| | | | | NYT Mag interviewing Trump | | President Trump has been press-shy since his joint address to Congress two weeks ago. But he recently sat down for an interview for The New York Times Magazine... for a cover story that's set to come out in print on Sunday, April 2. A source says the interview will be published on the web on Tuesday, March 28... No official word from the NYT yet... | | | Trump + Tucker on Wednesday | | Announced on Monday: Tucker Carlson will have a "wide-ranging conversation" with Trump... airing on Wednesday night... the interview will be taped in Detroit, TheWrap's Brian Flood reports.
This means Fox is getting two POTUS interviews in a row: This will be Trump's first TV sit-down since he appeared on "Fox & Friends" two weeks ago... | | "Democrats are finally back on the offensive on health care," CNNPolitics' MJ Lee wrote. Monday's CBO report was "way worse" for Republicans "than most analysts expected," Vox's Sarah Kliff tweeted. So one of the evening's big debates was about the credibility of the CBO.
Journalists stressed the nonpartisan nature of the CBO's work. Shep Smith anticipated push-back from Fox viewers. One hour before the report was released, he said, "Before you go saying 'Oh, we can't trust them, we can't trust them,' Donald Trump has been trusting them and tweeting about them for years..." | | | > Newt says "abolish the CBO" | | Then it hit. Within an hour, HHS secretary Tom Price said the score was "just not believable." Newt Gingrich said on Fox's "First 100 Days" that the CBO office should be abolished: "It is corrupt. It is dishonest. It was totally wrong on Obamacare by huge, huge margins. I don't trust a single word they have published. And I don't believe them." Martha MacCallum interjected: "But the head of it is a Trump appointee." Newt: "I couldn't care less." | | | > Conservative dismissals | | Stephen Moore on CNN's "AC360:" "I don't believe this report. I think it's hocus pocus." Jeffrey Lord a few minutes later: "We don't know what the weather is going to be. It's going to snow, but how much? We don't know. We don't trust weathermen. So why should we trust the CBO?" Ryan Lizza looked at Lord with disbelief: Are you saying "they're so wrong that no one is going to lose insurance?"
Over on MSNBC, conservative Texas Rep. Joe Barton told Chris Matthews, "The CBO is almost always wrong... In my 32 years in Congress, I can't recall them ever being right."
Talking is easy. Lawmaking is hard. Let's see what they do... | | On Monday's "Factor," Bill O'Reilly summed up the entire health care debate this way: "It's simply impossible for you, the American consumer, to know how this will all turn out." | | | While we're on the subject of trust... | | | "When can we trust the president?" | | Dylan Byers emails: "When can we trust the president?" NBC's Peter Alexander asked Sean Spicer at Monday's briefing. "When he says something, can we trust that it's real?" Alexander highlighted two claims by President Trump that raised questions about his trustworthiness:
1. Trump's accusation, made without evidence, that President Obama had wiretapped his phones.
2. Trump's claim, also made without evidence, that previous jobs reports were "phony," while current ones were real.
Spicer sought to defend both claims, but both defenses made little sense. First, he walked back Trump's use of the word "wiretapping." Second, he cited inaccurate CBO projections to defend the "phony" remark. But jobs numbers are provided by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, not the CBO.
Finally, Alexander pressed for a yes or no answer: "Can you say affirmatively that whenever the president says something, we can trust it to be real?"
"If he's not joking, of course," Spicer replied... Read Dylan's full story here... | | | "Federal Inquiry of Fox News Moves to a Grand Jury, but Without Preet Bharara" | | That's the headline in Tuesday's NYT... Jim Dwyer and Willie Rashbaum have new details about the federal investigation into Fox: A federal grand jury in Manhattan is expected to "hear testimony from at least two witnesses to testify in coming days about business practices" at the Roger Ailes-era Fox News.
"One of those subpoenaed," according to the paper's two sources, "is Mark Kranz, the former CFO for Fox News who oversaw the network's finances when it paid millions of dollars in settlements" to Ailes accusers...
-- ICYMI: What if Ailes' former lawyer Marc Mukasey succeeds Preet Bharara? I talked with Jeffrey Toobin about that on Sunday's "Reliable Sources..." Here's the video... | | | Chloe Melas asks Bob Iger about running for president | | Chloe Melas emails: I snagged an interview with Bob Iger at the Beauty and the Beast NYC premiere on Monday. A few highlights:
A lot of people think you should run for POTUS; would you consider it?
Well that's very nice of you. I have a full time job right now, it's called CEO of The Walt Disney Company, and I don't think the notion of running for president is something anyone considers either on a part time basis or a frivolous way.
Will you step down from your position on Trump's policy advisory committee?
I've actually already addressed this. I think it's an opportunity to have the opportunity to speak directly to the President and his administration and I intend to stay on the council and be a voice for Disney, its shareholders, its employees, maybe the fans and in the industry -- I'm the only one from the entertainment industry on that one.
Are you sending Trump a copy of Beauty and the Beast?
If he wants one, sure. He hasn't asked for one. | | A big honor: on Monday morning "Reliable Sources" was named a winner in the biennial Walter Cronkite Awards for Excellence in Television Political Journalism. "Reliable" was recognized in the "national network news program" category. Thank you!
