Thursday 28th of March 2024

morning splurt...

morning joe

Two television hosts attacked by U.S. President Donald Trump questioned the Republican leader's mental health on Friday and accused him of trying to exert pressure on them over unfavorable coverage, calling it blackmail. 

 

Trump drew a barrage of criticism on Thursday, including from his fellow Republicans, after he called Mika Brzezinski, a co-host of the MSNBC "Morning Joe" program, "low I.Q. Crazy Mika" and said she was "bleeding badly from a face-lift" when she visited his Mar-A-Lago estate around New Year's Eve.

 

He referred to her co-host Joe Scarborough, a former Republican U.S. congressman, as "Psycho Joe."

 

skip - Trump1

I heard poorly rated @Morning_Joe speaks badly of me (don't watch anymore). Then how come low I.Q. Crazy Mika, along with Psycho Joe, came..

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 29, 2017

skip - Trump2

...to Mar-a-Lago 3 nights in a row around New Year's Eve, and insisted on joining me. She was bleeding badly from a face-lift. I said no!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 29, 2017

The two television anchors, who were on friendly terms with Trump early in the 2016 presidential campaign but have been critical of him since he took office, responded with a column in The Washington Post on Friday.

 

"This year, top White House staff members warned that the National Enquirer was planning to publish a negative article about us unless we begged the president to have the story spiked. We ignored their desperate pleas," they wrote.

read more:

http://www.haaretz.com/us-news/1.798752

 

recidivist...

United States President Donald Trump has again lashed out at two television hosts, labelling them "crazy" and "dumb" despite days of bipartisan criticism over his initial attack on the pair.

Key points:
  • Donald Trump attacked TV hosts Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough on Twitter last week
  • President says other MSNBC host lost show for lack of "Trump hate"
  • The hosts responded by questioning Mr Trump's mental health

Mr Trump attracted widespread condemnation from across the partisan divide over tweets on Thursday in which he called co-host of the MSNBC Morning Joe program Mika Brzezinski "low I.Q. Crazy Mika", and said she was "bleeding badly from a face lift" when she visited his Mar-A-Lago estate around New Year's Eve.

He referred to her co-host and fiance Joe Scarborough, a former Republican US congressman, as "Psycho Joe".

Dragging the scandal into a third day, Mr Trump tweeted on Saturday: "Crazy Joe Scarborough and dumb as a rock Mika are not bad people, but their low rated show is dominated by their NBC bosses. Too bad!"

Mr Trump continued his Twitter tirade into the evening with a series of tweets defending his use of social media and attacking the media.

"The FAKE & FRAUDULENT NEWS MEDIA is working hard to convince Republicans and others I should not use social media — but remember, I won the 2016 election," he said.

The President also said his use of Twitter is "MODERN DAY PRESIDENTIAL", not Presidential, and introduced a new hashtag: #FraudNewsCNN.

read more:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-07-02/trump-lashes-out-again-at-televisi...

 

Trump is a bit like magician: look here... While the hard stuff goes on in the back-pocket...

beneath the office of the president...

 

Of course, the puritanical schoolmarms of the political press went absolutely bonkers over Mr. Trump’s broadside of their fellow travelers. They scolded him that his Twitter missives were beneath the office of the president.

Really, you mean like molesting an intern in the Oval Office? “Presidential” like that?

MSNBC — the afterthought cable channel that airs “Morning Joe” — responded on Twitter: “It’s a sad day for America when the president spends his time bullying, lying and spewing petty personal attacks instead of doing his job.”

But the funny thing about it is that nobody actually disproved anything that Mr. Trump alleged. Just like Russia and obstruction of justice and everything else, there is not one single shred of evidence that Mr. Trump is not 100 percent in the right.

“The Amazon Post” — the paper-of-record for Never Trumpers — rushed to the defense of Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough with a laughably illogical and twisted explanation.

“The notion that Brzezinski and Scarborough were desperate to hang out with Trump on New Year's Eve but were rebuffed seems dubious, at best,” reporter Callum Borchers wrote on the paper’s website.

