| | | | "This is why Trump has to call institutions like The New York Times the 'fake news.' It's because they break real news stories like these that make a difference."
--Senator Sheldon Whitehouse to Wolf Blitzer on "The Situation Room" | | Was Donald Trump Jr. believable in his interview with Sean Hannity? Was he believable when he said the June 9, 2016 meeting with a Russian lawyer amounted to "nothing?" Was President Trump's lawyer's spokesman believable when he said "the president was not aware of and did not attend the meeting?"
This story comes down to credibility. Some pro-Trump commentators say the press doesn't have credibility. But Saturday/Sunday/Monday's stories in the NYT were proven right when Don Jr. published his email exchanges. There haven't been any cries of "fake news" by the president or his aides today.
This special edition of the newsletter recaps twelve hours of stunning developments and looks toward tomorrow... | | "Don Jr. is the latest person in the president's orbit to mislead you" | | CNN's Anderson Cooper at 8pm: This June 9 meeting "may turn out to be the ONLY such encounter, or one of many. We don't know. And I think that's important to point out: We don't know if there's more to come."
Indeed -- but we do know that Trump Jr.'s story has shifted several times. Don Lemon at 10pm: "Don Jr. is the latest person in the president's orbit to mislead you, the American people, about their contacts with Russia." Lemon said to viewers, "Read the emails and ask yourself: who do you believe?"
This is a key point, especially since the NYT is now reporting that the president signed off on Trump Jr.'s initial Saturday statement, which withheld key info and "required day after day of follow-up statements..." | | | WHAT THE TRUMPS KNEW AND WHEN THEY KNEW IT... | | -- What is President Trump thinking, watching all of this cable news coverage right now?
-- Did Trump know about his son's email exchanges ahead of the June 9 meeting? And, though his team has denied it, did he know about the meeting?
-- One of Greg Krieg's questions in this CNN.com list of Q's: "What did the Russian attorney (really) say at the meeting?"
-- The president's attorney Jay Sekulow: "What law has been violated here?" Jake Tapper challenged him about the ethics of it all...
-- One of Dan Balz's questions in the Post: "Is it credible that this was the last communication between the Russians and people in the orbit of the Trump campaign?"
-- Who in the W.H. was motivated to leak to the NYT about Don Jr.?
-- Dan Rather's question in this Facebook post: "This is decision time, especially for our elected officials. Which side of history will you be on?" | | The timeline is crucial here | | I highly recommend Philip Bump's timeline of events "leading up to Trump Jr.'s fateful meeting." Of particular note: Trump's June 7 tease about a "major speech" detailing Clinton dirt... and Trump's June 9 tweet asking "where are your 33,000 emails that you deleted?"
-- Plus: CNN's Dan Merica has a "recreation" of June 9, 2016, explaining why it was a consequential day in the campaign... | | There's so much news that I can't highlight it all here. These are recommended reads -->
-- Peter Baker and Maggie Haberman have lots of new tidbits in this NYT story: "Rancor at White House as Russia Story Refuses to Let the Page Turn"
-- Philip Rucker and Ashley Parker's WashPost piece is equally newsy: "'Category 5 hurricane:' White House under siege by Trump Jr.'s Russia revelations"
-- Politico's Tara Palmeri and Josh Dawsey: "White House aides feeling 'helpless' as Trump Jr. scandal blossoms"
-- Matt Viser's analysis in the Boston Globe: "Now we know the Trump campaign repeatedly lied about Russia." | | This is what the Trumps will see in Wednesday's NYPost | | | The paper's Thursday editorial: "We see one truly solid takeaway from the story of the day: Donald Trump Jr. is an idiot." The piece ends by calling him "criminally stupid." | | | Bill Carter and I will be talking about all of this on CNN's "New Day" around 6:30am ET Wednesday... | | | For the third straight day, the president has no public events scheduled on Wednesday... "It is highly unusual," as Jim Acosta noted on air... | | Trump IS scheduled to hold a presser on Thursday... | | | On Wednesday night Trump will fly to Paris, and he's scheduled to speak at a joint presser with French president Emmanuel Macron on Thursday... Reporters will have a couple of chances to ask Q's, but these events usually don't last long... | | The NYT had four Trump Jr. scoops four days in a row. Tuesday's sudden release of the email exchanges came only after the NYT contacted Trump Jr.'s camp, said they'd reviewed the emails, and asked for comment.
Some insiders are asking: How much did the NYT's reporters and editors know on Saturday when the first story came out? Did any NYTers know about the existence of the damaging emails? Had anyone seen/reviewed the text of the emails?
