| | | | The best story of the day | | | Yes, let's start with a truly incredible, absolutely heartwarming story. It has nothing to do with President Trump or Steve Bannon. It's this feature by Nora Krug of the Washington Post: "Two dying memoirists wrote bestsellers about their final days. Then their spouses fell in love." Read it here... | | CBS fires political director | | I just published this exclusive on CNNMoney: CBS News said Wednesday that it has fired its political director, Steve Chaggaris, amid allegations of "inappropriate behavior" in his past.
"In the last two weeks, accounts of inappropriate behavior by Steve Chaggaris were brought to our attention and were immediately investigated," a spokeswoman told me. "As a result, CBS News has severed ties with Mr. Chaggaris for violating company policy, effective immediately."
Chaggaris could not be reached for comment. His Twitter account was deleted sometime in the past two days. The EIC of IGN was also fired on Wednesday... Scroll down for details... | | Trump disbands "voter fraud" commission | | | "It's a s--t show," one White House adviser said to CNN. The person was talking about Trump's voter fraud commission, which went "off the rails," the adviser said. On Wednesday evening Trump dissolved the commission, as Elizabeth Landers, Eli Watkins and Kevin Liptak reported here. So does this mean Trump has given up on his conspiracy theory about millions of illegal votes that stole the popular vote victory from him? | | So much sloppiness from the West Wing... | | | Trump's statement about the commission was initially attributed to White House press secretary Sarah Sanders, but it was written as if it came from Trump. And the web link to the statement didn't work. This is just the latest example of sloppy mistakes in official statements and messages from the U.S. government. The misspellings and misprints have been an embarrassing signature of Trump's first year. And this one happened on a day when a book about Trump White House dysfunction was the top story... | | Michael Wolff's book "Fire and Fury" went from #48,449 on Amazon's best selling books list to #1... All thanks to a sleuth at The Guardian and a strategically timed story by NYMag.
By now you've heard all about Wolff's shocking quotes and claims about the chaos and incompetence of the Trump White House. The book affirms so much of what's been reported about Trumpworld. It adds disturbing new details and damning allegations by Steve Bannon. But the Bannon gossip isn't the takeaway. It's "his stability" -- Trump's stability -- "that's really what this book is about." Carl Bernstein said that on "AC360," and he's right... | | NYMag had the "first serial" rights to the book, and it's the cover story in next week's print edition. The mag was going to publish Wolff's adaptation on the web late Wednesday night/early Thursday morning. But then The Guardian snagged a copy of the book from a store in New England and posted a story with some key Bannon quotes. NYMag published its piece within four hours. Here's my full story about the scramble...
--> Here's what a spokeswoman for publisher Henry Holt told me: "We kept the media schedule very flexible for the launch of 'Fire and Fury' knowing that an embargoed book is subject to leaks and that many of the plans get tossed in the air. Henry Holt is in perfect position for this week and the official publication on January 9..." | | Here's what's happening next | | -- More quotes: Multiple news outlets, from the WSJ to the AP to the NYT, have now obtained copies of the book, so we'll be seeing more quotes from it...
-- Another excerpt: The Hollywood Reporter will publish a second excerpt -- really more of Wolff's first-hand account of his time at the White House -- on Thursday, just in time for the morning shows...
-- The publisher's rebuttal: Will Henry Holt have anything to say about the initial criticism of the book's fact-checking and editing? I think so... We'll see...
