In Trump Era, Censorship May Start in the Newsroom
"Trevor Noah: 'Any leader tweeting policy is ridiculous' - Talk to Al Jazeera"
Jim Rutenberg MEDIATOR FEB. 17, 2017
Rick Casey, the host of a weekly public affairs program on a small television station in Texas, recently fashioned a stinging commentary on remarks by Representative Lamar Smith that was pulled shortly before it was to air. The station later reversed itself. Credit Josh Huskin for The New York Times
This is how the muzzling starts: not with a boot on your neck, but with the fear of one that runs so deep that you muzzle yourself.
Maybe it’s the story you decide against doing because it’s liable to provoke a press-bullying president to put the power of his office behind his attempt to destroy your reputation by falsely calling your journalism “fake.”
Maybe it’s the line you hold back from your script or your article because it could trigger a federal leak investigation into you and your sources (so, yeah, jail).
Or, maybe it’s the commentary you spike because you’re a publicly supported news channel and you worry it will cost your station its federal financing.
-- Mediator A column by Jim Rutenberg about our shifting media landscape .. one of ..
In that last case, your fear would be existential — a matter of your very survival — and your motivation to self-censor could prove overwhelming.
We no longer have to imagine it. We got a real-life example last week in San Antonio, where a PBS station sat atop the slippery slope toward censorship and then promptly started down it.
It’s a single television station in a single state in a very big country. And the right thing ultimately happened. But only after a very wrong thing happened.
The editorial misfire bears retelling because it showed the most likely way that the new administration’s attempts to shut down the free press could succeed, just as it shows how those attempts can be stopped.
Mr. Casey has been able to work for “40 years as a professional smart ass,” he told me, because “I’m not really a bomb thrower — I’ve watched politicians for so many years that I know how to be strong about something without being unfriendly.”
All set to go, the commentary was mentioned in a Facebook promotion for the show, which in turn caught the eye of Mr. Smith’s office, which called the station to inquire about the segment.
At a meeting the next Monday, Mr. Casey said, Mr. Emerson expressed concern “that the Corporation for Public Broadcasting was under attack and that this would add to it.” The Corporation for Public Broadcasting provides financing for public stations, including KLRN, and Mr. Trump’s election has heightened fears that its financing will be cut.
It also happens that Mr. Emerson had left journalism for several years to run his own advertising firm and that Mr. Smith had at one point been a client.
Mr. Casey says he asked Mr. Emerson if he’d be willing to come on the program and discuss it all, but Mr. Emerson declined. And that seemed to be that.
But as we’re learning this year, journalism has a safety net in the people who appreciate it, and the people who work in it.
Another titan of Texas journalism, Evan Smith, who co-founded The Texas Tribune .. https://www.texastribune.org/ .. and regularly appears on Mr. Casey’s program, noticed Mr. Garcia’s column while he was in Washington. “I had a hot coffee in my hand and I came very close to dropping it,” Mr. Smith told me. “Holding people accountable in public life is so fundamentally important that this idea that somehow we’re going to stop doing that because we’re worried about what the government’s going to do to us, I so unbelievably reject that.”
As it happened, Evan Smith was in Washington for a meeting of the PBS national board .. http://www.pbs.org/about/about-pbs/board-directors/evan-smith/ , on which he sits, and “I certainly got into the board room and talked to people in the system.” He also called Mr. Emerson, and told him “I didn’t see why The Tribune or I should continue to be associated with this show or this station.”
When I caught up with Mr. Emerson this week he acknowledged making “a mistake” that should not tarnish a career spent mostly in broadcast news, starting in a $1.25-an-hour job as a cameraman. “I had to make a decision in what was about 20 minutes,” he said.
He acknowledged that “clearly we always worry about funding for public television,” but said that wasn’t the “principal reason” for his decision to hold back the commentary. “We have to protect the neutrality of the station — somebody could have looked at it as slander,” he said. The “commentary” label, he said, would take care of it.
Mr. Casey is satisfied with the result. But he acknowledged that it was a close call and that he was uniquely qualified to push back in a way others might not be. “I’m lucky to be in the position of being 70 years old, and not in the position of being 45,” he said, meaning that job security was not the same issue. “There’s no level of heroism here.”
In a week in which Congress is calling for a leak investigation into stories in The Washington Post, The New York Times and CNN that led to Michael T. Flynn’s forced resignation as national security adviser, heroism is what’s called for. Hopefully there’s enough of it to go around.
Governors in the 11 states would have a choice regarding whether to have their guard troops participate, according to the memo, written by the US homeland security secretary, John Kelly, a retired four-star marine general.
The White House press secretary, Sean Spicer, told press on board the Marine One helicopter, on which Trump was flying to Joint Base Andrews in Maryland en route to South Carolina: “That is 100% not true. It is false. It is irresponsible to be saying this.”
Using the present tense, he added: “There is no effort at all to round up, to utilize the national guard to round up illegal immigrants.”
The Department for Homeland Security echoed this language. “The Department is not considering mobilizing the national guard,” said DHS acting press secretary Gillian Christensen in an email to the Guardian.
But Spicer would not categorically state that such a round-up was never a subject of discussion at some level in the Trump administration .. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/trump-administration . “I don’t know what could potentially be out there, but I know that there is no effort to do what is potentially suggested,” he said.
Staffers in the Department of Homeland Security said the proposal had been discussed as recently as last Friday, the AP reported.
Spicer added: “It is not a White House document.” The AP has made clear that the document was written by Kelly and so would originate from the Department of Homeland Security, not the White House.
FULL: President Donald Trump and Melania Trump rally in Orlando Melbourne Airport.
"Trevor Noah: 'Any leader tweeting policy is ridiculous' - Talk to Al Jazeera"
.. Melania speaks at 36:00 ..
CHANNEL90seconds newscom Streamed live 8 hours ago FULL EVENT: President Donald Trump rally at the Orlando Melbourne Airport. Feb 18. 2017.
President Donald Trump speech in Melbourne Orlando. Melania Trump Speech at President Donald Trump Rally in Melbourne. Trump takes feud with press to campaign rally in Florida. Trump bashes media at Florida campaign rally. Trump basks in cheers at Florida rally and takes aim at the media. Donald Trump returns to Florida for a rally and to interview national security adviser candidates. Watch Live: Donald Trump Rally in Melbourne, Florida on February 18, 2017. Trump: 'I'm only worried he's gonna give me a kiss. Trump Invites Gene Huber to Speak at Rally VIDEO. President Trump Speaks to Supporters 'Without the Filter of the Fake. Trump: Media Has Their Agenda, And Their Agenda Is Not Your. President Trump Speaks to Supporters 'Without the Filter of the Fake . Melania opens President Trump's campaign rally . Watch Donald Trump live in Florida as he hold campaign rally just one. Trump says he'll decide on national security adviser in next few days. Melania Trump Leads Melbourne Crowd in 'The Lord's Prayer'. Live: Donald Trump Florida rally Trump rallies Florida supporters 'without the filter of fake news'. Trump takes feud with press to campaign rally in Florida. Trump rally in Orlando Melbourne Airport.
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Transcript: President Donald Trump’s rally in Melbourne, Florida
Updated by Jacob Gardenswartz@gardenswartzj Feb 18, 2017, 7:26pm EST
On Saturday, after less than a month in office, President Donald Trump traveled to Melbourne, Florida, to give a campaign speech to a crowd of cheering supporters. After arriving on Air Force One to great fanfare, Trump took to the stage and delivered a classically Trump speech in which he rallied against the media and Democrats, and touted what he’s done his first weeks in office.
A rush transcript of his remarks in full is below:
Melania Trump
Thank you. Let us pray. Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed is your name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespasses against us. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever and ever. Amen.
Good afternoon. It is my honor and great pleasure to stand here before you as the First Lady of the United States. The mid— the America we envision is one that works for all Americans, and where all Americans can work and succeed. A nation committed to a greater civility and unity between people from all sides of the political divide. I will always stay true to myself and be truthful to you, no matter what the opposition is saying about me.
I will act in the best interest of all of you. I am committed to creating and supporting initiatives geared to my heart, which will have impacts on women and children all around the world.
My husband is creating a country of great safety and prosperity. Ladies and gentlemen, I'm proud to introduce the President of the United States, Donald Trump.
[ .. "greater civility" hey, a new skin again, it's a new one for your president .. good to see he is "creating" your country now, too .. can't wait to read the rest here .. just think, his first election speech of campaign 2020! ..]
President Trump
Thank you, everybody, thank you. I didn't know that Melania was going to be saying the Lord's Prayer, but I thought that was very beautiful, thank you, thank you.
It's so great to be here in Florida. My second home with you. This is a state I truly love. This is a state where we all had great victory together. Thank you.
It's now been a month since my inauguration. And I am here to tell you about our incredible progress in making America great again. I'm also here to tell you about our plans for the future and they're big and they're bold and It's what our country is all about, believe me.
I'm here because I want to be among my friends and among the people. This was a great movement, a movement like has never been seen before in our country our probably anywhere else. This was a truly great movement And I want to be here with you, and I will always be with you. I promise you that. I want to be in a room filled with hard working American patriots who love their country, who salute their flag and who pray for a better future.
