Nader: 'Why should Bernie Sanders drop out?'
By NICK GASS
Bernie Sanders should not drop out of the Democratic race, former Green Party presidential nominee Ralph Nader said Thursday, in an interview in which he reiterated his disdain for the notion that his 2000 presidential bid cost Al Gore the presidency.
"But why should Bernie Sanders drop out? There could be a scandal with Hillary Clinton. Those transcripts and closed door meetings with the big bankers and other corporations could be released," the consumer advocate told CNN in a telephone interview, referring to the Democratic front-runner's refusal to release the transcripts of her paid speeches to large financial institutions.
Nader also noted that the superdelegates currently pledged to Clinton are not bound.
"He made a good point, Bernie, when he said he wants to go all the way to the convention so everyone — ending up in California, every voter can have a right to vote for the candidate of their choice," Nader said, before turning his fire on Donald Trump.
Trump, he said, should release his income tax returns.
"He keeps saying he's working on it, he's working on it, but he has no intention ever disclosing the fraud that he's not worth what he is, that he doesn't give money to philanthropy, that he has very shady dealings in his business practices," Nader said. Trump has said he will not release those returns while they are being audited and has declined to release returns from years not under audit.
"So let's focus on the colossus of ignorance as somebody called Donald Trump," Nader continued.
Nader also said he did not think Sanders should or even would run as an independent candidate.
"Well, he's said repeatedly he's going to support the Democratic nominee, whoever the Democratic nominee is, and he's a believable person," Nader commented. "He doesn't dissemble. So that takes care of that. Apart from the fact it's getting very late to get on all the ballots. It's almost impossible now even if he wanted to do it."
As far as what he would do in Sanders' position, Nader demurred, again taking a shot at Trump.
"Well, I would never have run in the Democratic Party, so that's a question I cannot answer. He ran in the Democratic Party and he's doing very, very well. In fact, if independent voters could vote in those primaries this last Tuesday, he would have won them all," he said, echoing a line from the Sanders campaign. "He won Rhode Island because independent candidates [sic] could vote in the Democratic primary. So he really is ahead in the polls against Trump, ahead of Hillary against Trump, and by the way, Trump is not a sure thing. He's got a lot of vulnerabilities, and he can't keep his mouth shut to the delight of the ratings of CNN and Fox News."
April 28, 2016
Micromanaging
Ash Carter charges Congress is micromanaging Syria fight
By AUSTIN WRIGHT
Congress is using its power of the purse to micromanage the U.S. war plan in Syria in ways that risk “inhibiting results," Defense Secretary Ash Carter charged Thursday before the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Chairman John McCain’s retort: Congressional oversight is necessary given the failure of a previous effort to train and equip Syrian rebels that resulted in just four or five trained fighters willing to take on the Islamic State.
“When we spent several hundred million dollars the last time, the commander of Central Command testified before this committee that we had four or five people left,” the Republican senator from Arizona said. He noted that he had predicted the initial train-and-equip program would be an “abysmal failure” because recruits were required to pledge to fight ISIL and not the forces of Syrian President Bashar Assad.
In a fiery hearing, Carter and McCain sparred over the U.S. strategy in Iraq and Syria, with the senator urging the defense secretary to do more to retake the ISIL strongholds of Raqqa and Mosul. He said he wanted a ground force made up mainly of troops from Arab allies to take on the terrorist network.
Carter responded that such a force would be ideal, but that he had no indication from Arab countries that they’d be willing to commit to it.
Instead, the Pentagon chief outlined an updated U.S. approach to training and equipping Syrian rebels. Rather than create a new force, as was attempted in the first iteration of the train-and-equip program, the Pentagon is now seeking to aid existing Syrian rebels already on the ground fighting ISIL.
But Carter said the program was hamstrung by congressional oversight, with lawmakers holding up $349 million in funding. The way the train-and-equip program is set up, he noted, funds can’t be spent without the approval of the four congressional defense panels — the House and Senate Armed Services committees and Defense Appropriations subcommittees.
“We are required to submit reprogramming requests to the four congressional defense committees — and, so far on these funds, we’ve received differing responses, on differing timelines and sometimes with conflicting demands,” Carter said. “As it stands, the current setup invites troubling micromanagement of a wartime effort and risks inhibiting results.”
Carter's plea is the latest development in a months-long standoff with Congress over funding to support "vetted" Syrian rebels.
The congressional defense panels continue holding up the final $49 billion of the $500 million Syria train-and-equip fund approved in the fiscal 2015 budget, plus $300 million in fiscal 2016 funds that the Pentagon requested last month.
By AUSTIN WRIGHT
Congress is using its power of the purse to micromanage the U.S. war plan in Syria in ways that risk “inhibiting results," Defense Secretary Ash Carter charged Thursday before the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Chairman John McCain’s retort: Congressional oversight is necessary given the failure of a previous effort to train and equip Syrian rebels that resulted in just four or five trained fighters willing to take on the Islamic State.
“When we spent several hundred million dollars the last time, the commander of Central Command testified before this committee that we had four or five people left,” the Republican senator from Arizona said. He noted that he had predicted the initial train-and-equip program would be an “abysmal failure” because recruits were required to pledge to fight ISIL and not the forces of Syrian President Bashar Assad.
In a fiery hearing, Carter and McCain sparred over the U.S. strategy in Iraq and Syria, with the senator urging the defense secretary to do more to retake the ISIL strongholds of Raqqa and Mosul. He said he wanted a ground force made up mainly of troops from Arab allies to take on the terrorist network.
Carter responded that such a force would be ideal, but that he had no indication from Arab countries that they’d be willing to commit to it.
Instead, the Pentagon chief outlined an updated U.S. approach to training and equipping Syrian rebels. Rather than create a new force, as was attempted in the first iteration of the train-and-equip program, the Pentagon is now seeking to aid existing Syrian rebels already on the ground fighting ISIL.
But Carter said the program was hamstrung by congressional oversight, with lawmakers holding up $349 million in funding. The way the train-and-equip program is set up, he noted, funds can’t be spent without the approval of the four congressional defense panels — the House and Senate Armed Services committees and Defense Appropriations subcommittees.