From a curious emailer: "If they had the emails from the beginning, then they successfully managed to roll out a new important detail per day and so have kept the rest of the media (in the world) reporting their exclusives and promoting their brand for days. Pretty clever if that is the case."
Is this possible? I repeatedly asked a well-placed NYT source, but the person refused to divulge when the emails first entered the equation. I was struck by the fact that this source had a chance to put this "NYT knew all along!" theory to rest, but didn't do it.
But the Times did include this paragraph in its story: "Over the past several days, The New York Times has disclosed the existence of the meeting, whom it involved and what it was about. The story has unfolded as The Times has been able to confirm details of the meetings..." | | Tuesday night cable news quotes | | -- MSNBC's Rachel Maddow: "There has been a confession..."
-- Ryan Lizza on CNN: "The fundamental narrative of this story has shifted. The ONE thing that all partisans of the president could say is 'no evidence of collusion, no evidence of collusion, no evidence of collusion.' THAT is the thing that was exploded today."
-- Fox's Jesse Watters: "I believe Don Jr. is the victim here."
-- His co-host Kimberly Guilfoyle: "There's no evidence of collusion here, there's lots of evidence of DELUSION."
-- Former assistant special Watergate prosecutor Nick Akerman on MSNBC: "Legally, this is a smoking cannon." | | How Hannity helped Trump Jr. launder the Russia story | | Brian Lowry watched the entire Hannity-Trump Jr. interview. His recap: Hannity's main objective seemed to be providing Trump Jr. an opportunity to put the best possible spin on the situation without fear of follow-up.
To his credit, the Fox host asked most of the pertinent questions, including whether Trump Jr. had shared the information with his father, and whether there was any further contact with the Russian lawyer. Still, if Trump Jr. was determined to go public -- a decision many legal analysis have questioned -- he picked the right conduit, to the extent that Hannity didn't press him on areas where his story appears the most vulnerable.
Hannity, however, fulfilled two roles, giving Trump Jr. -- and Sekulow -- a forum to downplay the story, while simultaneously deriding the rest of the media for its failure, in Hannity's eyes, to cover other stories regarding, among others, Hillary Clinton, former FBI director James Comey and the Ukraine… | | Frank Pallotta emails: "My party has betrayed their core values." That is what Joe Scarborough told Stephen Colbert on Tuesday night's "Late Show." Scarborough used the platform to announce that he's leaving the Republican party and becoming an independent: "I'm not going to be Republican anymore..."
Frank will have a full late-night TV recap on CNN.com overnight... | | Inside Breitbart's Slack room when the news broke | | Oliver Darcy emails: I obtained a transcript of the internal Slack conversation that took place immediately after Trump Jr. tweeted the bombshell email exchange. Breitbart London Editor-in-Chief Raheem Kassam wrote, "So like, this is straight up collusion. Right?" Matthew Boyle disagreed, writing, "I mean I don't take this as a smoking gun at all. This is silly." Other reactions inside Breitbart Slack ranged from "wow" to "???????"
The debate inside Breitbart was emblematic of a larger sense of confusion that appeared to grip much of the pro-Trump media following the bombshell release of the emails. Typically, people and outlets supportive of Trump will coalesce around a message relatively quickly; not this time, though. Read more...
-- Reality check from talk radio: "Who cares about Russia?!" "I'm sick of it." "Keep kicking that dead dog." That's what pro-Trump callers told Michael Smerconish on the radio... | | Two CNN contributors, two very different views | | Kayleigh McEnany, one of CNN's most prominent pro-Trump commentators, wrote a column for The Hill on Tuesday titled "Forget Don Jr.'s email — it's Hillary Clinton who 'colluded' with Russia."
When she tweeted out the column, another CNNer, military analyst Mark Hertling, replied to her: "You're a young woman, Kayleigh. You'll still have a future. Get off this train now, it'll be okay." | | -- Anthony Mason on the "CBS Evening News:" "The Russia investigation the president calls FAKE has just become a very real problem for his son."
-- AP's Julie Pace: "The president's son connected the dots."
-- Ian Bremmer tweets: "This is like the plot of 'House of Cards' with the characters from 'Veep.'"
-- The Guardian's Martin Belam: "Imagine Watergate. But one of Nixon's kids kept uploading all the tapes to Soundcloud."
-- The Atlantic's David Graham writes: "What If It's All True?"
-- National Journal's Josh Kraushaar: "The coming months will offer a test of who the true Trump diehards are..." | | Off-camera briefings = no broadcast network coverage? | | Didja notice that the broadcast networks did not break in on Tuesday afternoon with special coverage of the audio-only W.H. briefing?