I also want to speak to you without the filter of the fake news. The dishonest media which has published one false story after another with no sources, even though they pretend they have them, they make them up in many cases, they just don't want to report the truth and they've been calling us wrong now for two years. They don't get it. By they're starting to get it. I can tell you that. They've become a big part of the problem. They are part of the corrupt system. Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, and Abraham Lincoln and many of our greatest presidents fought with the media and called them out often times on their lies. When the media lies to people, I will never, ever let them get away with it. I will do whatever I can that. They don't get away with it.
They have their own agenda and their agenda is not your agenda. In fact, Thomas Jefferson said, “nothing can be believed which is seen in a newspaper.” “Truth itself,” he said, “becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle,” that was June 14, my birthday, 1807. But despite all their lies, misrepresentations, and false stories, they could not defeat us in the primaries, and they could not defeat us in the general election, and we will continue to expose them for what they are, and most importantly, we will continue to win, win, win.
We are not going to let the fake news tell us what to do, how to live, or what to believe. We are free and independent people and we will make our own choices.
We are here today to speak the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. I hear your demands, I hear your voices and I promise you I will deliver. I promise that. And by the way, you've seen what we've accomplished in a very short period of time. The White House is running so smoothly. So smoothly. And believe me, I and we inherited one big mess. That I can tell you, but I know that you want safe neighborhoods where the streets belong to families and communities, not gang members and drug dealers who are right now as I speak being thrown out of the country and they will not be let back in.
We will have strong borders again, and I mean that. You've seen it in television. You've seen it on television. General Kelly, now Secretary Kelly, he's really doing the job. You're seeing it. The gang members, bad, bad people. I said day one, and they're going out. Or they're being put in prison, but for the most part, get them the hell out of here. Bring them back to where they came from.
The fact is, you want great schools for your children. You want good high paying jobs for yourselves and for your loved ones and for the future of your families. You want a health care system and by the way, we are going to be submitting in a couple of weeks a great healthcare plan that's going to take the place of the disaster known as Obamacare.
It will be repealed and replaced. For those people. The people put into rooms where Republicans are talking about the plan, and it wouldn't matter what they say, for those people just so you understand, our plan will be much better health care at a much lower coast. Okay? Nothing to complain about. Obamacare remember, it is a disaster.
You want low cost American energy also, which means lifting the restrictions on oil, on shell, on natural gas and on clean, very clean coal. We're going to put the miners back to work. The miners go back to work.
You want us to enforce immigration laws and defend our borders.
You want fair trade deals and a level playing field. We don't have a level playing field. Because you understand that when American workers win, America as a country wins and wins big. And every country over the last long period of time has been taking advantage of the [inaudible] of our politicians. It's not going to happen any longer.
You want lower taxes. Less regulation. Millions of new jobs and more product stamped with those beautiful, beautiful words, “Made in the USA.” You want to make it easy for companies to do business in America. And harder for companies to leave. We don't want companies saying, everybody is fired. We're moving to another country. We're going to make the product. Sell it across the border and isn't that wonderful. Not going happen anymore.
We're going to have strong borders and when they want to sell that product back across our border, they're going to pay a 35% tax and you know what, they're never going to leave. They will never, ever leave.
And you've seen that because I've already displayed it for the last two months even before I got into office. They're not leaving. And if they do, they're going to pay a big price for terminating the relationship with our workers. You want a government that serves the people not the donors and special interest. You want a government that keeps its promises.
A great spirit of optimism is sweeping and you see it. it's sweeping all across the country. Look at what's happening to the stock market. Look at what's happening to the every poll when it comes to optimism in our country. It's sweeping across the country. And, in fact, every day for the last long period of days this stock market means, companies, have been hitting new highs. They're going to start highs. It's going to be a new day in America. You're going to be proud again.
Jobs are already starting to pour back in. They're coming back in like you haven't seen in a long time. Ford, General Motors, Fiat, Chrysler are bringing in and bringing back thousands of jobs investing billions of dollars because of the new business climate that we are creating in our country. In Arizona, Intel, great company, just announced it will open a new plant that will create at least 10,000 brand new beautiful American jobs.
I followed through on my promise to withdraw from the job killing disaster known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership. TPP, we have just terminated our relationship to it. We're going to have tremendous trade deals all over the world, but they're going to be bilateral or as we would say, one-on-one. None of these deals where we get caught in quicksand. Get mired in and we can't do anything about it. By the way, NAFTA and so many others.
My administration has begun plans to crack down on foreign cheating and currency manipulation which is killing our companies and really, really hurting our workers. We're going to end it.
Within a few days of taking the oath of office, I've taken steps to begin the construction of the Keystone and the Dakota Access Pipelines. Anywhere from 30-40,000 jobs. And very importantly, as I was about to sign it, I said who makes the pipe? Who makes the pipe? Something this audience understands very well, right? Simple question. The lawyers put this very complex document in front. I said, who makes the pipe? They said, sir, it can be made anywhere. I said not anymore. I put a little clause in the bottom. The pipe has to be made in the United States of America if we're going to have pine line.
We believe in two simple rules. I can tell you everybody in this massive, this is a massive hanger. For the big planes. And by the way, do you think that one media group back there, one network will show this crowd. Not one. Not one. They won't show the crowd. You know, coming in on the plane, and that plane represented so much.
And just so you know, they were close to signing a $4.2 billion deal to have a new Air Force One. Can you believe this? I said no way. I said I refuse to fly in a $4.2 billion airplane. I refuse. So I got Boeing and it is actually — a lot of people don't know. The Air Force One project is actually two planes. Why they need to planes, we'll have to talk about that, but they have two planes, but we've got that price down over a billion dollars and I probably have it spoken to be honest with you for honest probably an more than an hour on the project. I got the generals in who are fantastic. I got Boeing in. I told Boeing it's not good enough. We're still not going to do it. The price is still too high. On the fighter jet. We were hundreds of billions of dollars over budget. Seven years late, great plane. A great plane.
So think of it. They're seven years late. Hundreds of billions of dollars over-budget. Other than that by the way the project is going extremely well. And I got the folks in from Lockheed Martin who are terrific people and a terrific product by the way. I also got Boeing in. I said do me a favor, give me a competing offer. And now they're competing and fighting and we've gotten hundreds of millions of dollars off the price of a plane that was going to be ordered, in other words, if my opponent got in, there would have been no calls made to them. They would have signed contracts. So they're going to make plenty of money, but it's going to be a lot less than they would have made without Trump. That I can tell you. You might as well know about it. Nobody talks. By the way, that's for fighter jets. One of the biggest orders in the history of aviation. The order for the F-35. You've been reading about it because it was a disaster. Under the last administration. A disaster. And now we have it running beautifully.
In fact, when the Prime Minister of Japan, Prime Minister Abe, was great. Great guy. When he came over, he said, thank you. I said for what. You saved us many, many millions of dollars on the F-35 fighter jet. Because when I negotiated, I took our allies into the same negotiation. So the first thing he did was thanked med for saving them money and that's good. Okay. That's good. I know the media will never thank me so at least Japan is thanking me, right?
But we believe in two simple rules. Buy American and hire American. We believe it. We've just issued a new order which requires that for every one new regulation, two old regulations must be eliminated. And by the way, a new director was just approved. Can you imagine the length of time it's taken to Democrats and I actually think it's an embarrassment to them, but this is getting in to be record setting time. Incredible people.
Scott Pruitt was just approved, just now approved for the Environmental Protection Agency. He'll do so good. He won't have projects going ten and 12 years and getting rejected. They may be rejected, but they'll be rejected quickly. For the most part, they're going to be accepted. They're going to be environmentally friendly and he is going to be a great Secretary. He will be amazing. We're very happy. That took place yesterday. That's going to be a big difference because they were clogging up the veins of our country with the environmental impact statements and all of the rules and regulations. It was impossible to navigate for companies.
And what did it really mean? Forget about the companies? What did it mean. It meant no jobs. It meant companies leaving our country and going to foreign countries to do things they would rather do here. So we're going to have a whole big situation. We are going to unfreeze all of those companies. They are going to be — they're going have freedom. Be able to build what they want to build. It will be environmentally friendly and we're going to start producing jobs like you've never seen before. That's going to happen. That was a big thing.
We're standing up for the incredible men and women always of law enforcement. We're standing up. And I can tell you, the military and law enforcement they stood up. I don't say for me. I'm the messenger folks. I'm the messenger. They stood up for us in this last election. We got numbers that nobody believed were possible from law enforcement and from military. Basically people they wear uniforms like us. Isn't that nice. I saw this man on TV just now, you. I just saw him on television. He said I love Trump. Let Trump do what he has to do. That's my guy right there. Come here. Come here. No, I just. I'm coming in. That's okay.
