WAPO 3

---

3 22

prolly neglected, see links

MERRI OK

see legacy press

BEZOS KILLED HARRIS ENDORSEMENT // LAT PLUTO = JRNL FAIL

SEE PRESS SUPPRESS ESP NYT ~ TRUMP 11 24 DEFAM

no wonder gop troll hate mAINSTREAM PRESS

targeted by mrc newsbusters

bak fail

---

-=-=

===

AN 8 26

WaPo catches Trump red-handed: White House faked ballroom progress

-=-=

he gave her specific instructions?!

RWW

06/22/2026

Kyle Mantyla

Jon Swaine @ The Washington Post: Tulsi Gabbard, her guru and the mysterious messages that helped shape her political career

I obtained hundreds of confidential memos detailing politics and policy guidance for Gabbard from her years in Congress, then embarked on a quest to identify who was behind them.

---

AN 5 26

Prominent right-wing or right-leaning media operations are hemorrhaging money and viewers, but according to a breakdown of the situation from The New Republic, the billionaires keeping the lights on at these companies still do not care.

:{:{In a piece published Friday morning, veteran media reporter Parker Molloy gave an overview of the woes currently besetting these more high-profile media operations. CBS News, recently taken over by conservative columnist Bari Weiss and reshaped into a much more MAGA-friendly mold, is bleeding viewers at a rapid rate and taking hits over the sloppiness of its operations. }:

Ben Shapiro's The Daily Wire, meanwhile, has seen its YouTube traffic "collapse" by 70 percent since the end of 2024, and recently cut about 13 percent of its staff. This came after the tepid launch of its expensive high-fantasy TV series, The Pendragon Cycle, as part of its abortive attempt at being a mainstream production studio.}:

Molloy's piece was mainly inspired, however, by the Washington Post, which has garnered attention — if not views — for its new podcast. The video series, "Make It Make Sense," is fronted by the paper's opinion section, which has been foregrounded after owner and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos slashed the outlet's newsroom to the bone. The series is 20 episodes and 186 YouTube videos deep, and boasted only a meager 515 subscribers at the time Molloy published the piece. (It is currently up to just 527, even after its flagging viewership went viral on BlueSky.)

The series — which includes videos claiming to debunk the claim that the rich do not pay enough taxes and that colleges are giving away top grades too easily — has numerous posts on YouTube that have failed to crack 100 views and does not seem to be doing much better on dedicated podcast platforms, boasting just four scathing reviews on Apple Podcasts.

"The new opinion section’s video push is failing publicly, and so are the other billionaire-funded prestige-media operations that share its model," Molloy explained. "The content is dull. The numbers are microscopic. And the men paying for it have been telling us all along that they don’t care. For all the talk of 'the marketplace of ideas,' 'Make It Make Sense' looks like yet another right-wing influence operation that exists solely because a billionaire is willing to subsidize it."

The Post has seen a notable shift under Bezos that has seen its once solid subscription base fizzle. The outlet lost 250,000 after it broke with years of tradition and declined to endorse a presidential candidate in 2024, with a report indicating that an endorsement of Kamala Harris had already been prepared. A month after Trump returned to office, Bezos announced that the opinion section would take on a new focus on "personal liberties and free markets," which prompted 75,000 more subscribers to bail.

When pressed about potential concerns that this shift would alienate paying readers, Bezos is reported to have told opinion editor David Shipley: "I don't care."

"The Post is down 24 percent. The Daily Wire is down 50 percent. CBS Evening News just posted its worst-ever April in the 25–54 demographic," Molloy observed. "The men funding all of it could read the numbers if they wanted to."

She concluded: "What’s on the screen, meanwhile, is what they think doesn’t need to work. Four mid-tier opinion writers on a couch under wood paneling and a framed cowboy. Recent topics: hantavirus, pension padding, the Twitch streamer Hasan Piker. The trailer view count and the channel subscriber count that you have to do the math to believe. Nobody is watching. Bezos doesn’t care."

---

Legacy outlets that bent the knee to Trump haven’t just lost credibility — they’re bleeding readers and viewers

Trumpism is bad for business: CBS News ratings are in a tailspin six months into Bari Weiss’ tenure

Written by Matt Gertz

:{Published 03/25/26

It turns out that there isn’t a ratings bump for MAGA capitulation.

David Ellison, the son of President Donald Trump’s megabillionaire ally Larry Ellison, took control of CBS last year following a corrupt deal that saw its parent company settle a lawsuit with the president and agree to implement a new conservative ombudsman for CBS News. As part of that takeover, he also installed conservative journalist Bari Weiss at the helm, promising that her “entrepreneurial drive and editorial vision” would “invigorate” the network. But six months into Weiss’ rightward makeover of CBS, the fruits of her labors include cheers from Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth for making the network more palatable to their aims, complaints from the CBS newsroom that she is dismantling its independence — and, it now appears, a viewer exodus.

Status’ Oliver Darcy got ahold of some CBS News ratings data from the first quarter of 2026, and it is brutal. CBS Evening News has lost 7% of viewers year-over-year, placing it “on track for its lowest-rated first quarter of the 21st century in both total viewers and the advertiser-coveted 25-54 demographic,” while CBS Mornings plummeted 13% and “is pacing toward its lowest-rated quarter on record in both total audience and the key demo.” Meanwhile, the audiences of competitor shows at ABC News and NBC News grew over the same period.

The ratings collapse is a devastating indictment of the strategy Ellison and Weiss are executing at CBS — and a blaring warning for CNN if Ellison is able to complete his takeover of that network and let Weiss run the same playbook there.

Meanwhile, new data from the Alliance for Audited Media show that while average daily print circulation among major audited newspapers saw year-over-year declines across the board in the six months running through the end of September 2025, the biggest drops came at The Washington Post, which fell 21.2%, followed by the Los Angeles Times, down 19.8%. Their billionaire owners — Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and biotech mogul Patrick Soon-Shiong, respectively — had responded to Trump’s return to the White House by trying to shift their papers to the right.

None of this should come as a surprise.

Ellison and Weiss have suggested that the core problem for American media is that the public does not trust news outlets, and that the reason for this is that the public perceives those outlets as too far left and too critical of the right. They propose to win over a larger audience by deliberately course-correcting in the opposite direction.

“We are not producing a product that enough people want,” Weiss said at a CBS News staff town hall in January. Weiss attributed this to two factors. “First: Not enough people trust us. Not you. Us. As in: the mainstream media,” she said. “Second: We are not doing enough to meet audiences where they are. So they are leaving us.”

Weiss is correct that trust in traditional media has fallen dramatically in recent decades, particularly among conservatives — indeed, this is a banal truth that everyone remotely connected to the media knows. But her strategy of conceding that potential viewers are correct to distrust journalists and seeking to “meet audiences where they are” by signaling that coverage will now be deliberately shifted to the right has had the obvious result of driving away the existing audience without adding a new one.

CBS News’ viewers either liked what they were already watching or they liked what watching Edward R. Murrow’s old network said about them. When the network’s new ownership and management proposed taking its programming in a dramatically different direction in search of a different audience — as the wildly unpopular president cheered — the existing viewers could see that, and some decided that CBS is no longer worth their patronage.

Weiss’ theory of the case is that these losses could be made up by new viewers with more right-leaning views. But the decline in public trust for traditional media among Republicans stems at least in part from a decades-long strategy pursued deliberately by the GOP and conservative movement. That effort revolves around simultaneously denouncing news outlets as liberal propaganda while encouraging conservatives to instead patronize new, deliberately right-wing news sources. And it’s been taken to another level under Trump, who relentlessly attacks the press while using state power to reduce its influence and lift up the MAGA media operation.

That dynamic makes it wildly implausible that the shift Weiss enacted would win over a sizable new segment of viewers. Her version of CBS may garner praise from Trump, but people who might be swayed by his comments already have — and are likely already patronizing — a plethora of pro-Trump outlets. You could imagine a scenario where some slightly more right-wing viewers of the ABC and NBC news shows switched to watching the new CBS. But instead, the data Darcy cited suggests, CBS appears to be shedding viewers who are instead watching its competitors — or exiting broadcast television altogether as their news source.

As for Bezos’ Post and Soon-Shiong’s Times, when the owners similarly bet on trying to make their outlets more acceptable to Trump, their existing audiences looked for the exits and were not replaced. The efforts may win over the likes of Tucker Carlson or even the president himself, but MAGA isn’t rushing to buy subscriptions.

For Ellison, Bezos, and Soon-Shiong, the declines in their news outlets may be a small price to pay to win over Trump. Each owner has massive business holdings outside of the press and can afford the losses from tearing down their news outlets if it wins the Trump administration’s support for their desired mergers, contracts, or patents.

The journalists facing layoffs from their outlets — and the public who lose access to their reporting — are the ones who will actually suffer from this doomed strategy.

### Why Conservatives Love Trump's Attacks On Journalists

02/27/17

### Paramount is mangling CBS — and CNN may be next

02/17/26

### The year the media oligarchs bowed to Trump

12/03/25

---

same day 3 6 26 ~ billionaire tax

Washington Post readers are pushing back against the paper and an op-ed that laments what its author sees as a shortage of evangelical Christians in the “halls of power.”

“Evangelicals are 23 percent of U.S. adults and one of the most loyal Republican voting blocs, with 81 percent backing Donald Trump in 2024,” writes author Aaron M. Renn. “Yet despite six of the nine Supreme Court justices being appointed by Republican presidents, there are no evangelicals on the Supreme Court.”

The Supreme Court “is just one of the many elite institutions in which evangelicals are absent or underrepresented,” he continues. Declaring that evangelicals “have excelled in politics,” he points to U.S. Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) and House Speaker Mike Johnson as examples.

Arguing that evangelicals “are also prominent in well-run and profitable businesses with relatively low cultural impact, such as food processing (Tyson Foods) and retail (Hobby Lobby),” he says that “they are all but absent from the leadership of prestigious universities, major foundations, Big Tech companies, leading financial firms and large media companies.”

“A stronger evangelical presence in elite institutions could strengthen them while addressing polarization and public mistrust,” he continues. “The lack of evangelicals in the halls of power contributes to anti-institutional public sentiment. It also deprives those institutions of an important pool of talent.”

Washington Post readers scorched the op-ed and the paper.

“The author remarked, more than once, of the lack of formal education among the vast numbers of evangelicals,” wrote one reader. “He then questions the lack of said evangelicals on corporate and college boards and in executive offices. Am I the only one seeing a connection here?”

“Is this not a request for a new DEI program to benefit evangelicals?” asked a reader.

---

MMA

February 4, 2026, edition of Timcast, posted to YouTube

TIM POOL (HOST): Let's read the news and then let's talk about the death of this industry. And, is it good? Is it bad? Well, you know, I think it's kind of a good thing.

CNN reports the Washington Post announcing mass layoffs Wednesday morning dealing another big blow to its storied media company in a newsroom that has reached a breaking point. Executive editor Matt Murray and human resources chief Wayne Connell sent an email to staffers Wednesday morning instructing employees to stay home today, but attend an 8:30 AM meeting via Zoom, during which the Washington Post leadership will announce significant actions across the company. Bye bye. Those actions include shutting down almost the entire sports section, closing the book section, and canceling the daily Post Reports podcast, sources at the newspaper said. }:}:

One of the most severe cuts comes in the form of a restructuring of the post's metro desk, which covers DC, Maryland, and Virginia. The post international coverage will also be markedly reduced, though some bureaus outside the US will remain open. Widespread layoffs of the Post have been expected for several weeks, especially after leadership told staff in an internal memo that they no longer plan to send any reporters to the Winter Olympics this month. The Post's publisher, Will Lewis, has spoken privately about finding a path to profitability for the Post by focusing the paper's investment on politics and a few other key areas while cutting back in areas like sports and foreign affairs.}:

And I'm gonna tell you right now, y'all is cooked. You're cooked. Because you wanna know what we're doing here at Timcast? We've been enjoying -- you know, even right now, over the election period last year, we were rivaling Steven Crowder for the top spot — biggest live show in, in news and politics. These days, we're in the off season, we're a very heavy political show. And, you know, Crowder does comedy. Bongino's back, his show's massive. And so we're sitting around, like, seventh or eighth place. I think we're usually around fifth place. So, you know, certainly others have have gotten big.

For some reason, they've been promoting Candace Owens like crazy despite her wackaloon claims that everyone has finally started to figure out — or wackaloon. Like, Charlie wasn't a time traveler. He was a guy. Rest in peace.

But what we're looking at is we don't -- we can't just be heavy politics darkness all day. So the conversations we've been having is, you know, there are episodes we have -- the show is basically like a news culture hangout, but we have to have fun with it. And so we want to bring on more guests that are in the politics and comedy space so that we can lighten things up and focus on general cultural issues with a heavy focus on politics. My point is this. The Washington Post pivoting heavy to politics and getting rid of sports and other things that people actually care about on a day-to-day basis is a death sentence. And I can tell you this right now, the ebb and flows of the political cycle are not conducive to a newspaper. It's not gonna play well.

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AN 1 26

The Washington Post* reported, and *The New York Timesconfirmed Wednesday,that a Post reporter was raided by the FBI in search of classified materials.

Semafor's Max Tani posted on X that "a Washington Post spokesperson confirmed to me that the paper is reviewing and monitoring the situation."

Post reporter Hannah Natanson was at her Virginia home when federal agents arrived and searched her home and devices. It's part of an investigation into "Aurelio Perez-Lugones, a system administrator in Maryland who has a top secret security clearance and has been accused of accessing and taking home classified intelligence reports that were found in his lunchbox and his basement," the report said, citing an FBI affidavit.

Natanson has covered some of the most "high-profile and sensitive coverage" from President Donald Trump's first year in office, the report explained.

The FBI reportedly took a phone and a Garmin watch.

The raid was "signed off on at highest levels of the Justice Department," said Punchbowl News'John Bresnahan on X.

*Read the full report here.

---

an 1 25

The Washington Post Editorial Board is standing up for President Donald Trump, arguing that the Jan. 6, 2021 riot at the U.S. Capitol falls under his First Amendment rights. And the board, in its argument, adopted many of Trump's own talking points.

Writing on Friday, the Post walks through questions from far-right Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), who probed Smith for specifics of Trump's case.

Smith told Jordan that Trump's First Amendment doesn't protect him when the purpose of the statements is something illegal: “Absolutely not. If they are made to target a lawful government function and they are made with knowing falsity, no, they are not. That was my point about fraud not being protected by the First Amendment.”

What the Post didn't include was Smith's full comments.

“There is no historical analog for what President Trump did in this case. As we said in the indictment, he was free to say that he thought he won the election,” Smith said. "He was even free to say falsely that he won the election. But what he was not free to do was violate federal law and use knowing — knowingly false statements about election fraud to target a lawful government function.”

The Post rejected the Harvard Law School graduate's assessment.

