| | | | | Special HIGH ENERGY Saturday edition | | Fewer than 72 hours left before the first polls close. How are you holding up? I asked Trump press secretary Hope Hicks -- who's already been in three time zones today -- to describe what it's been like. She replied with the perfect two words: "High energy!"
She's clearly not describing the sleep-deprived press corps... | | | I have been surveying campaign beat reporters. The results will come out in a couple of days. This comment from a "veteran" (from the very beginning!) member of the Trump traveling press corps stood out to me today: For most of us, "this is our first campaign. We will judge covering any other cycle through this prism. This is our baseline." Let that sink in. | | "We will never be stopped," Donald Trump said after returning to the stage in Reno Saturday night, minutes after Secret Service rushed him off stage during a security scare. There was talk in the crowd afterward about a man with a gun -- someone may have shouted "gun," causing the commotion -- but "no one actually had eyes on a gun," CNN's Kyung Lah reported on the air, and no weapon has been recovered.
In the immediate aftermath of the incident, there were rare notes of agreement among all of CNN's liberal and conservative commentators. Van Jones remarked, "Maybe tonight we all get a little more sober because of what we just saw."
-- Then there's this: When CNN producer Noah Gray ventured out into the crowd to try to film the suspect, he was harassed by several Trump rallygoers. On tape, you can hear them telling Gray "get the fuck out," "no news media," etc. He was also shoved repeatedly...
-- More: The Boston Globe's Matt Viser tweeted at 10:15pm: "A Trump adviser, and his son, are retweeting that this was an 'assassination attempt.' At this time there's no evidence to support this." | | | Kaine's press bus hit by a car | | | At almost the exact same time Trump was rushed off stage, a car hit the press bus that was traveling with Tim Kaine's motorcade. CNN embed Betsy Klein says "Everyone is okay. Kaine was unaffected by this." At least one reporter was thrown into the aisle by the jolt... | | | Going live... and STAYING live... | | | The cablers are ramping up. CNN's "New Day" starts an hour earlier than usual on Sunday, 5am, and once it begins, CNN will stay live for 100+ hours... I think the exact # is 115 hours, but who knows what will happen... | | | Don't miss "Reliable Sources" | | | Sunday at 11am, we're preparing a truly special show... with Marty Baron, Lynn Sweet, Jeffrey Goldberg, Michael Oreskes, Karen Tumulty, Dan Pfeiffer, Jon Favreau, Ari Berman, David Zurawik, and Dylan Byers... If that sounds like a lot of guests, it's because we'll be running limited commercials... | | | Donald Trump's year of extreme media bashing: Is this an aberration, or is it the new normal? I'll try to answer that question in a TV essay that we produced on Friday... Here's a preview clip... | | | Help shape our media reporting in the final three days of the campaign. What Q's do you have about election coverage? Email us: reliablesources@cnn.com | | | The Clinton campaign's 7-minute documentary | | | Here's an unusual campaign ad: On Saturday afternoon the Clinton campaign published a seven-minute mini-documentary, starting with her "I'm running" YouTube video, recounting the primaries, the convention, and the general. NBC's Micah Grimes tweets that Clinton's in-house cams captured "a few insider moments," a la the "Mitt" documentary, "including moment she hears she's been projected the Dem nominee..." | | HuffPost's Ryan Grim says Nate Silver "is putting his thumb on the scales," "unskewing polls" and helping Trump. This piece got a ton of attention on Saturday -- including from Silver -- who called it "idiotic and irresponsible." Here's the Silver tweetstorm...
-- Related: On Saturday night the Clinton campaign used Silver in a fundraising text message: "Right now, Nate Silver says Trump has a better than 1-in-3 shot of winning. That's WAY too high for me. Chip in $3 now..." | | "The 2016 election was a story about one human being's domination of the media," Jack Shafer writes. "Not since 9/11 has a single topic so colonized all of the media territories—print, television, and the Web—as thoroughly as Donald J. Trump did."
Shafer's column is one of the best things I've read about Trump all year. Check it out... | | -- "At times this campaign seemed to be occurring in some alternate universe. Up is down, no means yes, day is night." The AP has published these "greatest hits of a fact-challenged campaign..."
-- Politico Magazine made a list: "The 155 Craziest Things Trump Said This Election"
-- Big Sunday NYT story: "Clinton Appears to Gain Late Support Among Latino Voters." Vice EIC Ryan McCarthy tweets: "If this holds, and it might, it'll mean almost every media org underplayed one of the biggest stories of the year..."
-- Edward Luce writing for the FT about "the age of vitriol..."
-- Vox's Matthew Yglesias says "The real Clinton email scandal is that a bullshit story has dominated the campaign..." | | | Smerconish: "We need to stop this" | | | Vitriol. Obstructionism. And "there are troubling signs that things are about to get worse," Michael Smerconish said on his CNN show Saturday morning. Now there are even fantasies about impeachment -- before election day. His message: "We need to stop this. The nation cannot afford such disharmony. So I say: Let's finish it fair and square. And then embrace President Trump or President Clinton. And move forward in the name of national unity." Watch the commentary here... | | | "Indictment" talk continues on Fox | | | HuffPost's Michael Calderone says some Fox News hosts and guests are still promoting the Clinton "indictment" idea that Bret Baier evoked but then had to apologize for. "If you watched 'Fox & Friends"'for a 10-minute stretch during the 8 a.m. hour Saturday, you might think Clinton is likely to be indicted in the coming months. If you stuck with the show into the 9 a.m. hour, you'd have learned why there can't be any imminent indictment and also reminded that Fox News walked back its reporting of that baseless claim." Read more... | | | The criminalization of our politics | | Speaking of cable news morning shows: On "New Day," while talking about Fox's walk-back and FBI tensions, I said the "criminalization" of our politics is something we're going to regret after election day. (Video here.)