Let him up. I'm not worried about him. I'm only worried he's going to give me a kiss. I'm not worried about anything else. This guy is so great. He was one of many people. They're interviewing people in the line. And I have to say, there was a tiny group of protesters out there and they were given as much publicity as this massive room packed with people, but they interviewed this man. Come on up here. Come on up. Guy was great. Hop over the fence. Come on. He can do it. He's in good shape. Look at him. Look at this guy. Come on. This guy is great. Don't worry about him. No, no. Come here. They're going to — come on up. Come here.
This guy. So he's been all over television saying the best things and I see him standing and didn't you get here at like 4 in the morning.
Trump Supporter
I did sir.
President Trump
Say a couple of words to this crowd.
Trump Supporter
Mr. President, thank you sir. We the people, our movement is the reason why our President of the United States is standing here in front of us today. When President Trump during the election promised all these things that he was going to do for us, I knew he was going to do this for us. Thank you so much, sir.
President Trump
A star is born.
Trump Supporter
A star is born. That's fine.
President Trump
I wouldn't say that Secret Service was thrilled with that, but we know our people, right? We know our people. Great guy. And so many others. I see some others. Being interviewed. I see them over here. They started. They came at 4 in the morning. The media will give them no credit. The media, as I told you, won't show this crowd.
All the way outside of this — this is a big a hanger as you get. All the way outside. Way back to the fences. Amazing. I want to thank you, but I want to thank everybody.
I've directed the Department of Justice to take a firm, firm stance to protect our cops, sheriffs, and police from crimes of violence against them. We will work with our police not against our police, our police do a great job and they've never been troubled like they're troubled now. It's very unfair what's happening. So we want to cherish our law enforcement. We will always protect those who protect us.
We've directed the creation of a task force for reducing violent crime in America, including our inner cities. We're going to make our inner cities safe again. Look at what's going on. Look at what's happening in Chicago. Hundreds of shootings, hundreds of deaths. I'll tell you what's happening in Chicago and many other places. Safety is a civil right. And we will fight to make America totally safe again.
I've ordered the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice to coordinate on a plan to destroy transnational criminal cartels which are all over the United States and we are going to stop the drugs from pours into your country, into your community, into your cities and poisoning our youth. We're stopping it. We're stopping it. We've taken historic action to secure the southern border and I've ordered the construction of a great border wall, which will start very shortly.
And I've taken decisive action to keep radical Islamic terrorist the hell out of our country. So you probably read where we want to enforce the laws as existing. And so we signed an order a couple of weeks ago, and it was taken over by a court originally by a judge and then a — yes, it's very sad. The reason is for protection and safety. So the statute is so plain and so clear.
I said last week, I was speaking to a great group of sheriffs, the sheriffs group in Washington, and I said if you have a college education, you can understand its. If you have a high school education, you can understand it. If you were a bad student in high school, you can understand it.
I was told. I'll check, but I found it hard to believe, over 30-page decision by the appellate court. Three judges. And you could tell by the way they were reacting because it was broadcast on television. Everything we do gets a lot of people watching. So you could tell by the way that phone call went, wasn't looking good. When they wrote their decision, as I understand it. Maybe I'm wrong.
They didn't write the statute they were making the decision about because every word of the statute is a total kill for the other side. So I thought I would read it. And here's what it says. This is what it says: “Whenever the President finds that the entry of any aliens or any class of aliens into the United States” — okay. So essentially. Whenever somebody comes into the United States. Right.
“If it would be detrimental to the interest of the United States” — okay. Now you know the country's we're talking about and these were countries picked by Obama. They weren't even picked. They were picked by Obama.
“He may,” so the President may, “by proclamation and for such period as he shall deem necessary” — now, because it should have said he or she, right. They were not politically correct when they drew this. In fact, that's the only thing that was actually wrong with it. He or she. I don't think the women care too much about that. Right? I don't think so. By the way, we did very well with women. You know, my wife said when some of these phony polls were put out, the CNN poll was so far off, the phony polls. When some of these, she said, what's wrong with you and women. We did very nicely with women. We did nicely with a lot of groups they didn't think we were going to do so nicely with. I guess we had to. That's why we're all here tonight. Right?
So and it goes, “for such as he shall seem necessary suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or nonimmigrants or impose on aliens any restriction he may deem to be appropriate.” So basically it says the president has the right to keep people out if he feels it's not in the best interest of our country. Right? Unbelievable. Unbelievable. And I listened to these judges talk and talk and talk. So unfair. So we'll be doing something over the next couple of days. We don't give up. We never give up.
We had a court that I disagree with. I disagree with big league — and by the way, whether you read it or whether you watch it on television when other lawyers come on, many of them can't even understand. They're saying how do you come up with that decision. It cannot be more simple. So they're ruling on what I just read you and they don't even quote it in their ruling because you can't because it's too obvious. So we will do something next week. I think you'll be impressed. Let's see what happens.
Here's the bottom line. We've got to keep our country safe. You look at what's happening. We've got to keep our country safe. 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're having problems like they never thought possible. You look at what's happening in Brussels. You look at what's happening all over the world. Take a look at Nice. Take a look at Paris. We've allowed thousands and thousands of people into our country and there was no way to vet those people. There was no documentation. There was no nothing. So we're going to keep our country safe.
And we all have heart, by the way. And what I want to do is build safe zones in Syria and other places so they can stay there and live safely until their cities and their country, that mess that I was left by Obama and everybody else — folks, we were left a mess like you wouldn't believe, but we're going to build safe zones. We're going to have those safe zones.
We do owe $20 trillion. Okay. So we're going to have the gulf states pay for those safe zones. They've got nothing, but money. We're going to do it that way instead of taking massive numbers. Tens the of thousands of people into our country and we don't know anything about those people. We want people to come into our country, but we want people that love us. We want people that can cherish us and the traditions of our country. We want people that are going to be great for our country. We don't want people with bad, bad ideas. We don't want that.
I've also directed the defense community headed by General, now — you know, he said it, he said it — and now Secretary ‘Mad Dog’ Mattis, to develop a plan to totally destroy ISIS. I have ordered the department of defense to begin plans for the great rebuilding of the united states military. We will pursue peace through strength. Our military is badly depleted. You have planes in the military. Where the father flew them and now the son is flying them. Their so old. We make the best equipment anywhere in the world. We're going to start using our best and most modern equipment.
And we're going to make sure our veterans have the care they need when they come home. We love our veterans. We're going to do a great job for our veterans. Our veterans have been very, very sadly treated. These are our great great people. We owe them so much. Our veterans are going to be taken care of for once and for all. Our system and our country has led down our veterans. We are not going to let that go on any further. You wait and you see what we're going to be doing for our great veterans. Thank you veterans. Who is here? Who is a veteran? We're going to take care of our veterans.
We're going to downsize the bloated, bloated bureaucracy which make the government lien and accountable. We're going to drain the swamp in Washington, D.C. I've already imposed a five year lobbying ban on the executive branch officials and lifetime ban on lobbying for a foreign government.
And there's another major promise I have kept to the American people. I've nominated a fantastic justice to replace the late great Justice Scalia. His name is Judge Neil Gorsuch. He comes from my list of 20 very, very highly qualified judges. He's incredible and has an incredible resume. He's respected by all. His education is as good as it can get. His writings are truly amazing. He will be a true, true defender of our constitution. So let's tell the Senate Democrats to support his nomination for the good of the country because what's happening with the Democrats — no wonder they're doing so badly.
No wonder they're doing so badly. You take a look, race after race, I just want the tell you, in case you didn't read it, of course you're reading the fake news, but the Democrats were supposed to win the presidency. That didn't happen. They were supposed to take over the Senate. That didn't happen. And they were supposed to take over potentially even the House. It was going to be four weeks out the greatest defeat in the modern history of American politics. And it was, but it was for the Democrats, not for the Republicans. So we have to tell the Democrats, because they're doing the wrong thing for the American people, to stop their tactics of delay and obstruction and destruction. They got to get on with it.
My administration is also pushing ahead strongly with very historic tax reform. We are working to lower tax rates in the middle class to reduce tax rates big league on businesses and to make our tax code more fair and very simple for all Americans so it's understandable by everyone. Senate Democrats should work with us to lower taxes and bring back our jobs, but the Democrats want to increase your taxes very, very substantially. We're not going let that happen.
Also time for the Senate Democrats to take responsibility for Obamacare and to work with us to replace it with new reforms that reverse this nation-wide healthcare tragedy. It's a tragedy. You look at some states, Arizona, up 116%. Your deductibles have gone so high you can never use it. Obamacare doesn't work. It's become totally unaffordable. Remember they said the healthcare, it's unaffordable. It doesn't work. And I said to the Republicans, I said you want to do something great politically: don't do anything. Sit back for two years, let it explode. The Democrats will come and beg for us to do something, but we can't do that to the American people. We have to fix it. And we will.
We need members of both parties to join hands and work with us to pass a $1 trillion infrastructure plan to build new roads and bridges and airports and tunnels and highways and railways all across our great nation.
You're all part of this incredible movement. This movement that we talk about so much. That's been written about on the cover of every magazine all over the world. It's a movement that is just sweeping. It's sweeping across our country. It's sweeping frankly across the globe. Look at Brexit. Look at Brexit. Much smaller example, but it's still something you can look at. People want to take back control of their countries and they want to take back control of their lives and the lives of their family.
