Post journalist had photographed the written notes of Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson during a confirmation hearing. The journalist, who did not attend the hearing, was subsequently harassed with threatening voice mail messages and online attacks.

When asked about the false stories, Mr. Wintrich said: “That is the state of new media. When you are trying to get new information out there as quickly as possible, occasionally you’ll get something wrong and have to fix it. That’s how media works right now.” He said that Gateway Pundit had “broken dozens and dozens more factual stories” but did not offer an example when asked for one.

Mr. Wintrich described himself as a Trump supporter and Goldwater conservative who enjoys “simultaneously trolling both progressives and evangelical conservatives.” He said his aim was “to provide fair coverage from the conservative side.”

On Twitter on Monday, Mr. Wintrich posted a photograph of himself standing behind the White House press room lectern, a White House pass slung around his neck. The post from Mr. Hoft included the hashtag #pepe and an accompanying Pepe emoji, a reference to Pepe the Frog, a cartoon character that has been repurposed as a symbol by white supremacy and anti-Semitic groups.

Mr. Wintrich said the inclusion of the Pepe icon was not meant as anti-Semitic. “My grandfather is Jewish, he fought against the Germans, escaped through the Polish underground,” Mr. Wintrich said.

(h/t New York Times)

Black Plastic Covers Windows, Blocking Reporters’ Views of Trump Golfing

Reporters who are supposed to keep an eye on President Trump couldn’t see him Saturday morning.

White House reporters tasked with covering Trump tweeted they were holed up in a clubhouse basement of the luxurious Trump National Jupiter Golf Club & Spa.

That wouldn’t be so bad if the windows and doors weren’t covered with black plastic, blocking all views of the outside world, including Trump and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on the golf course.

“Trump’s press corps has been placed in a basement suite at Jupiter golf club,” tweeted Jennifer Jacobs, a White House reporter for Bloomberg. “Black plastic over windows to give Trump privacy as he golfs.”

Later, Jacobs tweeted that Japanese reporters were also in the room, and it wasn’t clear if “US side or Japan side vetoed golf pix.”

Jill Colvin of the Associated Press also tweeted a picture of the doors covered with black plastic. Twitter followers urged the reporters to rip down the plastic or tear peep holes in it.

Trump had set aside two days for Abe’s visit, including golf time. The two headed to the Trump National Jupiter Gold Club & Spa Saturday morning.

Once there, the traveling press pool was escorted into the clubhouse and downstairs into what was supposed to be a room to file stories. That’s when they saw the blackout. “The door and windows are covered with black plastic so we can’t see out,” the official White House pool report stated. The reporters were told they would be there for awhile, according to press pool reports.

And awhile it was according to Julie Dash, a White House reporter for the New York Times, who tweeted in the afternoon that reporters were “staring at black plastic-covered windows” when Trump and Abe arrived to golf.

Later in the day, Trump posted a picture on Facebook and Instagram of the two of them golfing.

Meanwhile, reporters were able to follow first lady Melania Trump and Abe’s wife, Akie, who spent the morning touring the Morikami Museum and Japanese Gardens in Palm Beach County.

Trump met Friday in the Oval Office with Abe. After a meeting, working lunch and news conference, Trump and Abe boarded Air Force One for a trip to the president’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Fla.

“Melania and I are hosting Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Mrs. Abe at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Fla. They are a wonderful couple!’’ Trump tweeted Saturday morning.

(h/t USA Today)

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

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8eEHoBQGf-4

Sean Spicer’s Response

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