-- Wolff's first TV interview about the book: He'll be on NBC's "Today" on Friday... The interview was slated for next Monday, but it's been moved up... | | | CNN's Jake Tapper on a special 10pm edition of his show: "In any other White House, a book like this, we would be like, 'Wow, the Obama administration is over.' 'The Bush White House is done.' 'I can't believe this.' 'They're never going to survive.' But today, it's like, 'it's Wednesday.' It's just Wednesday. I don't even know if we're going to be talking about this tomorrow..." | | Bannon is not denying the accuracy of the quotes that were attributed to him | | | Oliver Darcy emails: Bannon hosted "Breitbart News Tonight" on Sirius XM radio Wednesday night -- but almost entirely avoided addressing the elephant in the room. The Breitbart chief mostly focused on immigration policy and did not comment at length on his feud with Trump. That said, one caller referenced Trump's comments. Bannon replied, "The president of the United States is a great man. You know I support him day in and day out." | | Cease and desist letter?! | | | Bannon's cordial remark may or may not have been influenced by this ABC News scoop: Lawyer Charles Harder, acting on behalf of Trump, sent Bannon a letter Wednesday night "demanding he refrain from making disparaging comments against the president and his family," citing Bannon's NDA from the campaign... | | Does the W.H. have a copy of the book yet? | | | "Aides thought they had more time to prepare for the book's formal release," the WashPost's Josh Dawsey and Ashley Parker reported Wednesday night. "Trump spent much of the day raging about the book to top aides, officials and advisers said... As he fumed, some aides were still frantically searching for a copy of the book, and even senior aides like [Hope] Hicks had not seen it by the afternoon, officials said..." | | White House and RNC are blasting Wolff | | Sarah Sanders called the book "trashy tabloid fiction" on Wednesday, even though her boss spoke with Wolff during the reporting process. Later, the RNC sent out an email blast saying Wolff "has a long history of making stuff up. He's doing it again in his latest book." The email linked to this 2004 TNR piece by Michelle Cottle about Wolff's track record, among other examples. Paul Farhi wrote about Wolff's reputation on Wednesday...
-- Splinter's David Uberti tweeted: "Now the RNC is blasting out old stories from The New Republic. What a time to be alive." Uberti filed this skeptical piece about Wolff... | | -- CNN's Jim Acosta tweeted after the briefing: "Sad that @PressSec is starting New Year like much of last year... afraid to take questions from CNN..."
-- Joe Trippi's Fox contributor contract ended in December. He was with Fox for seven years. As of Wednesday night, he's now a CNN contributor...
-- "Peter Thiel wants to create a new conservative cable news network and his representatives have engaged the powerful Mercer family to help with funding," BuzzFeed reports... | | Oliver Darcy emails: Breitbart seemingly chose to hold its punches on Wednesday. Bannon's site published a story covering Trump's explosive statement, but refrained from taking an adversarial angle, choosing instead to write up a straight news story.
Breitbart's spokesperson didn't respond to text messages throughout the day and EIC Alex Marlow told staff in an internal Slack I obtained that it "should go without saying" he should "clear all comments made to the media." Marlow, who did not respond when asked if he had comment, added in his message to staff that he "should also clear all stories" related to Bannon...
-- Related? Via Mediaite: "Watch Hannity Bend Over Backwards Not to Take Sides in Trump-Bannon Feud" | | Trump whisperer Maggie Haberman tweeted that she read the entire book. "Thin but readable," she wrote. "Well written. Several things that are true and several that are not. Light in fact-checking and copy-editing."
Haberman added on "AC360" that some "basic details" are wrong... but other key details are right. The book's reliability is going to be a subplot of the next few days... I'm already seeing lots of partisan battles about it on social media... | | | --> Patrick Murray, director of the Monmouth University Polling Institute, tweeted: "What proportion of Wolff's book is accurate reportage? The left will believe 100%, the right will believe 0%. I'm putting the over/under at 40%." | | How did Wolff get the access? | | No one is disputing that Wolff spent a LOT of time at the White House last year. Many reporters described seeing him in the West Wing. He says he had 200 interviews. So how did he get inside? A big part of the answer is Bannon. Sanders said that the vast majority of the appointments were arranged by Bannon. We'll see what Wolff says about that.
Another part of the answer has to do with Wolff's criticism of other journalists, including yours truly. Wolff assailed the media for treating Trump too harshly during the first weeks of the Trump admin. In a memorable "Reliable Sources" segment, he said journalists were trying to take Trump down, called me a "ridiculous figure" and said the NYT front page "looks like it's 1938 in Germany every day." At the time, I figured he was trying to cozy up to W.H. officials...
--> Was Wolff's biography of Rupert Murdoch another factor? Joshua Green said this on "AC360:" "Trump has long worshiped Rupert Murdoch. It was suggested to me" by a source "that that was one of the reasons why Wolff was able to get the kind of face-time and access that he apparently had for the book..."