“For one thing, the New York Times spotted the co-hosts at Trump’s New Year's Eve party at Mar-a-Lago.”

So, wait a minute? The proof that Mr. Trump is lying about Ms. Brzezinski and Mr. Scarboroughslumming around Mar-a-Lago around New Year's Eve is that — well — Ms. Brzezinski and Mr. Scarborough were slumming around Mar-a-Lago around New Year's Eve?

read more:

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/jun/29/donald-trumps-mad-genius...

Note: the Washington Times is the same media wanting to kill Assange... (not the first time...)

 

See toon at top...

 

meanwhile in TV's underbelly...

 

Project Veritas, working a sting operation against mainstream news media giant CNN, has released a new video in which a producer for the network refers to people who voted for US President Donald Trump as being “crazy” and “stupid as sh*t.”

In the most recent of three undercover videos released by Project Veritas — the brainchild of conservative autuer James O'Keefe — a CNN producer is documented stating flatly that voters who chose "f-ing crazy" and "clown" Trump are "stupid as sh-.

 

The CNN producer, Jimmy Carr, stated that "90 percent of [news media] are on board with just the fact that [Trump is] crazy."

"On the inside, we all recognize that [Trump] is a clown, that he is hilariously unqualified for this, he's really bad at this and that he does not have America's best interests. We recognize he's just f-ing crazy," Carr said in the footage, cited by the Washington Times.

The revealing video is the third in a series of undercover sting operations by O'Keefe's Project Veritas.

Included in the video are comments by O'Keefe, who states, "It now seems pretty clear that CNN's bias and dishonesty is a plague in the once-respected news organization."

read more:

https://sputniknews.com/politics/201707011055151657-cnn-producer-names-t...

 

The "deplorables" according to Hillary voted for a clown... Circus USA might start to be more funny than tragic...

 

 

mother jones pisses in her pants...

 

 

...

If the White House aides did indeed tell Scarborough and Brzezinski that the National Enquirer would smear them unless they laid off Trump on their show, “that [would] be a crime,” Harvard Law Professor Laurence Tribe tweeted Friday. In a follow-up tweet, Tribe, a prominent Trump critic, added, “If Trump told staffers to extort, he too has committed that serious crime.”

Of course, lawyers will differ. Responding to Tribe on Twitter, prominent attorney Alan Dershowitz said, “Threatening to smear someone who smears him is not extortion. If it were prisons w/d be more overcrowded. Jefferson w/d have been imprisoned.”

The feud continued online Friday. Trump claimed in a tweet that Scarborough “called me to stop a National Enquirer article.” Trump said he refused. (The president did appear to confirm that there had been communication between the White House and Scarborough about this matter.) Scarborough responded that the president’s claim was “another lie.”

Addressing Trump, Scarborough maintained, “I have texts from your top aides and phone records. Also, those records show I haven’t spoken with you in many months.”

Also on Friday, the Enquirer published what appears to be the negative article to which Scarborough and Brzezinski had referred: a thinly sourced piece claiming that the couple, who are now engaged, had become romantically involved before each had divorced his or her spouse. 

Scott Altman, a University of Southern California Law School professor and expert on blackmail law, says that before the Enquirer article appeared, he was “very skeptical” that the threats the hosts described constituted blackmail under federal law. “Threats to communicate information count as blackmail only if they are threats to reveal secret facts that would subject someone to ridicule if revealed, or to reveal photos of videos of a person engaged in sexual acts or without clothing,” he explains. A general threat to make negative comments about someone or to cause the publication of a derogatory article, he adds, “likely does not meet this requirement.”

But Altman says the appearance of the gossipy Enquirer story bolsters the case that Trump aides, in Scarborough’s telling, did threaten to reveal facts that invite ridicule—and that action could be prosecutable. “If in context the threat could plausibly be read to refer to that information [in the published article], I think a case for blackmail would be much stronger,” he says.