The nation state remains the best model for human happiness and the American nation remains the greatest symbol of liberty, of freedom and justice on the face of god's earth. And now we have spirit like we've never had before. It's now that we have our sacred duty and we have no choice and we want this choice to defend our country, to protect its values and to serve its great, great citizens. Erasing national borders does not make people safer. It undermines democracy and trade prosperity. We're giving it away.
The so-called global elite have done well for themselves, but left working families with shrinking wages. Really they are shrinking. 18 years ago though many of you in this room made more money working one job than you're making right now working two and three jobs. Instead of peace, we've seen wars that never end and conflicts that never seem to go away. We don't fight to win. We fight politically correct wars. We don't win anymore. We don't win at trade. We don't win in any capacity. We don't win anymore. We're going to start winning again. Believe me.
And we have the chance now working together to deliver change for the ages. This will be change for the ages. Change like never before. To pursue real peace, real stability, and real prosperity. We want to secure our borders and protect our workers. To rebuild our military and our infrastructure. To fix our schools and restore safety to our neighborhoods. To bring hope and opportunity to our inner cities. To ensure a level playing field for all women in the workforce. To reform our tax code and remove the regulations that undermine growth and innovation. And to replace chaos and distrust with community and cooperation. The tired echoes of yesterday's fights. We're fighting battles that no longer help us. We're fighting battles that other people aren't treating us fairly in the fight.
I'm a NATO fan, but many of the countries in NATO, many of the countries that we protect, many of these countries are very rich countries. They're not paying their bills. They're not paying their bills. They have to help us. No longer are we chained down by the discredited approaches of the past. No longer must we listen to those who have nothing to brag about, but failure. New circumstances demand new solutions. Americans have fought and won wars together. Our heroes have shed their blood together and lost their lives. Our citizens have raised their children together, fought for justice together, and shared common hopes and dreams from one generation to the next. Stretching back to the first day of our American independence. This is our legacy. It belongs to all of you. And it belongs to every man, woman, and child in our nation.
Now is the time to call upon these deep ties in the name of bold acts. Let us move past the differences party and find a new loyalty rooted deeply in our country. We are all brothers and all sisters. We share one home. One destiny and one glorious American flag. We are united together by history and by providence. We will make America strong again. I promise. We will make America proud again. We will make America safe again. And we will make America great again. Greater than ever before.
Rachel Maddow reviews the series of failures Donald Trump has suffered since taking office, from withdrawn nominees to the resignation of NSA Mike Flynn, to the collapse of his only significant initiative, his executive order travel ban. Duration: 20:13
Report: Flynn may have committed felony re: Russia contact
The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell 2/16/17
The Washington Post reports Michael Flynn may have lied to the FBI about his discussions with Russia about sanctions, but Trump is still focused on attacking the media and leakers. Ari Melber speaks with Naveed Jamali, Jack Rice, and Rick Wilson. Duration: 13:14
Trump repeatedly talks about himself at marathon news conference
The 11th Hour with Brian Williams 2/16/17
Talking about his negotiating skills, his ratings draw, his poll numbers & more, Pres. Trump talked a lot about himself at Thursday's news conference. MSNBC's Brian Williams reacts with his panel[, including Malcolm Nance]. Duration: 4:09
During a no-holds-barred press conference, President Trump lashes out at the media, pushes lies about his Electoral College victory and boasts that he's not anti-Semitic.
On this Friday, Feb. 17th 2017 edition of the Alex Jones Show, we look into the rise of the surveillance state in opposition to President Trump as the technocrats roll out mass spying to control everything. Author David Horowitz explains the reasoning behind some of the actions Trump has taken which the media has ignored. And social commentator Mark Dice explains the mass brainwashing the elites do to segments of the population to keep them in check.
Once a target of President Trump's Twitter ire, Boeing has risen to significant influence inside the White House. Trump is the first sitting president to visit Boeing's fast-expanding campus in South Carolina.
Robert Harward, the widely respected retired vice admiral who declined the Trump administration's offer, did so, according to a source, after the White House could not satisfy his conditions and after watching President Trump's press conference yesterday. Duration: 2:04
Rep. Castro: Trump admin. coming for undocumented immigrants
All In with Chris Hayes 2/17/17
After meeting with President Trump's acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Rep. Joaquin Castro concludes the president is serious about rounding up and deporting millions of undocumented immigrants living in the U.S. Duration: 4:34
Trump hits new low as war with press moves beyond just talk
The Rachel Maddow Show 2/17/17
Rachel Maddow looks at the ways in which Donald Trump is trying to delegitimize, manipulate, and even eliminate the free press in the United States. Duration: 19:12
JFK on the importance of the press to a free society
The Rachel Maddow Show 2/17/17
Rachel Maddow shares video of President John F. Kennedy in 1962, talking about the value of a free press despite disagreeing with its recent treatment of him after the Bay of Pigs invasion. Duration: 1:58
Judge's e-mail order could move Pruitt from frying pan to fire
The Rachel Maddow Show 2/17/17
Rachel Maddow reports on the confirmation of Scott Pruitt to head the EPA despite the best efforts of environmentalists, but notes that in just a few days, thousands of pages of Pruitt e-mails will be release on a judge's order that could complicate the start of his tenure. Duration: 4:51
American voters call Congress members to account with town halls
The Rachel Maddow Show 2/17/17
Tara Burnette, a South Carolina voter, talks with Rachel Maddow about her petition drive to get her senators to hold a town hall to hear the concerns of their constituents. Duration: 9:33
Campaigner-in-Chief Trump: The election is over – time to govern
The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell 2/17/17
President Trump hits the road this weekend with a rally in in Florida and he's already talking up "massive crowds." MSNBC's Ari Melber looks at whether campaign-mode Donald Trump will be able to do the hard work of governing. Duration: 4:54
Donald Trump loses another top candidate to replace Flynn
The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell 2/17/17
Gen. David Petraeus is the second candidate to find the situation of being Donald Trump's National Security Adviser untenable. Ari Melber talks to David Rothkopf and Rick Stengel about dysfunction in the Trump Administration and its consequences. Duration: 8:21
Trump fixates on Clinton, declares media 'the enemy'
The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell 2/17/17
Ari Melber breaks down why Donald Trump couldn’t stop talking about Hillary Clinton at his press conference and why he’s escalating his attacks on the media. Duration: 2:33
Inside Trump's Nixonian strategy to make the media the enemy
The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell 2/17/17
In 1972, President Nixon said, "the press is the enemy," in a phone call with Henry Kissinger. Trump tweeted Friday the media is "the enemy of the American people!" Ari Melber unpacks this declaration with Nancy Giles, Mark Thompson and Erin Gloria Ryan. Duration: 5:07
This is how the muzzling starts: not with a boot on your neck, but with the fear of one that runs so deep that you muzzle yourself.
Maybe it’s the story you decide against doing because it’s liable to provoke a press-bullying president to put the power of his office behind his attempt to destroy your reputation by falsely calling your journalism “fake.”
Maybe it’s the line you hold back from your script or your article because it could trigger a federal leak investigation into you and your sources (so, yeah, jail).
Or, maybe it’s the commentary you spike because you’re a publicly supported news channel and you worry it will cost your station its federal financing.
President Donald Trump deemed his Thursday press conference a success because conservative right-wing radio host Rush Limbaugh complimented his performance. The commander in chief took to Twitter Friday to dispel the prevailing narrative in the media — that the conference was abnormal, even unhinged.
Limbaugh provided his listeners a live listen to the Thursday presser, offering intermittent commentary when ever he felt necessary. Unlike most political commentators, Limbaugh lauded the president’s attacks on the press. He said that Trump was “taking these people to school.”
President Donald Trump may have been elected as the nominee of a party that prides itself on fiscal conservatism, but he and his family are preparing to blow taxpayers out of the water as they continue with their posh lifestyle.
From the president’s frequent trips to his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida and his sons’ upcoming trip to the United Arab Emirates to open a golf course in Dubai to the First Lady’s decision to reside at Trump Tower in New York City, the lifestyle choices of Trump and family are running up taxpayers’ tab in an unprecedented manner.
Milo Yiannopoulos Interview | Real Time with Bill Maher (HBO)
Published on Feb 17, 2017 by Real Time with Bill Maher
The controversial senior editor of Brietbart News and author of the upcoming book, "Dangerous," joins Bill Maher to discuss free speech and his reputation as an internet troll.
New Rule: The Magic R | Real Time with Bill Maher (HBO)
Published on Feb 17, 2017 by Real Time with Bill Maher
In his editorial New Rule, Bill Maher wonders why Republicans have "Patriotic Immunity" and disputes the notion that they inherently love America more than Democrats.
MILO Confronts the Panel | Overtime with Bill Maher (HBO)
Published on Feb 17, 2017 by Real Time with Bill Maher
Bill and his Overtime panelists – Milo Yiannopoulos, Larry Wilmore, Malcolm Nance and Fmr. Rep. Jack Kingston – answer viewer questions after the show.