“We are required to submit reprogramming requests to the four congressional defense committees — and, so far on these funds, we’ve received differing responses, on differing timelines and sometimes with conflicting demands,” Carter said. “As it stands, the current setup invites troubling micromanagement of a wartime effort and risks inhibiting results.”
Carter's plea is the latest development in a months-long standoff with Congress over funding to support "vetted" Syrian rebels.
The congressional defense panels continue holding up the final $49 billion of the $500 million Syria train-and-equip fund approved in the fiscal 2015 budget, plus $300 million in fiscal 2016 funds that the Pentagon requested last month.
Disapproval
Poll: GOP disapproval highest since 1992
By BRIANNA GURCIULLO
More than 60 percent of the American public has an unfavorable opinion of the Republican Party, an increase from last fall and the highest that the party’s negative rating has been since 1992.
Sixty-two percent of Americans have an unfavorable impression of the GOP compared to 33 percent who view the party favorably, according to a Pew Research Center study released Thursday. That’s a more negative image of the party than in October, when there was a split of 58 percent unfavorable to 37 percent favorable.
American opinion of the Democratic Party, meanwhile, stayed about the same: 45 percent view the party favorably and 50 percent unfavorably. That leaves a quarter of the public with a negative view of both parties, an increase from past presidential election years.
Pew found that the falling image of the GOP mostly came from people who identified as Republican, 68 percent of whom had a favorable view of their own party versus 79 percent in October.
In contrast, 88 percent of Democrats have a favorable view of their own party. And more independents – 37 percent to 28 percent – have a favorable image of the Democratic Party compared to the GOP.
Women, blacks, Hispanics and white college graduates were all more likely to have a favorable view of the Democratic Party.
For the study, Pew surveyed 2,008 people by telephone between April 12 and 19. The overall margin of error is plus or minus 2.5 percentage points.
By BRIANNA GURCIULLO
More than 60 percent of the American public has an unfavorable opinion of the Republican Party, an increase from last fall and the highest that the party’s negative rating has been since 1992.
Sixty-two percent of Americans have an unfavorable impression of the GOP compared to 33 percent who view the party favorably, according to a Pew Research Center study released Thursday. That’s a more negative image of the party than in October, when there was a split of 58 percent unfavorable to 37 percent favorable.
American opinion of the Democratic Party, meanwhile, stayed about the same: 45 percent view the party favorably and 50 percent unfavorably. That leaves a quarter of the public with a negative view of both parties, an increase from past presidential election years.
Pew found that the falling image of the GOP mostly came from people who identified as Republican, 68 percent of whom had a favorable view of their own party versus 79 percent in October.
In contrast, 88 percent of Democrats have a favorable view of their own party. And more independents – 37 percent to 28 percent – have a favorable image of the Democratic Party compared to the GOP.
Women, blacks, Hispanics and white college graduates were all more likely to have a favorable view of the Democratic Party.
For the study, Pew surveyed 2,008 people by telephone between April 12 and 19. The overall margin of error is plus or minus 2.5 percentage points.
Made No Damn Sense
Here Are the Many Ways Trump's Big Foreign Policy Speech Made No Damn Sense
The real estate mogul's explanation of his foreign policy was completely incoherent.
By Max J. Rosenthal
Is the Donald Trump who supports torture and wants the United States to "bomb the shit out of ISIS" a thing of the past? The Republican front-runner certainly wants us to think so.
Trump gave a sedate but completely incoherent speech on foreign policy in Washington, DC, on Wednesday, hoping to burnish his image as the GOP's self-declared "presumptive nominee" and to put his inflammatory foreign policy statements behind him. As he did during his last major foreign policy speech before the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, Trump read from a teleprompter and seemingly tried to give off a calm, statesmanlike appearance.
At the start of the speech, Trump promised he would lay out a foreign policy "that replaces randomness with purpose, ideology with strategy, and chaos with peace." But there is simply no point in trying to pick out a Trump Doctrine or any sort of policy vision from Wednesday's speech. The address was a baffling combination of establishment GOP foreign policy talking points, attacks pulled from Trump's rallies and media appearances, red-meat jabs at President Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, and even an "America First" slogan once used by 1940s Nazi sympathizers to try and keep the United States out of World War II.
So, instead of trying to pick through the mess, here's a list, in no way comprehensive, of the many times Trump contradicted himself while laying out his alleged foreign policy:
* We have to be both stable and completely unpredictable: Trump repeatedly said the United States had "no coherent foreign policy" and needed to again become a stable and dependable ally. How to do that? "We must, as a nation, be more unpredictable."
* China is destroying the United States economically, but we have huge economic leverage over China: Trump loves to attack China, and he once again complained about the United States' large (but shrinking) trade deficit with China that's "letting them take advantage of us economically." But he also claimed that the Obama administration has huge, unspecified financial leverage over China, which isn't being used to make China take a tougher line against North Korea.
* We'll be an incredible ally again. Also, our allies are freeloaders: Trump once again criticized other countries for not spending enough on their own defense. "Our allies are not paying their fair share," he complained, promising to somehow make them boost their defense budgets. He then pledged that America would again be a powerful and respected ally to the same countries he had insulted.
* We can't waste money, but we have to spend a lot more on weapons: "Not one dollar can be wasted," Trump said of the federal budget, blaming much of America's supposed decline on government overspending and debt. He also called for the United States to pump cash into building new weapons to rebuild the American military, demanding hugely expensive and wasteful systems such as new fighter aircraft and warships.
* Weapons are a scourge, but we have to spend a lot more on weapons: "The power of weaponry is the single biggest problem we have today in the world," he said, seemingly forgetting his demand that the United States spend billions of dollars more adding to that very problem.
* We have to work with Muslim allies, but none of them are allowed to come here: Trump promised he would work "very closely with our allies in the Muslim world" to help defeat ISIS and radical Islam. Seconds later, he once again demanded the United States temporarily halt Muslims from entering the United States. "A pause for reassessment will help us prevent the next San Bernardino," he said.