Williams notes that if Scarborough and Brzezinski had gone to the feds before disclosing this episode, the FBI could have been in a position to mount a sting operation. “You could see if the president would take a call from Mika and Joe, and you could then corroborate what they are claiming,” he says. And, he adds, White House calls to Scarborough should be traceable by investigators to determine if such conversations occurred. “Then you put them before a grand jury,” he says, “and watch how they sing.”

read more:

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2017/06/trump-and-his-aides-might-ha...

 

I would expect better investigative journalism from Mother Jones. So far. hell-bent on punishing trump for his legitimate Presidential election, the Mother of left-wing barking commentaries has forgotten the purpose of her existence and stabs the great void of irrelevance. Rather than try to protect Mika who is a big girl and can deal with the situation herself, why not expose the deeds of her ultra right-wing devious dad that were at the source of the Iran-Iraq conflict of the 1980s and that of drawing the Russians into war in Afghanistan. These deeds, I suppose, pale into insignificance compared to gossip about two conflicted blabber-mouths on TV...

 

the sewer viewed from the hill...

 

 

Jeffrey McCall at The Hill

Constitutional framer James Madison helped create the free press in America. He once sang its praises, writing, “To the press alone, checkered as it is with abuses, the world is indebted for all the triumphs which have been gained by reason and humanity over error and oppression.” The press in that era certainly meant something different from what is seen in America’s news industry today, but it’s a safe bet Madison would be appalled by contemporary press performance.

 

The free press was established to serve as surrogate for the citizenry and to watchdog the government on behalf of the American people. Today, the nation has little confidence in the Fourth Estate to effectively serve its constitutional role. National polls indicate less than a third of respondents trust the media. The decline has been steep and steady for almost two decades

Approximately 80 percent of Americans believe coverage of the 2016 election was biased. That figure necessarily includes many Clinton supporters. A recent Quinnipiac University poll shows broad disapproval of news media performance, with 33 percent reporting dissatisfaction and another 26 percent saying they are angry about how the media does its job.

 

 

Social observer and media analyst Camille Paglia reflected the nation’s sentiments recently in a radio interview in which she bluntly said, “There is no journalism left.” She went on to say “the news media have turned themselves over to the most childish fraternity, kind of buffoonish behavior,” adding “it is going to take decades to recover from this atrocity.

Indeed, the “childish fraternity” is unable to provide the triumphs of reason while obsessing over a simplistic and concocted news agenda, swarming to every feeding frenzy and sensationalizing polarization in the pursuit of ratings and clicks. Twentieth century journalist and cultural critic Walter Lippmann once wrote, “Where all think alike, no one thinks very much.” So it is with the coastal journalistic hubs in which too many reporters see the world through the same cultural and ideological lenses.

The American free press, created to hold the powerful accountable, doesn’t even hold itself accountable. Rhetorician/philosopher Richard Weaver saw the onset of press negligence in his 1948 book, “Ideas Have Consequences.” He said the press distorted and controlled reality as a means to hold public attention, but with “no moral inspiration.” Sensationalism, he warned, was being substituted by the media for reflection. Not at all the press performance Madison praised.

The problem is more than whether the press can report fairly and with perspective. Media today ignore the responsibility to guide a nation’s sociopolitical discourse. This leadership void has created a communication chaos in which fake news and social media outbursts have become replacements for news of substance. Worse yet, the vacuous nature of the traditional media has so turned off the citizenry that many people become political bystanders, opting to remain uninformed and disengaged from civic life. 

Instead of focusing on its own issues regarding credibility and societal responsibility, the press has chosen in recent months to brood about President Trump’s anti-media barrages. Press leaders must understand that Trump’s attacks aren’t the cause of public distrust of media. Trump has only exploited an anti-press sentiment already ingrained into the public psyche. The public won’t sympathize with the press when Trump attacks because he is articulating much of what the public feels.

Fixing what ails the news industry might, as Paglia asserts, take decades. The fix won’t happen as long as formerly respected news outlets such as NBC throw millions of dollars at Megyn Kelly to anoint her with celebrity status, only to have her be overmatched in her interview with Russian strongman Putin. It won’t happen with ABC News having football player turned “journalist” Michael Strahan wasting resources and time with an exclusive interview of a dolt like Dennis Rodman. It won’t happen as long as journalism schools are designed to replicate the current media industry standards that led to the collapse of public confidence in its supposed surrogates.