--> Green added: "He manipulated the egos of people in the White House to get this kind of access, to get up close, and then turned around and wrote the kind of book they weren't expecting." Speaking of Green... | | "Devil's Bargain" also got a bump on Wednesday | | | Green's book about Bannon and Trump, "Devil's Bargain," enjoyed a big bounce on Amazon on Wednesday... Presumably because it's available right now, but "Fire and Fury" is not... I watched it climb the chart all day, and at the time I'm writing this, it's ranked #435. It was hovering around #15,000 last week. Full disclosure, Green is a CNN political analyst... | | "Inside Trump's two days of fury" | | | This is a must-read story by CNN's Kevin Liptak and Dana Bash... It says Trump's mad tweets this week were partly "fueled by anger at his legal team for offering shifting timelines about when the Russia investigation would end..." | | Gergen: "We need to have a serious national discussion" about this | | If you read last night's newsletter, you know I've been focused on the Q's about the president's fitness. I was struck by the way David Gergen framed it on "Erin Burnett OutFront" Wednesday night. He said "if Donald Trump were the head of any other major institution in this country, he would be gone by now." Later in the hour, Gergen said other details from Wolff's book -- about Trump's paranoia, etc -- reinforce questions about whether he's fit for office.
"I do think we need to have a serious national discussion about this," Gergen said. And "by the way," he added, "I think the Republican party bears some responsibility here..." | | | I think NBC's Peter Alexander deserves credit for bringing this up at Wednesday's briefing. He asked: "Should Americans be concerned about the President's mental fitness," given "that he appears to be speaking so lightly about threats regarding a nuclear button?" Sarah Sanders did not say "no, Americans should not be concerned." Instead, she said we should all be "concerned about the mental fitness of the leader of North Korea..." | | -- Bannon's motives are interesting, historian Tim Naftali said on "OutFront:" "We haven't seen this kind of turn against a figure from the inside since John Dean testified against Nixon..."
-- Trump biographer Michael D'Antonio in an op-ed for CNN.com: "Nothing affects Trump more than what people say about him"
-- Matt Schlapp on Tucker Carlson's show: "I think the only people that were happy today were the people on other cable news shows that are prosecuting the case against" Trump... | | BTW -- Trump has barely been seen this week | | On Thursday, "for the third straight weekday, the president has no events open to the media," CNN's Steve Brusk notes. There's a caveat however: Trump has two meetings with senators on the schedule…so "we'll see if they decide to open them for a photo op."
More from Brusk: "Except for his return from Mar-a-lago Monday night, he has not done any open events." Trump held two other photo ops during his holiday in Florida. "Except for those events, less than 15 minutes in duration, the last time he did an event was the Oval Office signing of the tax bill on December 22nd..." | | Catnip for the morning shows... | | | Here are the covers of Thursday's NY Daily News and NY Post: | | -- "My Life as a New York Times Reporter in the Shadow of the War on Terror" -- this is James Risen's must-read... (The Intercept)
-- PBS "NewsHour" and the NYT are launching a book club... (PBS)
-- "ESPN was the most-watched cable network in prime time in the fourth quarter..." (Bloomberg)
-- "ABC is reversing course on its planned Rolling Stone special. The Disney-owned network has scrapped its Rolling Stone 50 three-hour live broadcast that was slated to air Feb. 7..." (THR) | | Colbert wants to win a "fakie" | | That's what Stephen Colbert is calling President Trump's promised "Fake & Dishonest Media Awards." The "fakies!" On Wednesday's "Late Show," he mocked Trump's tweet about the trophies and pretended to campaign for an award. He even bought ad time on a billboard at 42nd St and 8th Ave in NYC. Here's the segment...
--> Colbert: "Nothing gives you more credibility than Donald Trump calling you a liar..." | | | "Time Inc. is selling Essence Communications Inc. to Essence Ventures LLC, a company launched in 2017 by Shea Moisture founder Richelieu Dennis. As a result, the Essence brand has returned to a 100% black-owned independent company, after 12 years of being owned by Time," Black Enterprise reports... | | LATimes union vote is on Thursday | | Julia Waldow emails: In what could be a historic move, the LATimes newsroom is set to vote on unionization on Thursday. Management seems to be making last-ditch attempts to quell a potential shift; the day before the vote, top editors sent a note "urging us to protect their 'independence,'" national correspondent Matt Pearce posted on Twitter. Splinter has a write-up on the email here...