The foreign policy establishment has already reacted with almost universal horror to Trump's rise. A group of more than 75 Republican foreign policy experts blasted Trump in an open letter last month, saying he was "fundamentally dishonest" and "utterly unfitted" to be president. CIA Director John Brennan said he would refuse any orders to resume waterboarding or other acts of torture, which Trump has said he would bring back. Marine Gen. Joe Dunford, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, attacked torture as "inconsistent with the values of our nation" in response to Trump's comments. The Huffington Post this week described panic among current and former military officers at the prospect of a Trump presidency. Wednesday's speech likely won't do anything to change minds.
The real estate mogul's explanation of his foreign policy was completely incoherent.
By Max J. Rosenthal
Is the Donald Trump who supports torture and wants the United States to "bomb the shit out of ISIS" a thing of the past? The Republican front-runner certainly wants us to think so.
Trump gave a sedate but completely incoherent speech on foreign policy in Washington, DC, on Wednesday, hoping to burnish his image as the GOP's self-declared "presumptive nominee" and to put his inflammatory foreign policy statements behind him. As he did during his last major foreign policy speech before the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, Trump read from a teleprompter and seemingly tried to give off a calm, statesmanlike appearance.
At the start of the speech, Trump promised he would lay out a foreign policy "that replaces randomness with purpose, ideology with strategy, and chaos with peace." But there is simply no point in trying to pick out a Trump Doctrine or any sort of policy vision from Wednesday's speech. The address was a baffling combination of establishment GOP foreign policy talking points, attacks pulled from Trump's rallies and media appearances, red-meat jabs at President Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, and even an "America First" slogan once used by 1940s Nazi sympathizers to try and keep the United States out of World War II.
So, instead of trying to pick through the mess, here's a list, in no way comprehensive, of the many times Trump contradicted himself while laying out his alleged foreign policy:
* We have to be both stable and completely unpredictable: Trump repeatedly said the United States had "no coherent foreign policy" and needed to again become a stable and dependable ally. How to do that? "We must, as a nation, be more unpredictable."
* China is destroying the United States economically, but we have huge economic leverage over China: Trump loves to attack China, and he once again complained about the United States' large (but shrinking) trade deficit with China that's "letting them take advantage of us economically." But he also claimed that the Obama administration has huge, unspecified financial leverage over China, which isn't being used to make China take a tougher line against North Korea.
* We'll be an incredible ally again. Also, our allies are freeloaders: Trump once again criticized other countries for not spending enough on their own defense. "Our allies are not paying their fair share," he complained, promising to somehow make them boost their defense budgets. He then pledged that America would again be a powerful and respected ally to the same countries he had insulted.
* We can't waste money, but we have to spend a lot more on weapons: "Not one dollar can be wasted," Trump said of the federal budget, blaming much of America's supposed decline on government overspending and debt. He also called for the United States to pump cash into building new weapons to rebuild the American military, demanding hugely expensive and wasteful systems such as new fighter aircraft and warships.
* Weapons are a scourge, but we have to spend a lot more on weapons: "The power of weaponry is the single biggest problem we have today in the world," he said, seemingly forgetting his demand that the United States spend billions of dollars more adding to that very problem.
* We have to work with Muslim allies, but none of them are allowed to come here: Trump promised he would work "very closely with our allies in the Muslim world" to help defeat ISIS and radical Islam. Seconds later, he once again demanded the United States temporarily halt Muslims from entering the United States. "A pause for reassessment will help us prevent the next San Bernardino," he said.
The foreign policy establishment has already reacted with almost universal horror to Trump's rise. A group of more than 75 Republican foreign policy experts blasted Trump in an open letter last month, saying he was "fundamentally dishonest" and "utterly unfitted" to be president. CIA Director John Brennan said he would refuse any orders to resume waterboarding or other acts of torture, which Trump has said he would bring back. Marine Gen. Joe Dunford, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, attacked torture as "inconsistent with the values of our nation" in response to Trump's comments. The Huffington Post this week described panic among current and former military officers at the prospect of a Trump presidency. Wednesday's speech likely won't do anything to change minds.
Antigua
Caribbean Sea
Antigua Sailing Week is currently underway and in the turquoise waters of the Caribbean Sea dozens of highly strung yachts are duking it out. It’s the 49th time that the regatta has been held with a promise that the big 5.0. next year is going to be a bumper event. If you look at the sailing calendar you will see that there is no shortage of Caribbean regattas from the Les Voiles de St. Barth which just ended, to the BVI Regatta a few weeks ago, but it was Antigua Sailing week that started it all and changed the area from a cruisers paradise to a racers dream.
The event was started, as these things often are, by a bunch of sailors sitting around in a bar wondering how they could extend the winter season in the Caribbean. They figured a regatta would bring people in at time when the season was pretty much over so in 1968 the Antigua Hotel Association sponsored the very first Antigua Sailing Week. Actually the race program called it “a week of sailing, fishing and entertainment in the Caribbean”. I don’t think that they had any idea how successful the event would become and how much it would change the whole Caribbean sailing scene.
When I was there in 1979 the area was called the West Indies and we sailed through the Spice Islands. It was exotic and for a fresh faced kid, an awesome experience. I have recently returned from those waters and it’s no longer a remote cruising ground for hardened escapists; it’s the playground of the rich and famous as well as the extraordinarily rich who flout their wealth with obscene super yachts that spell gluttony and not much else. I guess it’s called progress but I preferred it back when the area was a sleepy backwater and you could bump into Jimmy Buffett in a bar eating a cheeseburger.
Antigua Sailing Week provides some of the best sailing conditions of any regatta in the world. The winter trades, which blow consistently hard, are over replaced by more pleasant sailing conditions. Some say that the weather has changed so much in recent years that flat calm days are becoming the norm, but most of my Antigua experiences have been a steady 15-20 knots out of the east with warm water, smoking hot girls and cold beer. It’s hard not to like the place.