Moby Isn't A Credible Source, But Neither Is Kellyanne Conway
Published on Feb 18, 2017 by The Late Show with Stephen Colbert
With Moby and Tom Arnold threatening to share juicy intelligence on our President, The Late Show went digging for more insider information from random celebrities.
Published on Feb 18, 2017 by The Alex Jones Channel
The intelligence community, the mainstream media and the corrupt DC establishment are waging a coup against President Donald Trump attempting to sabotage the first days of his presidency. Alex Jones explains the engineered takedown of society and ties it in with previous military training targeting the American people.
Trump called the news media an ‘enemy of the American People.’ Here’s a history of the term.
By Amanda Erickson February 18, 2017
President Trump is not known for his subtlety. But even by this standard, his tweet Friday night was extreme. Trump called the news media “the enemy of the American People.”
Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump The FAKE NEWS media (failing @nytimes, @NBCNews, @ABC, @CBS, @CNN) is not my enemy, it is the enemy of the American People! 3:48 PM - 17 Feb 2017 [ https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/832708293516632065 (with {over 75,000} comments)]
Enemy of the people is a phrase “typically used by leaders to refer to hostile foreign governments or subversive organizations,” the New York Times wrote. “It also echoed the language of autocrats who seek to minimize dissent.”
Where did the expression come from? In its original incarnation, enemy of the people wasn't code for “enemy of my regime.” In one of its earliest uses, the phrase was used to describe a leader himself — Nero. The Roman ruler was [ http://www.history.com/topics/ancient-history/nero ] a disastrous emperor, and a careless one to boot. As his country fell into ruin, strained by construction costs and a massive devaluation of the imperial currency, Nero vacationed in Greece. He enjoyed musical performances and theater. He took a chariot to some Olympic Games. He considered whether to build a canal across the Isthmus of Corinth.
When he got back home, the political class was angry. And he didn't do himself any favors by ignoring a revolt in Gaul. The Senate grew so infuriated that they declared Nero an enemy of the people and drew up plans for his arrest and execution. Nero took his own life after a failed attempt to flee.
The term fell out of fashion among the political class, though it popped up in literature and art. Most famously, Henrik Ibsen wrote an 1882 play called “An Enemy of the People.” It features a doctor who's almost run out of town because of an article he's written bashing the government. The idea came to Ibsen after his own brush with infamy — his play “Ghosts” challenged the hypocrisy of Victorian morality, and was deemed indecent.
Adolf Hitler was allegedly an Ibsen fan. (Some historians say they believe that he read the plays as prophecy of the Third Reich.) He reportedly read “An Enemy of the People” closely, even weaving [ http://njjewishnews.com/njjn.com/101206/ltAssertingHitlers.html ] some key lines into speeches. His administration deployed this rhetoric to describe Hitler's main enemy: the Jews. “Each Jew is a sworn enemy of the German people,” Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels wrote in 1941 [ http://research.calvin.edu/german-propaganda-archive/goeb1.htm ]. “... If someone wears the Jewish star, he is an enemy of the people. Anyone who deals with him is the same as a Jew and must be treated accordingly. He earns the contempt of the entire people, for he is a craven coward who leaves them in the lurch to stand by the enemy.”
Around the same time, leaders of the Soviet Union were transforming enemy of the people into a major tool for oppression and silencing enemies. Vladimir Lenin, founder of the Bolsheviks, used “the peoples' enemies” as a label to stigmatize anyone who didn't fall into line when the revolution happened. Enemies of the people were ostracized and even their friends were under suspicion.
For foes of Joseph Stalin, being branded an enemy of the people was a death sentence. The Soviet leader deployed that language against politicians and artists he didn't like. Once branded, the accused were sent to labor camps or killed. Best case? An enemy would be denied education and employment. “It is one of the most controversial phrases in Soviet history,” Mitchell Orenstein, professor of Russian and East European studies at the University of Pennsylvania, told Voice of America [ http://www.voanews.com/a/donald-trump-attack-on-media-enemy-of-people-historic-echoes/3729946.html ].
“For both Lenin and Stalin, journalists and intellectuals who didn't share their point of view were among the most hated enemies,” University of Washington professor Serhiy Yekelchyk told VOA. “In attacking them, both appealed to the people.”
Members of society are divided into two major categories: the “people” and the “class enemy.” People describes the in-group, within which are workers, poor and lower-middle-class peasants, soldiers and cadres. The “class enemies of the people” refers to the out group … a highly arbitrarily assigned group whose members are defined by the party state.
While the “people” are described in terms of “warmth, friendliness, candor, courage, and everything that is good,” the class enemies are depicted as “cruel, cunning, morally degrading, always scheming, and evil,” Fu writes. In the enemies camp [ https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2012/feb/24/cultural-revolution-portraits-xu-weixin ] were who often were imprisoned.
Today, enemy of the people is still deployed. But mostly, you hear it from dictators. (Heads of former Soviet countries are particularly fond [ http://www.dw.com/en/belarus-declares-rammstein-a-public-enemy/a-5277932 ] of the construction. Old dog, new tricks, etc.) It's never before been uttered by the leader of the free world. One more way in which Trump's presidency truly is unprecedented in U.S. history.
Donald Trump and the Enemies of the American People
President Trump seems determined to exploit the public’s mistrust of the media to the hilt, if only to distract his base from the disappointments that are sure to come. PHOTOGRAPH BY JABIN BOTSFORD / THE WASHINGTON POST VIA GETTY
By David Remnick February 18, 2017
When the leaders of the Bolshevik movement - Lenin, Stalin, and the rest - used the term vrag naroda, an “enemy of the people,” it was an ominous epithet that encompassed a range of “wreckers” and “socially dangerous elements.” Enemies included clergy, intellectuals, monarchists, Trotskyists, “rootless cosmopolitans,” and well-to-do farmers. To be branded an enemy of the people was to face nearly inevitable doom; such a fate was soon followed by a knock on the door in the middle of the night, a prison cell, the Gulag, an icy ditch - a variety of dismal ends. To be called an “enemy of the people” did not mean you had to hold oppositional thoughts or commit oppositional acts; it only meant that the dictator had included you in his grand scheme to insure the compliance of the population.
Robespierre, one of the architects of the Jacobin Reign of Terror, set out to “horrify” the opposition, and his instruments were the epithet, righteousness, and the blade. “The revolutionary government owes to the good citizen all the protection of the nation,” he said. “It owes nothing to the Enemies of the People but death.”
In 1917, the same year as the Bolshevik seizure of power, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin published an essay in Pravda called “Enemies of the People,” in which he lionized the Jacobin Terror as “instructive.” His party, “the Jacobins of the twentieth century,” he wrote, should follow suit, if not with the guillotine then with mass arrests of “the financial magnates and bigwigs.” Once in power, Lenin was far more brutal than the revolutionary French. He built the first outposts of the gulag archipelago. Stalin, Lenin’s energetic successor, expanded the system from western Russia to the Sea of Okhotsk, ten time zones to the east.
Now Donald Trump, the elected President of the oldest democracy on earth, a real-estate brander and reality-TV star, has taken not to Pravda but to his own preferred instrument of autocratic pronouncement - the tweet - to declare the media “the enemy of the American People [ https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/832708293516632065 ].” Here is the declaration in full:
Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump The FAKE NEWS media (failing @nytimes, @NBCNews, @ABC, @CBS, @CNN) is not my enemy, it is the enemy of the American People! 3:48 PM - 17 Feb 2017 [ https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/832708293516632065 (with {over 75,000} comments)]
For months, cool, responsible heads have been counselling hot, impulsive heads to avoid overreacting to Trump. We must give him a chance. We must not in all our alarm compare him to all the tin-pot dictators and bloody authoritarians who have disgraced history. The Oval Office - its realities and traditions - will temper his rages. His aides, his son-in-law, and his daughter will “soften” his impulsivity. Besides, he doesn’t really mean all he says. Even as Trump was signing one chilling executive order after another - all with the cool counsel of Steve Bannon, late of Breitbart - we were assured that everything was fine. He was simply fulfilling the agenda of his campaign. Calm down. Don’t react to every tweet. Don’t take the bait.
Then came his press conference, last week, his first solo press conference in office, and it was epochal. Ostensibly an occasion to announce a replacement appointment to the Department of Labor after the first had to step aside, Trump instead took it upon himself to denounce repeatedly and at length the sinful, dishonest press and the “very fake news” it produces. It was unforgettable. With all his nastiness, his self-admiring interruptions and commands (“Sit down! Sit down!”) Trump resembled an oversauced guy at a bar who was facing three likely options in the near term: a) take a swing at someone, b) get clocked by someone else, or c) pass out and wake up on a hard, alien cot.
But the venue was not a bar. It was the White House, and this was hardly a joke. What Trump resembled at the lectern was an old-fashioned autocrat wielding a very familiar rhetorical strategy.
