| | | | | Yes, crisis. I haven't seen those "White House in Crisis" banners on cable news in a couple of weeks. But those banners are applicable today, just like yesterday, just like tomorrow. Because this is an unfolding crisis. A crisis of White House leadership. And you know what? Much of the national news media's coverage is reflecting it. President Trump's unhinged news conference on Tuesday provoked unusual reactions from political reporters, anchors and media execs. This special edition of the newsletter is an attempt to sum up the presser and the aftermath... | | Trump was furious about news coverage... | | Tuesday's presser was a media critique through and through. POTUS argued with members of the press corps, assailed "dishonest" coverage, and threw in a "fake news" smear for good measure. Where did this come from? Well, according to the NYT's Glenn Thrush and Maggie Haberman, "no sooner had he delivered the Monday statement than he began railing privately to his staff about the press. He fumed to aides about how unfairly he was being treated, and expressed sympathy with nonviolent protesters who he said were defending their 'heritage,' according to a West Wing official..."
My take: If Trump lashed out because he was angry about media coverage of the Charlottesville aftermath, imagine what he's going to say after Tuesday evening's coverage... | | -- NYT's headline for the history books: "Trump Gives White Supremacists an Unequivocal Boost"
-- Nicolle Wallace on MSNBC right after the presser: "Today he threw a stick of dynamite on the bridge that he laid down yesterday."
-- CNN's Van Jones: "I don't know what to say tonight. I am just hurt..."
-- National Review's David French: Trump "gave the alt-right its greatest national media moment ever..."
-- Viral tweet by historian David Maraniss: "The living former presidents -- Bushes, Carter, Clinton & Obama -- should make a joint statement calling on the racist Trump to resign..."
-- Merriam-Webster tweeted at 9:15pm: "Top lookups right now: fascism, bigot, racism, complicit, neo-Nazi, nationalism."
-- Conservative commentator Scott Jennings on CNN: "Mr. President, we want to be with you in policy. But you are making it impossible for us to be with you in spirit..."
-- +1 to NPR's Scott Simon, who tweeted: "I don't know what to make of the news. But I promise we will cover it with fairness, and without fear. We work for America." | | This is (only) day 208 of the Trump presidency. | | And as Jeffrey Toobin said on CNN, "We are going to learn a lot about the United States during the Trump presidency."
The closest analogue to Tuesday was October 8, the day the obscene "Access Hollywood" tape came out. On both occasions, journalists freely expressed shock, disappointment and sometimes outright disgust. | | | Dylan Byers emails: Donald Trump has decided once and for all to tether his legacy to the racist and bigoted elements of the far-right that played an important role in getting him elected. I don't understand the end game. He is alienating himself from the country he is supposed to be leading. Is his war with the press, the offense he takes when it doesn't treat him the way he feels he should be treated, worth that? | | Late-night hosts ripped up their scripts | | | I'm sending out this newsletter before the late0night shows air on the East Coast, but I'm confident we're going to see a repeat of Monday night, when comics had serious things to say about the aftermath of Charlottesville. Here's a preview clip from Stephen Colbert. Frank Pallotta will have a complete recap on CNN.com overnight... | | GOP pundits ripped up their talking points | | From the W.H. nightly talking points email: "The president is entirely correct." Some of the recipients thought the email was so ridiculous that they immediately leaked it to reporters, including yours truly...
--> Even before those talking points came out, former RNC comms director Doug Heye, now a CNN commentator, tweeted: "I've asked the press offices at both the White House & RNC to remove me from their email lists." | | Hey, who's really the Twitter president? | | | At 10:07pm Tuesday, Barack Obama's Saturday night message against hate became the most-liked tweet in Twitter history... | | "Here is the thing, when I make a statement, I like to be correct. I want the facts...
Unlike you and unlike the media, before I make a statement, I like to know the facts."
--President Trump sparring with reporters on Tuesday... | | Overall observations about the day's coverage | | -- Until 4pm, @realDonaldTrump's tweets were a hot topic. Among other things, he retweeted, then deleted, another anti-CNN cartoon...
-- W.H. correspondents were advised that the president would not take Q's at his 4pm appearance...
-- Control rooms were expecting vague talk about infrastructure, not... this. So none of the broadcasters carried it live. ABC broke in with a special report afterward...
-- CBS's Mark Knoller, who's seen it all: "Have never seen as frenzied a Q&A session with a president. Or as high-decibel an exchange either."
-- On some news sites, the #1 most-read story on Tuesday evening was the complete transcript of the Q&A...
-- Similarly, the evening newscasts broke from form and ran unusually long chunks of Trump's comments, so viewers could judge for themselves...
-- MSNBC re-played the entire thing during the 6pm hour...