Brian Hancock
Pieties
The End of Pieties
By Rich Lowry
When the Americans defeated the British at Yorktown, the surrendering British forces supposedly played “The World Turned Upside Down.”
The song should be on the soundtrack at Donald Trump rallies. The mogul is marching toward the Republican nomination by trampling every single assumption about presidential politics, especially on the GOP side.
Surely no campaign has ever before had a divisive internal fight over whether the candidate should be presidential or not, with the candidate firmly coming down on the side of “not,” at least for now. But that has reportedly been one of the bones of contention between new Trump hand Paul Manafort and old Trump hand Corey Lewandoski, the contestants in a high-stakes episode of Consultant Apprentice.
Trump is operating on the rather insulting assumption that he can’t act presidential — i.e., with too much dignity — while also attempting to appeal to his Republican voters, and so far he has been proved right. It’s just one of the ways in which he has seemed to understand the party he is seeking to take over better than its longtime loyalists.
It was once thought that a Republican presidential candidate had to pay constant obeisance to Ronald Reagan and hew closely to certain rhetorical tropes and policy truisms. It turns out that the Republican Party — or at least a sizable element of it — isn’t that conservative, and even what were once thought to be the party’s most rigidly ideological guardians in talk radio aren’t really sticklers for conservative doctrine.
It was once thought that any serious presidential candidate had to have political experience and be a committed member of the party he or she sought to lead, or at the very least not openly threaten it. Trump the novice, who re-registered as a Republican only in 2012, has appended the not-so-subtle warning, “or else,” to his candidacy from the beginning.
It was once thought you had to act with some decorum, display respect for others and yourself, avoid vulgarity and public displays of anger, and show discipline and self-control. Trump has made it his business to do the opposite and, even after reining himself in a little since Wisconsin, is still the most outlandish presidential candidate in memory.
We have destroyed manners and chivalry over recent decades — with popular and celebrity culture leading the way — and the left has tried to replace them with political correctness. As a celebrity comfortable in the realms of Howard Stern and the WWE, Trump has little loyalty to the old standards at the same time he (rightly) rejects political correctness. Worse, Trump mistakes basic civility — for instance, not calling women “bimbos” — for political correctness. This is a license for unconstrained boorishness.
And it has played well in the party of evangelicals, of social conservatism, and of disdain for Hollywood and for elite libertinism. Who would have guessed?
Trump has barely made a pretense of religiosity, occasionally hoisting a family Bible aloft and averring that his favorite verse is — naturally — “an eye for eye” (and completely misunderstanding its meaning). Otherwise, he has been incredibly overt in his vindictiveness and braggadocio and shown that almost nothing goes too far for his voters as long as he is inveighing against the right people.
Clearly, what a certain segment of conservatives didn’t like about Mitt Romney wasn’t his pedigree as a Northeastern moderate — which he shares with Trump — so much as his decorousness. Peggy Noonan wrote a book on Reagan called “When Character Was King.” The follow-up for our era could be called “When Character Became a Sign of Weakness.”
The old pieties don’t have the hold they once did, but Trump’s celebrity and unsurpassed media skills have also allowed him to get away with things that more conventional candidates never could. At least with Republican voters. Everyone else is another question. If Trump wins the nomination, he has to hope that swing voters are as enamored of belittling nicknames and brash put-downs (“if Hillary were a man …”) as a plurality of the GOP is, and that the traditional rules of how a president acts and represents the country no longer apply. He will need the world to be turned upside down.
By Rich Lowry
When the Americans defeated the British at Yorktown, the surrendering British forces supposedly played “The World Turned Upside Down.”
The song should be on the soundtrack at Donald Trump rallies. The mogul is marching toward the Republican nomination by trampling every single assumption about presidential politics, especially on the GOP side.
Surely no campaign has ever before had a divisive internal fight over whether the candidate should be presidential or not, with the candidate firmly coming down on the side of “not,” at least for now. But that has reportedly been one of the bones of contention between new Trump hand Paul Manafort and old Trump hand Corey Lewandoski, the contestants in a high-stakes episode of Consultant Apprentice.
Trump is operating on the rather insulting assumption that he can’t act presidential — i.e., with too much dignity — while also attempting to appeal to his Republican voters, and so far he has been proved right. It’s just one of the ways in which he has seemed to understand the party he is seeking to take over better than its longtime loyalists.
It was once thought that a Republican presidential candidate had to pay constant obeisance to Ronald Reagan and hew closely to certain rhetorical tropes and policy truisms. It turns out that the Republican Party — or at least a sizable element of it — isn’t that conservative, and even what were once thought to be the party’s most rigidly ideological guardians in talk radio aren’t really sticklers for conservative doctrine.
It was once thought that any serious presidential candidate had to have political experience and be a committed member of the party he or she sought to lead, or at the very least not openly threaten it. Trump the novice, who re-registered as a Republican only in 2012, has appended the not-so-subtle warning, “or else,” to his candidacy from the beginning.
It was once thought you had to act with some decorum, display respect for others and yourself, avoid vulgarity and public displays of anger, and show discipline and self-control. Trump has made it his business to do the opposite and, even after reining himself in a little since Wisconsin, is still the most outlandish presidential candidate in memory.
We have destroyed manners and chivalry over recent decades — with popular and celebrity culture leading the way — and the left has tried to replace them with political correctness. As a celebrity comfortable in the realms of Howard Stern and the WWE, Trump has little loyalty to the old standards at the same time he (rightly) rejects political correctness. Worse, Trump mistakes basic civility — for instance, not calling women “bimbos” — for political correctness. This is a license for unconstrained boorishness.
And it has played well in the party of evangelicals, of social conservatism, and of disdain for Hollywood and for elite libertinism. Who would have guessed?
Trump has barely made a pretense of religiosity, occasionally hoisting a family Bible aloft and averring that his favorite verse is — naturally — “an eye for eye” (and completely misunderstanding its meaning). Otherwise, he has been incredibly overt in his vindictiveness and braggadocio and shown that almost nothing goes too far for his voters as long as he is inveighing against the right people.