Joel Simon, the executive director of the Committee to Protect Journalists, makes the point that autocrats from Chavez to Erdogan, Sisi to Mugabe, all follow a general pattern. They attack and threaten the press with deliberate and ominous intensity; the press, in turn, adopts a more oppositional tone and role. “And then that paves the way for the autocrat’s next move,” Simon told me. “Popular support for the media dwindles and the leader starts instituting restrictions. It’s an old strategy.” Simon pointed to Trump’s lack of originality, recalling that both Nestor Kirchner, of Argentina, and Tabare Ramon Vazquez, of Uruguay, referred to the press as the “unelected political opposition.” And, as Simon has written [ http://www.cjr.org/opinion/trump-chavez-media.php ], it was the late Hugo Chavez who first mastered Twitter as a way of bypassing the media and providing his supporters with alternative facts.
Trump, as indulgent parents say of an indolent child, is “not a big reader.” He may not hear every historical echo in his “enemy of the American people” tweet. What he does know, however, is that the American trust in “the media” - that generalized term that stretches from the Times to NewsMax - is miserably low. He is determined to exploit that to the hilt, if only to distract his base from the disappointments that are sure to come. On Saturday evening, he held a rally in Melbourne, Florida, and doubled down on the familiar theme: putting himself in the same league as Lincoln and Jefferson, he told the crowd, “Many of our greatest Presidents fought with the media and called them out.” The agenda is always to divide. “They have their own agenda, and their agenda is not your agenda,” he said.
At the same time, there are distinct signs that Trump is losing ground among members of the conservative media who had initially cut him some slack, not least because they felt the liberal media had been besotted by Barack Obama. The attacks on the legitimacy of the courts, on the intentions of the intelligence agencies, and on the patriotism of the press have become too evident, too repulsive to be discounted as mere sideshow. Joe Scarborough, the former Republican congressman from Florida and the co-host of “Morning Joe,” tweeted [ https://twitter.com/JoeNBC/status/832724853346033666 ] a telling call to the right on Friday: “Conservatives, feel free to speak up for the Constitution anytime the mood strikes. It is time.”
It’s true that Trump has not arrested any journalists [yet]. He has not shuttered any newspapers or television stations or Web sites [yet]. I went to work at The New Yorker on Friday and helped close a new issue that includes a deeply reported and tough-minded Letter from Washington, by Nicholas Schmidle, about the Michael Flynn affair [ http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/02/27/michael-flynn-general-chaos ], as well as a Comment by George Packer that notes that Trump, at his press conference, “behaved like the unhinged leader of an unstable and barely democratic republic.” Yes, there was a little trouble with a Xerox machine, but no one at the office counted it a threat to the First Amendment. In the meantime, the New York Times and the Washington Post are engaged in a ferociously competitive battle to cover this new Administration that has bolstered the forces of fact and truth, and no one has shut off their computers or phones [yet], either. At CNN, Jeff Zucker, the network president, has gotten telephone calls of bitter complaint from Jared Kushner about the coverage of his father-in-law, but if the performance of Jake Tapper and others there is any indication, the attempt to intimidate CNN has not [yet] deflated any spirits. The journalists at Mother Jones, MSNBC, BuzzFeed, The Atlantic, NPR, The National Review, the Marshall Project, ProPublica, and many other outlets are [still, so far, one fucking month in] doing their work with determination and seriousness.
In Vladimir Putin’s Russia, as in every genuinely authoritarian state, there are no “enemies” - or, at least, none with the capacity to challenge power. Calling on all the repressive means available in such a state - compliant courts and legislatures; the elimination of political competition; comprehensive censorship of television - soaring popularity ratings are achieved. President Trump may wish for such means, just as he wishes for such popularity. For all the chaos and resulting gloom these past weeks, it has been heartening to see so many “enemies of the American people” - protesters, judges, journalists, citizens of all kinds, even some [. . .] members of Congress - [still, for now, one fucking month in] do their work despite Presidential denunciation, not necessarily as partisans of one party or another but as adherents to a Constitution.
In Trump’s Volleys, Echoes of Alex Jones’s Conspiracy Theories
Alex Jones on Friday before hosting his radio show in Austin, Tex. His platforms have gotten record traffic in the Trump era. Ilana Panich-Linsman for The New York Times
By Jim Rutenberg FEB. 19, 2017
Way back on Friday, President Trump declared that several news organizations — ABC, CBS, CNN, NBC, The New York Times — were “the enemy of the American people.” You know who’s not the enemy, in his book?
Mr. Jones, 43, has been around for a while. Like every media outfit in the Trump era, his platforms have gotten record traffic and, he told me last week, seen increases in revenue, with ads for water purification systems and for supplements to enhance “brain force” and virility.
But he is apparently taking on a new role as occasional information source and validator for the president of the United States, with whom, Mr. Jones says, he sometimes speaks on the phone.
Millions of listeners and viewers tune in to Mr. Jones on his websites (Infowars chief among them), on Facebook and through old-fashioned radio, and their loyalty partly explains how Mr. Trump maintains a hard-core faithful who don’t believe a word they read about him in a newspaper like this one.
His audience, Mr. Jones told me, is “the teeth of the Trump organization on the ground — the information-warfare, organic internal resistance.” Sure enough, on Saturday the journalist McKay Coppins of The Atlantic tweeted from Florida, “Spotted at Trump rally: More than one InfoWars t-shirt.”
Where Mr. Jones’s content fits in Mr. Trump’s broad media diet isn’t clear. White House officials declined to talk about it in detail. (Hey, Mr. President, I’m trying.) But as Mr. Trump pushes full steam ahead on his effort to delegitimize American journalism, he is lending credence to a number of out-there Jonesisms, adding yet another “pinch yourself, this is happening” element to our national journey into the upside-down.
You can look no further than Mr. Trump’s description of the press as “the enemy of the American people” on Friday, which was reminiscent of Mr. Jones’s use of the same phrase in 2015, as Mr. Jones noted on Sunday [ https://twitter.com/RealAlexJones/status/833328212293861376 ] on Twitter.
Mr. Jones demurred when it came to his influence on Mr. Trump, which he said the “MSM” (mainstream media) overstated to undermine the president. “MSM tries to say Alex Jones is an eight-headed kook with all these warts and Trump’s copying everything he says,” Mr. Jones told me. “It’s just not true.”
For instance, he said, when he urged Mr. Trump to address illegal voting allegations during one phone conversation, “he said, ‘I already know, I’m making a speech in two days.’” (Mr. Trump, he said, “was an Infowarrior before I was born.”)
Mr. Jones said that conversation had taken place earlier in the campaign, not on the phone call immediately after the election that my colleague Maggie Haberman reported on [ https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/17/us/politics/alex-jones-trump-call.html ], in which Mr. Jones said the president had thanked him for his support. Mr. Jones told me that he had spoken with Mr. Trump since that call, though an aide to the president, communicating on the condition of anonymity, played down the frequency of their contact.
Either way, Mr. Jones is hoping his organization will qualify for a coveted White House press credential. He says it’s not something he’s pining for or needs, but he doesn’t see why Infowars shouldn’t get one when “Trump’s calling CNN fake.”
The White House said it had yet to receive a proper application from Infowars and therefore could not comment on whether it would get one. Mr. Jones said the delay might be related to a bureaucratic snag. “They say it’s going to get rectified,” he said.
One ally in his corner is Roger Stone, the longtime Republican operative and informal adviser to Mr. Trump, whose matchmaking brought them together and led to the 2015 Infowars interview during which Mr. Trump told Mr. Jones that “you have an amazing reputation [ http://www.cnn.com/2015/12/02/politics/donald-trump-praises-9-11-truther-alex-jones/ ].”
Mr. Stone said in an interview, “They are reaching millions of people, and these people are steadfast and loyal Trump supporters.”
Two of the major internet tracking companies, Quantcast and Alexa, reported that in January Infowars had an average of around eight million (Quantcast) or 8.7 million (Alexa) global visitors, who viewed its pages nearly 50 million times. As of Sunday Quantcast ranked [ https://www.quantcast.com/top-sites/US/4 ] its traffic above that of the fact-checking site Politifact.com [ http://www.politifact.com/ ].
Those numbers miss the audiences for his national radio show and his team’s videos on YouTube, where the biggest of his 18 channels has 1.2 billion views [ https://www.youtube.com/user/TheAlexJonesChannel/about ], and on Facebook, where they draw many millions of views. (One, by his editor at large, Paul Joseph Watson, lists 18.1 million views.)
Mr. Jones’s growth has astounded those who have followed a progression that began on cable access in Austin, Tex., in the early 1990s, moved to radio and then to the bigger national footprint he began building online.
Mr. Jones says it’s hardly CNN-size (and, for the record, he says, he believes Sandy Hook may have happened).
Last week, Mr. Jones’s conspiracy workshop was busy making the case that the leaks that forced Michael T. Flynn’s resignation as Mr. Trump’s national security adviser were part of a “counter coup [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lRMa9-Rgutk (the Ron Gibson upload of the full February 14, 2017 Alex Jones Show; the original Alex Jones upload of same included in the post to which this is a reply)]” by what he has called “criminal, corporate elements inside the C.I.A.” working “to basically overthrow Trump.”