CNN's Jake Tapper, NBC's Katy Tur and Univision's Jorge Ramos also won awards, along with an impressive list of local and regional journalists. Details here... | | "In a first-of-its-kind arrangement" for the NYT Magazine and ProPublica, award-winning Texas Monthly staffer Pam Colloff will work for both outlets. Politico's Joe Pompeo calls it a "unique proposition for pooling journalistic resources..."
-- Jake Silverstein tweets: "Subtext here: Pamela Colloff is so great it takes TWO nat'l journalism outfits to employ her..."
| | | Storm alert in the Northeast! | | Sadly I'm going to miss the big blizzard in NYC... I'm on a flight to Austin for SXSW right now. But my better half will be up early (2 a.m. alarm clock!) tweeting and reporting on NY1. Have fun Jamie! | | "I'm not in the job of having evidence. That's what investigations are for."
--Kellyanne Conway to Chris Cuomo on Monday... | | | Chris Cillizza leaps from WashPost to CNN | | Chris Cillizza is joining CNN as a reporter and editor at large, starting April 3. "In his current job at The Post, Cillizza has written and led The Fix, a team of reporters who do quick-twitch stories on political stuff. Switching platforms, Cillizza has also done a lot of TV as a contributor at MSNBC," WashPost's Erik Wemple writes. "The move to CNN, says Cillizza, enables him to fuse these two worlds under a single roof..." | | | S.E. Cupp hosting 7 p.m. show on HLN | | HLN will add "S.E. Cupp to its early-evening programming, where she will, starting some time in June, lead into Ashleigh Banfield's program at 8 p.m.," Variety's Brian Steinberg reports. The channel also announced several new crime-solving series on Monday.
CNN EVP Amy Entelis: "We are trying to bring high-quality appointment television to HLN primetime, being very mindful that the audience is a little bit younger than CNN's, a little bit more Midwestern, and has known HLN to be the home of 'Forensic Files.' We think we can deliver a high-quality product that touches on similar themes to that show..." | | | New Yorker's in-depth look at the W.H. press corps | | "Just a few weeks into the tenure of the first reality-star President, the drama in the White House is already at mid-season-cliffhanger levels," Andrew Marantz writes in this week's issue of The New Yorker.
His story focuses on the "floaters," the W.H. reporters without assigned seats in the briefing room, some of whom hail from far-right-wing web sites. Marantz finds that some of these folks aren't really interested in reporting, they're interested in trolling. Or as The Gateway Pundit's Jim Hoft put it so eloquently: "Policy schmolicy." Read the full article here... | | | What happened on the "Bachelor" finale? | | | What comes after "This Is Us" | | Brian Lowry emails his latest review: "This Is Us" has one bit of business left to conduct in Tuesday's season finale -- helping NBC launch its replacement. And it turns out "Trial & Error," a mockumentary of true-crime shows like "Making a Murderer" and "The Jinx," is pretty funny, with John Lithgow starring as the eccentric accused killer... Read Lowry's full review here >>> | | | The MTV Movie *and TV* Awards | | MTV is expanding "its iconic award show for the first time in its 25-year history with the introduction of the MTV Movie and TV Awards," Sandra Gonzalez reports. "The revamped ceremony will air from Sunday, May 7... MTV tells CNN the expanded show intends to keep the iconic popcorn trophy..." | | | Academy president speaks at SXSW | | Frank Pallotta reports from SXSW: Cheryl Boone Isaacs said the Best Picture mix up at this year's Oscars was a shocking but beautiful moment. "It was a bit of shock," Isaacs said at a SXSW event. "However, what I thought was so important was how, in a matter of minutes, you saw a humanity and a respect and a graciousness from the 'La La Land' filmmakers and the 'Moonlight' filmmakers in a way that was very special and very different..." Read more... | | | Premature (?) Oscar buzz about "The Disaster Artist" | | Brian Lowry emails: The latest exercise in premature Oscar exclamations goes to James Franco's "The Disaster Artist." Variety is already proclaiming it a contender coming out of its "work in progress" SXSW screening, which means the movie isn't even locked yet... | | | "Reliable Sources" highlights | | | | Hannity and Crowley in denial | | Sean Hannity's disdain for journalism hurts his viewers. That was the point of my essay about Hannity and his recent interview with Monica Crowley.
Back in January, Crowley had to give up a Trump administration job because extensive plagiarism was found in her 2012 book. But both Crowley and Hannity seem to be in denial about it now. Hannity even said to her on TV, "I don't think you should answer any of these people's questions because they can go straight to hell." Real mature, Sean.
Here's the video of my essay... | | David Zurawik on Sunday's show, saying the Obama administration's legal actions were worse than Trump's words: "It's not the worst war on the press. He hasn't even done what Obama has done. It might be that, but not yet..." | | | Z's blog post about a fellow guest | | | Is Trump "media literate?" (Are you?) | | Educator and advocate Michelle Ciulla Lipkin, the head of the National Association for Media Literacy Education, joined me on Sunday's show. I asked: Is the president, who tweets what he hears on Fox and reads on Breitbart, lacking media literacy?
"Well, I think you have to start with the definition of media literacy," she said. "If you look at media literacy as the ability to access, analyze, evaluate, create and act, using all forms of media, the president actually does some of those things quite well, right? He's communicating a lot, he's accessing technology. But where he and many Americans are lacking is the ability to analyze and evaluate."
This is much more than a political issue, Lipkin said. "We're not teaching" these skills enough... "I think we're doing a lot of people a disservice..." Watch the segment here... | | 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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