| | | | | ⚡⚡ ⚡⚡ Presidential tweetstorm ⚡⚡ ⚡⚡ | | Trump supporters now have a new response whenever Team Trump's ties to Russia come up: "This is really about OBAMA, not TRUMP."
That's one of the consequences of this weekend's eye-popping President Trump tweetstorm. Trump hasn't given his followers any proof, but he's given them a compelling story -- a rebuttal to any current and future charges against Trump's associates.
This special edition of the newsletter tries to cover all the bases... and arm you with intel for Monday... scroll down for fresh comments from Mark Levin, Chris Ruddy, and more... | | This is reminiscent of 1) reality TV star Trump's claims that President Obama was illegitimate and 2) candidate Trump's warnings about a rigged election. But now his words have exponentially more power. "Trump's presidency has veered onto a road with no centerlines or guardrails," Karen Tumulty writes in Monday's WashPost.
She says this "audacious tactic was a familiar one for Trump... When he wants to change a subject, he often does it by touching a match to the dry tinder of a sketchy conspiracy theory. But the stakes have gotten higher, and the consequences more real and serious..." | | | Challenge for journalists | | How do we convey the stakes, the severity, the combustible and reckless nature of Trump's wiretapping claims, the reality of what's going on... within the confines of our scripts, our stories, our packages, our headlines, our tweets? | | | Fahrenthold said it best... | | "Trump is in a position to be the most-informed person in the world," yet he keeps relying on "third-hand info," David Fahrenthold said on CNN Saturday afternoon... | | >> This WashPost story is attributed to "interviews with 17" Trumpworld sources. It says Trump, feeling "besieged," has been "seething as he watches round-the-clock cable news coverage." Don't miss the detail about Reince Priebus unsuccessfully trying to "kill the story" about a Friday outburst in the Oval Office...
>> The NYT says Trump's aides spoke "late Saturday morning" about "how to get him to stop posting on Twitter, to avoid opening himself up to further problems... By Sunday, advisers said, he was fuming that more people were not defending him..." | | On Thursday evening conservative radio talker Mark Levin asserted that Obama allies have mounted a "silent coup" against Trump using "police state" tactics. Rush Limbaugh used the same language on Friday. Also on Friday, Breitbart's Joel Pollak quoted from Levin's presentation and published an "expanded version of that case." The Breitbart article "circulated" in the West Wing, a source told CNN's Jeff Zeleny, and it "infuriated" Trump.
Levin and Pollak's opinion pieces relied heavily on Heat Street, BBC and Guardian reports about possible FISA requests from June and October 2016. WashPost fact-checker Glenn Kessler said these are "sketchy, anonymously sourced reports." CNN has not been able to confirm them. But those reports, alleging efforts to monitor Trump associates with suspected ties to Russia, became the basis of the conspiracy theory.
BTW: A couple of Fox News shows brought up the FISA reports on Friday night... | | You know what happened next. POTUS posted four reckless tweets about his predecessor on Saturday morning. He said he "just found out" about "wires tapped." A full day later, Sean Spicer said Congress should investigate and said the White House would have no further comment. However, his deputy Sarah Huckabee Sanders did have further comment on ABC's "This Week..." PolitiFact debunked her primary claim... | | | Ruddy says Trump is "very confident he will be proven right" | | Newsmax CEO Chris Ruddy said he talked with Trump twice on Saturday in Florida... And the president was, in a word, "pissed."
"I haven't seen him this pissed off in a long time," Ruddy wrote on Newsmax.com. "When I mentioned Obama 'denials' about the wiretaps, he shot back: 'This will be investigated, it will all come out. I will be proven right.'"
I followed up with Ruddy on Sunday. Trump didn't go into detail about his sources, Ruddy said, but Trump was "very confident he will be proven right, said the first FISA was rejected, second one approved..." (That's what Heat Street reported and Breitbart promoted.)
I asked Ruddy if he counseled Trump on how to handle this controversy. "No, but he seemed sooooo confident it was true and seemed to know the whole trails of the FISA actions and was recounting them to me," Ruddy said... | | These six tweets from Jake Tapper perfectly summed up the state of play:
1: WH officials with whom I spoke said POTUS got the info about wiretap from media - Breitbart, Levin - not from govt sources
2: Obviously FBI/DOJ wiretap of POTUS would be HUGE story. One illegally ordered by previous POTUS even bigger. BUT WH officials have no proof
3: Most reporters I know are digging on this. But every current Intel voice is saying they know of nothing to back up this claim.
