| | | | What transpired before election day? | | This was the very first question at Tuesday's 1pm briefing: "Back in January, the president said that nobody in his campaign had been in touch with the Russians. Now, today, can you still say definitively that nobody on the Trump campaign, not even General Flynn, had any contact with the Russians before the election?"
ABC's Jon Karl asked the question. Sean Spicer, while stammering, said he knew "nothing" that indicated any differently.
Wait for it...
At 9:21pm, the NYT fired off this news alert: "Intercepted calls show members of the Trump campaign had repeated contact with Russian intelligence before the election, officials said." Bylines: the three M's, Michael S. Schmidt, Mark Mazzetti, Matt Apuzzo.
There's a lot the story doesn't say... a lot we don't know... but the headline will spawn 100 followups and 200 cable news conversations... | | "A serious reporting war" | | Esquire's Charles Pierce tweeted at 9:23pm: "The NYT and WaPo are in a serious reporting war on the Russian story right now, praise be."
Just the NYT and WashPost? Not so fast. At 10pm, CNN's Don Lemon said this: "High level advisers close to then-presidential nominee Donald Trump were in frequent communication during the campaign with Russians known to U.S. intelligence." The reporting came from Pamela Brown, Jim Sciutto and Evan Perez, less than an hour after the NYT story landed. Here's the CNN.com story...
NYT's Sydney Ember tweeted at 10:51pm: "It's a race now between the NYT, CNN and the Washington Post on this story..." | | | Max Fisher on Twitter: "A senior official resigned in disgrace during the administration's first month, and 24 hours later it's not even the top story anymore..." Douglas Brinkley on "CNN Tonight:" "This reminds me a lot of Watergate... This is getting grimmer and grimmer by the day..." Jon Meacham: "We may be heading into uncharted waters here..." David French: "Two things true at once: 1) Bureaucrats can be furiously and improperly leaking; and 2) Admin officials can be doing improper things...." Ben Shapiro: "No, the Flynn thing isn't 9/11, Watergate, or Iran-Contra. Get a freaking grip, media..." | | "A class five political hurricane" | | | Earlier in the day, before the stories about pre-election communications, Chuck Todd said this on Tuesday's "MTP Daily:" "Welcome to day one of what is arguably the biggest presidential scandal involving a foreign government since Iran Contra. Take a breath. Hyperbole aside, folks, hunker down, because this is a class five political hurricane that's hitting Washington." | | What readers and viewers need from journalists right now | | | Care. Caution. Elaboration. Explanation. | | Trump blames "illegal leaks" | | The president's only tweet about the scandal on Tuesday morning: "The real story here is why are there so many illegal leaks coming out of Washington?" Kellyanne Conway emphasized this on "Hannity" Tuesday night: "If people are running to the media to leak and not providing that information to the proper authorities, that should concern all of us. This is not a partisan issue. It's dangerous stuff."
-- For the record: On CNN, I noted that Trump praised other kinds of leaks -- specifically Wikileaks -- during the campaign. He marveled at how "nothing is secret" anymore... | | Right wing framing: "Sabotage" | | | Tom Kludt emails: At Fox News, Breitbart and Infowars, the leaks that culminated with Flynn's resignation were characterized as a disquieting act of betrayal. Breitbart's Joel Pollak called it a case of "political espionage against the newly-elected government." At InfoWars, Paul Joseph Watson said the resignation was "part of an ongoing effort by the military-industrial complex to sabotage President Trump and re-assert control over foreign policy." Some Trump loyalists called for prosecutions of leakers, though Spicer did not go that far at Tuesday's briefing... | | | The prevailing sentiment on Fox was that Trump's adversaries had scored a victory against the new administration. "The left smells blood," observed Laura Ingraham, a phrase that was repeated throughout the day. Some of Fox's commentators lumped "the left" and "the media" together. Read more from Tom here... | | On Tuesday morning -- which feels like a week ago -- I tried to step back and show how leaks and old-fashioned investigative journalism created the conditions that led to Flynn's resignation. A David Ignatius column in the WashPost is what started the domino effect. The White House isn't challenging the accuracy of the leaks; it is challenging the existence of the leaks. Some Republicans in Congress want a formal investigation. Here's my story...
-- Glenn Greenwald writes: "The officials leaking this information acted justifiably, despite the fact that they violated the law..."