It’s the sort of message that resonates with his segment of Trump voters because, Mr. Jones said, “the public doesn’t have any trust in the system.”
“They believe the social contract is broken,” he continued, “and they’re able to interact with the new diverse pantheon of the internet-based media.” In other words, with people like him.
It makes you wonder: If Watergate had broken in this media environment, would President Richard Nixon have had to resign? Would enough people have believed it?
I put the question to Bob Woodward, who broke that scandal for The Washington Post with Carl Bernstein. He said it would have turned out the same. “The evidence was so strong, because of the tapes — these things turn on the facts,” he said. “It would be: Can you get information and sources and testimony from witnesses and documents that show what happened.”
Given that no alternative reality was strong enough to save Mr. Flynn’s job, for instance, I’d have to agree. That said, if you live in Mr. Jones’s world, Mr. Flynn’s ouster would seem to be the height of injustice, delivered by the news media on behalf of those “criminal, corporate elements inside the C.I.A.” So, yes, you would see the press as the enemy.
Trump’s ‘Winter White House’: A Peek at the Exclusive Members’ List at Mar-a-Lago Mar-a-Lago, the members-only club in Palm Beach, Fla., is being called the winter White House. The entry fee for members was doubled, to $200,000, shortly after President Trump took office. FEB. 18, 2017 https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/18/us/mar-a-lago-trump-ethics-winter-white-house.html
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Holding Trump Accountable
Illustration by Tom Bachtell
After a month in office, he has already proved himself unable to discharge his duties. But the only people with real leverage over him won’t use it.
By George Packer February 27, 2017 Issue
Section 4 of the Twenty-fifth Amendment to the Constitution allows for the removal of a President who can no longer discharge his duties but is unable or unwilling to say so. It empowers the Vice-President, along with “a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide,” to declare the President unfit and to install the Vice-President as Acting President. Section 4 has never been invoked. In 1987, when Ronald Reagan appointed Howard Baker to be his new chief of staff, the members of the outgoing chief’s team warned their replacements that Reagan’s mental ineptitude might require them to attempt the removal of the President under Section 4. Baker and his staff, at their first official meeting with Reagan, watched him carefully for signs of incapacity—but the President, apparently cheered by the arrival of newcomers, was alert and lively, and he served out the rest of his second term.
After a month in office, Donald Trump has already proved himself unable to discharge his duties. The disability isn’t laziness or inattention. It expresses itself in paranoid rants, non-stop feuds carried out in public, and impulsive acts that can only damage his government and himself. Last week, at a White House press conference, the President behaved like the unhinged leader of an unstable and barely democratic republic. He rambled for nearly an hour and a half, on script and off; he flung insults at reporters; he announced that he was having fun; and he congratulated himself so many times and in such preposterous terms (“this Administration is running like a fine-tuned machine”) that the White House press corps could only stare in amazement. The gaudy gold drapery of the East Room contributed to the impression that at any moment Trump might declare himself President for Life, and a flunky would appear from behind the curtain to pin the Medal of National Greatness on his suit jacket, while, backstage, officials and generals discussed his overthrow. Trump experienced such a deep need to get back on top by lashing out that he apparently overrode the objections of his advisers, felt much better afterward, then prepared to go to Florida to sustain his high at the first rally of his reëlection campaign.
While the White House isolates itself in power struggles, the Administration is in nearly open revolt. Career diplomats are signing statements of dissent or leaving the State Department, while key posts remain unfilled. Officials at the Environmental Protection Agency fought to stop Scott Pruitt, Trump’s pro-industry nominee, from taking over as their new boss. And other government officials, after weeks of hearing Trump belittle their agencies, are feeding the press information about Russian involvement with his campaign.
Foreign leaders, depending on their orientation, are watching this spectacle with disbelieving alarm or with calculating interest. Allies such as Prime Ministers Justin Trudeau, of Canada, and Shinzo Abe, of Japan, flatter the President in order to avoid the fate of Australia’s Malcolm Turnbull, whom Trump first berated and then hung up on during their get-to-know-you phone call. Vladimir Putin is already testing Trump, by sending Russian fighter jets to buzz a U.S. Navy ship. Xi Jinping is positioning China to fill the void in the Pacific Rim which will be left by Trump’s policy of America First. Pragmatists in Iran are trying to judge whether the new American government can be counted on to act rationally—exactly what U.S. officials always wondered about the fractured leadership of the Islamic Republic.
It won’t get better. The notion that, at some point, Trump would start behaving “Presidential” was always a fantasy that has the truth backward: the pressure of the Presidency is making him worse. He’s insulated by sycophants and by family members, and he can still ride a long way on his popular following. Though the surge of civic opposition, the independence of the courts, and the reinvigoration of the press are heartening, the only real leverage over Trump lies in the hands of Republicans. But Section 4 won’t be invoked. Vice-President Mike Pence is not going to face the truth in the private back room of a Washington restaurant with Secretaries Betsy DeVos, Ben Carson, and Wilbur Ross, or in the offices of Speaker of the House Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. Republican leaders have opted instead for unconstrained power.
They need Trump to pass their agenda of rewriting the tax code in favor of the rich and of gutting regulations that protect the public and the planet—an agenda that a majority of Americans never supported—so they are looking the other way. Even the prospect of Russian influence over our elections and our government leaves these American patriots unmoved. Senator John Cornyn, of Texas, the Republican whip, made it plain: Trump can go on being Trump “as long as we’re able to get things done.” Senator Rand Paul, of Kentucky, explained, “We’ll never even get started with doing the things we need to do, like repealing Obamacare, if we’re spending our whole time having Republicans investigate Republicans.”
The growing Russian scandal will challenge the willingness of the Party to hold the President accountable. So far, the situation is not encouraging. The heads of the key House and Senate committees are partisans who are doing as little as possible to expose corruption and possible treason in the White House. The few critical Republican voices—Senators John McCain, Lindsey Graham, and Susan Collins, and Representative Mark Sanford—are ineffective. Perhaps Party leaders are privately searching their souls; perhaps, as with the old Bolshevik Rubashov, in Arthur Koestler’s “Darkness at Noon,” ideology and power have rendered them incapable of independent moral judgment. Whatever the case, history won’t be kind to them.
An authoritarian and erratic leader, a chaotic Presidency, a supine legislature, a resistant permanent bureaucracy, street demonstrations, fear abroad: this is what illiberal regimes look like. If Trump were more rational and more competent, he might have a chance of destroying our democracy [hey George, you smug fucking idiot, nicely flippant and totally self-contradictory finish to an otherwise worthy piece, whistling right past the waiting open grave you just depicted; as so many including Trump himself have documented and made clear, Trump IS destroying our democracy, and you just laid out why he will NOT be stopped, at the very least not until he, with the continuing help of his fellow Christo-fascists, has done MUCH more damage].
