| | | | Tom Kludt sums up this day better than I can. He emails:
In Trumpworld, everything comes back to an attack on the media. An explosive, evidence-free charge from the president aimed at his predecessor over the weekend invariably turned into another round of criticisms toward the press and its purported double-standard against the administration.
As they made the rounds on TV Monday morning, both Kellyanne Conway and Sarah Huckabee Sanders complained that Trump's allegation that President Obama tapped his phone had been met with more scrutiny than the avalanche of other damning reports out of the White House. "The media has been extremely dismissive of this reporting and this potential story while all the while being very happy to jump on all of the false attacks that have been launched at this president over the last six months," Sanders said on the "Today" show. "All that we're asking for is a fair and same look at this potential story and to let the House intelligence committee do its job."
"If the president walked across the Potomac," she said in the same interview, "the media would report that he couldn't swim."
Neither went nearly as far as Trump did – note Sanders' description of it as a "potential story" – and neither could say where exactly Trump got his info. Both framed his tweets as simply a call for an investigation (as opposed to what it was: an unequivocal claim, devoid of proof), and both seemed to imply that Trump should be afforded a level of trust that has been afforded to past presidents. "He's the president of the United States," Conway said. "He has information and intelligence that the rest of us do not." | | | Has Trump earned that trust? | | | Here's what we don't know | | Cherry-picking convenient info, ignoring inconvenient info... What Tom described up above, I experienced first-hand on Monday.
I wrote on CNNMoney that "an incendiary idea first put forward by right-wing radio host Mark Levin is now burning across DC, fanned by Trump's tweets and a huge number of supportive commentators and websites -- even though the facts don't back up the conclusion." I was looking to make the point that Trump loyalists have fully bought into the Obama wiretapping theory. Levin objected to the term "right-wing" and my references to the "conspiracy theory." He wrote an angry "open letter," called me "thoroughly dishonest," and ensured that conservative blogs wrote all about it.
The thrust of Levin's letter: "Do you deny there were two FISA applications?" Well, yes, I guess I do. I replied and said: "I don't know if there were 2 FISA applications. You don't know if there were 2 FISA applications. The reporting is very murky and unproven. Specifically, CNN and Fox and other big newsrooms have been unable to substantiate what Heat Street and the BBC reported months ago."
In my mind, that's what this controversy is all about: News versus opinion-about-the-news. Levin and co., on the opinion side, are relying on these months-old claims about FISA applications. They don't play by the same rules as reporters, on the news side, who seek independent confirmation of information. | | -- Related: Michael Calderone explains it really well right here: Pro-Trump media sources spent the day Monday trying to pin the "wiretap" claim on news reports, "but the stories cited don't back up Trump's assertion that Obama ordered surveillance of Trump Tower..." | | | Hannity's new name for the media he loves to hate | | Suffice to say, Levin did not appreciate my response to his letter. His Monday evening radio/web show consisted of a LOT of media criticism. To Tom's point earlier: When you can't defend Trump's baseless tweets, what do you do? Attack the media, using clips from shows like "Reliable Sources" as raw material. At one point Levin called CNN "evil," the same word Trump used to describe the NYT last week...
And at the end of the day, Levin joined Sean Hannity over on Fox. Hannity's new name for his opponents: the "Destroy-Trump-at-all-costs media." | | | Trump's "conspiracy-theory feedback loop" | | Brian Lowry emails: The Atlantic has a pretty fascinating Derek Thompson piece about the click-bait advantages of becoming part of the Trump "conspiracy-theory feedback loop." But the potential benefits clearly also extend to talk radio, where Mark Levin's show — which, with his staccato delivery, is stylistically part performance art — has been at the center of the president's latest allegations... | | There's an information vacuum in the center of the Trump-Russia-election controversy... Sure, there's smoke. But if there's fire, why can't anybody just say so?"
--Byron York, teeing up his latest Washington Examiner column... | | | On Tuesday, Spicer will brief ON camera... | | This is noteworthy because Sean Spicer decided not to hold an on-camera briefing on Monday. Instead, he held an off-camera session, a "gaggle," in the crowded W.H. press briefing room. | | "The White House press briefing room has gone dark," I wrote in this Monday afternoon story. "Spicer hasn't held an on-camera briefing in a week. Veteran W.H. correspondents say this is unusual, particularly at the start of an administration...
-- Spicer's POV: He's doing what he said he would do. Before Inauguration Day, Spicer said he might curtail the # of on-camera briefings and increase the # of gaggles. In an email on Monday, Spicer told me he is fulfilling his promise to conduct a daily briefing of some sort -- "some on camera, some off." He also said that some reporters, including from broadcast outlets, find off-camera briefings more informative...
TV interviews and gaggles aren't replacements for group Q&As with the govt's top spokesman, however. Reporters are starting to speak up about it. Here's my full story... | | Spicer didn't allow cameras in the room when Trump signed his revised immigration order. In fact, Monday was the first weekday of the Trump presidency without any Trump events open to the press. The W.H. released its own picture of the signing instead.
Separately, the State Department was scheduled to hold its first press briefing of the Trump presidency on Monday, but the briefing was shifted to Tuesday... | | | "8 Tricks for Defending Trump" | | 1. The He-Believes-It Shuffle
2. The Kellyanne Escape Asana
3. The Spicey Nitpick
4. Trumpal Infallibility
5. "George..."