-- Related? "Vox employees are going on a 'Slack Strike' to push for a union," BI's Maxwell Tani reports... | | | For the record, part three | | | By Julia Waldow:
-- Gallup will be reporting presidential job approval #'s weekly, rather than daily, starting next week. EIC Frank Newport links the changes to shifts in data sources... (Gallup)
-- The Daily Beast's Matt Lewis ponders "what the president doesn't get about the power of words..." (The Daily Beast)
-- Fact-checking in real time? The Tech & Check Cooperative at Duke U hopes to evaluate Trump's State of the Union Address instantaneously through live, automated alerts... (NiemanLab)
-- "We're looking for behavior, not sites:" Here's why local digital news platforms are increasingly moving away from display advertising and toward more integrated approaches... (Digiday) | | "The massive gaming website IGN has fired its editor-in-chief, Steve Butts, after an investigation into alleged workplace misconduct, the company said today," Kotaku's Jason Schreier reports. Kotaku first reported that Butts was under scrutiny.
According to Polygon, "IGN co-founder and chief content officer Peer Schneider will take over for Butts as editor-in-chief on an interim basis..." | | | For the record, part four | | | -- I missed this yesterday: Jeremy Barr had a rare interview with Fox News president of news Jay Wallace... (THR)
-- "New year. Same global dominance for Netflix," Paul R. La Monica writes. "Shares of the streaming titan soared 55% in 2017 and have already shot up another 7% in the first two trading days of 2018 to an all-time high..." (CNNMoney)
-- Megan Thomas emails: These made-up quotes from critics to a made-up Ken Burns documentary about the Trump administration are Onion-worthy satire courtesy of the New Yorker... (TNY)
-- Chloe Melas emails: Beyoncé will headline the Coachella festival this April. Check out the full lineup... (CNN) | | Golden Globes kick off award season of discontent | | | Brian Lowry's awards show preview: The Golden Globes haven't been especially reliable this century as an Oscar bellwether. But because of where they're situated on the calendar as the kickoff to awards season, this Sunday's ceremony could be significant -- as it was last year, in Meryl Streep's comments about President-elect Trump, and his Twitter reaction -- in setting the tone for how Hollywood publicly addresses that and some of the other issues facing it. Read more... | | Kantor will be on the red carpet | | | Megan Thomas emails: The NYT will be covering award season red carpets a little differently this year, according to Styles editor Choire Sicha. In a letter from Sicha published Wednesday, he laid out the paper's plan to recognize the "enormity of our cultural reckoning" over sexual misconduct and gender inequality. Among the changes, Jodi Kantor and Pulitzer prize-winning photographer Damon Winter will be covering the carpet... | | | Sandra Gonzalez emails: Winter TCA kicks off Thursday in Pasadena. As Cynthia Littleton at Variety points out in her preview, you can expect to see Fox TV Group chairmen Gary Newman and Dana Walden field a lot of questions about the network's future in light of Disney's impending acquisition of various 21st Century Fox assets. And on Friday, FX CEO John Landgraf will face similar Q's, as well as many on the network's now terminated relationship with Louis C.K., whose deals with the network were axed after he faced sexual misconduct allegations... | | Lowry reviews "9-1-1" and "The X-Files" | | | Brian Lowry emails: Fox's big week of premieres continues with "The X-Files," which struggles to recover from the previous season's silly cliffhanger; and "9-1-1," which actually brings unexpected energy to a cops-firefighter procedural. Read the review here... | | This might get me watching "Murder" again... | | | ABC is doing a pair of "Scandal" and "How to Get Away with Murder" crossover episodes, Sandra Gonzalez reports. No air date yet... | | | Megan Thomas emails: In a new interview with the NYT, Tom Hanks and Meryl Streep weigh in on what it's going to take to rebuild faith in the institution of journalism, the #MeToo movement, and being icons (a term they're not fond of) playing icons in "The Post..." | | | Email brian.stelter@turner.com... I appreciate every message. Happy New Year! | | | Get Reliable Sources, a comprehensive summary of the most important media news, delivered to your inbox every afternoon. | | | | | |
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