Clearly, what a certain segment of conservatives didn’t like about Mitt Romney wasn’t his pedigree as a Northeastern moderate — which he shares with Trump — so much as his decorousness. Peggy Noonan wrote a book on Reagan called “When Character Was King.” The follow-up for our era could be called “When Character Became a Sign of Weakness.”
The old pieties don’t have the hold they once did, but Trump’s celebrity and unsurpassed media skills have also allowed him to get away with things that more conventional candidates never could. At least with Republican voters. Everyone else is another question. If Trump wins the nomination, he has to hope that swing voters are as enamored of belittling nicknames and brash put-downs (“if Hillary were a man …”) as a plurality of the GOP is, and that the traditional rules of how a president acts and represents the country no longer apply. He will need the world to be turned upside down.
Blame TV
Why I Blame TV for Trump
A former cable host says the industry utterly caved to the candidate.
By Campbell Brown
My friends in the TV news business are in a state of despair about Donald Trump, even as their bosses in the boardroom are giddy over what he’s doing for their once sagging ratings.
“It feels like it’s over,” one old friend from my television days told me recently. Any hope of practicing real journalism on TV is really, finally finished. “Look, we’ve always done a lot of stupid shit to get ratings. But now it’s like we’ve just given up and literally handed over control hoping he’ll save us. It’s pathetic, and I feel like hell.” Said another friend covering the presidential campaign for cable news, “I am swilling antidepressants trying to figure out what to do with my life when this is over.”
I’ve been there, and I sure am sympathetic. When I left cable news in 2010 after 14 years as a correspondent and anchor for NBC News and CNN, this kind of ratings pressure was a big reason why (and I don’t take for granted that I had the luxury of being able to walk away). I was not so interested in night-after-night coverage of Michael Jackson’s death or Britney Spears’ latest breakdown—topics that were “breaking news” at the time. And yes, as my friend reminded me, we did “stupid shit” to get the numbers up when it came to political coverage then, too. (Anyone remember the correspondent’s hologram that appeared on set during CNN’s 2008 election coverage?) But it was nothing like what we’re seeing today.
I really would like to blame Trump. But everything he is doing is with TV news’ full acquiescence. Trump doesn’t force the networks to show his rallies live rather than do real reporting. Nor does he force anyone to accept his phone calls rather than demand that he do a face-to-face interview that would be a greater risk for him. TV news has largely given Trump editorial control. It is driven by a hunger for ratings—and the people who run the networks and the news channels are only too happy to make that Faustian bargain. Which is why you’ll see endless variations of this banner, one I saw all three cable networks put up in a single day: “Breaking news: Trump speaks for first time since Wisconsin loss.” In all these scenes, the TV reporter just stands there, off camera, essentially useless. The order doesn’t need to be stated. It’s understood in the newsroom: Air the Trump rallies live and uninterrupted. He may say something crazy; he often does, and it’s always great television.
This must be such a relief for the TV executives managing a business in decline, suffering from a thousand cuts from social media and other new platforms. Trump arrived on the scene as a kind of manna from hell. I admit I have been surprised by the public candor about this bounty. A “beaming” Jeff Zucker, president of CNN Worldwide, told New York Times media columnist Jim Rutenberg, “These numbers are crazy—crazy.” But if their bosses are frank about the great ratings, some of my friends left at the cable networks are in various degrees of denial. “Give me a break,” one told me. “You can’t put this on us. Reality has changed because of technology. Look at the White House. They’re basically running their own news organization. They bypass us every day. We’re just trying to keep up.”
And then there’s this attempt to put the best face on things, which is the most universal comment I hear: “At least this shows how much we still matter.”
But do we really matter—except as a free-media platform for a presidential candidate who almost every journalist knows could destroy the country if he ever got into the White House?
It’s OK to admit it. The bosses are saying it out loud. Take CBS President and CEO Leslie Moonves on the Trump phenomenon: “It may not be good for America, but it’s damn good for CBS.” This is a statement of the obvious to anyone in TV news. My wonder at it stems from how long we’ve managed to treat this as our dirty little secret, that thing we all know: that what’s damn good for CBS is damn bad for American journalism.
The 800-pound gorillas of TV news are gone. When I was the White House correspondent at NBC and Tom Brokaw was anchor, the reporters were protected. Great TV journalists like Tom had enormous influence; they could and did push back on commercial decisions that affected our coverage. When another one of those powerhouses, Meet the Press host Tim Russert, was alive, he used to tell us: “Beware the pamphleteers.” By that, he meant avoid a story that’s presented to you fully baked. Now that’s impossible; there’s no way to allow TV reporters to apply the filter of their journalism to a story like Trump. And more to the point, there’s little genuine interest in letting them.
We all know how it started. Early on, even before he was the front-runner, TV news was giving Trump far more attention than other candidates and far more than he deserved. The coverage itself has helped create him, and has exposed those systemic weaknesses in television journalism. Based on data from the Internet Archive’s TV News Archive and analysis by Republican pollster Jan van Lohuizen and analytics expert Luke Thompson, Trump gets about six appearances on the major networks for roughly every one his rivals Ted Cruz or John Kasich get. In fact, Trump’s exposure has been three times greater than that of Cruz and Kasich combined. He received 50 percent of the exposure when there were more than a dozen candidates—a percentage that has only grown. Of course, by now, you’ve all also read the figure of close to $2 billion worth of free media the New York Times cited for Trump’s TV bonanza. And that story was back in March. No campaign’s advertising budget can compete.
So yes, I believe Trump’s candidacy is largely a creation of a TV media that wants him, or needs him, to be the central character in this year’s political drama. And it’s not just the network and cable executives driving it. The TV anchors and senior executives who don’t deliver are mercilessly ousted. The ones who do deliver are lavishly rewarded. I know from personal experience that it is common practice for TV anchors to have substantial bonuses written into their contracts if they hit ratings marks. With this 2016 presidential soap opera, they are almost surely hitting those marks. So, we get all Trump, all the time.