Trump Pursues His Attack on Sweden, With Scant Evidence A group of refugees walking on a highway in Denmark toward Sweden in 2015. Statistics in Sweden found no appreciable increase in crimes from 2015, when the country processed a record 163,000 asylum applications, to 2016. FEB. 20, 2017 LONDON — President Trump escalated his attack on Sweden [ http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/sweden/index.html ]’s migration policies on Monday, doubling down on his suggestion — based on a Fox News report — that refugees in the Scandinavian country were behind a surge in crime and terrorism. Mr. Trump set off consternation and ridicule [ https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/19/world/europe/last-night-in-sweden-trumps-remark-baffles-a-nation.html ] on Saturday when he seemed to falsely imply to an adoring throng at a rally in Florida [ https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/18/us/politics/donald-trump-rally-melbourne-florida.html ] that a terrorist attack had occurred in Sweden, which has admitted tens of thousands of refugees in recent years. On Sunday, as questions swirled, a White House spokeswoman, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, said that “he was talking about rising crime and recent incidents in general, not referring to a specific issue.” Mr. Trump then said on Twitter [ https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/833435244451753984 ] that he was referring to a Fox News segment about an American filmmaker who argues that the police in Sweden were covering up a migrant-driven crime wave. Officials in both countries expressed alarm and dismay on Monday at Mr. Trump’s remarks. Senator Bob Casey, a Pennsylvania Democrat, said [ https://twitter.com/SenBobCasey/status/833449667056771072 ] the president should get his information from intelligence agencies and not from television. The Swedish Embassy in Washington offered the Trump administration [ https://twitter.com/SwedeninUSA ] a briefing on its immigration policies. Sweden’s prime minister, Stefan Lofven, said he was surprised by Mr. Trump’s comments, and noted that Sweden ranks highly on international comparisons of economic competitiveness, human development and income inequality. “We have challenges, no doubt about that,” he allowed, adding: “We must all take responsibility for using facts correctly and for verifying anything we spread.” Yet even before the prime minister spoke, Mr. Trump pursued his attack. On Twitter, he suggested [ https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/833681539997253636 ] that the news media was covering up problems related to migration in Sweden. Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump Give the public a break - The FAKE NEWS media is trying to say that large scale immigration in Sweden is working out just beautifully. NOT! 8:15 AM - 20 Feb 2017 [ https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/833681539997253636 (with {over 30,000} comments)] Immigration is, in fact, a hotly debated issue in Sweden, Germany and many other European countries, and a subject of frequent news coverage. Moreover, statistics in Sweden do not back Mr. Trump’s claims. Preliminary data released last month [ https://www.bra.se/bra/bra-in-english/home/crime-and-statistics.html ] by Sweden’s crime prevention council found no appreciable increase in crimes from 2015, when the country processed a record 163,000 asylum applications, to 2016. The council did note an increase in assaults and rapes last year, but also recorded a drop in thefts, robberies and drug offenses. Officials say they have not seen any evidence for the claim, prevalent in right-wing media like Breitbart and Infowars, that migration has driven a surge in crime. The government has not provided a breakdown of crime statistics according to the ethnic or national background of suspects since 2005, though one right-wing party has called on the government [ http://www.svt.se/nyheter/inrikes/krav-ny-undersokning-av-utrikesfodda-och-brott ] to provide updated statistics. “The general crime rate in Sweden is below the U.S. national average,” the State Department noted last May [ https://www.osac.gov/pages/ContentReportDetails.aspx?cid=19681 ]. Although terrorism is a concern for Sweden — an Iraqi-born Swede carried out a suicide bombing [ http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/13/world/europe/13sweden.html ] in central Stockholm in 2010 — the authorities say they are equally worried about racist hate crimes [ http://www.government.se/492382/contentassets/e6047ff54c00452895005f07e2e2ba39/a-comprehensive-approach-to-combat-racism-and-hate-crime ], including attacks on migrants. Carl Bildt, a former prime minister and foreign minister of Sweden, made a jab at Mr. Trump [ https://twitter.com/carlbildt/status/833696821058928641 ] on Twitter: “Just a piece of friendly advice: when you are in a hole, stop digging.” [...] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/20/world/europe/trump-pursues-his-attack-on-sweden-with-scant-evidence.html
AP FACT CHECK: The audacity of hype In this Thursday, Feb. 16, 2017 photo, President Donald Trump pauses while speaking during a news conference in the East Room of the White House in Washington. [ https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/whitehouse/ap-fact-check-the-audacity-of-hype/2017/02/19/02f949d2-f6b3-11e6-aa1e-5f735ee31334_story.html (no comments yet)] February 19, 2017 WASHINGTON — In the Washington week that wasn’t, President Donald Trump’s new administration whirred like a “fine-tuned machine,” piling on big-league accomplishments at a pace never before seen. Immigration agents newly empowered by Trump’s call to secure borders sent hordes of bad foreigners back home, validating a president who won the most lopsided Electoral College victory since Ronald Reagan. That’s what the audacity of hype looks like. In the Washington week that actually was, Trump fired his national security adviser for misleading the vice president, was rebuffed by his next choice, saw a Cabinet nominee’s prospects flame out, and stirred anxiety among some fellow Republicans over the tumult holding up Trump’s agenda. Immigration officials announced a sizable but routine roundup of people living in the country illegally, which resulted in fewer arrests than raids mounted under President Barack Obama almost two years earlier. Trump was called out on his latest of many boasts about the Electoral College, which handed him one of the narrowest victories since Reagan — sixth out of eight — and not one of the biggest. A look at some of his statements in the past week: [...] http://bigstory.ap.org/article/80366038c4a94ff4a3ba421eb0903a4c/ap-fact-check-audacity-hype
Israeli opposition head: Netanyahu caved on peace initiative Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu chairs the weekly cabinet meeting, in Jerusalem, Sunday, Feb. 19, 2017. [ https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/israeli-opposition-netanyahu-blinked-on-peace-initiative/2017/02/20/248034c0-f75e-11e6-aa1e-5f735ee31334_story.html (with comments)] Feb. 20, 2017 JERUSALEM (AP) — Israel's opposition leader said Monday that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was ready to freeze settlement construction in most of the West Bank and reach out to regional Arab nations but ultimately backed out for fear of losing his grip on power. Isaac Herzog, head of the opposition Zionist Union, said he was prepared to join Netanyahu's government based on a secret regional peace initiative brokered by then-U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry that would have limited settlement growth to just the major blocs that Israel is expected to keep in any peace accord. But he said the talks broke down when Netanyahu caved under pressure from his hard-line allies. "Netanyahu fled away, turned his back as opposed to his commitments to third parties ... and simply reneged on the basic understanding that we had," Herzog told participants at the annual Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organization gathering in Jerusalem. "History will judge Netanyahu on that failure." Herzog's comments were the latest revelations about secret peace negotiations that have shaken up Israeli politics and raised new doubts over the genuineness of Netanyahu's stated commitment to pursuing Middle East peace, expressed most recently in a White House press conference last week with President Donald Trump. Former American officials have confirmed a report Sunday in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz that Netanyahu turned down an offer that would have secured regional recognition of Israel as a Jewish state — a key Netanyahu demand — alongside a renewal of peace talks with the Palestinians with the support of the Arab countries. [...] http://bigstory.ap.org/article/6eab95d053224432a9e50fd130c97cd1/israeli-opposition-netanyahu-blinked-peace-initiative
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Trump Delivers On Plans To Reignite American Economy: 2/19/17 Full Show
Published on Feb 19, 2017 by The Alex Jones Channel
On this Sunday, Feb. 19 edition of the Alex Jones Show [with appearances by Jerome Corsi and Owen Shroyer], we report on how President Trump is putting his business skills to use in the White House, particularly by shutting down establishment media. The president intentionally held a rally in Florida on Saturday to talk to the people directly about the state of the country while cutting out the middleman media. We also look into what to expect geopolitically in the next few weeks as the communist Chinese try to expand their power.
Russia Compiles Psychological Dossier on Trump for Putin
Former Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov. NBC News
by Bill Neely EXCLUSIVE News Feb 20 2017, 9:40 am ET
MOSCOW - A dossier on Donald Trump's psychological makeup is being prepared for Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Among its preliminary conclusions is that the new American leader is a risk-taker who can be naïve, according to a senior Kremlin adviser.
Trump "doesn't understand fully who is Mr. Putin - he is a tough guy," former Deputy Foreign Minister Andrei Fedorov told NBC News.
The file is being compiled by retired diplomats and some of Putin's staff, he added.
The attempt to get inside the U.S. president's mind is aimed at helping Putin plan for his first meeting with America's new leader, the date for which is yet to be decided.
"Very serious preparatory work is going on in the Kremlin, including a paper - seven pages - describing a psychological portrait of Trump, especially based on this last two to three months, and the last weeks," added Fedorov, who said he has known Trump since 2000.
The dossier was being revised regularly, he said, adding that many in the Kremlin believed that Trump viewed the presidency as a business.
Fedorov added: "Trump is not living in a box - he is living in a crowd. He should listen to the people around him especially in the areas where he is weak."
It is normal for any president or leader to be fully briefed before entering negotiations for the first time with a rival leader, but preparing a detailed dossier on the mind and instincts of a U.S. leader is unusual.
The White House's connection with the Kremlin - and how deep it runs - remains under scrutiny, which has only ramped up last week when Mike Flynn resigned from his role as national security adviser after admitting to misleading Vice President Mike Pence [ http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/mike-pence-told-about-flynn-warning-11-days-after-trump-n720836 ] and other senior administration officials about conversations he had with the Russian ambassador to the United States in December.
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has no government or diplomatic experience, but boasts exceptionally close ties with Moscow and Putin.
And former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort - who resigned in August amid questions about his ties to pro-Russia interests in Ukraine — told NBC News last week that he had "no contact knowingly with Russian intelligence officials." Manafort was reportedly one of the Trump campaign officials whose communications were investigated by the FBI [ https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/14/us/politics/russia-intelligence-communications-trump.html ], according to The New York Times.
The issue of Russia "is now a kind of banana skin for Trump - that's why we should avoid any kind of step that could damage Trump," said Fedorov. "Trump cannot come to a meeting with Putin as a loser - he must sort out his domestic problems first."
Fedorov added that Trump's "constant battle with the mass media" was "worrying us."
The U.S. president "is dancing on thin ice," he said. "It's a risky game."
A former prime minister under Putin said the Kremlin is taking no pleasure at Trump's struggles.
"Absolutely not - not laughing," Mikhail Kasyanov said. "The situation is very serious and the whole of [Putin's] team, they are nervous."
Many in the Kremlin believe hardliners in America - in Congress and the military - want to sabotage the president and his plans for better ties with Russia.
Some even talk of a conspiracy against Trump. Markov, the former lawmaker, told NBC News that he believes America's intelligence services "want to overthrow President Trump in a coup" because of his desire to improve relations with Russia.
Flynn was a victim of U.S. intelligence services, according to Markov.
So while many in Russia celebrated Trump's election, the mood in Moscow was changing from delight at Trump's election to doubt about his ability to deliver on a better relationship with Russia, he added.
"Donald Trump has done nothing good for Russia, nothing," Markov said. "But they already attack him."
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