The fix must come, not from the newsrooms of big media, but from the corporate leadership at the very top of the massive media corporations. Sadly, those corporate giants know more about merger financing than journalistic duty or societal responsibility. It is time they read about the vision Madison had for a free press. It is time they understand and internalize the harm their lack of vision is doing to an American people whose information needs go unmet.

Jeffrey McCall (@Prof_McCall) is a professor of communication at DePauw University.

Read more:

http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/media/339631-the-journalism-indust...


Gus:

The Hill is a middle of the road small circulation newspaper. We all know what McCall writes about and we have reported on this regularly since 2005 (soon after this site came online). 

I invite McCall to read all the articles published since here about Mr Murdoch and Mr Soros (and others) and read from top, especially visit: http://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/31677

In terms of Putin, much of the media, including McCall seems to think of him as the devil — a smart devil. He definitively is a smart guy, but he is not the devil. Putin has a job to do which is to protect Russia. The US hegemony and its lackeys at NATO make his job complicated, but he manages to steer Russia in a best way possible with limited resources. The Success of the Soccer Confederation Cup in Sochi so far, and that of the Winter Olympics in that city has shown that the Western media is far from the task of being honest, in its underwritten protection of the US exceptionalism:

Please visit: https://www.rt.com/op-edge/394914-football-sport-russia-cup/

 

Oh... and by the way, the decline of news being news is done deliberately by MMMM (MSM) — mediocre mass media de mierda) in favour of voyeuristic entertainment — and with ugly partisanship in website dedicated to a singular desire such as bringing Donald Trump down with no proof of his collusion with Putin. But the press egg on the political "establishment" to harp on this subject. Shall the press tell the establishment that it had cried wolf once too often, The establishment would go back in its box. Would the press show Russia for being a country like others, with foible and hopes, there would be a relaxation of the sphincters. Egging on and "approving' of people like John McCain and his obsession with the devil Russia, does the press no good. With a bit more reflection and proper journalism, then the world could hope for peace. But peace does not sell newspapers. 

See also: if you don't know why your country is at war, forget "democracy" and "freedom". think petrodollar...

the guy is having fun...

Meanwhile while some "comics" parade with doing harm to Donald, like carrying his severed head in one hand, others are annoyed the Prez "could incite violence" against journos (who are doing a bad job anyway— read above comments) with a bad comedy of a low humour clip. And the more you egg him on, the more he's going to react. Please the guy is a nut case, but please media, give us a break, enjoy the moment:

 

 

President Trump posted a short video to his Twitter account on Sunday in which he is portrayed wrestling and punching a figure whose head has been replaced by the logo for CNN.

The video, about 28 seconds long, appears to be an edited clip from a years-old appearance by Mr. Trump in WrestleMania, an annual professional wrestling event. The clip ends with an onscreen restyling of the CNN logo as “FNN: Fraud News Network.”

#FraudNewsCNN #FNN pic.twitter.com/WYUnHjjUjg

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 2, 2017

Cartoonish in quality, the video is an unorthodox way for a sitting president to express himself. But Mr. Trump has ratcheted up his attacks on the news media in recent days — assailing CNN and crudely insulting the hosts of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” — while defending his use of social media as “modern day presidential.”

In a speech on Saturday at a faith rally in Washington, Mr. Trump was met with cheers when he referred to CNN as “garbage journalism” and said: “The fake media tried to stop us from going to the White House. But I’m president, and they’re not.

The wrestling video, which was also posted to the official @POTUS Twitter account, stirred criticism, disbelief and dumbfoundedness. Some journalists denounced its portrayal of violence as dangerous, saying it could incite attacks or threats against news media employees.

read more:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/02/business/media/trump-wrestling-video-cnn-twitter.html

 

as if...

please visit: 

 

a bit more flogging of candidates would be welcome to maintain the true spirit of democracy...

 

it's a joke of sorts...