It is not just the wall-to-wall coverage of Trump. It’s the openness with which some are reveling in his attention. It’s the effort, conscious or not, to domesticate and pretty him up, to make him appear less offensive than he really is, and to practice a false objectivity or equivalence in the coverage. Here, journalism across all platforms—corporate, as well as publicly funded—is guilty.
Trump is a chronic liar and dissembler; this has been demonstrated beyond any reasonable doubt. He repeatedly makes factual errors, large and small, in his statements. He is also a misogynist, has a cruel streak (including mocking people’s looks and physical disabilities), has condoned physical violence among his supporters and is shockingly ignorant. To ask journalists to pretend otherwise is akin to asking them to have pretended in the 1960s that George Wallace wasn’t a racist or in the 1950s that Joe McCarthy wasn’t a demagogue. Yet when former ABC anchor and National Public Radio’s legendary pioneer Cokie Roberts dared to state the truth, calling Trump “one of the least qualified candidates ever to make a serious run for the presidency,” NPR took pains to distance itself. The vice president for news issued a memo reminding staff that she is just a “commentator,” not a member of NPR’s staff.
It need not be this way. As Trump finally seemed to close in on the nomination this spring, we saw MSNBC’s Chris Matthews and conservative radio host Charlie Sykes really challenge him rather than allow themselves to be props in his act—something Fox News’ Megyn Kelly had been doing for a while, in spite of Trump’s obsessive attacks. The Washington Post editorial board and two New York Times reporters, Maggie Haberman and David Sanger, have used their time with Trump to probe his knowledge of the issues—and expose his ignorance of even basic matters.
They have shown other journalists how, if they don’t cover Trump less, they can at least cover him better. The greatest contribution TV (or any other) journalists can make going forward is to abandon the laziness that too often comes with just playing referee. Use your knowledge and experience to give context; call a misrepresentation just that; and embrace the difference between objective truth and relative truth. You know what it is. Share it. In this campaign, it has never been so important.
A former cable host says the industry utterly caved to the candidate.
By Campbell Brown
My friends in the TV news business are in a state of despair about Donald Trump, even as their bosses in the boardroom are giddy over what he’s doing for their once sagging ratings.
“It feels like it’s over,” one old friend from my television days told me recently. Any hope of practicing real journalism on TV is really, finally finished. “Look, we’ve always done a lot of stupid shit to get ratings. But now it’s like we’ve just given up and literally handed over control hoping he’ll save us. It’s pathetic, and I feel like hell.” Said another friend covering the presidential campaign for cable news, “I am swilling antidepressants trying to figure out what to do with my life when this is over.”
I’ve been there, and I sure am sympathetic. When I left cable news in 2010 after 14 years as a correspondent and anchor for NBC News and CNN, this kind of ratings pressure was a big reason why (and I don’t take for granted that I had the luxury of being able to walk away). I was not so interested in night-after-night coverage of Michael Jackson’s death or Britney Spears’ latest breakdown—topics that were “breaking news” at the time. And yes, as my friend reminded me, we did “stupid shit” to get the numbers up when it came to political coverage then, too. (Anyone remember the correspondent’s hologram that appeared on set during CNN’s 2008 election coverage?) But it was nothing like what we’re seeing today.
I really would like to blame Trump. But everything he is doing is with TV news’ full acquiescence. Trump doesn’t force the networks to show his rallies live rather than do real reporting. Nor does he force anyone to accept his phone calls rather than demand that he do a face-to-face interview that would be a greater risk for him. TV news has largely given Trump editorial control. It is driven by a hunger for ratings—and the people who run the networks and the news channels are only too happy to make that Faustian bargain. Which is why you’ll see endless variations of this banner, one I saw all three cable networks put up in a single day: “Breaking news: Trump speaks for first time since Wisconsin loss.” In all these scenes, the TV reporter just stands there, off camera, essentially useless. The order doesn’t need to be stated. It’s understood in the newsroom: Air the Trump rallies live and uninterrupted. He may say something crazy; he often does, and it’s always great television.
This must be such a relief for the TV executives managing a business in decline, suffering from a thousand cuts from social media and other new platforms. Trump arrived on the scene as a kind of manna from hell. I admit I have been surprised by the public candor about this bounty. A “beaming” Jeff Zucker, president of CNN Worldwide, told New York Times media columnist Jim Rutenberg, “These numbers are crazy—crazy.” But if their bosses are frank about the great ratings, some of my friends left at the cable networks are in various degrees of denial. “Give me a break,” one told me. “You can’t put this on us. Reality has changed because of technology. Look at the White House. They’re basically running their own news organization. They bypass us every day. We’re just trying to keep up.”
And then there’s this attempt to put the best face on things, which is the most universal comment I hear: “At least this shows how much we still matter.”
But do we really matter—except as a free-media platform for a presidential candidate who almost every journalist knows could destroy the country if he ever got into the White House?
It’s OK to admit it. The bosses are saying it out loud. Take CBS President and CEO Leslie Moonves on the Trump phenomenon: “It may not be good for America, but it’s damn good for CBS.” This is a statement of the obvious to anyone in TV news. My wonder at it stems from how long we’ve managed to treat this as our dirty little secret, that thing we all know: that what’s damn good for CBS is damn bad for American journalism.
The 800-pound gorillas of TV news are gone. When I was the White House correspondent at NBC and Tom Brokaw was anchor, the reporters were protected. Great TV journalists like Tom had enormous influence; they could and did push back on commercial decisions that affected our coverage. When another one of those powerhouses, Meet the Press host Tim Russert, was alive, he used to tell us: “Beware the pamphleteers.” By that, he meant avoid a story that’s presented to you fully baked. Now that’s impossible; there’s no way to allow TV reporters to apply the filter of their journalism to a story like Trump. And more to the point, there’s little genuine interest in letting them.