6. I Know You Are, But What Am I?
7. Move Along. Nothing to See Here.
8. This Is Very Fluid | | | Some sympathy for Spicer, Conway and co. | | Speaking of Politico... Shane Goldmacher calls defending Trump "D.C.'s toughest gig" in this Monday evening story... he quotes GOP communications pro Alex Conant: "Your ability to do your job well is only as good as the information and the policies that you're advocating... I know those guys well but I certainly don't envy their jobs right now. Communicators are the first to get blamed even when the problems are much deeper." | | Bill Carter and I will be analyzing all of this on CNN's "New Day," Tuesday at 6:50am... | | -- CNN's Alisyn Camerota has written a novel... set in the world of cable news... it comes out in July... (TVNewser)
-- A deep dive by the WSJ's Deepa Seetharaman: "Facebook, Rushing Into Live Video, Wasn't Ready for Its Dark Side..."
-- Jim Prosser tweets: "Personal finance news is hot right now. Mic, Vice News, and now Dow Jones all have millennial money sites." Details via Digiday...
-- CNN is starting to introduce free original programming on the formerly for-subscribers-only CNNgo platform. The first such series, Laurie Segall's "Mostly Human," debuts next week... (Variety) | | "Nothing happens on Saturday. We have very little readership and we're often paying editors to kill time by surfing the Web." That's a quote from a 2015 memo from former Bloomberg staffer Dawn Kopecki, resurrected by Erik Wemple for this 💯 blog post. The point is that a LOT happens on Saturday now. So much happens, every single day of the week, that he wonders if Trump's strategy is to "outlast the media," to exhaust newsrooms... | | | Hard to get the "approved-upon administration line" | | Wemple notes that reporters are having a hard time getting dependable answers from administration officials. With the help of the WashPost's Philip Rucker, he compares this to past years: "The Obama White House, says Rucker, generally had one or two top officials who would voice the 'approved-upon administration line.' If you did one interview, he says, you could 'pretty much take it to the bank that that's the position of the White House. With the Trump White House, you talk to five different officials on a story and you get slight variations and it becomes a challenge to figure out what is true,' says Rucker..." | | | "The Americans" returns on Tuesday | | When 'The Americans' premiered on FX way back in 2013, the drama felt like a period piece, a Reagan-era Cold War throwback..." But now the series "feels surprisingly current," the LAT's Meredith Blake writes. The fifth season debuts on Tuesday night... Jamie and I watched the screener on Monday, and it did not disappoint... | | | Robert Osborne, 1932-2017 | | Sandra Gonzalez writes: Robert Osborne, the film aficionado who shared his knowledge and passion for movies with millions of viewers as the longtime host of Turner Classic Movies, has died. He was 84.
Osborne was the face of TCM for more than twenty years. Read about his life and passions here... | | Trump now has a comms director: As part of a personnel announcement on Monday, the White House said "Michael Dubke will serve as Assistant to the President and White House Communications Director..." | | | Rather: "I have never seen anything like this" | | Former anchorman Dan Rather's latest Facebook post: "At some points words fail, or they are starting to fail me. We have an Administration in freefall..."
"Conspiracy theories are corrosive in society at large. When they dictate national policy, they can be lethal..."
"The Oval Office can be a bubble. Power attracts sycophants and cynics. But I have never seen anything like this. The sheer level of paranoia that is radiating out of the White House is untenable to the workings of a republic..." | | | Letterman says he would've 'gone to work on Trump.' His successor is doing just that | | Frank Pallotta emails: For this NYMag cover feature, David Letterman told interviewer David Marchese that late night hosts have an "obligation" to take on President Trump. He wouldn't have to watch long to see his successor, Stephen Colbert, doing just that to great success. Read Frank's full story here... | | Brian Lowry's latest: Thanks to "Logan's" big box-office haul, there were several stories by Sunday speculating about whether R-rated superhero movies would be the genre's logical next evolution. But in a business that has various incentives to reach younger audiences — and relies on merchandising and theme park tie-ins — the X-Men spinoff might be more an expansion of the toolbox than augur a revolution...
Read Lowry's full column here! | | | Steven Spielberg to direct "The Post" | | Megan Thomas emails: The movie American journalists need right now is A-list all the way: According to Deadline, Steven Spielberg just signed on to direct Tom Hanks and Meryl Streep in a film about the Washington Post's role in the release of the Pentagon Papers in 1971. Title: "The Post..."
-- Historian Robert McNamara asks: "Shouldn't a Pentagon Papers movie be about Abe Rosenthal and the Times and not Ben Bradlee and the Post?" | | -- Before taking off for France, Lisa France interviewed the cast of "Underground" about why you can't look away from this intense series...
-- Chloe Melas emails: The first pics of Hugh Grant reprising his role as the British Prime Minister for the "Love Actually" mini sequel are here! It looks as though time as stood still for the past 14 years... | | | "Reliable Sources" highlights | | | | Miller portrays leakers as "attackers" | | Former Trump campaign comms director Jason Miller said "the president saw what total messaging victory looks like" after Tuesday's joint address. But then came more leaks... which Miller called "attacks..." intended to "step on the president's momentum."
Trump is "constantly being faced with these attacks from these nameless, faceless, anonymous sources," Miller said. (I asked if he'd stop being an anonymous source for reporters, and he sidestepped that one.) Here's the full exchange... | | Legendary newsman Bill Plante, who retired last year after 52 years at CBS, urged journos to keep their feelings out of their coverage: "If journalists are offended by what's going on, they should keep it to themselves..." | | Don't call it "fake news," call it "viral deception," or "VD" for short. That's what Kathleen Hall Jamieson said on Sunday's show. "VD" conjures up "venereal disease," and that's precisely the point, she said... "We don't want to get venereal disease. If you find someone who's got it, you want to quarantine them and cure them. You don't want to transmit it..." | | 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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