-- Anderson Cooper at the start of his 8pm hour: "We normally start off the broadcast saying 'good evening,' but tonight there doesn't seem to be much that is 'good' about this evening..." | | | SOME OF THE REACTIONS THAT STOOD OUT TO US... | | "The nation can only weep." | | | That's the title of this WashPost editorial. "Tuesday was a great day for David Duke and racists everywhere. The president of the United States all but declared that he has their backs..." | | -- David Gergen on "AC360:" "Increasingly, people feel he's posing a danger not just to his party but to the country. He's going to tear us apart."
-- Presidential historian Michael Beschloss on Maddow's show: "I would say to all Americans: we've got a problem."
-- Mika Brzezinski tweeted the hashtag #25thAmendment and asked: "Is it time?" | | The media cycle of disbelief... | | | "Maybe this IS America," Jason Farkas emails: "The media cycle of disbelief is not about Donald Trump; we know who he is. It's with ourselves. We are learning about America's very dark heart, week after week. It's why Fox News and the GOP aren't going anywhere. They already know what America is made of." | | | Farkas adds: I was moved by the very personal, ad-libbed responses from anchors on air in the aftermath of the presser. Don Lemon giving an impassioned speech about how it feels to be black in an America that still memorializes the Confederacy. Wolf Blitzer mentioning that all four of his grandparents died in the Holocaust. Jake Tapper reassuring viewers that they're not going crazy... | | How the evening newscasts reacted | | | The "CBS Evening News" devoted its entire half hour to all things Trump and Charlottesville. The other newscasts squeezed in some other stories, but focused squarely on the presser and the sweeping criticism that followed. An NBC staffer texted: "Tonight's newscasts, across the networks, feel like one for the record books. Feels like this could have been a day right out of 1969." The 60s? What about 1974? | | It's a good thing Vice was there last Friday | | | HBO's "Vice News Tonight" is winning a lot of praise for this 22-minute documentary, "Charlottesville: Race and Terror," which came out on Monday. CNN, NBC and other outlets played portions of the doc on Tuesday night because it vividly shows racists chanting slogans like "Jews will not replace us" on the campus of UVA last Friday night... | | "Alt-left:" from Sean Hannity's lips to... | | | Maybe it's a slight exaggeration to say, as Wired did on Tuesday, that "Trump cribbed his Charlottesville press conference straight from Fox News." But it's true that some of his talking points came straight from conservative media, including Fox's pro-Trump opinion shows. Sean Hannity did not invent the term "alt-left," but he certainly popularized the term by saying it over and over again on his TV and radio shows... | | Primetime on Fox was Trump time | | | Dylan Byers watched all of Fox News' primetime lineup tonight. Some of his thoughts: For the better part of three hours, Tucker Carlson, the co-hosts of "The Five" and Sean Hannity went after liberals and the media instead of criticizing Trump for his decision to draw a moral equivalency between neo-Nazis and leftist protestors. Fox's programming stood in stark contrast to the mainstream media's coverage on the controversial nature of Trump's remarks. Instead, the night was heavy on "whataboutism." The average viewer could only have left with the impression that the toppling of some Confederate statues was a far greater threat to America than white supremacism or the President's apparent defense of bigotry.
If Fox News has a line when it comes to Trump's presidency, it was not crossed on Tuesday.
More from Dylan on this coming to CNNMoney.com later... | | But earlier in the day... | | | Oliver Darcy emails: It's not often that an entire Fox News panel hammers Trump, but it happened at 5pm when the five-person "Specialists" panel ripped into his response to Charlottesville. Co-host Kat Timpf went as far as to say it was "honestly crazy" she had to comment in the immediate aftermath of the spectacle because she was "still in the phase" where she was "actually wondering" if what she watched "was real life." Here's video of that viral clip... | | Oliver's look at the pro-Trump media universe | | Oliver Darcy emails: Trump's freewheeling, bombastic press conference played well in another universe: the one dominated by pro-Trump media personalties. Ann Coulter heaped praise on the president, tweeting that he combated the "B.S. left-wing media narrative." Gateway Pundit publisher Jim Hoft said it was "EPIC!" And Breitbart declared Trump had come "ROARING BACK" at the press with a "SMACKDOWN AT TRUMP TOWER."