Clearly, it’s a joke of sorts, but it’s led to accusations that the President is inciting violence against reporters:

We had Sarah Huckabee Sanders this week specifically coming out in the White House this week for a rare on camera press briefing week saying that the president has never condoned or encouraged our promoted violence. That is exactly what he has just done.

— NBC, Meet The Press, 2 July, 2017

And those who run CNN agreed, issuing a statement to say: 

It is a sad day when the President of the United States encourages violence against reporters.

— Statement, CNN, 2 July, 2017

Sad and strange. How on earth does the media deal with a president like that? No doubt they’ll hit back even harder.

read more:

http://www.abc.net.au/mediawatch/transcripts/s4695561.htm

---------------


Hitting "harder" isn't going to solve the mad situation the media is digging itself in... The media has to show restraint, humour and PROPER investigations. The Russian thing by the US media is a disgrace... It only incites trump to "hit harder"...

CNN versus the rest of the world...

CNN informally declared war on the Internet and the whole World Wide Web turned against it, the head moderator of /r/The_Donald subreddit, where the clip that triggered the #CNNBlackmail scandal was originally posted, told RT in an exclusive interview.

 

No one should be surprised by the fact that “CNN is suppressing a private citizen’s right of free speech,” he said. The man is a moderator of “The_Donald” Subreddit, where the viral clip, showing US President Donald Trump wrestling a man with the CNN logo for a head, was originally posted and then deleted by its creator. The scandal started after the news network tracked down the alleged meme maker and threatened to disclose his identity if they post such “offensive” content again.

READ MORE: #CNNBlackmail: Ted Cruz claims CNN may have broken law as meme war intensifies

The moderator believes that such actions against freedom of speech cannot end up without consequences.

CNN has all of the Internet against them right now, and when organizations attack freedom of speech, it never ends up well for them,” he told RT.

“This is an attack on the Internet and CNN has informally declared war upon it. In return we need to hit CNN where it hurts, and tell the advertise companies… that you do not approve of them by running ads at the network or endorsing CNN by running adds.”

While CNN says it respects the privacy of the man behind the viral meme, the network said that it “reserves the right to publish his identity should any of that change,” which is understood as “complete threat,” ‘PrinceCamelton’ said in the interview. This message was received by the whole community, the moderator said, referring to the threat.

CNN has no right to make “blanket threats… telling you to stop doing what you want to do on the Internet” the moderator stated, adding that people should “stick to their guns and do what they think is right.”

The moderator also said that he would be frightened if he were the Reddit user who posted the clip.

READ MORE: #CNNBlackmail: Network blasted for ‘threatening’ Trump meme creator

CNN’s move has triggered outrage among the Internet users, resulting in many more mocking memes and videos.

“There are hundreds of other gifs just like that, there are subreddits that are dedicated just to making CNN gifs now,” /r/The_Donald moderator said.

read more:

https://www.rt.com/usa/395447-cnn-blackmail-internet-war/

morning joe spills the beans...

 

MSNBC talk show star Joe Scarborough claimed on Thursday that he was told by sources close to US President Donald Trump during his campaign that the candidate was suffering from the “early stages of dementia.”

Scarborough, a former representative from Florida who has hosted the popular MSNBC program "Morning Joe" since 2007, said that "people close" to the president told him Trump is "mentally unfit" and "completely detached from reality."

Along with co-host Mika Brzezinski, Scarborough called on Trump's cabinet, including Vice President Mike Pence, to remove the "unfit" Trump from the White House. "Everybody around Donald Trump knows he's not stable. Everybody," he said.

Read more:

https://sputniknews.com/us/201711301059584672-scarborough-msnbc-trump-dementia-claim/

read from top...

 

kcuf trump...

MSNBC host Joe Scarborough expressed his disappointment with Robert De Niro on Monday after the actor said, “F*ck Trump,” during the Tony Awards Sunday night.

The program decided not to play De Niro’s clip from the awards, instead opting to show a tweet from Steve Schmidt, another MSNBC political analyst, criticizing the actor’s actions.

 

Read more:

http://dailycaller.com/2018/06/11/morning-joe-de-niro-trump/?

 

Read from top