The Board claims, "Political speech — including speech about elections, no matter how odious — is strongly protected by the First Amendment. It’s not unusual for politicians to take factual liberties. The main check on such misdirection is public scrutiny, not criminal prosecution."

Smith's comments focused on using those words to "target a lawful government function" as the key piece.

The board argues that the exception in his case with Trump applies only to that case. The Post, however, thinks that if one exception is made, it will be "exploited by prosecutors."

The editors then pivoted to complain about Smith trying to impose a gag order on Trump. It claimed that Smith was pressing to broadly limit Trump's First Amendment rights during a 2024 presidential campaign. It's a claim that was similar to the argument that Trump's own lawyers made in court.

The facts are that the gag order was narrow. October 17, 2023, the court issued a gag order saying Trump couldn't make “any public statements, or directing others to make any public statements, that target (1) the Special Counsel prosecuting this case or his staff; (2) defense counsel or their staff; (3) any of this court’s staff or other supporting personnel; or (4) any reasonably foreseeable witness or the substance of their testimony.”

The Editorial Board say Trump won his cases to eliminate the gag order, but neglected to mention the specifics of what the court said when it did rule.

The ACLU was part of the suit opposing the law suit, saying the gag order was too broad, and the court "agree[d] with the district court that some aspects of Mr. Trump’s public statements pose a significant and imminent threat to the fair and orderly adjudication of the ongoing criminal proceeding, warranting a speech-constraining protective order" but held that the district court's "sweeps in more protected speech than is necessary" and therefore must be narrowed to comport with the First Amendment.

The appeals court accordingly vacated the order except insofar as it "prohibits all parties and their counsel from making or directing others to make public statements about known or reasonably foreseeable witnesses concerning their potential participation in the investigation or in this criminal proceeding" and "to the extent it prohibits all parties and their counsel from making or directing others to make public statements about — (1) counsel in the case other than the Special Counsel, (2) members of the court’s staff and counsel’s staffs, or (3) the family members of any counsel or staff member — if those statements are made with the intent to materially interfere with, or to cause others to materially interfere with, counsel’s or staff’s work in this criminal case, or with the knowledge that such interference is highly likely to result."

At the time, the concern was Trump's constant social media posts attacking key people involved in the case from lawyers to even staff. Smth argued it was creating a security risk for DOJ lawyers on the case.

Trump could talk about himself, his innocence, and he could tell his story. He could not target specific people, including witnesses. The Editorial Board ignores these details, only saying in passing, "some restrictions were appropriate." The Board concluded that Trump had a right to attack Smith personally

The Post closes by saying that Smith lost the cases, which isn't accurate either. After Trump was elected in Nov. 2024, Smith withdrew the case, knowing that a valid prosecution would never happen while Trump was in office.

Smith, who previously worked for the U.S. Department of Justice's public integrity section, made it clear in his testimony that they had proof beyond a reasonable doubt that would have convicted Trump.

*Read the full column here.

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an 12 25

an in-depth report published by the Washington Post on Tuesday offers new details about the damage being done to the Social Security Administration during President Donald Trump’s second term.

The Post, citing both internal documents and interviews with insiders, reported that the Social Security Administration (SSA) is “in turmoil” one year into Trump’s second term, resulting in a customer service system that has “deteriorated.”

The chaos at the SSA started in February when the Trump administration announced plans to lay off 7,000 SSA employees, or roughly 12% of the total workforce.

This set off a cascade of events that the Post writes has left the agency with “record backlogs that have delayed basic services to millions of customers,” as the remaining SSA workforce has “struggled to respond to up to 6 million pending cases in its processing centers and 12 million transactions in its field offices.”

The most immediate consequence of the staffing cuts was that call wait times for Social Security beneficiaries surged to an average of roughly two-and-a-half hours, which forced the agency to pull workers employed in other divisions in the department off their jobs.

However, the Post‘s sources said these employees “were thrown in with minimal training... and found themselves unable to answer much beyond basic questions.”

One longtime SSA employee told the Post that management at the agency “offered minimal training and basically threw [transferred employees] in to sink or swim.”

Although the administration has succeeded in getting call hold times down from their peaks, shuffling so many employees out of their original positions has damaged the SSA in other areas, the Post revealed.

Jordan Harwell, a Montana field office employee who is president of American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) Local 4012, said that workers in his office no longer have the same time they used to have to process pay stubs, disability claims, and appointment requests because they are constantly manning the phones.

An anonymous employee in an Indiana field office told the Post that she has similarly had to let other work pile up as the administration has emphasized answering phones over everything else.

Among other things, reported the Post, she now has less time to handle “calls from people asking about decisions in their cases, claims filed online, and anyone who tries to submit forms to Social Security—like proof of marriage—through snail mail.”

Also hampering the SSA’s work have been new regulations put in place by Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency that bar beneficiaries from making changes to their direct deposit information over the phone, instead requiring them to either appear in person at a field office or go online.

The Indiana SSA worker told the Post of a recent case involving a 75-year-old man who recently suffered a major stroke that left him unable to drive to the local field office to verify information needed to change his banking information. The man also said he did not have access to a computer to help him change the information online.

“I had to sit there on the phone and tell this guy, ‘You have to find someone to come in... or, do you have a relative with a computer who can help you or something like that?’” the employee said. “He was just like, ‘No, no, no.’”

Social Security was a regular target for Musk during his tenure working for the Trump administration, and he repeatedly made baseless claims that the entire program was riddled with fraud, even referring to it as “the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time.”

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AN 12 25

The America First Policy Institute (AFPI), a pro-Donald Trump think tank run by his former chief of staff, helped secure a $1 billion Department of Homeland Security contract tied to new planes for Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.

Noemhas already spent $200 million on a pair of luxury Gulfstream G700 private jets for her team during a government shutdown.

On Wednesday, the Washington Post reported that the fast-tracked contract is closely linked to AFPI’s top donor. That donor, William Walters, runs the company that received a separate $140 million Noem-approved contract to buy six Boeing 737 planes for use in deportations, as the Post reported last week.

Under the larger deal, AFPI is set to oversee “Project Homecoming,” which will deport people the administration deems unlawfully present to their home countries or to third countries.

"The program arose from an executive order on the first day of President Donald Trump’s second term directing DHS to develop policies to encourage immigrants to leave the country voluntarily, a process the administration calls 'self-deportation,'" the report explained.

"The larger contract involves a DHS program called Project Homecoming that offers cash bonuses, free flights and a 'concierge service' at airports for departing migrants," the report said. "The program arose from an executive order on the first day of President Donald Trump’s second term directing DHS to develop policies to encourage immigrants to leave the country voluntarily, a process the administration calls “self-deportation.”

DHS claimed that the nonpartisan federal officials ensure the legitimacy of contracting decisions. Indeed, they do, but not in this case. The Post obtained emails exposing that it was the political appointees who chose the Meadows outfit for the $1 billion contract.

The main contract went to an Arlington-based firm, Salus Worldwide Solutions, incorporated in 2023, which advertises expertise in coordinating international travel, disaster relief, and security facilities. It has never previously held a federal contract, but documents show Walters, its CEO, is a major donor to AFPI.

DHS promoted its self-deportation program with various reels, including a vintage messagetrying to make it sound like self-deportation could earn them money.

Read the full report here.

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===

GMAIL

The Washington Post Fired Me — But My Voice Will Not Be Silenced.

I spoke out against hatred and violence in America — and it cost me my job.

Karen Attiah

Sep 15

Democracy Dies in Darkness, but some of us will still carry on the light.

Last week, the Washington Post fired me.

The reason? Speaking out against political violence, racial double standards, and America’s apathy toward guns.

Eleven years ago, I joined the Washington Post’s Opinions department with a simple goal: to use journalism in service of people.

I believed in using the pen to remember the forgotten, question power, shine light in darkness, and defend democracy. Early in my career, late Washington Post editorial page editor Fred Hiatt told me that opinion journalism is not just about writing the world as it is, but as it should be. He told me we should use our platform to do good. That has been my north star every day.

As the founding Global Opinions editor, I created a space for courageous, diverse voices from around the world — especially those exiled for speaking the truth. I was inspired by their bravery. When my writer, Global Opinions columnist Jamal Khashoggi was brutally murdered by Saudi Arabia regime agents for his words, I fought loudly for justice for years, putting my life and safety on the line to pursue accountability and defend global press freedom. For this work, I was honored with global recognition, prestigious awards and proximity to the world’s most powerful people.

David Ignatius and I receiving the George Polk Award, in 2019 for commentary on Jamal Khashoggi’s murder.

In the aftermath of Jamal Khashoggi’s murder. Seated next to Jeff Bezos at the 2019 Gridiron Dinner.

As a columnist, I used my voice to defend freedom and democracy, challenge power and reflect on culture and politics with honesty and conviction.

Now, I am the one being silenced - for doing my job.

On Bluesky, in the aftermath of the horrific shootings in Utah and Colorado, I condemned America’s acceptance of political violence and criticized its ritualized responses — the hollow, cliched calls for “thoughts and prayers” and “this is not who we are” that normalize gun violence and absolve white perpetrators especially, while nothing is done to curb deaths....

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an 8 25

The latest casualty of Trump’s efforts to silence media criticism is Eduardo Porter, one of the most thoughtful and intelligent critics of this heinous regime.

On Tuesday, Porter wrote his last column for The Washington Post. In a widely-circulated email, he explained why he was leaving the Post:

“Jeff Bezos and his new head of Opinion are taking the paper down a path I cannot follow, directed toward the relentless promotion of free markets and personal liberties…. I have no idea to what extent this is driven by Mr. Bezos’ fear of what Donald Trump could do to his various business interests, most of which are more valuable to him than The Post.”

Well, I do have an idea. Bezos stopped the Post from endorsing Kamala Harris. He made a huge contribution to Trump’s inauguration. And he stood directly in front of Trump at Trump’s swearing in.

Why? Because Bezos owns a bunch of mega-corporations, including Amazon, that depend on Trump’s goodwill and could be in deep trouble if Trump decided to retaliate against Bezos.

IFrame Content

It’s much the same story with Stephen Colbert, longtime host of CBS’s “The Late Show” and the top-rated late-night talk show host in the United States.

On July 14, Colbert openly criticized CBS’s parent company, Paramount, for its $16 million settlement with Trump of his frivolous lawsuit over the routine editing of a “60 Minutes” interview with Kamala Harris that Trump claimed gave her an unfair advantage in the 2024 election.

Said Colbert in his opening monologue:

“As someone who has always been a proud employee of this network, I am offended. And I don’t know if anything will ever repair my trust in this company…. I believe this kind of complicated financial settlement with a sitting government official has a technical name in legal circles. It’s big fat bribe. Because this all comes as Paramount's owners are trying to get the Trump administration to approve the sale of our network to a new owner, Skydance.”

Three days later, on July 17, Paramount pulled the plug on Colbert’s show, eliciting from Trump a celebratory, “I absolutely love that Colbert was fired.”

(A few days later, Colbert came out swinging, telling Trump to “go f--- yourself,” and joking that it had always been his dream to have a sitting president celebrate the end of his career.)

Yesterday, one week after Colbert’s show was cancelled, Trump’s Federal Communications Commission approved Paramount’s sale to Skydance.

To cinch the deal, Skydance CEO David Ellison promised that he’d eliminate all U.S.-based DEI programs at Paramount and CBS and create a new ombudsman to field complaints of ideological bias in news coverage.

Trump says CBS also agreed to run $20 million worth of public service announcements consistent with his ideological beliefs.

Let’s be clear. Jeff Bezos has silenced any criticism of Trump on the editorial pages of The Washington Post because Bezos fears Trump’s wrath.

CBS and its parent corporation, Paramount, has silenced criticism of Trump on Colbert’s hugely popular “Late Show” because its top corporate brass fears Trump’s wrath.

The new owner of CBS has agreed to some federal interference in the content of what it produces because he fears Trump’s wrath.

The silencing is happening across American media because Trump cannot stand criticism, because he’s vindictive as hell, and because he’s willing and able to use every department and agency of the federal government to punish any media corporations that allow its writers or hosts to criticize him.

It’s the same with American universities, whose professors have often criticized Trump’s illegal and unconstitutional actions and whose research has often yielded conclusions that contradict Trump’s lies (such as that climate change is a “hoax”).

Columbia University, Dartmouth College, and a handful of others have gone out of their way to “cooperate” with the Trump regime in order to avoid Trump’s wrath.

What does “cooperation” entail? Silencing Trump’s potential critics.

Columbia has just agreed to allow the regime to review its admissions and hiring practices in order to receive the federal research grants that the regime had held back.

Friends, this is how democracy dies.

Shame on any media outlet or university that allows Trump to silence it.

Trump is a dangerous despot. America needs its Eduardo Porters, Stephen Colberts, and all others in the media and in academia who have helped the nation understand just how truly dangerous Trump is.

NOW READ:'It is a reckoning': DC insider blasts Baby Boomers — and blames them for Trump

---

AN 8 25

Federal employees at the Department of the Interior are reportedly raising alarms over a weekly video series titled “Inside Interior,” which they describe as "propaganda" — a slick, over‑the‑top portrayal of President Donald Trump and agency leadership, complete with staged scenes and breathless narration.

The Daily Beast reportedWednesday that Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, once tagged “Diva Doug” for requesting political appointees to bake chocolate chip cookies and summoning a U.S. Park Police helicopter for his own personal use, now finds himself at the center of growing backlash within his own department.

Staffers deride the Environment and Natural Resources Agency as “The Department of Propaganda,” a moniker born from their mounting frustration with weekly “Inside Interior” videos, widely criticized for their slick, "Dear Leader"-style presentation and unabashed praise of Trump and Burgum to a lesser extent.

The latest installment, according to the report, touts that “Interior made major moves to strengthen America’s energy future, protect taxpayer interests, and keep our nation’s capital city safe.”

IFrame Content

But the true inflection point came with a July 4 special that left many shaken. The clip opens with Trump dancing to the Village People’s YMCA, then cuts to him exiting Air Force One, greeted by cheering construction workers, before returning to more footage of Trump, much to the chagrin of those compelled to watch.

The report further noted that the narration heralds the day with a patriotic fervor likened to authoritarian regimes: “Happy Birthday America!” “Today we celebrate 249 years of American liberty, freedom and strength and we’re doing it under the fearless leadership of President Donald J. Trump, who reminds us every day what true patriotism looks like as he works tirelessly to make America great again.”

Critics among the staff have dubbed the presentation “North Korea‑worthy," according to the report.

Meanwhile, many already felt demoralized by deep cuts tied to tech billionaire Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency initiative and a policy shift prioritizing fossil fuel development over conservation.

A National Park Service employee told The Beast: “I have never seen a more blatant and deplorable display of propaganda on behalf of the Trump administration.”

Adding insult to injury, they note, “They even called for the USA to celebrate the 4th ‘the MAGA way!’”