4: Moreover we cannot pretend we haven't been here before, w/POTUS putting out wild accusations that are untethered to reality.
5: Obama's birth certificate/ Vaccines/ Ted Cruz's father & Lee Harvey Oswald / crowd sizes/ Vince Foster / Murder rate / 3-5 illegal votes
6: In any case, will continue to report. WH call for Congress to find evidence of POTUS claim with "no further comment" is not proof | | The aforementioned Mark Levin declined to come on "Reliable Sources," but we corresponded via email this weekend, and he summarized his POV this way:
"I'm saying the public record is damning of the Obama administration. It was investigating the campaign of a presidential candidate of an opposing party during the course of the campaign. Its use of FISA, loosening of NSA distribution requirements, husbanding and protecting information at the behest of White House staff on the way out the door, and recent leaks of confidential and perhaps classified information is extraordinary. Everything I just said is based on media reports, including and especially the NYT. It's time to get to the bottom of the extent of what took place in the Obama administration and who was involved. If Obama had no idea about any of this, then he must not have read the newspapers during his presidency, since some of it was public while he was president." | | | What right-wing web sites are saying | | Trump loyalists have a new "story," a new talking point, summed up in three words: "It's Obama's fault." Breitbart is calling this "DeepStateGate." Others are going with "ObamaGate." Some popular conservative sites are treating Trump's unfounded tweets like undeniable fact and spinning up all sorts of "related" stories. See Gateway Pundit on Facebook: "Crooked Hillary KNEW about the WIRETAPS." Meantime, Sean Hannity is asking: "What did OBAMA know and when did he know it???"
It would be a mistake to underestimate the potency of this "story..." | | -- Joel Pollak's latest on Sunday night: "The spotlight is now on President Barack Obama and his administration's alleged surveillance of the Trump campaign, as well as his aides' reported efforts to spread damaging information about Trump..." | | -- "Once upon a time," Mike Allen says, "Saturdays were devoid of news beyond boring presidential radio address. Now, they are wild affairs..."
-- Mike Rogers on CNN's "SOTU:" Trump "just put another quarter in the conspiracy parking meter..."
-- Economist DC bureau chief David Rennie: "Trump is painfully like a cornered man shouting FIRE! in a crowded room. He may not control what happens next..."
-- PBS's Amy Walter tweets: "On earth-2, the Sunday shows are doing deep dives into Obamacare repeal & tax reform..." | | CNN analyst Tom Fuentes, a 29-year veteran of the FBI, told Pamela Brown Sunday night: "I've never heard of a situation similar to this, ever, actually." That was after CNN matched the NYT's reporting about the FBI director urging the DOJ to "publicly reject" Trump's wiretapping allegation... Much more to come on Monday... | | I'll be up early with Christine Romans and Dave Briggs, talking about all of this on "Early Start" at 5am ET Monday... | | | "Reliable Sources" highlights | | | Legendary newsman Bill Plante, who retired last year after 52 years at CBS, joined me on Sunday's show. He 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..." | | | 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... | | | Hear from Hemingway, Blow, Siddiqui, Collins... | | -- What's happening inside Time Inc.? As suitors line up, Sydney Ember talks with some of the company's top execs... for this feature in Monday's paper... (NYT)
-- An update on Facebook's effort to add warning labels to "fake news" ("viral deception!") stories, via Peter Kafka... (Recode)
-- "Ed Meagher has been promoted to weekend programming manager for CNN, based in Atlanta. Meagher takes over for Bryan Bell who joins HLN Monday as senior director of programming..." (TVNewser) | | | "The time for trivial fights" is... 8:19am? | | POTUS in his joint address on Thursday: "The time for small thinking is over, the time for trivial fights is behind us."
POTUS on Twitter on Saturday morning: "Arnold Schwarzenegger isn't voluntarily leaving the Apprentice, he was fired by his bad (pathetic) ratings, not by me. Sad end to great show."
He's right that the ratings were weak, but is he right to be picking this trivial fight? | | @Schwarzenegger to @realDonaldTrump: "You should think about hiring a new joke writer and a fact checker..." | | | Notice what Trump is not tweeting about | | The "Reliable Sources" producing team crunched the #'s, and this is Trump's longest streak without an anti-media tweet since at least election day. It's been a full week... a noteworthy shift in tone, as CNNMoney's Jill Disis writes here...
