Playboy Embarrassed Trump Was on the Cover
Cooper Heffner told the Hollywood Reporter that he and his father feel personal embarrassment for having once had President Trump on a Playboy cover.
Said Heffner: “We don’t respect the guy. There’s a personal embarrassment because Trump is somebody who has been on our cover.”
Wall Street Journal Editor Admonishes Reporters
“Gerard Baker, the editor in chief of The Wall Street Journal, has faced unease and frustration in his newsroom over his stewardship of the newspaper’s coverage of President Trump, which some journalists there say has lacked toughness and verve,” the New York Times reports.
“Some staff members expressed similar concerns on Wednesday after Mr. Baker, in a series of blunt late-night emails, criticized his staff over their coverage of Mr. Trump’s Tuesday rally in Phoenix, describing their reporting as overly opinionated.”
Wrote Baker: “Sorry. This is commentary dressed up as news reporting… Could we please just stick to reporting what he said rather than packaging it in exegesis and selective criticism?”
Breitbart Editor Pledges to Do ‘Dirty Work’ Against Trump
“A self-described ’email prankster’ seemingly fooled top editors at Breitbart over the weekend into believing he was Steve Bannon, the fired White House chief strategist who returned to the right-wing website as executive chairman on Friday,” CNN reports.
“In the emails, Breitbart Editor-in-Chief Alex Marlow pledged that he and several other top editors would do Bannon’s ‘dirty work’ against White House aides. The emails were shared with CNN by the prankster.”
Brands Are Now Blacklisting News Sites
Digiday: “Political tensions have reached a point where some brands are perceiving mainstream news outlets as too controversial, leading media buyers to pull ads from those sites.”
Bannon vs. the Murdochs
Mike Allen: “The coming war between Steve Bannon and the ‘globalists’ inside the White House promises to be a public spectacle, and a continuing distraction for the Trump administration. But it’s Bannon vs. the Murdoch sons that could really define conservatism — or at least conservative media — far beyond the Trump era.”
“We reported this weekend that Bannon, backed by the billionaire Mercers, has dreams of the Fox rival in the video/TV space. It will be unapologetically nationalist, and unapologetically at war with the Republican establishment, globalism and anyone who sides with either.”
“Oh, and Bannon has the added incentive of knowing Rupert Murdoch — executive chairman of 21st Century Fox, the parent of Fox News — pushed for his ouster.”
Bannon Readies His Revenge
Gabriel Sherman:”Bannon also told friends that he believed Kushner encouraged Fox News chairman Rupert Murdoch to lobby Trump to fire him. Last week, The New York Times reported that Murdoch told Trump over a private dinner with Kushner that Trump needed to jettison his chief strategist. The Bannon camp believes that Murdoch was especially receptive to Kushner’s lobbying because Murdoch is worried about the rise of Sinclair Broadcasting as a competitor to Fox, and blames Bannon for Trump’s decision so far not to block the Sinclair’s $3.9 billion takeover of Tribune Media in May.”
“Bannon has media ambitions to compete with Fox News from the right. Last week in New York, he huddled with his billionaire benefactor, Robert Mercer, and discussed ways to expand Breitbart into TV, sources said. ‘Television is definitely on the table,’ a Bannon adviser told me. A partnership with Sinclair remains a possibility. In recent days, Sinclair’s chief political analyst Boris Epshteyn has spoken with Breitbart editors about ways to form an alliance, one Breitbart staffer said. ‘All the Sinclair guys are super tight with Breitbart. Imagine if we got together Hannity and O’Reilly and started something?'”
Is Bannon More or Less Powerful Now?
Dylan Byers: “I think the only question you have to ask is: What platform is more powerful for you than being in the White House, than having the ear of the president of the United States? If you don’t have that, how powerful can you really be? That’s really what we are going to see in terms of where Bannon goes.”
Quote of the Day
“I feel jacked up. Now I’m free. I’ve got my hands back on my weapons. Someone said, ‘it’s Bannon the Barbarian.’ I am definitely going to crush the opposition. There’s no doubt. I built a fucking machine at Breitbart. And now I’m about to go back, knowing what I know, and we’re about to rev that machine up. And rev it up we will do.”
— Stephen Bannon, quoted by the Weekly Standard.
James Murdoch Slams Trump In Email
“James Murdoch, the 21st Century Fox CEO and son of Rupert Murdoch, one of President Trump’s close informal advisers, has written a scathing email denouncing the president’s reaction to the violence in Charlottesville,” CNN reports.