Click here to read the Daily Beast's report in full (subscription required).

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The administration of President Donald Trump reacted badly to a Washington Post story reporting Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth quadrupled his security detail over that of past administrations to guard his multiple homes and properties.

The Post reported Wednesday that “Hegseth’s unusually large personal security requirements are straining the Army agency tasked with protecting him as it pulls agents from criminal investigations to safeguard family residences in Minnesota, Tennessee and D.C., according to numerous officials familiar with the operation.”

Described by the Post as a “sprawling, multimillion-dollar initiative” the security team has forced the Army’s Criminal Investigation Division to staff weeks-long assignments in each location and monitor residences belonging to Hegseths’ former spouses, say officials.

“I’ve never seen this many security teams for one guy,” said one official, speaking anonymously to reporters. “Nobody has.”

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Sources told the Post about 150 agents typically serve on VIP security details, but one source said Hegseth team is “400 and going up,” while another claimed it was “over 500.”

Trump administration officials pounced the Post for publishing the revelation.

“By publishing details about Secretary Hegseth’s security protocols, the Washington Post is actively putting him and his family in danger for clicks, posted Department of Defense Press Secretary Kingsley Wilson on X.

Several people working with the Department of Defense’s Press Secretary joined in and slammed the info, including Assistant Press Secretary Jacob Bliss, who called the Washington Post “scum” for publishing the embarrassing numbers. Bliss also claimed reporting the staff increase put “numerous lives and families at risk.”

“How do these reporters sleep at night,” asked Assistant Press Secretary Riley Podleski on X.

Acting Deputy Press Secretary Joel Valdez claimed the Post “intentionally published sensitive details of [Hegseth’s] security detail for him and his family — putting their safety at risk.” He even called for “severe punishment for what [reporters] are doing.”

“President Trump was SHOT and nearly KILLED just last year—yet the corporate media STILL plays reckless games with people’s lives,” posted the Department of Defense “Rapid Response” account on X.. “Have they learned NOTHING?”

None of the Department of Defense commenters explained in their posts how citing the size of Hegseth’s detail endangered lives as of early Wednesday morning.

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During his first presidency, Donald Trump spent a lot of time fighting with conservative appointees who resisted parts of his agenda — from John Bolton (national security adviser) to Jeff Sessions (U.S. attorney general) to Rex Tillerson (secretary of state) to Gen. John F. Kelly (White House chief of staff). Trump's third White House press secretary, Stephanie Grisham, even ended up endorsing presidential nominee Kamala Harris at the 2024 Democratic National Convention.

But Trump's second presidency is much different. This time, he made a point of surrounding himself with hardcore MAGA loyalists—who, the Washington Post's Philip Bump argues in his June 2 column, are making a concerted effort to bully and intimidate opponents and create a climate of fear.

Trump, Bump warns, has a "range of dishonest actors" at his disposal. And they range from White House adviser Stephen Miller to Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem to immigration czar Tom Homan.

"What President Donald Trump wants is to put big deportation numbers on the scoreboard," Bump explains. "Recent reporting suggests that senior administration officials, including adviser Stephen Miller, are leaning on DHS to remove more people, faster. Trump’s 2024 campaign promised to focus on removing the massive population of criminal undocumented immigrants in the U.S. But, in part because his claims about the scale of the problem have consistently been hyperbolic, the (Trump) Administration is instead resorting to deporting just about anyone it can conceivably fit into the system."

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Bump notes that the intimidation tactics of Trump and his allies range from the arrests of Rep. LaMonica McIver (D-New Jersey) and Judge Hannah Dugan to DHS agents accusing Rep. Jerry Nadler's (D-New York) staff of "harboring rioters" and even handcuffing a Nadler staffer.

"In San Diego," Bump observes, "heavily armed immigration officers conducted a raid at a restaurant. When observers attempted to halt the arrests, the federal agents allegedly used a stun grenade against the crowd. That incident was perhaps the most extreme of a number of tense, aggressive encounters between immigration officials and the public over the past four months…. It also seems clear that some agents understand they won’t be held accountable for their actions."

Bump adds, "Detaining a staffer in member of Congress' office in search of 'rioters' from a nonexistent riot doesn't comport with a liberal democracy."

Nadler told the New York Times, "The Trump Administration is really using totalitarian or even authoritarian practices. We have to fight them. We don't want to be a fascist country."

Bump laments, "This is the reality. Immigrants are cast as dangerous when they aren't. Governmental power is abused without accountability. All of it at Trump’s whim — very much to Nadler's 'authoritarian' point."

*Philip Bump's full Washington Post column is available at this link (subscription required)

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Early Monday morning, January 13, a bombshell announcement came from longtime Washington Post columnist Jennfier Rubin: She is leaving the Post and is starting a new publication with attorney Norm L. Eisen, known for his legal analysis for CNN and his years as ambassador to the Czech Republic under the Obama Administration.

Rubin isn't holding back in on her reasons for leaving the Post. The Never Trumper is highly critical of Post/Amazon owner Jeff Bezos for, she says, trying to curry favor with President-elect Donald Trump — who, Rubin believes, did the Post a huge disservice when he killed an endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris during the 2024 election.

During a January 13 interview with CNN, Rubin said of The Contrarian — her new media venture with Eisen — "Our goal is to combat, with every fiber of our being, the authoritarian threat that we face."

Rubin told CNN that Bezos and other media figures have "bent the knee" to Trump, lamenting, "the Post, along with most mainstream news outlets, has failed spectacularly at a moment that we most need a robust, aggressive free press."

Rubin was equally biting in an interview with CNBC, arguing that Bezos and others have "scrambled to enlist Trump-friendly voices."

The former Post columnist told CNBC, ":{Corporate and billionaire owners of major media outlets have betrayed their audiences' loyalty and sabotaged journalism's sacred mission — defending, protecting and advancing democracy."

In an official statement, Rubin complained, "The Washington Post’s billionaire owner and enlisted management are among the offenders. They have undercut the values central to The Post’s mission and that of all journalism: integrity, courage, and independence. I cannot justify remaining at The Post."

Rubin continued, "Jeff Bezos and his cronies accommodate and enable the most acute threat to American democracy — Donald Trump — at a time when a vibrant free press is more essential than ever to democracy’s survival and capacity to survive."

For many years, Rubin, now 62, was known as a conservative and voted GOP in presidential elections. But she has been a blistering critic of Trump, voting Democratic in the presidential elections of 2016, 2020 and 2024. And she has said that she no longer identifies as "conservative" because Trump and the MAGA movement have badly tarnished that word.

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“The press freedom fire is at our door step now," saidone Washington Post journalist on Thursday night after news broke that two months before President-elect Donald Trump is set to take office, he has already begun to wage legal warfare against on the news media.

The Columbia Journalism Review (CJR)reported that days before the election, a lawyer for Trump, Edward Andrew Paltzik, sent a letter toThe New York Times and Penguin Random House demanding $10 billion in damages for publishing articles and a book that were critical of the president-elect, who was convicted of 34 felony counts earlier this year.

Trump's legal team took issue with a book by Times journalists Susanne Craig and Russ Buettner titled Lucky Loser: How Donald Trump Squandered His Father’s Fortune and Created the Illusion of Success. They also said they were demanding damages over "false and defamatory statements" in the October 20 article "For Trump, a Lifetime of Scandals Heads Toward a Moment of Judgment" by Peter Baker and the October 22 piece "As Election Nears, Kelly Warns Trump Would Rule Like a Dictator"by Michael Schmidt.

The former article covered numerous wrongdoings by the president-elect and accusations against him, pointing out that he "is the only president in American history impeached twice for high crimes and misdemeanors, the only president ever indicted on criminal charges, and the only president to be convicted of a felony (34, in fact)," and that he has also boasted about sexually assaulting women and spearheaded numerous businesses that went bankrupt.

The latter article detailed comments by Trump's former chief of staff, John Kelly, who told the Times that the definition of fascism accurately describes Trump.

The president-elect himself said while campaigning that he planned to govern as a dictatoronly on "Day One"of his term in office.

"Governments and powerful figures threatening journalists and media outlets with costly legal battles and bankruptcy is a common tactic against press freedom in repressive countries."

Paltzik told the newspaper that the articles demonstrate the Times' "intention of defaming and disparaging the world-renowned Trump brand that consumers have long associated with excellence, luxury, and success in entertainment, hospitality, and real estate, among many other industries, as well as falsely and maliciously defaming and disparaging him as a candidate for the highest office in the United States."

TheCJR reported that theTimes responded to Paltzik's letter, telling him the newspaper stood by its reporting on Trump.

As Barry Malone, deputy editor-in-chief of the Thomson Reuters Foundation,saidon social media on Friday, Trump's legal threats may be designed not to actually win billions of dollars in damages but "to tie the media up with time-consuming and often prohibitively expensive cases."

The Timesand Penguin Random House threats were reported two weeks after Trump suedCBS News for another $10 billion, claiming an interview with Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris, who lost the November 5 election, was unfairly edited to present her in a positive light and qualified as "election interference."

CBS said it would "vigorously defend" its journalistic practices and called the lawsuit "completely without merit"—a similar response to the one by The Washington Post, which was accused by Trump on the same day of making an illegal in-kind donation to Harris.

Anne Champion, an attorney who has represented several journalists and CNN in legal cases initiated by Trump, told the CJR that the legal threats will likely have "a mental chilling effect" on reporters and news outlets in the United States as Trump prepares to take office.

"It is both conscious and unconscious," said Champion. "Journalists at smaller outlets know very well that the costs for their organization to defend themselves could mean bankruptcy. Even journalists at larger outlets don't want to burden themselves or their employees with lawsuits. It puts another layer of influence into the journalistic process."

Trump has a longstanding disdain for the media, saying numerous times during his first term that journalists were the "enemy of the people." During one campaign rally just before the election he said he wouldn't "mind" if reporters at the event were shot, and he called the media the "enemy camp" during his victory speech last week.

During his first term he also threatened to "take a strong look at our country's libel laws"—which are actually controlled by states, not the federal government—and ensure that "when somebody says something that is false and defamatory about someone, that person will have meaningful recourse in our courts."

The American Civil Liberties Unionpointed outat the time that the First Amendment and the lack of federal libel laws would stand in Trump's way, but on Thursday Lachlan Cartwright wrote atCJR that "the drumbeat of legal threats signals a potentially ominous trend for journalists during Trump's second term in office."

AsWashington Post columnist Karen Attiah noted on the social media platform Bluesky, "governments and powerful figures threatening journalists and media outlets with costly legal battles and bankruptcy is a common tactic against press freedom in repressive countries."

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owner Jeff Bezos spreads his hands after a ceremonial ribbon cutting during dedication ceremonies for the new Washington Post offices on January, 28, 2016 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post via Getty Images)

Jeff Bezos is the second-richest person in the world, with a net worth of approximately $211 billion. Most of Bezos' wealth is derived from his 9% stake in Amazon, the company he founded. Bezos also founded and owns Blue Origin, a private space exploration company worth billions.

Bezos also owns the Washington Post, which he purchased in 2013 for $250 million in cash. Is Bezos now making decisions at the Washington Post to protect and enhance the value of his other enterprises? Many current and former employees of the Washington Post believe so.

The business interests of Amazon and Blue Origin — and, therefore, Bezos — are inextricably linked to the federal government. Consider:

In 2021, Amazon was awarded a $10 billion cloud-computing contract with the National Security Agency. It also has a portion of a $9 billion cloud-computing contract inked in 2022 with the Department of Defense and a multi-billion dollar cloud-computing contract with the CIA.

In 2023, the Federal Trade Commission sued Amazon, alleging "the online retail and technology company is a monopolist that uses a set of interlocking anticompetitive and unfair strategies to illegally maintain its monopoly power." The lawsuit seeks "a permanent injunction in federal court that would prohibit Amazon from engaging in its unlawful conduct and pry loose Amazon’s monopolistic control to restore competition."

> In May 2023, Blue Origin was awarded a $3.4 billion contract to build a lunar lander for NASA. Between 2025 and 2029, the company is expected to compete for $5.6 billion in space launch contracts for the Pentagon.

The Washington Post, unlike Amazon and Blue Origin, has been a money loser for Bezos, reportedly running a deficit of $100 million last year. More importantly, Bezos believes that former President Trump's hostility toward the Washington Post, which produced critical coverage of Trump's presidency, cost his companies billions in government contracts. In 2019, Amazon sued the federal government for awarding a $10 billion cloud-computing contract to Microsoft, alleging that Amazon lost out on the contract based on Bezos' ownership of the Washington Post:

President Trump has made no secret of his personal dislike for Mr. Bezos, Amazon, and the Washington Post, or of his express desire to harm them. The seeds of this animus originate with the Washington Post's coverage of him before he even was elected President. That coverage placed Mr. Bezos, Amazon, and the Washington Post directly in the crosshairs of President Trump's wrath.

…After he assumed office, President Trump grew "obsessed" with Mr. Bezos and determined to "f'*** with him." His new powers expanded his ability to punish Mr. Bezos for the Washington Post's coverage of him

…President Trump has frequently referred to the "Amazon Washington Post" as a single entity, and he has frequently hurled invective against Amazon whenever the Washington Post publishes articles that he believes slight him or his Administration. President Trump has also repeatedly claimed the Washington Post is selling "fake news," and he has called it an "[e]nemy of the [p]eople[.]"

In a few months, it is possible that Trump will be president again. This time, Bezos faces an even more acute threat to his business interests. Elon Musk, who owns Blue Origin's chief rival SpaceX, has aligned himself closely with Trump, spending tens of millions in support of Trump's campaign and making appearances in swing states on Trump's behalf.

On Friday, days before the election, Washington Post publisher William Lewis — installed by Bezos earlier this year — announced that "the Washington Post will not be making an endorsement of a presidential candidate in this election." The announcement, less than 2 weeks before Election Day, was a break from decades of precedent. Bezos made the decision, according to the New York Times, after the Washington Post "editorial board had already drafted an endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris."

Marty Baron, the former Executive Editor of the Washington Post, slammed Bezos' decision as "cowardice" and linked it to Bezos' desire to appease Trump. Baron said it would backfire, and Trump would "see this as an invitation to further intimidate owner [Bezos]."

Hours after Lewis published the announcement, Trump was seen meeting with Blue Origin CEO David Limp. Steven Cheung, the Trump campaign's chief spokesman, embraced the suggestion that the meeting and the announcement of the non-endorsement were linked.

Robert Kagan, who worked at the Washington Post for two decades and resigned immediately following Lewis' announcement, said the meeting was evidence of a quid pro quo. “Trump waited to make sure that Bezos did what he said he was going to do, and then met with the Blue Origin people,” Kagan told The Daily Beast. “Which tells us that there was an actual deal made, meaning that Bezos communicated, or through his people, communicated directly with Trump, and they set up this quid pro quo.”