A former W.H. press secretary (who wishes to remain anonymous) emails: "I am really taken aback by the fact that the networks are not taking the briefing live today. There will not be a bigger story in this presidency, and this is as big a development as we're going to see, absent anything directly involving the POTUS. I wonder if it's because it's not newsworthy enough or the fact that it's not on camera. If it's the latter, that's a hard decision to defend and a victory for the W.H. Even with all the changes in the broadcast landscape, the networks still reach many more people than cable. More importantly, the networks cutting into programming sends a message to the country that something important has happened, something worth paying attention to..." | | Back to attacking the messenger... | | Why has Trump been bashing the press? "Because of stories like this." | | | A crucial point made by Jake Tapper at the end of the 11am hour on CNN: Many strategists believe that "one of the reasons why" the Trump White House "has been so aggressive in trying to undermine the fourth estate, whether it's The New York Times or The Washington Post or CNN, is because of stories like this. Because 35, 40% of the country doesn't want to hear this information..." | | GOP operatives looking to "discredit" some of the journos who are covering this crisis? | | | According to the WashPost: "A handful of Republican operatives close to the White House are scrambling to Trump Jr.'s defense and have begun what could be an extensive campaign to try to discredit some of the journalists who have been reporting on the matter. Their plan, as one member of the team described it, is to research the reporters' previous work, in some cases going back years, and to exploit any mistakes or perceived biases. They intend to demand corrections, trumpet errors on social media and feed them to conservative outlets, such as Fox News..." | | | Correction: Our mid-day edition of the newsletter said it took Fox News 34 minutes to cover the email release on TV. Fox actually broke into coverage within 8 minutes... 26 minutes later, the network covered the news more extensively... I should have caught this before sending out the letter. | | -- Days of Amelia Earhart coverage, and now this counter: "Blogger discredits claim Amelia Earhart was taken prisoner by Japan..." (The Guardian)
-- Mika Brzezinski has landed a "mega three-book deal..." (Page Six)
-- "Megyn Kelly's new morning show will debut on NBC Sept. 25 at 9 a.m. and will feature a live studio audience," Hadas Gold scoops... (Politico)
-- "We were mistaken:" On Tuesday's show, "Fox & Friends" acknowledged Monday's false report about James Comey... (Mediaite)
-- Francesca Giuliani-Hoffman emails: People blocked by Trump on Twitter are suing him, saying the blocking is unconstitutional... (BuzzFeed)
-- The Intercept's owner First Look Media says it will support alleged leaker Reality Winner's defense... (The Intercept) | | Time Inc. changing its name? | | | From TIME to LIFE? "Senior executives at Time Inc. recently met to discuss a potential rebranding of the company that could include changing the publisher's corporate name, according to several people familiar with the situation," the WSJ reports... | | By Howard Cohen:
-- Former Goldman Sachs exec Ned Segal is Twitter's new CFO... (Variety)
-- Facebook is going to start serving ads in Messenger all around the world... (CNBC)
-- The Weather Channel will be using augmented reality for its coverage of the solar eclipse on August 21... we'll see what that actually means... (TVNewser) | | Summer TV? The apocalypse is now | | | Brian Lowry emails: In summer TV dramas, the apocalypse is now, as networks have sought to provide a form of escapism by serving up end-of-the-world scenarios, the latest being CBS' "Salvation," about a giant meteor hurtling toward Earth. Read more... | | More illusive than a genie | | Megan Thomas emails: The bountiful online response to this THR story about Disney's struggle to find stars for its live-action remake of "Aladdin" ranged from Fusion tweeting "It cannot be this difficult to cast 'Aladdin,' you Disney punks" to suggestions of casting Zayn (formerly of One Direction) or tapping Bollywood's "industry of men who can dance and sing."
Guy Richie is set to direct the movie. Dev Patel and Riz Ahmed were reportedly considered, but after looking at thousands of actors, still no Aladdin... | | | For the record, part three | | | By Lisa Respers France:
-- Maybe we could call it an Arnold Palmer since it's like "Lemonade" mixed with all the tea. Jay-Z is spilling the behind the scenes on his love with Beyoncé, including that their relationship was "not built on the 100% truth..."
-- "See You Again" has taken YouTube's top spot for most viewed video, topping "Gangnam Style..."
-- DeMario Jackson says he will be returning to the "Bachelor" franchise... | | | What do you like about this newsletter? What do you dislike? Email us... we're at reliablesources@cnn.com... we appreciate every email. | | | Get Reliable Sources, a comprehensive summary of the most important media news, delivered to your inbox every afternoon. | | | | | |
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