Said Murdoch: “What we watched this last week in Charlottesville and the reaction to it by the President of the United States concern all of us as Americans and free people… I can’t even believe I have to write this: standing up to Nazis is essential; there are no good Nazis. Or Klansmen, or terrorists. Democrats, Republicans, and others must all agree on this, and it compromises nothing for them to do so.”
GOP Lawmakers Are Apparently In Hiding
The Washington Post reports that Republicans want nothing to do with defending President Trump’s remarks on the white supremacist violence in Charlottesville.
“We invited every single Republican senator on this program tonight — all 52,” Chuck Todd said on MSNBC’s “MTP Daily” on Wednesday. “We asked roughly a dozen House Republicans, including a bunch of committee chairs, and we asked roughly a half dozen former Republican elected officials, and none of them agreed to discuss this issue with us today.”
That’s about 70 rejections altogether, and other news anchors had the same experience on Wednesday — even on Fox News.
“Our booking team — and they’re good — reached out to Republicans of all stripes across the country today,” Shepard Smith told his viewers. “Let’s be honest: Republicans often don’t really mind coming on Fox News Channel. We couldn’t get anyone to come and defend him here. Because we thought, in balance, someone should do that. We worked very hard at it throughout the day, and we were unsuccessful.”
When There Is No Debate
“What’s a Fox & Friends host to do when they desperately want to push President Trump’s narrative the ‘both sides’ are to blame for Charlottesville, but their guests want to talk about what’s really going on in America right now?,” the Daily Beast asks.
Abby Huntsman found out this morning.
Associated Press Won’t Use Term ‘Alt-Right’
New guidance from the Associated Press:
At AP, we have taken the position that the term “alt-right” should be avoided because it is meant as a euphemism to disguise racist aims. So use it only when quoting someone or when describing what the movement says about itself. Enclose the term “alt-right” in quotation marks or use phrasing such as the so-called alt-right (no quote marks when using the term so-called) or the self-described “alt-right.”
Trump Cribbed His Remarks Straight From Fox News
Wired: “Trump notoriously picks up proclamations from either Twitter or his cable news habit, of which Fox News plays a significant role. That Trump’s divisive comments Tuesday appear to stem from sources with a national audience suggests that they shouldn’t have come as a complete surprise—and that the white supremacists marching through Virginia this past weekend have far more apologists than one might have assumed.”
“To help you get a glimpse of how Trump’s Nazi-friendly statements formed, here are his more salient points, traced to the likely source.”
Daily Beast: Fox News’ Tucker Carlson helps Trump push ‘both sides’ narrative.
Stunned TV Hosts Reacted in Real Time to Trump
New York Times: “For a few visceral minutes on Tuesday, television’s partisan lines dissolved as dumbfounded anchors reacted on-air — some in clearly personal ways — to Mr. Trump’s fiery remarks, in which he seemed to cast equal blame on white supremacists and the demonstrators who marched against them during the weekend’s deadly clash in Charlottesville.”
“Like many of Mr. Trump’s dramatic moments, Tuesday’s impromptu question-and-answer session unspooled on cable television. But as the president’s exchanges grew testier, ABC and CBS cut into regular programming to carry the news conference, adding millions of households to the audience.”
Fox News Deletes Video of Driving Through Protests
Fox News and the Daily Caller deleted posts that encouraged people to drive through protests with their cars, CNN reports.
“Originally published by The Daily Caller and later syndicated or aggregated by several other websites, including Fox Nation, an offshoot of Fox News’ website, it carried an unsubtle headline: ‘Here’s A Reel Of Cars Plowing Through Protesters Trying To Block The Road.’ Embedded in the article was a minute-and-a-half long video showing one vehicle after another driving through demonstrations. The footage was set to a cover of Ludacris’ Move Bitch.”
Bonus Quote of the Day
“I mean, quite frankly, I’ve been to these events, a lot of the KKK guys with their hats off look like they’re from the cast of Seinfeld. Literally they’re just Jewish actors. Nothing against Jews in general, but they are leftists Jews that want to create this clash and they go dress up as Nazis.”
— Alex Jones, quoted by Media Matters.
Sean Spicer Would Like to Appear on SNL
“An insider reveals in the new issue of Us Weekly that the New York-born political aide ‘is angling’ to appear on Saturday Night Live.”
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