According to CNN, "Amazon CEO Andy Jassy also recently reached out to check in" with Trump.

The apparent capitulation to Trump illustrates the danger of billionaires scooping up major media organizations as a side hustle. For nearly everyone, the price Bezos paid for the Washington Post is an unfathomable amount of money. For Bezos, it's less than half the $575 million he paid for his new 417-foot superyacht, Koru, and its 246-foot support yacht, Abeona, which has a helipad, accommodations for staff, and storage for smaller boats and jet skis.

Bezos did not get to the point where he could afford such yachts through his dedication to journalistic integrity. He became the second-wealthiest person in the world by prioritizing the bottom line. And it appears that continues to be his priority.

The Washington Post's incoherent defense

Lewis claims that the decision not to endorse a presidential candidate was based on principle. Specifically, Lewis says the decision was guided by the belief that the Washington Post's mission "is to provide through the newsroom nonpartisan news for all Americans, and thought-provoking, reported views from our opinion team to help our readers make up their own minds."

Lewis doesn't explain why, if that was the case, the Washington Post editorial board endorsed candidates for U.S. Senate and House earlier this month. If it is about the principle that readers should "make up their own minds," why does that principle only apply to presidential candidates?

Further, Lewis tried to insulate Bezos from the fallout. The Washington Post reported that the "decision to no longer publish presidential endorsements was made by The Post’s owner, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, according to four people who were briefed on the decision."

Lewis attempted to undermine his own paper's reporting, claiming that "[r]eporting around the role of The Washington Post owner and the decision not to publish a presidential endorsement has been inaccurate." But Lewis did not directly dispute that it was Bezos' decision. Instead, he said only that Bezos "was not sent, did not read and did not opine on any draft" — a claim that no one actually made.

Washington Post staff was not buying it. 17 members of the paper's opinion staff signed onto a statement calling the decision not to endorse a "terrible mistake." The Washington Post Guild, the union that represents the paper's reporters, said in a statement that the decision "undercuts the work of our members at a time when we should be building our readers’ trust, not losing it." Legendary Washington Post journalists Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward called the decision "surprising and disappointing, especially this late in the electoral process."

One could legitimately conclude that newspaper endorsements have outlived their usefulness. It is the timing and context of the Washington Post's change that is raising alarm bells.

The billionaire owner of the LA Times

Patrick Soon-Shiong, the billionaire owner of the LA Times, also abruptly demanded his publication stay neutral in the presidential election. Soon-Shiong bought the paper for $500 million in 2018.

Soon-Shiong is a healthcare and biotech entrepreneur whose companies rely on the federal government. His companies regularly seek FDA approval for new drugs, vaccines and therapies and federal funding for research.

The editorial board had planned to endorse Kamala Harris and publish a series of columns tentatively titled "The Case Against Trump." But in a post on X, Soon-Shiong said he offered the LA Times editorial board "the opportunity to draft a factual analysis of all the POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE policies by EACH candidate during their tenures at the White House, and how these policies affected the nation." Soon-Shiong said that "[i]nstead of adopting this path as suggested, the Editorial Board chose to remain silent and I accepted their decision."

Soon-Shiong did not explain why he did not demand a similar approach for U.S. House and Senate races, state ballot initiatives, and many other contests facing California voters. Beginning in September, the LA Times has endorsed in dozens of races up and down the ballot.

In response to the spiking of the presidential endorsement, 200 LA Times staff members signed an open letter calling on Soon-Shiong to "provide readers with an explanation for not issuing an endorsement, along with clarity about the broader endorsement process."

Three members of the paper's editorial board have resigned. "I am resigning because I want to make it clear that I am not okay with us being silent," Mariel Garza, the LA Times editorials editor, said. "In dangerous times, honest people need to stand up. This is how I’m standing up."

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Former Washington Post editor-at-large, Robert Kagan, revealed to The Daily Beast on Saturday that the newspaper's owner — Amazon's Jeff Bezos — and 2024 GOP nominee Donald Trump, allegedly agreed on a plan to "kill" thePost's endorsement of 2024 Democratic nominee, Kamala Harris, the news outlet reports.

The Beast notes:

Bezos knows first hand the consequences of criticizing the former president. The Post’s 2016 endorsement of Hillary Clinton is widely thought to have led to him losing out on a $10 billion cloud computing defense contract awarded by the Trump administration.

Following his Friday resignation from thePost,Kagan told the Beast "that Trump’s meeting with executives of Bezos’ Blue Origin space company the same day that the Amazonfounder killed a plan to support Harris was proof of the backroom deal."

READ MORE:['Bit of a panic': Trump adviser’s attack on bombshell WaPo report fact-checked by expert

The ex-Post editor said, "Trump waited to make sure that Bezos did what he said he was going to do, and then met with the Blue Origin people. Which tells us that there was an actual deal made, meaning that Bezos communicated, or through his people, communicated directly with Trump, and they set up this quid pro quo.”

Per the report, Kagan warned that this kind of "alleged collusion between" the billionaire tech founder and Trump "is just the beginning," and emphasized there will be "a lot of self censorship [in the media] and a lot of changing course just to be sure that they’re not going to be punished," if the MAGA leader wins the White House.

"This is what we have to look forward to," Kagan told the Post. "All Trump has to do is threaten the corporate chiefs who run these organizations with real financial loss, and they will bend the knee."

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Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk — the world's wealthiest man — has come out harshly against undocumented immigrants since becoming one of former President Donald Trump's biggest donors and campaign surrogates. But a new report reveals that he launched his career in the United States without legal status.

The Washington Post is now reporting that Musk was illegally staying in the U.S. on a student visa despite dropping out of school. While Musk, who is from South Africa, emigrated to attend Stanford University, he called his department chair shortly after the fall 1995 semester began to inform him that he wouldn't be attending classes.

At that point, Musk was legally obligated to leave the United States, according to the Post. But instead, he illegally overstayed his visa while building his first company, Zip2 (originally called the Global Link Information Network).

Eventually, venture capital firm Mohr Davidow Ventures made a $3 million investment into Zip2 in 1996. Upon learning that both Musk and his brother, Kimbal, didn't have legal status to be in the United States, the funding agreement included a clause that stipulated Mohr could claw back its investment if the two didn't obtain a legal work visa within 45 days.

"Their immigration status was not what it should be for them to be legally employed running a company in the U.S.,” Zip2 board member Derek Proudian told the paper. “We don’t want our founder being deported."

Because U.S. immigration records aren't public, determining when Musk's immigration status changed is difficult to ascertain. However, the Post cited two different biographers who wrote that Mohr ultimately arranged for an attorney to line up visas for both Elon and Kimbal Musk in 1996. This means both he and his brother were technically illegal immigrants for the better part of a year. This is particularly noteworthy, as Elon Musk has used his social media platform X (formerly Twitter) to regularly launch attacks against and spread disinformation about undocumented immigrants.

"[I]llegals in America can get bank loans, mortgages, insurance, driver's licenses, free healthcare (California & New York) and in-state college tuition," Musk tweeted in February. "What's the point of being a citizen if an illegal gets all the benefits, but doesn't pay taxes or do jury duty?"

The Post's reported that Musk's colleagues confirmed that he drove a car during the period in which he was in the United States illegally, meaning he would have needed both a driver's license and auto insurance in order to do so. The report also confirms what Kimbal Musk said in a 2013 interview, when saying that he and his brother "were illegal immigrants" when their company landed the $3 million investment from Mohr. Elon didn't use that exact phrasing, but rather said that their status "was a grey area."

Despite making a promise in March to refrain from endorsing a presidential candidate, Elon Musk has not only appeared onstage with Trump, but is now his second-biggest campaign donor. Forbes reported earlier this week that Musk has donated roughly $118 million to a pro-Trump super PAC. His largesse is outpaced only by Timothy Mellon, who had given $150 million to the former president's 2024 bid for the White House.

Click here to read the Post's report in full (subscription required).

READ MORE:[Elon Musk donates 'sizable amount' to shadowy pro-Trump super PAC

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"Real Time" host Bill Maher recently noted that when Republicans and right-wing media outlets find a new talking point, they work it to death regardless of its merits. And he cited the claim that President Joe Biden is using some type of drug or stimulant ahead of his first 2024 debate with presumptive GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump as a prime example.

Right-wing media outlets have been claiming that if Biden performs well against Trump in the June 27 debate that CNN is hosting in Atlanta, it will be because he is getting an unfair advantage via a stimulant. But there is no proof or evidence to support that baseless claim.

In an op-ed published on June 26, the Washington Post's Aaron Blake details how that claim took off in right-wing media.

"When Fox Business Network host Maria Bartiromo asked Rep. Greg Murphy (R-N.C.) about the just-announced presidential debate last month," Blake explains, "she prefaced the question oddly. 'So, let me get you to put your doctor's hat on for a second, given the (GOP) Doctors Caucus that you are leading'…. What did being a doctor have to do with handicapping the debate?.... Murphy quickly took the cue, though, launching into a baseless suggestion that Biden might take something to enhance his performance."

Blake continues, "He said Biden 'must have been jacked up' during his State of the Union address in March — that 'they gave him something.' Murphy gave no evidence but said he could provide proof for his claim to Bartiromo 'offline.'"

The Washington Post columnist notes that "a little more than 40 days" after that Bartiromo/Murphy conversation, "such evidence still hasn't seen the light of day." But Trump and allies like Fox News hosts Jesse Watters and Sean Hannity, Blake adds, continue to promote their claim anyway.

"Responsible journalists don't just accuse people of drug use based upon suspicion," Blake argues, "and there's still no actual evidence."

*Aaron Blake's full Washington Post column is available at this link (subscription required).

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nobody likes Big Oil, a monopolistic and heavily polluting industry with a legendary history of abusing its excessive power that can be traced back over the past hundred years.

But Donald Trump has promised to be the oil industry's best friend -- if its bosses give him a billion dollars.

In the latest instance of the former president's mind-blowing corruption, he is reported to have entertained a group of two dozen top U.S. oil company executives at Mar-a-Lago. Over dinner at his Palm Beach sanctum, Trump is quoted as telling the chiefs of Chevron, Exxon, and Occidental Petroleum and their colleagues that if they collectively coughed up $1 billion to ensure his reelection, he would take very good care of their corporate needs.

According to The Washington Post, he promised to toss out all of President Joe Biden's efforts to mitigate climate changes, including new rules aimed at reducing automotive exhaust and promoting electric vehicles. For that measly billion bucks, he vowed to increase oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, where we have already seen catastrophic well blowouts, rescind restrictions on drilling in the Alaskan wilderness, pull down the windmills that he hates, and cancel the recent White House decision to pause new natural gas export permits.

"You'll get it on the first day," said Trump, according to someone who was present and blabbed to the Post. Speaking as crudely as any gangster, he informed the oilmen that they and their companies can easily raise that kind of money, and that paying him off would be "a deal" because of the high return on their investment.

No doubt they found it hard to argue with Trump's logic, since oil lobbyists are already writing dozens of executive orders that they want him to rubber-stamp if and when he returns to the Oval Office.

So is anybody surprised?

Only perhaps by the audacity of Trump explicitly soliciting a gigantic bribe, before a large group of witnesses, at a time when he is in fact on trial for campaign finance offenses and facing scores of additional criminal charges. But he has never felt abashed in displaying his venality. He lives in a world of miscreants who behave much the same way, from his son-in-law Jared Kushner, who sought and obtained an even bigger payoff from the Saudi dictator, to his adviser Steve Bannon, who will face criminal charges next fall for swindling the dopey donors to his fake "We Build the Wall" outfit.

As the eminent journalist Laurie Garrett observed on social media, Trump's attempt to extort the oil industry echoes one of the greatest government scandals in American history, under another Republican president owned by corporate power. Beginning in 1921, the Teapot Dome affair implicated officials of President Warren G. Harding's administration in the crooked leasing of public lands for oil exploration. Harding's Interior secretary Albert B. Fall ultimately went to prison for bribery, although none of the oilmen who paid him off did any time.

What we can expect from a second Trump administration is the most naked orgy of swindling and boodling that this country has ever seen. He thoroughly exploited the presidency during his first term, as outlined in my forthcoming book, "The Longest Con." But his second term, should such a disaster occur, would be the conman's last big chance to score, and he can be expected to enrich himself to the maximum -- at ruinous cost to the rest of us.

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former President Donald Trump recently made a controversial proposal to a gathering of oil executives and lobbyists at his Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida: Favorable policy in exchange for $1 billion in campaign cash. Now, it looks as if the U.S. Senate may launch an official inquiry into the ex-president.

That's according to the New Republic's Greg Sargent, who spoke to Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-Rhode Island) about Trump's recent entreaty to the oil industry. Whitehouse said it was "highly likely" that the Senate Budget Committee would investigate the former president over his brazen offer.

"The phrase that instantly came to mind as I was reading the story was ‘quid pro quo,’" Whitehouse said, adding that he was also concerned about a series of proposed executive orders oil lobbyists drafted for Trump and to have ready to sign on day one should he win a second term in November. "Put those things together and it starts to look mighty damn corrupt."

Billionaire oil magnate Harold Hamm arranged the Mar-a-Lago event, which the Washington Post reported was designed to allow for the fossil fuel industry to be able to bring concerns over environmental regulations directly to Trump. At the meeting, Trump reportedly promised to overhaul President Joe Biden's policies relating to electric vehicles and wind energy.

"The contrast between the two candidates on climate policy could not be more stark. Biden has called global warming an 'existential threat,' and over the last three years, his administration has finalized more than 100 new environmental regulations aimed at cutting air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions, restricting toxic chemicals, and conserving public lands and waters," wrote the Post's Josh Dawsey and Maxine Joselow. "In comparison, Trump has called climate change a 'hoax,' and his administration weakened or wiped out more than 125 environmental rules and policies over four years."

Whitehouse, who chairs the Budget Committee, said Trump's proposal to oil executives was "practically an invitation to ask more questions." He added that the inquiry would hopefully shed light on the myriad ways in which industries like Big Oil exploit the campaign finance system and find ways to make the system more transparent and accountable. Noah Bookbinder, who is president of the anti-corruption watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), said that while Trump's offer was technically legal, there is still plenty of work to do in cleaning up the grey areas in federal campaign finance laws.

"There’s a clear legislative purpose in determining what happened at the meeting,” Bookbinder told Sargent. "If this really constituted “an attempt to link significant campaign contributions with specific policy promises, that suggests a huge loophole that needs to be closed.”

Many of the environmental policies Trump suggested he would do away with in a second term are in the Inflation Reduction Act, which was the $485 billion bill Biden signed into law in 2022 that included a swath of clean energy infrastructure initiatives and incentives for electric vehicle development. Economists projected the clean energy development grants could generate roughly $1.5 trillion in new economic activity, and could reduce carbon dioxide emissions by five billion tons before the next decade.