We all know how it started. Early on, even before he was the front-runner, TV news was giving Trump far more attention than other candidates and far more than he deserved. The coverage itself has helped create him, and has exposed those systemic weaknesses in television journalism. Based on data from the Internet Archive’s TV News Archive and analysis by Republican pollster Jan van Lohuizen and analytics expert Luke Thompson, Trump gets about six appearances on the major networks for roughly every one his rivals Ted Cruz or John Kasich get. In fact, Trump’s exposure has been three times greater than that of Cruz and Kasich combined. He received 50 percent of the exposure when there were more than a dozen candidates—a percentage that has only grown. Of course, by now, you’ve all also read the figure of close to $2 billion worth of free media the New York Times cited for Trump’s TV bonanza. And that story was back in March. No campaign’s advertising budget can compete.
So yes, I believe Trump’s candidacy is largely a creation of a TV media that wants him, or needs him, to be the central character in this year’s political drama. And it’s not just the network and cable executives driving it. The TV anchors and senior executives who don’t deliver are mercilessly ousted. The ones who do deliver are lavishly rewarded. I know from personal experience that it is common practice for TV anchors to have substantial bonuses written into their contracts if they hit ratings marks. With this 2016 presidential soap opera, they are almost surely hitting those marks. So, we get all Trump, all the time.
It is not just the wall-to-wall coverage of Trump. It’s the openness with which some are reveling in his attention. It’s the effort, conscious or not, to domesticate and pretty him up, to make him appear less offensive than he really is, and to practice a false objectivity or equivalence in the coverage. Here, journalism across all platforms—corporate, as well as publicly funded—is guilty.
Trump is a chronic liar and dissembler; this has been demonstrated beyond any reasonable doubt. He repeatedly makes factual errors, large and small, in his statements. He is also a misogynist, has a cruel streak (including mocking people’s looks and physical disabilities), has condoned physical violence among his supporters and is shockingly ignorant. To ask journalists to pretend otherwise is akin to asking them to have pretended in the 1960s that George Wallace wasn’t a racist or in the 1950s that Joe McCarthy wasn’t a demagogue. Yet when former ABC anchor and National Public Radio’s legendary pioneer Cokie Roberts dared to state the truth, calling Trump “one of the least qualified candidates ever to make a serious run for the presidency,” NPR took pains to distance itself. The vice president for news issued a memo reminding staff that she is just a “commentator,” not a member of NPR’s staff.
It need not be this way. As Trump finally seemed to close in on the nomination this spring, we saw MSNBC’s Chris Matthews and conservative radio host Charlie Sykes really challenge him rather than allow themselves to be props in his act—something Fox News’ Megyn Kelly had been doing for a while, in spite of Trump’s obsessive attacks. The Washington Post editorial board and two New York Times reporters, Maggie Haberman and David Sanger, have used their time with Trump to probe his knowledge of the issues—and expose his ignorance of even basic matters.
They have shown other journalists how, if they don’t cover Trump less, they can at least cover him better. The greatest contribution TV (or any other) journalists can make going forward is to abandon the laziness that too often comes with just playing referee. Use your knowledge and experience to give context; call a misrepresentation just that; and embrace the difference between objective truth and relative truth. You know what it is. Share it. In this campaign, it has never been so important.
Refuses to rule out
Trump refuses to rule out nuclear strike against ISIL
By Nick Gass
When it comes to using nuclear weapons against the Islamic State, Donald Trump said Thursday that he would be the last person to do so. But that does not mean he would completely remove the option, remarking in an interview that he would "never, ever" keep it off the table.
"I don't want to rule out anything. I will be the last to use nuclear weapons," the Republican presidential front-runner told NBC's "Today" at the end of a telephone interview. "It's a horror to use nuclear weapons. The power of weaponry today is the single greatest problem that our world has. It's not global warming, like our president said. It's the power of weapons, in particular nuclear."
Trump continued, "I will be the last to use it. I will not be a happy trigger like some people might be."
"I will be the last," he said. "But I will never, ever rule it out."
By Nick Gass
When it comes to using nuclear weapons against the Islamic State, Donald Trump said Thursday that he would be the last person to do so. But that does not mean he would completely remove the option, remarking in an interview that he would "never, ever" keep it off the table.
"I don't want to rule out anything. I will be the last to use nuclear weapons," the Republican presidential front-runner told NBC's "Today" at the end of a telephone interview. "It's a horror to use nuclear weapons. The power of weaponry today is the single greatest problem that our world has. It's not global warming, like our president said. It's the power of weapons, in particular nuclear."
Trump continued, "I will be the last to use it. I will not be a happy trigger like some people might be."
"I will be the last," he said. "But I will never, ever rule it out."
Make sense??
Trump's economic policies starting to make sense, former Fed board member says
By Nick Gass
Donald Trump's economic message showing newfound signs of coherence, according to an op-ed by a former board member of the Federal Reserve published Thursday.
"About a month ago, I urged the presidential candidates to explain what policies and leadership they would like to see at the Federal Reserve," Narayana Kocherlakota, the maverick president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis from 2009 to 2015, wrote in a column for Bloomberg View.
Kocherlakota said he was "glad to see" Trump discussing issues related to the Federal Reserve in an interview with Fortune magazine published April 21.
Pointing to Trump's call to rebuild infrastructure and the military as well as reducing debt, Kocherlakota interpreted it as "two forms of fiscal stimulus."
"Both could have a beneficial effect on the U.S. and global economy, creating the demand for goods and services needed to get inflation and employment back up to healthier levels," he noted, though such policies would depend on how the Fed responded with respect to raising interest rates or leaving as they are.
Trump would appear to support the Fed leaving interest rates alone, he continued, comparing it to "what Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has attempted in Japan."
Still, Trump has some questions to answer with respect to his attitude toward inflation, Kocherlakota suggested, such as whether he would prefer the Fed keep interest rates low even after inflation surpasses the central bank's 2 percent target.
"If not, then the coordination of monetary and fiscal policy is a welcome way to help the Fed achieve its objectives without resorting to novel policy measures like negative interest rates," he wrote. "If so, then he is advocating the kind of policies that led to the Great Inflation of the 1960s and 1970s."