-- Worth re-reading: Jack Shafer's 2012 column about the motivations of anonymous sources: "What made Deep Throat leak?" | | | Brian Lowry emails: Variety's Ted Johnson makes an interesting point about the Flynn story: It's provided the news media -- which has understandably been all over the place with its Trump coverage -- a clear focus. In this case, it boils down to the simple "What did he know, and when did he know it?" question... | | Pence found out by reading the WashPost? | | In all of these stories, the timeline is crucial. Numerous news outlets said Tuesday that VP Mike Pence didn't know about Flynn's mendacity until last week.
Axios's Jonathan Swan writes: "Pence's spokesman Marc Lotter confirmed to us in an email that Pence only learned of Flynn's misleading statements — that the General had in fact discussed sanctions with the Russians — after reading about it in the Washington Post."
-- For some reason this reminds me of an old WashPost sales slogan: "If you don't get it, you don't get it..." | | Conway under even more scrutiny | | This is a partial timeline of Kellyanne Conway's day:
7am: Conway struggled through an interview with Matt Lauer on "Today." At one point Lauer told her, "That makes no sense..."
By 9am: Lauer's name was trending on Twitter thanks to his tough questioning...
1pm: Conway attended Spicer's briefing. While she was there, the Office of Government Ethics released a letter that recommended a White House investigation into Conway's "go buy Ivanka's stuff" comments last week. The letter said Trump should "consider taking disciplinary action against her..."
Around the same time: BuzzFeed and other news outlets noticed that Conway had retweeted a white nationalist and said "love you back." When contacted, Conway said she didn't know who had access to her Twitter account, said "everybody makes mistakes," and deleted the tweet...
6:30pm: On the "CBS Evening News," Scott Pelley said Conway has become a "fearless fabulist..." | | Dylan Byers' profile of Sean Spicer coming Wednesday morning | | | Did you spot Dylan Byers at one of last week's W.H. briefings? Now you know why he was there. Look out for his piece about Sean Spicer's fate at the White House on CNNPolitics Wednesday morning... | | Tuesday night on MSNBC, Brian Williams resurfaced this May 28, 2016 tweet from Trump: "The only quote that matters is a quote from me!"
So who will President Trump call on at Wednesday's joint presser with Benjamin Netanyahu? The 12pm event is a "two and two," meaning two questions from American reporters and two questions from Israeli reporters... | | | The Atlantic's Rosie Gray has a look at Breitbart's new target, chief of staff Reince Priebus... BuzzFeed's Steven Perlberg says "cable news is relevant again at the highest levels of power — and the key players know it. These are the new golden days for cable news..." | | Noah Oppenheim taking over for Deborah Turness | | NBC's Tuesday afternoon surprise: "Today" show boss "Noah Oppenheim is the new president of NBC News," replacing Deborah Turness, who will "become the first president of NBC News International," Frank Pallotta reports. What's "NBC News International?" It's a new initiative. NBC is buying a "25% stake in Euronews for $30 million," Bloomberg's Christopher Palmeri reports, citing an anonymous source. The network will be renamed Euronews NBC, and Turness will run the news operation.
"To be sure, Euronews needs work to improve its ratings before it can truly become a rival CNN and BBC World News," the NYPost's Claire Atkinson writes... | | Point: This feels like a significant demotion for Turness, diminishing her headcount and responsibility for NBC newscasts. As the NYT's John Koblin wrote, Turness was the "top female executive in television news" in the United States...
Counterpoint: Andy Lack is saying that he's taking international expansion really seriously... | | What Turness told her colleagues | | | Quoting her internal memo: "I have been asked to head up a brand new NBC News International Division with the goal of globalizing our brand. It's a huge new opportunity, a major investment by NBC, and one that will bring us all back to London!!" More: "I've been working behind the scenes on this plan for months and it's finally come together and now is the moment when we can go public..." | | | Politico's Joe Pompeo broke the news: "Jim Impoco, the editor in chief of Newsweek for the past three-and-a-half years, is leaving the magazine in an abrupt shakeup announced to employees Tuesday morning. He is being replaced by Matt McAllester, the editor of Newsweek's London-based international operation, who will move to New York in a new title as global editor in chief." Staffers loved Impoco. Why the sudden change? Unknown... | | | No new public comment from CBS or Josh Elliott about his sudden exit from the news division. But an emailer says "you haven't heard the end of this yet." Elliott's next step: hiring a lawyer? | | -- Jacob Bernstein was the NYT reporter who made that inappropriate remark about Melania Trump... (CNNPolitics)
-- The WashPost's Perry Bacon Jr. is moving to 538, where he'll be a senior political writer... (ESPN PR)
-- CNN's Gregg Birnbaum "is moving to NBC News Digital as their new politics editor" (via Hadas Gold)
-- Somehow I missed this yesterday: "Dr. Richard Besser, ABC's chief health and medical editor for the last 7 years, is leaving the network to join the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation as president and CEO..." (TVNewser) | | Facebook's app for your TV screen | | CNNTech's Seth Fiegerman writes: Facebook "plans to launch apps for Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV and Samsung Smart TV. They will bring videos shared on the social network into the living room. The video app is expected to roll out 'soon' to these three TV platforms, with others to come later, according to the company..."