Conversely, some of the executive orders the oil industry has prepared for Trump would undo the progress on climate Biden has made since taking office. Politico reported that some of the orders would lift Biden's pause on new natural gas export permits, open up new protected federal lands for more oil drilling and allow for more offshore oil drilling leases.

Trump casting Biden as an opponent of Big Oil is somewhat confusing, given that the United States officially hit record-high domestic oil production levels earlier this year. The U.S. Energy Information Administration found that in 2023, the U.S. produced 13 million barrels of oil per day on average, making the United States the world's largest oil producer.

Click here to read Sargent's full essay in the New Republic (subscription required).

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https://www.mediamatters.org/washington-post/washington-post-pushes-misleading-framing-about-social-security

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yikes // experts say truth degrades trust?!

mma 1 24

As many regions of the country experienced dangerously low temperatures, right-wing media used the cold weather to push climate change denial, delegitimize climate protesters at Iowa caucus events, and gripe about supposed bias toward science-based climate reporting.

Millions of Americans were under wind chill advisories and winter weather advisories this January as an arctic blast brought subzero temperatures, snow, and ice across the Northeast, Midwest, Pacific Northwest, and South. At least one power company made an appeal for energy conservation.

Amid the cold weather, figures across right-wing media have yet again been making claims that global warming is a “hoax,” and that the scientists and politicians who discuss it are part of a “cult.” Several influencers and climate scientists debunked the claim that cold weather means global warming is not occurring, and pointed out its absurdity.

Substack author Andrew Wortman called the conflation of cold weather with the absence of climate change “hopelessly stupid.”

“We will always have winter even as our climate continues to warm,” wrote meteorologist Marshall Shepherd in a Forbes article explaining how we can have a polar vortex in a warming world. Former columnist for The Boston Globe and Union of Concerned Scientists fellow in climate and energy Derrick Z. Jackson. also amplified this message:

"Despite the skepticism from those Republicans that cold weather and climate change can co-exist, it’s important to remember that, for many of us, the cold snap is just a moment of discomfort, while climate change is a long-term disaster. … All signs point to an overall trend of warmer winters."

Right-wing media falsely claimed that the spate of cold weather discredits global warming

The drumbeat of climate change denial during cold weather persisted this winter, as right-wing media figures conflate day-to-day weather with long-term changes to the climate.

Fox Business host Larry Kudlow said that “the immediate danger from global warming is a hoax.”“What about all the subfreezing, subzero record temperatures we're talking about?” he said. “That sounds like global freezing. I even remember the big freeze cover of Time magazine way back in the early 1970s. … The immediate danger from global warming is a hoax. It's a left-wing Biden-esque hoax. It’s a socialist Green New Deal hoax. And there may be climate change over the next hundred years, but like Bjorn Lomborg or physicist Steve Koonin, I'm more than willing to wait for technological innovation and economic growth to take care of all that, but there is no immediate threat.” Fox Business, *Kudlow*, [1/12/24]

Newsmax host Chirs Salcedo said that the cold temperatures in Iowa are “contradicting the Democrats’ man-made global warming religion.”Newsmax, *The Chris Salcedo Show*, [1/13/24]

Trump loyalist and America First Policy Institute ambassador Nick Adams: “This is how cold it is at Arrowhead Stadium tonight. Where is your global warming now, Democrats?” Twitter/X, [1/13/24]
Right-wing political commentator and serial plagiarist Benny Johnson: “Can’t wait to experience Global Warming first hand in Iowa!” Twitter/X, [1/14/24]

Right-wing troll account Catturd: “The global warming cult sure is quiet right now.” Twitter/X, [1/15/24]

Right-wing social media personality Amuse: “Brrr… illegal aliens believed the global warming hype pushed by the WEF and now they’re complaining it is too cold in the US.” Twitter/X, [1/16/24]

Right-wing media targeted bundled-up climate protesters disrupting Iowa caucus events

This year’s Iowa caucuses were the coldest on record. Climate protesters interrupted several campaign to voice their opposition to the candidates’ climate change denial or refusal to address the climate crisis.

On Newsmax’s Wake Up America, hosts and guests delegitimized climate protesters at the Iowa caucus because “it was below 20.” “OK, by the way, that was a climate change protester. It was 20 below in Iowa yesterday, so I don't know. What are they — ‘It's too cold now?'”asked host Rob Finnerty. Guest Hogan Gidley then asked whether they were “protesting for global warming because it's so cold.” Newsmax, *Wake Up America*, [1/15/24]

Fox host Dana Perino suggested cold weather in Iowa delegitimizes the message of climate activists there. “I would just say that it reminds me of the day that…Al Gore released An Inconvenient Truth in 2002 or 2003; it was the coldest day of the year,” she said. “That’s what these climate protesters remind me of. It’s ridiculous and they’re persuading no one.” The Daily Beast, [1/15/24]

Mainstream media were baselessly accused of downplaying coverage of the Arctic blast to push a “green agenda”

Even though the cold weather was widely covered, right-wing media complained that coverage of extreme heat has been purposefully exaggerated in comparison. Some figures also suggested that reporting on a wide range of extreme weather events in the context of climate change, including winter storms, somehow made media outlets dishonest.

But as some mainstream media outlets are correctly reporting, cold weather doesn’t mean climate change isn’t happening. A warming winter looks different in different parts of the world. Even if there are some unusually cold days, overall, temperatures are trending upward. Other countries, such as Oman and Argentina, have seen record-high temperatures in January.

As The New York Times explained, “Global climate change unfolds a history of extremes: Historically wet areas are likely to experience increased precipitation (sometimes in the form of snow), while historically dry areas may see more drought.”

Climate denier Steve Milloy said the Times needs to “get its story straight.”He added: “Jan. 2: Global warming to end snow. Jan. 12: Global warming to increase snow. That is the say-anything 'science' behind the climate hoax.” Twitter/X, [1/13/24]

The Five accused The New York Times of “trafficking global warming hysteria” by allegedly publishing contradicting stories. The segment featured the chyron “Climate Confusion: NYT cries ‘end of snow’ days before saying ‘increase’” and was seemingly inspired by a tweet from climate denier Steve Milloy from a few days prior. “Well it was global warming, and then, I don’t know, every time it was snowing or blizzarding, then Democrats want it to be climate change,” said America Reports co-anchor Sandra Smith. Fox News, *The Five*, [1/17/24]

Larry Kudlow asked, “Why hasn’t there been front page stories?” and called climate change a “hoax.” “There's a story in the Washington Post today, 60 degrees below normal, parts of Montana, where we were married, minus 40 degrees,” he said. “ This is The Washington Post. So, I just want to know of Mr. Kerry, whatever happened to global warming? Why hasn't there been front page stories? I mean every time you get a little heat wave or every time you get a bad rainstorm, everyone runs with these crazy stories about global warming, global warming, global warming, and climate change. … The whole thing is a — I just want to — it is a hoax. Global warming is a hoax.” Fox News, *America Reports*, [1/12/24]

Right-wing media personality Tim Young: “The AP is covering for the climate grift today… Can't let the extreme cold weather disprove the obvious.” Twitter/X, [1/17/24]

Arizona Sun-Times and Townhall reporter Rachel Alexander asked where are “all the dramatic headlines they run like when the temperature is hotter than expected?”She wrote: “Oh no, global warming hitting Arizona now. They're saying this cold spell is expected to linger. Where's all the dramatic headlines they run like when the temperature is hotter than expected?” Twitter/X, [1/12/24]

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ggl alert 1 24

Marc Morano

Weekly update ⋅

WSj

Morano, Varney Warn America Could 'Ban Gas Cars by 2035' - Newsbusters

Newsbusters

After California's radical electric vehicle (EV) mandate came under EPA review, Climate Depot founder Marc Morano broke down what is a.

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Washington Post Repeats Dumb Claim Global Warming Causing Alaska Blizzards - Newsbusters

Newsbusters

Climate Depot Marc Morano also ripped The Post for publishing what he described as “parody.” “Too little snow? Global warming. Too much snow ...

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'Psychotic' & 'Anti-Human' UN 'Climate' Deal a Break from Reality: Leading Skeptic

The New American

... Marc Morano in this interview on Conversations That Matter with The New American magazine's Alex Newman. Morano, who has attended 18 of the last ...

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Exclusive: Circuit Court Ruling on Biden DOE's Appliance Regulation 'a Win' for Americans

PJ Media

Climate Depot's Marc Morano called the DOE's revoked regulations “a complete bypassing of democracy through the unelected regulatory state” and ...

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GARLINGTON: Yes, Weather Modification Is Real - The Hayride

The Hayride

Folks like Patrick Wood and Marc Morano have been documenting that for years. That said, those same conservatives take their opposition to phony ...

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12 23 an

a new analysis of Republican-led "election integrity" prosecutions of alleged voter fraud found not only an extremely low success rate, but a common theme of prosecutions disproportionately targeting Democrats and minority voters.

This week the Washington Post published a report analyzing voter fraud prosecutions in six different Republican-led states — Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Ohio, Texas and Virginia — dating back to the 2020 presidential election. The Post found that out of tens of millions of ballots cast in those states since then, there were only 47 confirmed convictions out of 136 total prosecutions. Additionally, 76% of defendants in those cases were either Black or Hispanic, compared to just 24% of defendants who are white.

"At best, these 'election integrity' units are for show, designed to placate far-right election denialists in the conservative base," Heather Sawyer, executive director of the watchdog group American Oversight, told the Post. "At worst, they are used to justify new voting restrictions and to intimidate people — especially racial minorities — from exercising their right to vote."

The Post's report additionally found that all of the 47 voter fraud-related convictions occurred in Florida, Ohio and Texas with Arkansas, Georgia and Virginia's prosecutions not yielding a single guilty verdict despite spending millions of tax dollars. And out of the 115 cases resolved as of December, the Post found that 42 of those prosecutions ended in dismissal, acquittal or dropped charges.

In addition to the investigations overwhelmingly targeting racial minorities, the publication found that 58% of defendants were registered Democrats while only 23% were registered Republicans. The remaining defendants weren't registered with any political party. And contrary to former President Trump's claims that he was unfairly disadvantaged by widespread cheating, the bulk of prosecutions were over minor mistakes, like falsifying a registration form or voting despite being barred from doing so due to a felony conviction.

"They did not have a record of fraud that they needed to go and create these investigative units," Rutgers University professor Lorraine Minnite said. "The fact that they have not produced evidence of fraud is support for their lack of necessity."

The Post's findings in its most recent report are similar to another deep dive into alleged voter fraud by Loyola University-Los Angeles law professor Justin Levitt. In a 2014 analysis for the Post, Levitt found just 31 credible instances of voter fraud out of more than one billion ballots cast since 2000.

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exxonknewS 12 23

...“Oil and gas companies are under pressure, desperately trying to preserve their social license through recycled pledges,” said David Tong, Global Industry Campaign Manager at Oil Change International, which last year published a report finding that Exxon’s climate commitments are “grossly insufficient” to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement.

Woods and his fellow oil company representatives are also using COP to push for unproven technologies that will prolong the lifespan of climate-wrecking fossil fuels. In an interview with Bloomberg at COP, Woods said the energy transition would require an assortment of “solutions” — including hydrogen and carbon capture — and “we need big companies to help with that.”

Woods rejected the IEA’s recent assessment of carbon capture as an “illusion,” telling Reuters that “you could say that about electric vehicles, about wind, about solar.” But according to the IEA, “The key actions required to bend the emissions curve sharply downwards by 2030 are well understood, most often cost effective and are taking place at an accelerating rate. The scaling up of clean energy is the main factor behind a decline of fossil fuel demand of over 25% this decade.”

Yet unlike the billions it invests in carbon capture, Exxon is spending almost nothing on renewable sources of energy, while lobbying against the transition away from its core products.

“It’s no surprise that Exxon is pushing for the continued use of fossil fuels,” said Jessica Green, Professor of Political Science at the University of Toronto. “Exxon is in a fight for its life. Real progress on climate change isn’t about more carbon markets or net zero pledges, it’s about putting the oil and gas industry out of business.”

A larger strategy

Woods’ deflections at COP are part of a larger strategy of “corporate issues management,” said Supran, which “the fossil fuel industry has been pioneering for decades.”

“It means having your fingers in all the pies, anticipating future threats to your business and neutralizing them through decades of 360-degree public affairs strategies,” he said.

Exxon has been working to shift the narrative outside of COP, too. “On November 30, the first day of COP 28, The New York Times included a full-page greenwashing ad from ExxonMobil,” Brad Johnson documented in Hill Heat on Monday. “Reuters coverage of Al Gore’s criticism of ExxonMobil’s presence at COP 28 was smothered by greenwashing ads from ExxonMobil. The Punchbowl News political newsletter today is Presented by ExxonMobil.” Yesterday’s Power Switch newsletter from Politico was Presented by ExxonMobil, too.

While the oil giant’s greenwashing may have ramped up around COP, it’s also a years-long affair — aided in large part by many of the same media outlets interviewing Woods at the conference. A major analysis of Big Oil’s advertising between October 2020 and October 2023 found that “many of the world’s most trusted English-language news publications help fossil fuel companies mislead readers about topics like the promise of carbon capture, the potential of ‘renewable biogas,’ and how much the industry contributes to the energy transition,” according to Amy Westervelt and Matthew Green.

The analysis, published by Drilled and DeSmog this week, found that Bloomberg Media Studios last year created a video for Exxon promoting carbon capture and hydrogen; Politico organized 37 e-mail campaigns for Exxon; and Exxon sponsored more than 100 editions of Washington Post newsletters in 2022 alone, as just a few examples.:}:

Ultimately, it’s up to the media, policymakers, and other major institutions to determine whether the oil companies still responsible for fueling climate catastrophe are allowed to have a platform to stand on — or whether, like Big Tobacco, their time to influence the debate about their products’ harm is finally up.

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aha reverse of move goalpost on trump [don't impeach, let cts do it --> no ct let voters decide wash rereat --> widen the net/what counts // escalator

an 8 23 no lnx

Republicans’ 'untethered' Hunter Biden claims demolished by WaPo fact-checker

Alex HendersonAugust 17, 2023

A Washington Post fact check on Thursday took House Republicans to task as right-wing lawmakers "over hype" the House Oversight Committee's investigation into President Joe Biden's son, Hunter Biden.

House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Kentucky) has been leading the Hunter Biden probe in the U.S. House of Representatives. The Post's Glenn Kessler gives Comer and his GOP colleagues an aggressive fact-check in his August 17 column.

"The House Oversight Committee, led by Comer, has been investigating business dealings of President Biden's son, Hunter, and other family members — and by extension, unverified allegations that the president was involved in his son's business as well," Comer explains. "The Committee has obtained thousands of bank records, and the Republican staff has issued three memorandums summarizing some of the findings. The memos are written in a partisan manner — ignoring or playing down contrary information — but an interesting pattern has emerged."