Trump also needs to answer whether he would be comfortable with an inflation target higher than 2 percent, he added. Rates higher than 2 percent, he continued, would allow "the Fed more room to support fiscal stimulus of the kind suggested by Trump."
"It’s great that Trump, currently the leading contender for the Republican nomination, is starting to answer" questions, Kocherlakota concluded. "Would Hillary Clinton, the leading contender for the Democratic nomination, be as willing to pursue a policy of low taxation, high government spending and low interest rates to address the country’s economic ills? Someone should ask her."
Kocherlakota began his tenure at the Minnesota Fed an ardent inflation hawk, but changed his mind in September 2012, when he turned heads in the economics world by arguing for a more expansionary monetary policy.
By Nick Gass
Donald Trump's economic message showing newfound signs of coherence, according to an op-ed by a former board member of the Federal Reserve published Thursday.
"About a month ago, I urged the presidential candidates to explain what policies and leadership they would like to see at the Federal Reserve," Narayana Kocherlakota, the maverick president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis from 2009 to 2015, wrote in a column for Bloomberg View.
Kocherlakota said he was "glad to see" Trump discussing issues related to the Federal Reserve in an interview with Fortune magazine published April 21.
Pointing to Trump's call to rebuild infrastructure and the military as well as reducing debt, Kocherlakota interpreted it as "two forms of fiscal stimulus."
"Both could have a beneficial effect on the U.S. and global economy, creating the demand for goods and services needed to get inflation and employment back up to healthier levels," he noted, though such policies would depend on how the Fed responded with respect to raising interest rates or leaving as they are.
Trump would appear to support the Fed leaving interest rates alone, he continued, comparing it to "what Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has attempted in Japan."
Still, Trump has some questions to answer with respect to his attitude toward inflation, Kocherlakota suggested, such as whether he would prefer the Fed keep interest rates low even after inflation surpasses the central bank's 2 percent target.
"If not, then the coordination of monetary and fiscal policy is a welcome way to help the Fed achieve its objectives without resorting to novel policy measures like negative interest rates," he wrote. "If so, then he is advocating the kind of policies that led to the Great Inflation of the 1960s and 1970s."
Trump also needs to answer whether he would be comfortable with an inflation target higher than 2 percent, he added. Rates higher than 2 percent, he continued, would allow "the Fed more room to support fiscal stimulus of the kind suggested by Trump."
"It’s great that Trump, currently the leading contender for the Republican nomination, is starting to answer" questions, Kocherlakota concluded. "Would Hillary Clinton, the leading contender for the Democratic nomination, be as willing to pursue a policy of low taxation, high government spending and low interest rates to address the country’s economic ills? Someone should ask her."
Kocherlakota began his tenure at the Minnesota Fed an ardent inflation hawk, but changed his mind in September 2012, when he turned heads in the economics world by arguing for a more expansionary monetary policy.
No love-loss...
Boehner: Cruz is 'Lucifer in the flesh'
The former House speaker also says that he would vote for Trump, and called the two of them 'texting buddies.'
By Nick Gass
When it comes to Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, even a few months’ time out of Congress has done little to lessen former Speaker John Boehner’s contempt for his former Capitol Hill colleague.
“Lucifer in the flesh,” Boehner told an audience at Stanford on Wednesday night, according to the Stanford Daily. “I have Democrat friends and Republican friends. I get along with almost everyone, but I have never worked with a more miserable son of a bitch in my life.”
In fact, Wednesday night was not the first occasion that Boehner has compared Cruz to “Lucifer,” using the epithet last month during a question-and-answer session with reporters at the Futures Industry Association conference in Boca Raton, Florida.
As far as Donald Trump goes, Boehner remarked that he had golfed with Trump for years and that the two are “texting buddies.”
On fellow Ohioan John Kasich, Boehner was magnanimous.
The governor “requires more effort on my behalf than all my other friends … but he’s still my friend, and I love him,” Boehner said, according to the report.
On the Democratic side of the race, Boehner said that while Hillary Clinton would win the party’s nomination, Bernie Sanders is a likable guy and the most honest politician in the race. He also apparently impersonated the former secretary of state, saying, “Oh I’m a woman, vote for me,” while reportedly later noting her accomplishments.
Boehner’s comments also included a reference to the ongoing FBI investigation into Clinton’s use of a private email server while she was at the State Department, speculating on what might happen if the scandal widens.
“Don’t be shocked … if two weeks before the convention, here comes Joe Biden parachuting in and Barack Obama fanning the flames to make it all happen,” the former speaker said.
The former House speaker also says that he would vote for Trump, and called the two of them 'texting buddies.'
By Nick Gass
When it comes to Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, even a few months’ time out of Congress has done little to lessen former Speaker John Boehner’s contempt for his former Capitol Hill colleague.
“Lucifer in the flesh,” Boehner told an audience at Stanford on Wednesday night, according to the Stanford Daily. “I have Democrat friends and Republican friends. I get along with almost everyone, but I have never worked with a more miserable son of a bitch in my life.”
In fact, Wednesday night was not the first occasion that Boehner has compared Cruz to “Lucifer,” using the epithet last month during a question-and-answer session with reporters at the Futures Industry Association conference in Boca Raton, Florida.
As far as Donald Trump goes, Boehner remarked that he had golfed with Trump for years and that the two are “texting buddies.”
On fellow Ohioan John Kasich, Boehner was magnanimous.
The governor “requires more effort on my behalf than all my other friends … but he’s still my friend, and I love him,” Boehner said, according to the report.
On the Democratic side of the race, Boehner said that while Hillary Clinton would win the party’s nomination, Bernie Sanders is a likable guy and the most honest politician in the race. He also apparently impersonated the former secretary of state, saying, “Oh I’m a woman, vote for me,” while reportedly later noting her accomplishments.
Boehner’s comments also included a reference to the ongoing FBI investigation into Clinton’s use of a private email server while she was at the State Department, speculating on what might happen if the scandal widens.
“Don’t be shocked … if two weeks before the convention, here comes Joe Biden parachuting in and Barack Obama fanning the flames to make it all happen,” the former speaker said.
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