That said, there was one noticeable disturbance in the force running through the pro-Trump media universe. The Drudge Report, the far-right universe's center of gravity, conspicuously played down Trump's presser. While almost every major news website led with the news, the Drudge Report featured other unrelated stories as its banner headline. Perhaps Matt Drudge, or Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump, Drudge's close allies in the White House, did not approve of Trump's display and preferred not to draw further attention to it. As I also reported a few weeks ago, Trump has been firing warning shots at Trump as of late... | | | Brian Lowry emails: TPM's Josh Marshall made an interesting point, albeit tartly: That it's difficult to distinguish whether Trump's comments were motivated by his views or his anger and irritation over the criticism he's received since Saturday. It is, as Marshall notes, almost irrelevant at this point, but it does get back to the question of the president responding impulsively to perceived slights, often at the expense of thinking through the political implications and potential fallout... | | By Francesca Giuliani-Hoffman:
-- Facebook has removed eight pages belonging to "racist groups" in the past few days... (The Hill)
-- Facebook has also deleted posts by users who linked to a Daily Stormer article that attacked Heather Heyer, the victim of the vehicular attack in Charlottesville. The article was shared on the platform 65,000 times... (The Verge)
-- After GoDaddy and Google booted the Daily Stormer, the neo-Nazi site says it's moving to the dark web... (The Verge)
-- Ken Doctor shares eight lessons from how the media covered Charlottesville. "Reliable Sources" fans will appreciate #4... (NiemanLab)
-- Quartz has a thorough analysis of Charlottesville as seen from the alt-right... (Quartz) | | More calls for impeachment from... entertainers | | Megan Thomas emails: Hollywood's reaction to Trump's impromptu comments today ranged from shock to calls for impeachment. Here's just a sample:
Jimmy Kimmel: "I haven't seen anything that crazy since Tyson bit Holyfield."
Ava Duvernay: I feel like... I don't know what I feel anymore. Shock. Been there. Disgust. Done that. Rage. Ongoing. This is bizarre and revolting."
Lin-Manuel Miranda: "Impeach this bad man."
Norman Lear: "I fought Nazis in World War II. They aren't 'very fine people.'" | | What Trump should have learned from Schwarzenegger | | Francesca Giuliani-Hoffman emails:
With Trump, everything is personal. The President's role wasn't written with him in mind, and Trump isn't an actor who can mold himself into different roles. He's a reality TV star. He sells himself. Whenever he decides to break free from the presidential script and ad lib, he makes mistakes that may catch up to him eventually.
Take Arnold Schwarzenegger as another example of a populist celebrity candidate, running against the establishment. Although Schwarzenegger had more political experience than Trump when he first ran for office, his gubernatorial campaign was centered on his showbiz persona. After getting the job, Schwarzenegger had to put his head down and study. He had to learn, and to listen to the advice of real professionals, in order to become a viable governor.
At the last National Prayer Breakfast, Trump insulted Schwarzenegger for having worse ratings than he did while hosting "The Apprentice." Maybe he should have asked him for advice instead. | | NYT documentary series in the works for Showtime | | So it turns out that Tuesday at 4pm was the wrong time to break this news! Alas... Here's what I wrote...
Since Inauguration Day, a documentary filmmaker has been embedded inside The New York Times, working on a film about the acclaimed news organization in the age of Trump. The project, produced and directed by Liz Garbus, is being financed by the Showtime network, according to multiple sources with knowledge of the deal. The tentative title, subject to change, is "The Fourth Estate." Showtime envisions a four-night TV premiere for the film sometime in 2018. (Our future colleague Hadas Gold first reported on the existence of a film crew inside the Times newsroom earlier this week.)
Details about the project:
-- Garbus will continue filming through next January...
-- NYT DC editor Elisabeth Bumiller and many political reporters will be featured in the film...
-- It'll be about both covering Trump and moving from print to digital... | | Laura Ingraham and Fox... | | | I reported last night about Laura Ingraham's talks with Fox News about a possible hosting gig. There were no new updates on Tuesday, but Ingraham is back from vacation so she was back on Fox... | | The Daily Caller's clean-up | | On Tuesday Fox News and The Daily Caller deleted posts encouraging people to drive through protests. Seriously.
"Here's A Reel Of Cars Plowing Through Protesters Trying To Block The Road" was first published by The Daily Caller and reposted by other sites in January, but there was a sudden burst of criticism about the posts on Tuesday... Tom Kludt has all the details here... | | | Trump and the media (continued) | | | Would firing Bannon turn Breitbart against Trump? | | Tom Kludt emails: If Trump ditches Steve Bannon, the president might lose more than just a senior adviser; that move could also cost the White House one of its most reliable cheerleaders in the press.
For our latest video, my producer Jon Sarlin and I took a stab at a hypothetical: what would happen if pro-Trump media outlets, like Breitbart. were to abandon Trump? Former Breitbart spokesman Kurt Bardella told us that, should Bannon get sacked, "it's going to be all out war." In fact, we may have already gotten a glimpse of what such a feud would look like earlier this summer, when Trump attacked Jeff Sessions, who has long been one of Breitbart's sacred cows. Watch/read here... | | "Bannon vs. Murdoch, Breitbart vs. WSJ: The proxy war over Trump" | | | Dylan Byers has this guide to the Steve Bannon-Rupert Murdoch battle... | | | We'll be back with a regular edition on Wednesday night... | | | Email us at reliablesources@cnn.com... we appreciate every message. The feedback helps us craft the next day's newsletter! | | | Get Reliable Sources, a comprehensive summary of the most important media news, delivered to your inbox every afternoon. | | | | | |
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