Kessler continues, "The memos themselves have careful language that is often hedged. Then, Comer and other GOP lawmakers, including House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (Calif.), go on Twitter or speak to conservative media using hyperbolic language that goes well beyond what the memos say. Over time, the reporting on the memos in conservative media becomes untethered from the documentation in the reports."

House Republicans, Kessler emphasizes, typically exaggerate the amount of $20 million in payments that went to the Biden family because of Hunter Biden's business activities.

"As for the $20 million in payments," Kessler explains, "Comer and other Republicans invoke this figure often. A close reading of the memos, however, finds that only about $7 million can be directly attributed to Biden family members, mostly Hunter, while the rest went to 'associates,' according to the memos. Yet Comer and other lawmakers misleadingly suggest all of the money went to the Biden family or, as some label it, 'the Biden crime family.' No evidence has emerged that any of these funds can be traced to Joe Biden himself."

Kessler points out that Comer "often suggests that the Biden family used…. so-called shell companies to launder money." But that claim, according to Kessler, is "undercut by the list of 21 companies that appear in" a staff memo.

READ MORE: 'It's like a soap opera': These Republicans are weary of their colleagues' Hunter Biden obsession

The term "shell company," Kessler points out, has a dark connotation. But the companies Hunter Biden headed, he adds, "had legitimate business interests."

"Others had clearly identified business investments," according to Kessler. "Digging through the records, we find only three whose business purpose remains vague. One, Rosemont Seneca Global Risk Services, LLC, may not even be related to Hunter Biden, according to an e-mail found in Hunter Biden's laptop. The memos do not list any payments that flowed through these three companies."

READ MORE: Vivek Ramaswamy implies Hunter Biden is reason behind US aid to Ukraine: report

Glenn Kessler's full column is available at this link (subscription required).

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The Long Crusade of Clarence and Ginni Thomas - The New York ... ›

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ref no lnx

Judicial activist directed fees to Clarence Thomas’s wife, urged ‘no mention of Ginni’

Leonard Leo told GOP pollster Kellyanne Conway to bill nonprofit, then use money to pay spouse of Supreme Court justice

By Emma Brown, Shawn Boburg and Jonathan O'Connell

May 4, 2023

Leonard Leo, a conservative judicial activist, speaks at the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast in D.C. in 2019. (Michael Robinson Chavez/The Washington Post)

Conservative judicial activist Leonard Leo arranged for the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas to be paid tens of thousands of dollars for consulting work just over a decade ago, specifying that her name be left off billing paperwork, according to documents reviewed by The Washington Post.

In January 2012, Leo instructed the GOP pollster Kellyanne Conway to bill a nonprofit group he advises and use that money to pay Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, the documents show. The same year, the nonprofit, the Judicial Education Project, filed a brief to the Supreme Court in a landmark voting rights case.

Leo, a key figure in a network of nonprofits that has worked to support the nominations of conservative judges, told Conway that he wanted her to “give” Ginni Thomas “another $25K,” the documents show. He emphasized that the paperwork should have “No mention of Ginni, of course.”

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Conway’s firm, the Polling Company, sent the Judicial Education Project a $25,000 bill that day. Per Leo’s instructions, it listed the purpose as “Supplement for Constitution Polling and Opinion Consulting,” the documents show.

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In all, according to the documents, the Polling Company paid Thomas’s firm, Liberty Consulting, $80,000 between June 2011 and June 2012, and it expected to pay $20,000 more before the end of 2012. The documents reviewed by The Post do not indicate the precise nature of any work Thomas did for the Judicial Education Project or the Polling Company.

The arrangement reveals that Leo, a longtime Federalist Society leader and friend of the Thomases, has functioned not only as an ideological ally of Clarence Thomas’s but also has worked to provide financial remuneration to his family. And it shows Leo arranging for the money to be drawn from a nonprofit that soon would have an interest before the court.

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In response to questions from The Post, Leo issued a statement defending the Thomases. “It is no secret that Ginni Thomas has a long history of working on issues within the conservative movement, and part of that work has involved gauging public attitudes and sentiment. The work she did here did not involve anything connected with either the Court’s business or with other legal issues,” he wrote. “As an advisor to JEP I have long been supportive of its opinion research relating to limited government, and The Polling Company, along with Ginni Thomas’s help, has been an invaluable resource for gauging public attitudes.”

Of the effort to keep Thomas’s name off paperwork, Leo said: “Knowing how disrespectful, malicious and gossipy people can be, I have always tried to protect the privacy of Justice Thomas and Ginni.”

Leo’s statement did not address questions about whether he had arranged other work for Ginni Thomas or how much money he directed to her in all from the nonprofit.

Conway, who was a senior adviser in the Trump White House, did not respond to messages seeking comment.

Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, on Capitol Hill last year. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

The Thomases did not respond to messages seeking comment. Ginni Thomas, a political activist and former GOP aide on Capitol Hill, has long maintained that she and her husband keep their careers separate.

In December 2012, the Judicial Education Project submitted an amicus brief in Shelby County v. Holder, a case challenging a landmark civil rights law aimed at protecting minority voters. The court struck down a formula in the Voting Rights Act that determined which states had to obtain federal clearance before changing their voting rules and procedures. Clarence Thomas was part of the 5-to-4 majority.

Thomas issued a concurring opinion in the case, arguing that the preclearance requirement itself is unconstitutional. Thomas’s opinion, which was consistent with a previous opinion he wrote, favored the outcome the Judicial Education Project and several other conservative organizations had advocated in theiramicus briefs. He did not cite the Judicial Education Project brief.

Legal ethics experts disagreed about whether the arrangement outlined by Leo and the payments from Conway should have led Thomas to recuse himself from the Shelby case.

Federal law requires justices to recuse if their “impartiality might reasonably be questioned,” a standard that has not been well-defined as applied to filers of amicus briefs, the experts said. Law professor Kathleen Clark of Washington University said that if the Judicial Education Project paid Ginni Thomas $100,000 in the year and a half before it filed its brief, the size and timing of the payments would have been enough to cast doubt on Clarence Thomas’s impartiality and require his recusal. Law professor Stephen Gillers of New York University, however, said that as the rule is now interpreted, the link appeared too “attenuated” to require recusal.

But both experts said the arrangement shows that current ethics rules and disclosure requirements fail to protect public confidence in the independence of the courts. For example, although justices must report the name of companies that pay their spouses, they are not required to report the names of the companies’ clients. In this case, even if there were such a requirement, it is not clear that the Judicial Education Project would have been listed as a client, because the fees intended for Ginni Thomas were to go through Conway.

“The idea that Leonard Leo, who has a passionate ideological interest in how the court rules and who has worked hard for years to advance that interest, could pick up the phone and generate substantial compensation to Virginia Thomas, which also benefits Clarence Thomas — that idea is bad for the country, the court and the rule of law,” Gillers said. “It’s not the way the Supreme Court should do its business or allow its business to be done.”

The effort to keep Ginni Thomas’s name off paperwork makes the arrangement seem “more egregious,” said Clark.

In his statement to The Post, Leo said that Ginni Thomas’s work had no bearing on her husband’s opinions.

“I have known Clarence and Ginni Thomas since 1990. They are dear friends and are people of tremendous good will and integrity. Anybody who thinks that Justice Thomas is influenced in his work by what others say or do, including his wife Ginni, is completely ignorant of who this man is and what he stands for. And anybody who thinks Ginni Thomas would seek to influence the Supreme Court’s work is completely ignorant of the respect she has for her husband and the important role that he and his colleagues play in our society.”

Leonard Leo and the Supreme Court's push to the right

28:51

Conservatives are winning the battle for America’s courts, a triumph decades in the making. This is how they did it. (Video: Dalton Bennett, Jesse Mesner-Hage, Jorge Ribas/The Washington Post)]

Leo, 57, has for years been the behind-the-scenes leader of a network of interlocking nonprofits that has raised and spent hundreds of millions of dollars to support conservative judges and causes. Marble Freedom Trust, one of the organizations Leo chairs, received a contribution worth $1.6 billion in 2020 from a Chicago businessman, Barre Seid.

The Judicial Education Project was part of that network, although Leo was not listed on its tax filings or incorporation records. Leo’s allies founded the Judicial Education Project in 2004. Its mission was to “conduct research and educate the public on the role of the judiciary as laid out in the U.S. Constitution,” according to its tax filings. It secured tax-exempt status in 2011 and was not initially well-funded, filing paperwork with theIRS indicating it brought in less than $50,000 annually.

In 2012, it received about $1.5 million from donors whose identities were not publicly disclosed,the tax filings show. The Judicial Education Project spent $150,000 on “polling” that year, according to its tax filing. The filing does not identify which firm did the work.

The president of the Judicial Education Project that year was Neil Corkery, a Leo ally and bookkeeper for several of his nonprofit groups. Corkery certified on the group’s 2012 tax filing that no one other than the group’s officers or key employees had control over the nonprofit.

Corkery declined to comment.

Clarence Thomas has been under scrutiny since ProPublica revealed in April that Texas billionaire Harlan Crow took him on lavish vacations and also bought from Thomas and his relatives a Georgia home where Thomas’s mother lived; the transaction was not listed on the justice’s annual disclosure forms.

Senate Democrats this week held a hearing focused on Supreme Court ethics. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. declined an invitation to testify, offering instead a statement signed by all the justices in which they reaffirmed their commitment to abide by “foundational ethics principles and practices.”

During the hearing, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) mentioned Leo, who The Post has reported used the nonprofit network during the Trump administration to conduct publicity campaigns in support of nominees he helped select. “This guy doesn’t have business before the court,” Whitehouse said. “His business is the court.”

Leo’s ties to the Thomases go back decades and span their personal and professional lives.

Leo advised Clarence Thomas through his contentious confirmation process in the early 1990s and made Thomas the godfather of one of his children. Leo also has hosted the justice at his New England vacation home, according to the New York Times.

At a Federalist Society event in 2018, Thomas shared a stage with Leo and jokingly told him, “You’re the Number Three most powerful person in the world.”

The year before that, Ginni Thomas called Leo a “mentor to me” and “a hero” when she honored him with one of her Impact awards for conservative activists.

“Leonard Leo has single-handedly changed the face of the judiciary,” she said at the awards dinner, held at what was then the Trump International Hotel in Washington. “He has many hats. That isn’t even all he does. He does not really tell all that he does. But I know enough to know the man is a force of nature.”

In 2009, when Thomas founded a tea party-aligned nonprofit called Liberty Central, Leo served on the board, tax filings show. Corkery was the nonprofit’s accountant, public records show.

Thomas stepped away from Liberty Central in late 2010 amid controversy over whether its anonymous funding — including one donation for $500,000 — posed a potential conflict of interest for her husband. (Politico reported the following year that thedonation had come from Crow.)

She then formed Liberty Consulting, a for-profit firm. On her LinkedIn page, Thomas describes her work as collaborating with “citizen activists, leaders and nonprofits to succeed and have impact in defending the principles that have made America an exceptional nation.”

Liberty Consulting began receiving payments from Conway’s firm within months of its creation in 2011, documents reviewed by The Post show. On multiple occasions, Thomas contacted the Polling Company to discuss her payments, the documents show.

The documents do not indicate whether Thomas knew of Leo’s role in the arrangement with Conway’s company, or of the Judicial Education Project’s role. (Conway sold the company in 2017 to what is now known as CRC Advisors, another firm that Leo chairs.)

Since its first amicus brief, in the voting rights case in 2012, the Judicial Education Project has submitted about a dozen amicus briefs to the Supreme Court. It has argued for limiting or rolling back race-based college admissions policies,regulations on greenhouse-gas emissions and gun-control measures.

In 2014, the group filed a brief in theHobby Lobby case, which challenged a mandate in the Affordable Care Act that employers make contraception available to workers at no cost to the workers. The court’s ruling struck down part of the requirement in a split decision, with Clarence Thomas again in the narrow majority.

:{:{}:

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas at the White House in 2018. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)]

Thomas’s votes were aligned with the Judicial Education Project in six of the cases in which it filed briefs, including the Hobby Lobby case and two involving affirmative action at public universities. Thomas, a longtime critic of affirmative action, voted with the majority to uphold Michigan’s prohibition on race-based admissions at its public universities, and he dissented in a ruling that upheld admissions policies at the University of Texas.

Thomas’s votes did not align with the group’s position in three other cases, including one that largely upheld the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to regulate greenhouse-gas emissions. The court did not take up all the cases in which the Judicial Education Project filed briefs.

The group’s interest in the Supreme Court extended beyond the courtroom. It spent money on campaigns to support President Donald Trump’s nominations of Brett M. Kavanaugh and Neil M. Gorsuch to the Supreme Court. And it is listed as a funder in the credits of a 2020 documentary that celebrated Thomas. Clarence and Ginni Thomasare featured extensively in the documentary, titled “Created Equal: Justice Thomas In His Own Words,” talking about the justice’s upbringing and his judicial philosophy.

As the Judicial Education Project pushed for a conservative court, the group grew into a financial juggernaut and was rebranded as the 85 Fund. Between 2020 and 2021, its revenue nearly doubled from about $66 million to more than $117 million, tax forms show.

Even so, the group has never had more than a handful of employees, tax filings show. It has listed its main office address as a UPS Store situated amid rowhouses and retail stores in the Georgetown neighborhood of D.C.

Alice Crites contributed to this report.

---

an raw 3 23

During a hearing this week, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) was humiliated after promoting a report from the Global Times to justify the end of military aid to Ukraine — only for the witness to point out the Global Times is Chinese state-run media.

But there's a lot more to the story, wrote Aaron Blake for The Washington Post on Tuesday.

"The Trump administration in 2020 designated the Global Times and three other outlets as 'foreign missions' because they are 'effectively controlled by the government of the People’s Republic of China,'" wrote Blake. "'This designation recognizes PRC propaganda outlets as foreign missions and increases transparency relating to the CCP and PRC government’s media activities in the United States,' the State Department said."

"Some media scholars have likened the Global Times to China’s Fox News. The New York Times in 2019 labeled it 'a 24-hour propaganda machine' whose top editor at the time was 'seen as a combative public voice of the administration of President Xi Jinping in an era of more open rivalry with the United States,'" said the report. "Responding to a request for comment from The Washington Post, Gaetz spokesman Joel Valdez said, 'Congressman Gaetz wanted to ask if the report was true. The panelist said it wasn’t true, and that was a good enough answer for him.' He did not address the congressman’s apparent surprise at where his source came from."

The specific article Gaetz was pushing alleged that the Azov Battalion was getting access to U.S. weapons. The Azov Battalion is a militia founded by far-right extremists that was later incorporated into Ukraine's military and separated from its original extremist mission. Russian propagandists have long used the existence of the group to claim, baselessly, that the entire Ukrainian government is run by neo-Nazis, one of the public justifications used by Vladimir Putin for the invasion of the country.

