Appointments
In the wake of President Trump’s interview with The New York Times, where he hammered his Attorney General and pressed on the Russia investigation, MSNBC’s Chief Legal Correspondent Ari Melber demonstrated that NBC can’t get its story straight. “And with regard to [Special Counsel] Mueller … just to be clear, neither the new FBI director nor the president has any ability to remove the special counsel,” Melber told colleague Katy Tur during Thursday’s MTP Daily. But just over a month earlier, their colleagues were freaking out about just that.
April Ryan has been a frequent subject this year at NewsBusters, given her proclivity to see racism where there is none, her failure to understand the difference between a person's annual income and their net worth, and her criticism of center-right news sites allowed into White House briefings as "fake news peddlers." Naturally, Ryan's next move after that final item was to join serial fake news perpetrator CNN as an analyst. Three months into her new gig, she has embarrassed herself several times, perhaps never moreso than on Monday, when she first tweeted her belief that a Trump administration official had made up the term "stagflation," and then pathetically tried to claim she had been joking.
On Monday morning, even rumors about the possibility of Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy retiring sent the network morning shows into panic mode. Reporters wrung their hands over the potential that President Trump could replace the high court’s “swing vote” and make it “solidly conservative for decades.”
Appearing as a guest on Sunday's Fareed Zakaria GPS on CNN, former New York Times executive editor Jill Abramson blamed a Republican "rage machine" for the level of political polarization that currently exists, and complained about how congressional Republicans are conducting business. She also oddly claimed that Democrats were not partisan in their reaction to President Donald Trump's nomination of Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch -- even though Republicans had to change the filibuster rule to keep Democrats from blocking his confirmation to the Court.
Appearing as a guest on Friday's All In with Chris Hayes on MSNBC, former New York Times executive editor Jill Abramson slammed the Donald Trump administration's accomplishments so far as a "debacle" and declared that the Republican budget has "savagely" taken money from poverty programs and education. Abramson: "I think both of the scenarios, Chris, that you just laid out equal debacle because, you know, he has done quite a bit, but I think what he's done has been, you know, altogether damaging both to the country and internationally. ... A budget that has savagely taken money from housing programs from the poor, federal money for the schools."
On top of the high-profile testimony of Attorney General Jeff Sessions before the Senate Intelligence Committee Tuesday, the media was swarming over a rumor President Trump was looking to fire Special Counsel Robert Mueller. “Is the President now considering firing special prosecutor Robert Mueller who is now overseeing the Russia investigation,” speculated ABC Anchor David Muir during World News Tonight. All of the Big Three Networks (ABC, CBS, and NBC) pushed the rumor despite the fact that their source admits he never spoke with the President and thinks he wouldn’t do it.
Recent NewsBusters posts have shown how the hysterical establishment press wants the American people, against all factual evidence, to believe that President Donald Trump obstructed justice in his conversations with James Comey. Former federal prosecutor and prolific national security columnist Andrew McCarthy, in Wednesday and Thursday appearances on Tucker Carlson's Fox News show, made several argument-ending points on that issue, and also essentially alleged that the former FBI director has engaged in serious and arguably illegal misconduct.
It appears that 5 p.m. has become the new witching hour, since for over a week that’s been when most of the major news stories regarding President Trump have been broken. It was no different Wednesday evening when D.C. was rocked by the announcement that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein had appointed former FBI Director Robert Mueller to be the special counsel to oversee the Russia investigation. The Big Three Networks led with the development on their evening programs, during which they celebrated it and slammed the right.
Another alleged “bombshell” fell on Washington, D.C. Tuesday, this one in the form of a memo Comey supposedly left for himself in his Russia investigation file. According to The New York Times, who had the unclassified memo read to them by a Comey associate over the phone, it purported claims that Trump pressured Comey to end the FBI investigation into Mike Flynn. Every member of the Big Three Networks (ABC, CBS, and NBC) rushed to shout the claims, but none of them have actually seen the memo first hand.
A week to the day after President Trump fired FBI Director James Comey, a memo he purportedly written claiming Trump asked him to end the Mike Flynn investigation was leaked to The New York Times. In the aftermath of the first story, CNN Senior Legal Analyst Jeffrey Toobin flew off the handle and compared it Watergate. A week later, Toobin was again jumping to conclusions and ignoring the sketchy facts. “Three words: Obstruction of justice,” he exclaimed to Wolf Blitzer on The Situation Room.
In the immediate aftermath of the firing of FBI Director James Comey, CNN was a hub of outrageous hyperbole and rancor. Five days after the event, and CNN is still that hub. On Global Public Square, Fareed Zakaria claimed Trump was a “danger to American democracy.” Meanwhile, on Reliable Sources, analyst Carl Bernstein claimed the firing was worse than Watergate. “I think this is a potentially more dangerous situation than Watergate and we are at a very dangerous moment,” he told CNN’s Brian Stelter and Jeffrey Toobin.
Since President Trump fired FBI Director James Comey on Tuesday, the media have been in an uproar with conspiratorial claims that the Russia investigation was the cause. On CNN Sunday morning, serial plagiarist Fareed Zakaria kicked off his show by declaring that there was only one group that could defend America from Trump: The Media. “Donald Trump in much of his rhetoric and many of his actions poses a danger to American democracy,” he announced. “Our task is, quite simply, to keep alive the spirit of American democracy.”