-- The Big Q: What shows is Ricky Van Veen making for Facebook? | | Autoplay with the sound on | | | "Facebook's autoplay videos will soon play with the sound on," Recode's Kurt Wagner reports. But "there are a few caveats. Sound will only play if you already have the sound turned on for your phone; if your phone is in silent mode, for example, the videos won't play with sound..." | | NYT's Vindu Goel reports from Code Media: "Apple said Monday night that it would introduce its first two television-style video series on Apple Music, its subscription music-streaming service, in the spring..."
-- For Recode's complete coverage from the conference, click here... | | Dems and NYT fooled by fake Flynn account | | Two of the top Democrats in the House of Representatives, Reps. Nancy Pelosi and Elijah Cummings, were fooled by a fraudulent Twitter account on Tuesday. Cummings cited Flynn's comment about being the "scapegoat" during a lunchtime presser -- but the quote came from a Twitter account, @GenMikeFlynn, that has been made to look like the actual Flynn, but is not him. Earlier, the NYT fell for the same account, and had to run a correction, blaming an "editing error."
In response to my questions, a spokesman for Pelosi said she heard about the tweet from Cummings. "I believe Cummings had seen it in a New York Times story which has since been corrected," the spokesman said. Read more... | | The Trump White House has employed several different strategies for sidestepping uncomfortable questions. There has been a rightward tilt at press conferences and briefings. I wrote all about it here...
-- Details: Tuesday was an exception to the rule: Spicer handed the first question to ABC. Spicer normally starts his on-camera briefings by skipping front row outlets like The AP and CNN, and calling on smaller and normally right-leaning outlets instead. On day one, he gave the first question to The New York Post; day two, LifeZette, a fledgling right-wing site by radio host Laura Ingraham; day three, The Washington Times. He started his second week by calling on a reporter from OANN, a conservative-themed channel with an audience that isn't even measured by Nielsen... | | | About that Omarosa altercation... | | Dylan Byers reports:
On Tuesday, a war of words broke out between Omarosa Manigault, a Trump communications official, and April Ryan, a longtime White House reporter, stemming from a heated exchange the two had last week in the White House press office. In separate interviews with CNNMoney, Ryan and Manigault offered contradicting accounts about what had taken place during the confrontation. Read Dylan's full story here... | | Anti-climactic "Apprentice" finale | | Brian Lowry emails: Less than 3.5 million people watched the finale of "The New Celebrity Apprentice" on Monday, a pretty meager number by NBC's standards. But it's a reach -- as some have suggested -- to lay the blame on Trump, his connection to the show or his replacement, Arnold Schwarzenegger. The bottom line is that the NBC series had been trending downward. Some of the attention the election focused on the show probably wasn't helpful, but those saying they would tune out because Trump still had an interest/producer title likely wouldn't have watched in any event...
-- Sooo... will NBC order another season of the show? | | | -- Via Chloe Melas: Matt Iseman was crowned the winner Monday night... Read all about him here... | | | More from Lowry: Katherine Heigl makes her second stab at headlining a series post-"Grey's Anatomy" with "Doubt," a CBS legal drama. This one is more of an ensemble, also featuring Dule Hill and Laverne Cox, but not much more promising... | | -- Via Lisa France: According to a study from Netflix, more people are cheating than ever... meaning, they're binging without their partner...
-- More from Lisa: All about Rachel Lindsay, the first black "Bachelorette..."
-- Megan Thomas emails: For anyone lamenting about not having a Valentine's Day date, stars really are just like us, with their own dating disaster stories... | | | What do you like about this newsletter? What do you dislike? Send your feedback to reliablesources@cnn.com. We appreciate every email. See you tomorrow... | |  | | We'd love to share our other newsletters with you. Check out Five Things for Your New Day, CNN's morning newsletter. Give us five minutes, and we'll brief you on all the news and buzz people will be talking about. | | | Get Reliable Sources, a comprehensive summary of the most important media news, delivered to your inbox every afternoon. | | | | | |
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