-- Related? The absence of media attacks also came the same week Trump said he has a messaging problem... | | | Watching Fox on Sunday morning | | We know that because @realDonaldTrump quoted almost verbatim from a 6 a.m. hour segment. He even gave attribution by tagging @FoxAndFriends in the tweet... | | | VP asks AP for an apology | | Friday night's AP story about Vice President Pence's use of an AOL account to conduct official business as governor of Indiana also included the private email address of Pence's wife Karen. The VP said the newswire was "violating her privacy and our security..." and "when we requested they take it down, they refused. The @AP owes my wife an apology."
My two cents: The story was clearly newsworthy, but there was no need to include the entirety of the Pences' email addresses. The counterargument: The addresses were obtainable through public records requests... | | | AP "stands by" its story, but... | | AP spox Lauren Easton's statement: "AP removed the email address from subsequent stories after learning Mrs. Pence still used the account. The AP stands by its story, which addresses important transparency issues."
My followup Q's: "Did the AP check with the VP's office or anyone else about the email address before publishing the initial story? If not, does it regret that decision?" No answer from the AP... | | "While no one is predicting car bombings or poisonings of American journalists, it's not much of a stretch to see similarities between Trump and Putin's attitude. Both leaders want a compliant press and are willing to take action toward getting it — some, of course, more extreme than others."
--Margaret Sullivan's Monday column in the WashPost... | | | ICYMI: Facebook's "TV-like" plans | | From Friday: Facebook execs are "soliciting pitches for TV-like original programming in about half a dozen genres, including sports, science, pop culture, lifestyle, gaming and teens..." But not hard news... (WSJ) | | David Letterman, talking with NYMag's David Marchese, about what it would be like having a show in the age of Trump: "If I still had a show, people would have to come and take me off the stage. 'Dave, that's enough about Trump. We've run out of tape.' It's all I'd be talking about. I'd be exhausted."
On Trump as president: "I'm tired of people being bewildered about everything he says: '' can't believe he said that.' We gotta stop that and, instead, figure out ways to protect ourselves from him. We know he's crazy. We gotta take care of ourselves here now." Read the rest here... | | On Sunday's "Reliable," The Nation editor and publisher Katrina vanden Heuvel discussed her latest issue, all about "Trump's war on the media." She said the press "needs to do a better job covering President Trump than candidate Trump..." Watch the segment here... | | Joe Scarborough on Twitter on Sunday: "His tweets this weekend suggest the president is not crazy like a fox. Just crazy." Crazy? Another conservative critic of Trump, the WSJ's Bret Stephens went further on Saturday night, asking, "When will Republicans acknowledge that the President of the United States is mentally ill?" Later in the evening, Stephens deleted the tweet, saying "I'm a columnist not a diagnostician. That something is deeply amiss, I have no doubt." | | | "SNL" turns Jeff Sessions into Forrest Gump | | Alec Baldwin didn't impersonate Trump on "SNL" this weekend, but Kate McKinnon reprised her Kellyanne Conway and Jeff Sessions characters. Hulu has the full episode. Frank Pallotta recapped it here...
-- A zinger from Michael Che about Trump's tweet to Arnold: "Donald, just forget about 'The Apprentice.' You're the president now. You're the executive producer of the free world!" | | | Big opening weekend for "Logan" | | Frank Pallotta reports:
Explosions, bullets, evil scientists, and even an R-rating cannot stop Wolverine. "Logan," 20th Century Fox's latest X-Men film, made an estimated $237.8 million at the worldwide box office this weekend. Roughly $85 million of that total came from the North American box office... exceeding industry expectations...
Worth noting: The haul is even more impressive since the ultra violent film is rated R, rather than the more inclusive PG-13. The U.S. total makes "Logan" one of the top R-rated openings of all time and the biggest box office opening of the year in America so far... | | "Logan" and last year's R-rated hit "Deadpool" "aren't flukes," Shawn Robbins, chief analyst of Boxoffice.com, told Frank. "Viewed as templates for the evolution of superheroes on film, they represent where the next era of the entire genre may be heading."
-- More from Frank: "Logan" will have some competition at the box office in the coming weeks. Next weekend will bring the return of King Kong in the Warner Bros. movie "Kong: Skull Island." Disney's highly anticipated "Beauty and the Beast" revival opens in theaters the following week... | | 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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