The Global Times article cites a 2018 blog post to support the idea the U.S. is training the Azov fighters — but there is no firm evidence to support this.

"The Global Times article goes on to cite various experts accusing the United States of 'inciting conflicts between Ukraine and Russia” and “being very much conniving with the neo-Nazi forces' in Eastern Europe," wrote Blake. "It cites the United States and Ukraine having voted against a United Nations resolution on 'combating the glorification of' Nazism and neo-Nazism. But it does not explain that this is a resolution frequently pushed by Russia, which many European countries abstain from voting on. The United States has repeatedly said the resolution calls for 'unacceptable limits on the fundamental freedom of expression' and that it’s a thinly veiled political attack on Ukraine and even a pretext for Russia’s invasion."

---

an 23 23

Republican Donald Trump is the first former president in United States history to run for office again despite having been impeached twice and despite facing a variety of criminal and civil investigations when he officially announced his campaign. The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and Fulton County, Georgia District Attorney Fani Willis are simultaneously investigating Trump's actions after the 2020 U.S. presidential election.

In a March 1 column, Never Trumper and Washington Post opinion writer Jennifer Rubin stresses that Trump isn't the only Republican who deserves accountability for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results. Trump's "enablers," she writes, must also face consequences for the former president's "assault on our democracy."

"There's never would have gotten far, or even off the ground, without the participation of right-wing media executives, lawyers and pliant state officials," Rubin argues. "Without holding these enablers accountable, democracy and the rule of law will remain at risk."

Rubin goes on to cite some specific examples of Trump allies facing consequences but writes that there needs to be a lot more of them.

"Progress has already been made," Rubin observes. "John Eastman, the architect of the coup plot, faces disciplinary charges from the California state bar. The D.C. bar has similarly filed ethics charges against Jeffrey Clark, the former Justice Department official whom Trump attempted to appoint as acting attorney general. And Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani has been suspended from the New York bar."

Rubin calls for "discipline" for any pro-Trump attorneys "who played a part in the coup attempt" of late 2020 and early 2021.

"(Pro-Trump lawyers) filed more than 60 bogus challenges to the 2020 election on behalf of the Trump campaign; devised the phony elector scheme; and assisted Trump in attempting to strong-arm state election officials," Rubin notes. "For the sake of accountability and to deter other lawyers from similar efforts in the future, those involved must be disciplined. If they committed crimes, they must be prosecuted."

Read Jennifer Rubin's full Washington Post column at this link (subscription required).

---

TWO BAK PARTIAL

apparently not Joe and Greta's fault?!:

no lnx twt

These 5 ‘deeply malevolent’ things that Trump did to hurt Ukraine must not be forgotten: journalist

Alex Henderson March 01, 2022

With Ukraine now being invaded by Russian troops on orders from President Vladimir Putin, MAGA messaging on the crisis has ranged from praising Putin to blaming President Joe Biden for the crisis. One of the most ludicrous MAGA talking points is that Putin wouldn’t have invaded Ukraine if Trump were still president.But liberal Washington Post opinion writer Greg Sargent,in a scathing column/listicle published on March 1, stresses that the things Trump did to hurt Ukraine and President Volodymyr Zelensky when he was president must not be forgotten.

“With the Russian invasion of Ukraine getting more horrific,” Sargent writes, “Donald Trump and his allies are frantically erasing the truth about Trump’s relations with Ukraine. Trump absurdly claims that as president, he stood strong behind Ukraine and NATO, even as his spinners comically downplay his corrupt and deeply malevolent betrayal of our ally.”

Sargent continues, “The obvious rejoinder to this spin is that Trump got impeached for withholding military aid to strong-arm Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky into manufacturing propaganda to help Trump’s reelection. This came even as Zelensky pleaded for help against Russian aggression, which the world is now witnessing unfold in all its horror.”

The columnist notes that when Trump was president, he repeatedly “aligned our interests with those of Russian President Vladimir Putin and against those of Ukraine, NATO and the West.” And Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman agrees. Vindman, who testified during House Democrats’ impeachment inquiry against Trump in November 2019, told Sargent, “Trump acted against U.S. interests with the consequence of aiding Russian interests.”

Sargent goes on to list and describe five examples of Trump doing things to hurt Ukraine. Trump, Sargent recalls: (1) “spread propaganda about Ukrainian interference in the 2016 election,” (2) “ousted the well-regarded U.S. ambassador to Ukraine,” Marie Yovanovitch, (3) “froze military assistance to Ukraine,” (4) “withheld a White House meeting from Zelensky,” and (5) “turned Ukraine policy over to (Rudy) Giuliani.”

“All this has important forward-looking implications, now that Trump may run for president again,” Sargent explains. “As president in 2025, he’d be stewarding relations with Russia, Ukraine and NATO, but after this war has unfolded. Right now, we’re seeing extraordinary unity among the United States and its allies as it imposes harsh sanctions on Russia and otherwise tries to dissuade Putin’s invasion. Trump would almost surely rupture that.”

Vindman, during his interview with Sargent, warned that it will be great for Putin if Trump becomes president again.

“With Trump as president in 2025,” Vindman told Sargent, “we’re quite likely looking at a world in which Russia may have achieved its objectives and folded Ukraine back into its sphere of influence.”

---

3 22

Fact checker shreds Trump Jr.'s claim about 6 million military hours being spent promoting the 'woke' agenda

Donald Trump, Jr. speaking at the 2019 Teen Student Action Summit, hosted by Turning Point USA at the Marriott Marquis in Washington, D.C., Gage Skidmore

Meaghan Ellis March 03, 2022

A fact-checker is pushing back against Don Trump Jr.'s latest claim suggesting the military's last 6 million hours have placed an emphasis on the so-called "woke" agenda.

The Washington Post's Glenn Kessler highlighted remarks made by former President Donald Trump's son when he appeared at theConservative Political Action Conference in Orlando, Fla. At one point during his speech, he criticized the U.S. military.

“Our generals, the great woke leaders of our military that spent 6 million man-hours training our troops about wokeness — not fighting, not killing bad guys," Trump Jr., said on February 27. "They wanted to learn about White rage, a term none of us had heard of prior to him [Army Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff] testifying, right?”

[Donald Trump Jr. Bashes Biden Over Ukraine Crisis In Fiery CPAC 2022 Remarks | Full Speech

youtu.be]

Kessler pushed back with the facts about the military's hours spent. He noted that Trump Jr.'s remarks would only make sense to conservatives who rely on information from far-right influential platforms like Fox News and Newsmax. He went on to explain why.

After tracking down the six million figure, Kessler acknowledged that it derives from a letter written by Milley that was addressed to Sen. James M. Inhofe (Okla.), who is a high-ranking Republican official serving on the Senate Armed Services Committee. At the time, Inhofe had requested to know how much time had been dedicated to three key items as under the U.S. Department of Justice requirements. Those items, according to Kessler, are "an extremism 'stand-down' related to the Jan. 6 attacks on the Capitol, a climate change plan and a new diversity, equity and inclusion training program."

Although Trump Jr. claimed the military had spent a substantial amount of its time on the woke agenda,Kessler pointed out that they actually placed an emphasis on mitigating extremism.

"The biggest chunk of time was devoted to the extremism stand-down — nearly 5.4 million hours," Kessler explained. "Since nearly 2.5 million members of the military participated, that means about two hours per person, which Milley noted is “comparable to other Joint Force periodic training requirements.” The climate change plan (1,059 hours) and diversity training (529,711 hours) brought the total up to 5.9 million hours. But you can see that more than 90 percent of the total related to the extremism course."

Kessler also highlighted Trump Jr.'s attempt to bend words.

"Notice the sneaky trick that Trump Jr. plays here," he wrote.

The vast majority of the “6 million man-hours” and the “White rage” comment concerned the attack on the Capitol by supporters of his father — an attack that the former president has defended and even seemed to celebrate. But his son does not make that clear. Instead, he claims that this is all about a “woke agenda” imposed by the Biden administration. To some extent that might be a matter of opinion, but it seems like a real stretch."

He concluded saying that although the 6 figure number is an actual estimate of real-time hours, "there is no evidence that this relatively minor course detracted from any military training — and Trump Jr. entirely mischaracterizes what the training was for."

---

https://www.alternet.org/2022/01/ron-desantis-2656462349/

wapo crit him

---

amplify: paper cites congrats from trump:

tenn star

...[no grafic]

“Thank you and congratulations to Laura Baigert of the Georgia Star News on the incredible reporting you have done. Keep going! The scam is all unraveling fast!” President Trump said of her reporting.

Recently, Baigert has been investigating the process of the November 2020 election throughout the state of Georgia. She has uncovered several concerning actions relating the handling of absentee ballots, specifically in Fulton County — a population center of Georgia.

According to her reporting, several months after the November 2020 election and afterfailing on two occasions to produce a complete chain of custody documents for absentee ballot drop boxes, the Fulton County Registration and an Elections official said that they “needed more time” to produce the documents.

Due to her efforts in uncovering the questionable actions, a Fulton County election official told The Star News that “a few forms are missing” and that “some procedural paperwork may have been misplaced.”

However, her analysis demonstrated that drop box ballot transfer forms for absentee ballots deposited in drop boxes provided by Fulton County in response to an Open Records Request [by?] showed that 385 transfer forms out of an estimated 1,565 transfer forms Fulton County said should have been provided are missing – a number that is significantly greater than “a few” by any objective standard. According to a spreadsheet provided by Fulton County, 18,901 absentee ballots that should have been tracked in these 385 missing forms now have no chain of custody documentation.

Many officials have demonstrated concerns over the security of the election in Georgia and other states. President Trump has repeatedly encouraged Republicans to enhance election security measures.

The concerns across the state inspired officials in Georgia to pass new election laws, meant to strengthen the integrity of the election process.

Cooper Moran is a reporter for the Star News Network. Follow Cooper on Twitter. Email tips to cooperreports@gmail.com

---

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/06/22/trumps-baseless-claim-about-ballot-drop-boxes-fulton-county-ga/

debunk fact check 4 pinoccios:

no lnx

wapo

Salvador Rizzo

Reporter

June 22, 2021 at 12:00 a.m. PDT

“Thank you and congratulations to Laura Baigert of the Georgia Star News on the incredible reporting you have done. Keep going! The scam is all unraveling fast.”

— Former president Donald Trump, in a statement, June 17

False and misleading claims that cast doubt on Georgia’s 2020 election results continue to pop up seven months after the vote, and Trump keeps promoting them.

---

an 521 R Reich

At the risk of being the skunk at the picnic, I feel compelled to warn you that if we forget and move on from the tragedies of this past year, we're setting ourselves on a dangerous path. Of course I understand the desire to forget all the unpleasantness and start a new chapter. But if we do, we're inviting greater tragedies in the future.

Let me remind you: Donald Trump lied about the results of the last election. And then – you remember, don't you? – he tried to overturn the results.

Trump twisted the arms of state election officials. He held a rally to stop Congress from certifying the election, followed by the violent attack on the Capitol. Five people died. Senators and representatives could have been slaughtered.

Several Republican members of Congress encouraged the attempted coup by joining him in the big lie and refusing to certify the election — even after the mob desecrated the halls of our democracy.

This was in January of this year, yet we seem to be doing everything we can to blot it out of our memory. Meanwhile, those responsible for instigating the attack haven't been held accountable in any respect — including by the media.

The Washington Post hosted a live video chat with Missouri Republican senator Josh Hawley, a ringleader in the attempt to overturn the results of the election. Hawley had even made a fist-pump gesture toward the mob at the Capitol before the attack.

But the Post billed the interview as being about Hawley's new book on big tech. It even posted a biography of Hawley that made no mention of Hawley's sedition,referring instead to his supposed reputation "for taking on the big and the powerful to protect Missouri workers" and as "a fierce defender of the Constitution."

CBS This Morning interviewed Florida Republican Rick Scott, another senator who tried to overturn the election by not certifying the results. But there was no mention of his sedition, either. The CBS interviewer confined his questions to Biden's spending plans, which Scott unsurprisingly opposed.

Senators Ted Cruz and Ron Johnson and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy also repeatedly appear on major news programs without being questioned about their attempts to undo the results of the election, or their continued promotion of Trump's lies.

The media is supposed to serve as a crucial check on those in power. But in its breathless desire to cover the "news" it is failing to remind us of our recent past.

The consequences of this failure are dire.

Trump's big lie that the 2020 election was stolen, and that President Biden is not legitimate, is not disappearing. A majority of Republican voters believe him.

That big lie is being used by Republican state legislatures to justify an all-out assault on the right to vote.

Hours after Florida enacted new voting restrictions, Texas's Republican-led legislature pushed ahead with its own bill that would make it one of the hardest states in which to cast a ballot.

The Republican-controlled Arizona Senate launched a private recount of the 2020 presidential election results in Maricopa County – farming out 2.1 million ballots to GOP partisans with no experience in ballot counting or election monitoring. At least one person involved in the recount participated in the Capitol attack.

The Republican Party even purged one of its leaders, Wyoming representative Liz Cheney, for telling the truth about the election.

Meanwhile, Republican state legislatures are muscling their way into election administration, as they attempt to dislodge or bully local election officials who have always run our voting systems.

Trump's big lie will continue to flourish unless the lawmakers who went along with it and have failed to renounce it face real consequences.

That means no book promotions, no cushy interviews, no guest op-eds in the Sunday paper.

What possible excuse is there for booking them if they have not publicly retracted their election lies? If they must appear, they should be asked if they continue to deny the election results and precisely why.

It also means a thorough independent 9-11 type inquiry into what happened, whether members of Congress were involved, how Donald Trump and others were involved.

Republican leaders must not duck this. History is watching.

They must be held accountable to the truth. Otherwise the trauma of 2020 will return — perhaps in even more terrifying form.

---

julie h fair

an 121

the media seem to have finally found the line they won't abide crossing. After both sides–ing the political situation for four years of Donald Trump, the storming of the Capitol by an armed rebellion incited by Trump himself has brought out swift and strong words [wapo op ed pix

...always bear the stigma of having contributed to the day's shameful events."

"Trump Caused the Assault on the Capitol. He Must Be Removed," declared the Washington Post editorial board (1/6/21). "Responsibility for this act of sedition lies squarely with the president, who has shown that his continued tenure in office poses a grave threat to US democracy," they wrote. "He should be removed." They continued:

The president is unfit to remain in office for the next 14 days. Every second he retains the vast powers of the presidency is a threat to public order and national security. Vice President Pence, who had to be whisked off the Senate floor for his own protection, should immediately gather the Cabinet to invoke the 25th Amendment, declaring that Mr. Trump is "unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office."

The Post deplored GOP lawmakers like Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley who continued to press their baseless attempt to overturn the election, and praised Mitch McConnell, who "to his lasting credit" did not join them, even if, as they noted, "almost all" GOP members "bear some blame for what occurred on Wednesday." The Republicans, the paper wrote, have an "overriding responsibility to the nation: stopping Mr. Trump and restoring faith in democracy."