Ron Nehring, national spokesman for Ted Cruz 2016, emailed afterward in agreement: "In my day job I work in politics around the world and it's a common, unfortunate theme in underdeveloped countries to brand opponents as criminals. Sometimes they are, but when taken to extremes, it delegitimizes the democratic process. It shouldn't be a surprise that rioting is more common in these countries because people turn to violence when they don't have faith in democratic systems. Suffice to say, Congressional Democrats did plenty of this during GOP administrations, attempting to criminalize differences over policy." | | | How Peter Schweitzer and "Clinton Cash" helped shape the race | | VF's Abigail Tracy says you can count Peter Schweitzer as one of the most influential journalists of the campaign season. Why? Because of his 2015 book "Clinton Cash."
It has been "held up by many as irrefutable proof of wrongdoing, or at least common venality, by the Clintons," giving Trump & Co. a narrative all year long, Tracy writes. "It also found plenty of eager readers within the FBI... galvanizing a number of agents to launch an investigation into the Clinton Foundation, based mostly on assertions made by Schweizer in the book." That's according to the WSJ's recent reporting. Remember, the WSJ said Schweitzer was interviewed by FBI agents several times. Read more... | | | Gateway Pundit misinforming its readers, example #739 | | Gateway Pundit blog is a favorite of Drudge and Hannity. I spotted this post via Drudge on Saturday afternoon. "THREE PEOPLE Line Up to See TIM KAINE in Florida," blogger Jim Hoft wrote. He showed a few pictures from a local TV station showing a pitifully small line outside Kaine's event in Fort Myers. The insinuation, of course, is that no one cares about Clinton/Kaine, giving readers reason to believe that Trump/Pence will prevail.
Here's the problem. Hoft is once again misinforming his readers, and that has obvious consequences at election time. CNN's Betsy Klein, who was at the Kaine event, said the line WAS small -- at 9:30am. But the event didn't start til 1:30pm! There were 500+ people there -- "very enthusiastic crowd actually, more so than usual," Klein told me... | | | Facebook's upsides and downsides | | Trump has used Facebook fantastically well to organize his fans and communicate with them. Clinton has made it a priority as well. And there's tons of organizing activity constantly going on underneath the surface, in private and semi-private groups. Here's a great example: Cosmo's Kate Spencer wrote about her "secret Hillary Clinton Facebook group." It was a necessity, she says -- a "safe space" for women "sharing our support and excitement."
The column got me wondering -- if there's a "hidden Trump vote," is there also "secret Clinton support?" | | | On Friday I wrote about this bogus story about Gloria Allred paying a Trump accuser -- and how it was "trending" on Facebook. If you take a look at the "trending" box now, you might see Michael McCaul's name, since he recently suggested Clinton committed treason. The "top posts" from users are full of false information, plus some of Fox's overheated anonymously sourced claims from Wednesday and Thursday. This is the kind of thing Joshua Benton is talking about when he says (in this Friday night tweet) that "maybe THE most important thing for the future of our democracy is for Facebook to start caring about the quality of news on its platform..." | | "Did Trump play the media, using provocation to gain more attention than anyone thought possible? We are all the media now. He played all of us. And there is no reason to think that he will be the last viral candidate."
--Andrew Marantz writing about "the viral candidate..." | | | Lots of networks adding "election night coverage" | | | Stephen Battaglio's election night TV preview: "ABC's daytime program 'The View' will get a live airing on Lifetime. CBS late-night host Stephen Colbert will react in real time to the news in a live special airing on Showtime. MTV will cover the vote from its old 'TRL' studio in Times Square. BuzzFeed will feature its political reporters in coverage from its NY HQ, which will be streamed over Twitter. Vice Media's nascent cable network Viceland is using the election to try its hand at a live telecast — a special election edition of the comedy show 'Desus & Miro.' The comics will riff on the results late Tuesday night..." | | | Looks about right. Der Spiegel says "Trump versus Clinton will go down in American history as the dirtiest campaign of all time..." | | | Recommended reads, round two | | | -- Town Hall's Kurt Schlichter: "With the clock ticking toward Election Day, the mainstream media seems intent on committing ritual suicide by eviscerating the tattered remnants of its credibility. See, there's some good news out there if you just look for it..."
-- Politico's Alex Weprin with a deep dive: "There's just one problem with Trump TV: the business model..."
— Related: Keith Olbermann asks: "Why are we all assuming "Trump TV" is his back-up plan if he loses. What if it's his propaganda outlet if he WINS?"
-- ICYMI on Friday: Variety's Sonia Saraiya asks: "How Do We Hold Our Cable News Organizations Accountable?" | | | Think THIS has been a marathon? Try running a real one! | | | Good luck to "Reliable" producers Shanta Covington and Lee Alexander -- they'll be running the NYC marathon on Sunday morning! | | | What do you like about this newsletter? What do you dislike? Send your feedback to reliablesources@cnn.com. We appreciate every email... And we'll be back tomorrow with another special edition... | | | Get Reliable Sources, a comprehensive summary of the most important media news, delivered to your inbox every afternoon. | | | | | |
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