It's a surprisingly forceful position. At the same time, imagine if the paper—and the rest of the establishment media—had taken the GOP's threat to democracy seriously before it reached the point of the president inciting an armed insurrection on Capitol Hill.Yesterday's events were the logical outcome of years of the GOP and Trump casting aside institutional rules and norms one by one with increasing boldness, as the press corps described this increasingly authoritarian behavior as "us[ing] all of the levers of his power" (FAIR.org, 10/15/20), and years of giving Trump and his allies space to make their bogus claims of election fraud (FAIR.org, 9/15/20). The media's long history of both sides–ing the issue of purported election fraud (Extra!, 11–12/08, 10/12; CounterSpin, 10/21/16) paved the way for Trump's mythology that has seduced a breathtakingly—and dangerously—large proportion of the public.

Imagine if corporate media didn't praise McConnell, Lindsey Graham or any other Republicans who propped up Trump's dangerous lies for so long, for finally turning on him. Do they really believe we could have gotten to this point if McConnell and the rest of the party hadn't gone along with Trump's dangerously escalating lies–not just for the last several weeks, but for the last four years? If you keep your foot on the gas as the car speeds toward a cliff, but jump out a few seconds before you reach the edge, do you really deserve "lasting credit" for that?

The real test of corporate media will be not whether they are able to forcefully condemn a president's seditious acts, but whether they go back to business as usual after Trump is gone, pretending that the GOP, a disturbing number of whose members in Congress still pushed to overturn the election after the armed insurrection, is a democratic party that can be counted on to restore faith in democracy. [pix op ed]

new York Times (1/5/20): "More than 150 Republican lawmakers have signed on to reject the votes of tens of millions of Americans."

The Times editorial board, while silent so far after the events of yesterday, did publish a fairly benign opinion the day before ("Trump Still Says He Won. What Happens Next?"—1/5/20), whose optimism clearly didn't take seriously the extensive planning underway in broad daylight on right-wing websites: "The Republican effort to derail Congress's electoral vote count on Wednesday will fail, and President-elect Joe Biden will be sworn in at noon on January 20, as the Constitution commands."

The Times could only muster the courage to say that "there is a strong argument" for impeachment (linking to an op-ed they published on January 4) without actually making that argument themselves;the piece concluded by praising Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger for resisting Trump's corrupt attempts at overturning the election results, and lamenting, "If only that weren't extraordinary in the Republican Party today."

What's missing so far is a mea culpa from the media for its own role in normalizing the GOP's long-term efforts to drag this country toward authoritarian rule—and their cynical enjoyment of the ratings bonanza provided by the enthralling spectacle of Trump's assault on democracy (FAIR.org, 3/1/16). Instead, we have the editor of Columbia Journalism Review (11/4/20) castigating the press for spending too much time in the past four years on Trump's "infinite faults," and not enough trying to understand Trump supporters (FAIR.org, 11/16/20).

Kudos to the Washington Post for finally calling for a political reckoning. Now it's time for you to call for a media reckoning.

---

In March, a report by the Climate Investigations Center tallied $1.4 billion worth of public relations, advertising, and communications contracts signed by energy and business trade associations from 2008 to 2017. One organization, the American Petroleum Institute (API), accounted for nearly half of that sum.

The Evolution of Fossil Fuel Messaging — and Climate Science Denial

Amid the investigations into their communications on climate change, many fossil fuel companies have been slowly re-tooling their messaging.

Some have acknowledged a need to transition away from fossil fuels — but at what critics respond would be a very slow pace.

Others have continued to push natural gas as a climate-friendly fossil fuel, despite the industry’s severe climate-changing methane problems. API,for example, hasplaced adsclaiming natural gas can “help meet the growing global demand for sustainable energy” under the Washington Post’s “branded content platform,” as The Intercept’s Sharon Lerner reported in April.

Other campaigns ditch mention of climate change and pollution all together, instead focusing on the benefits of products made from fossil fuels.

During the Super Bowl in 2017, the American Petroleum Institute released an ad campaign called Power Past Impossible, touting the many uses of oil and natural gas and highlighting how dependent modern life is on the byproducts of these fossil fuels.

“Oil majors are projecting themselves as key players in the energy transition while lobbying to delay, weaken, or oppose meaningful climate policy,” Edward Collins of the UK-based think tank InfluenceMap said in a March statement accompanying a report he authored on public relations campaigns by oil and gas giants. “They advocate gradual implementation of market-based and technological climate solutions, but the latest [United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] report makes clear that urgent policy action and limitations on fossil fuel use are needed to avoid dangerous climate change.”

The shift doesn’t spell the end of climate science denial — DeSmog’s database of individuals and organizations that seek to cast doubt on climate science or oppose action to prevent some of the worst effects of warming the world includes roughly 225 organizations — and that list continues to grow.

---

https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/new-report-shows-how-trump-businesses-took-money-from-the-government-even-while-they-closed-down/

when Donald Trump was running for president in 2016, he insisted that if he won the election, there would be a strict separation between the federal government and his business interests — that he would be “completely isolating” himself from his businesses. But according to Washington Post reporters David A. Fahrenthold and Josh Dawsey, the president’s high-end properties have “charged the U.S. government more than $1.1 million in private transactions since Trump took office” in January 2017.

Documents showing $1.1 million in charges, Fahrenthold and Dawsey report in the Post, were released by the U.S. Secret Service after the Post filed a public-records lawsuit. Those documents included receipts and invoices from Trump’s businesses, and the Post reporters note that “$188,000 in previously unknown charges” increases the Post’s “running total of payments to Trump’s properties related to the presence of Secret Service agents.”

One of those businesses is the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey, which “charged the Secret Service more than $21,800 to rent a cottage and other rooms” while it was closed to the public because of the coronavirus pandemic. President Trump, according to Fahrenthold and Dawsey, did not visit his Bedminster property while it was “closed and otherwise off limits to guests,” but his daughter, White House Senior Adviser Ivanka Trump, reportedly did.

Fahrenthold and Dawsey explain, “The family visited the club in April to celebrate Passover, a period that overlaps with several of the largest Secret Service charges. At the time, both the District of Columbia — where Ivanka Trump lives — and New Jersey had imposed ‘stay-at-home’ orders, telling residents to avoid travel except under limited circumstances." the Post reporters, however, note that the Secret Service does not appear to have violated New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy’s stay-at-home order, which employees of the federal government were exempt from.

Lisa Gilbert, executive vice president of the government watchdog group Public Citizen, finds it “appalling” that Trump’s businesses are profiting at the expense of taxpayers — especially in light of the toll that the coronavirus pandemic has taken on state budgets.

Gilbert told the Post, “The waste inherent in this is appalling…. They’re nickel-and-diming the American people at a moment when every penny counts.”

The Fahrenthold/Dawsey article published on Thursday isn’t the first time the Post has reported on the Bedminster business making money from taxpayers, but the Post reporters point out that “the new documents show that the rentals lasted much longer than previously known. Instead of lasting only for the summer months, when Trump usually visited, the rentals stretched from May to the end of October, the new documents show.”

According to a former Trump official, the Secret Service chose to rent out rooms for six months at a time because the president did not announce his travel schedule far in advance. That source, presumably interviewed on condition of anonymity, told the Post, “We always had space reserved at Bedminster weeks before the president arrived, just in case. If he came in the Oval on, let’s say, on a Wednesday, and said, ‘I want to go this weekend,’ you have to be ready.”

---

to be fair, WH sez will colect and pt out inaccuracies, which is SOP fair, but they haven't yet?

https://www.alternet.org/2020/08/white-house-threatens-journalist-with-a-dossier-over-report-exposing-trumps-self-dealing/

no lnx twt

white House threatens journalist with a ‘dossier’ over report exposing Trump’s self-dealing

Written by Alex Henderson August 27, 2020

During his 2016 campaign, Donald Trump promised that he would “completely isolate” himself from the Trump Organization if elected president. But the Washington Post and other media outlets have done a great deal of reporting on the many ways in which Trump’s properties — from Mar-a-Lago in South Florida to his hotels and golf resorts around the world — have profited from his presidency. Some of that reporting can be found in an article that was written by reporters David A. Fahrenthold, Josh Dawsey and Joshua Partlow and published by the Post on Thursday morning, and one of the article’s revelations is thata White House spokesman resented the Post’s investigation so much that he was willing to threaten Fahrenthold with a “dossier.”

In a written statement to the Post, the journalists report, Deere said: “The Washington Post is blatantly interfering with the business relationships of the Trump Organization, and it must stop. Please be advised that we are building up a very large ‘dossier’ on the many false David Fahrenthold and others stories as they are a disgrace to journalism and the American people.”

In that statement, Deere insisted that Trump has “turned over the day-to-day responsibilities of running the company, though he was not required to, (and) has sacrificed billions of dollars.” But Fahrenthold, Dawsey and Partlow, in their article, make it abundantly clear how much Trump’s businesses have profited from Trump’s presidency.

“Trump has now visited his own properties 270 times as president, according to a Washington Post tally — with another visit planned for Thursday, when he is scheduled to meet GOP donors at his Washington hotel,” the Post reporters explain. “Through these trips, Trump has brought the Trump Organization a stream of private revenue from federal agencies and GOP campaign groups. Federal spending records show that taxpayers have paid Trump’s businesses more than $900,000 since he took office. At least $570,000 came as a result of the president’s travel, according to a Post analysis.”

One of the Trump Organization’s profitable customers, according to Fahrenthold, Dawsey and Partlow, has been the U.S. Secret Service.

“New federal spending documents obtained by the Post via a public-records lawsuit give more detail about how the Trump Organization charged the Secret Service — a kind of captive customer, required to follow Trump everywhere,” the reporters note. “In addition to the rentals at Mar-a-Lago, the documents show that the Trump Organization charged daily ‘resort fees’ to Secret Service agents guarding Vice President Pence in Las Vegas and, in another instance, asked agents to pay a $1300 ‘furniture removal charge’ during a presidential visit to a Trump resort in Scotland.”

The Post journalists observe that Trump can cause his businesses to profit — at the expense of U.S. taxpayers — merely by setting foot in them.

“The most frequent way Trump is known to have helped his properties has been just to visit them, with the vast, big-spending presidential entourage in tow,” they explain.

Noah Bookbinder, executive director of the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, told the Post, “One would think that if he was trying to completely isolate himself from his businesses, he wouldn’t talk about his business — he wouldn’t promote his business, he wouldn’t go to his businesses…. (But) his businesses have been a constant presence in his presidency. No, the idea that he was going to isolate himself completely — it’s been quite the opposite.”

---

an720

President Donald Trump’s fundraising operation paid about $400,000 to the Trump International Hotel in Washington in the second quarter, an analysis by a researcher at the Center for Responsive Politics revealed.

The Trump Victory Committee, a joint fundraising operation between Trump’s campaign and the Republican National Committee, spent about $400,000 at Trump’s hotel between April and June, according to CPR researcher Anna Massoglia.

Trump’s fundraising operation has steered “over $3 million in donations from presidential campaign donors to Trump family, properties & businesses with his 2020 re-election campaign & Trump MAGA joint fundraising [committee],” Massoglia wrote on Twitter. “$17.4M+ counting 2016."

[twt doc]

the Trump Victory Committee previously spent more than $250,000 at the Washington hotel in the second quarter of 2019, according to an analysis by 1100 Pennsylvania. The hotel has received more than $1.1 million in total from Trump Victory, the RNC, Vice President Mike Pence’s Great American Committee and Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s Protect the House committee.

Trump campaign spending has been a boon for his private company, from which he has refused to divest. By last fall, political spending by Trump’s campaign committees and his allies at Trump properties topped $20 million, according to CPR data.

Trump’s presidency, which he kicked off by dropping $1 million to book a ballroom at his own hotel ahead of his inauguration, has also resulted in new cash flow for the company.

The Washington Post’s David Fahrenthold has tracked about $970,000 in taxpayer spending at Trump’s properties since he took office, though that number only scratches the surface. Both the administration and the Trump Organization have gone to great lengths to conceal how much taxpayer money is spent at the properties.

Eric Trump, the executive vice president of the Trump Organization, claimed last year that the administration relied on the president’s properties to save taxpayers money.

Secret Service agents “stay at our properties for free — meaning, like, cost for housekeeping,” he insisted. “We charge them, like, 50 bucks.”

But receipts obtained by The Post show that the Trump Organization jacked up the prices when Secret Service agents stayed at the property on the taxpayers’ dime. The Trump Organization charges Secret Service an average of $396 per night, or abouteight times more than Eric Trump’s claim.

Fahrenthold wrote on Twitter that he has found “exactly zero cases where Trump Org did what they promised.”

“They always charged more,” the reporter added.

Newly-released Federal Election Commission filings cast more light on the donors that powered Trump to a $262 million haul between his campaign committees and the party committees in the second quarter.

Top donors to the Trump Victory Committee included Marvel CEO Isaac Perlmutter and his wife Laura, as well as Jet Support Services CEO Robert Book and his wife Amy. Both couples gave more than $1.1 million combined.

Other top donors include oil tycoon Douglas Scharbauer ($580,000), prominent Scientologist Trish Duggan ($580,000) and Ross Perot Jr. ($575,000).

“Trump Supporters, that money he told he desperately needed to help him get re-elected went right in his pocket,” actor and activist Jon Cryer tweeted in response to the spending at the Washington hotel.

“Who knew,” tweeted radio host David Pakman, “running for president could be so profitable.”

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authoritarian

https://www.alternet.org/2020/05/trump-goes-ballistic-over-twitters-fact-check-but-he-has-no-idea-what-hes-talking-about

That didn’t take long.

Around 5:30 PM Twitter slapped a label on two of President Donald Trump’s tweets, inviting social media users to “get the facts about mail-in ballot.” It’s the first time Twitter has placed what some are calling a “warning label” on any individual tweet.

And while others say it’s not sufficient – Trump lies remain and the label isn’t especially strong – Trump went ballistic just two hours later.

Despite the fact that Trump was engaging in voter suppression, he is accusing Twitter of “interfering in the 2020 Presidential Election."

'They are saying my statement on Mail-In Ballots, which will lead to massive corruption and fraud, is incorrect, based on fact-checking by Fake News CNN and the Amazon Washington Post.”

Actually, his tweets are filled with lies and falsehoods, no fact-checking required.

But Trump did not stop there.

In yet another example of his belief that he is all powerful, Trump decreed, “Twitter is completely stifling FREE SPEECH, and I, as President, will not allow it to happen!”

The President, who has never read the U.S. Constitution and little to no understanding of it, does not comprehend that he is using a private platform operated by a private company, and the only “free speech” guarantee is when the government “stifles” it.

Twitter can do what they want. And they have.

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