Tag Archives: MSNBC

International news, media news, national news

Golden Rule, Mr. President?

One of the aspects of this latest feud that’s erupted between Donald J. Trump and the media involves its timing.

The president decided to go after MSBNC morning talk-show host Mika Brzezinski with a hideous tweet about her supposedly “bleeding from a face lift” while she and fiancé and fellow co-host Joe Scarborough sought to visit Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort.

The president is angry over “negative coverage” delivered by the MSNBC hosts. So he decided to make it personal.

Let’s consider a fairly underreported aspect of this spate uncivility. It comes just after the death of Brzezinski’s father, Zbigniew Brzezinski, who was national security adviser to President Carter from 1977 until 1981. The elder Brzezinski, who died on May 26,  was an avid anti-communist; he fled his native Poland, which would be taken over by the communist government that followed orders set down by the Soviet Union. Zbig, as he was known to his friends, became a naturalized American and then became one of the nation’s foremost experts on the Soviet Union. He was a great man who, quite obviously was revered by his family, including his daughter Mika.

Why couldn’t the president have honored Mika Brzezinski’s grief? Why did he feel compelled to launch that Twitter tirade while she is still hurting?

Oh, I almost forgot. That would require a sense of human decency, which the president seems to lack.

I am reminded of a New Testament passage. It’s in the Gospel of Matthew, referring to the Golden Rule. The New Living Translation instructs us as Jesus Christ taught: Do to others whatever you would like them to do to you. This is the essence of all that is taught in the law and the prophets.

How might the president have felt had someone attacked him so directly — and so personally — so soon after the death of a loved one?

I’m guessing he’d get real angry … real fast.

media news

POTUS meddling with media?

Try for a moment to process what MSBNC “Morning Joe” co-hosts — Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough — said today about their relationship with the president of the United States.

According to Scarborough, Donald J. Trump’s White House called Scarborough and asked him to apologize for the “negative coverage” he and Brzezinski have done on the president. In return, again according to Scarborough, the president would call his good friend who runs the National Enquirer and spike a story that the publication is going to run about Scarborough and Brzezinski.

See the story here.

So, if I have this right — and if Scarborough is telling the truth — the president of the United States is now taking time away from matters of state to engage even further in a petty and petulant quarrel with the media over “negative coverage.”

Are there any more examples needed to demonstrate that Donald J. Trump is categorically unfit to hold the office of president?

media news

Hell freezes over: Fox News anchor defends Obama

When a TV anchor for Fox News Channel — the outfit formerly known for its “fair and balanced” mantra — comes to President Barack Obama’s defense, well, then you’ve got my attention.

So it was this week with Julie Banderas, who scolded Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna Romney McDaniel’s feeble attempt at defending Donald J. Trump’s vulgar tweet about another news talk show host, MSNBC’s Mika Brzezinski.

Banderas noted that Obama’s critics called him all sorts of names, heaped all sorts of unfair and inaccurate criticism on him. She told McDaniel that the former president responded with dignity and decorum. He chose not to fire off angry tweets in the wee hours of some morning to answer his critics.

Banderas said: “People used to call him a Muslim. People used to call him under-qualified, a sellout to America, a hater of Israel. I mean they called him every name in the book, but you didn’t see him lash out.”

Here is the Fox interview

“Today, the president acted like a human, and he pushed back,” McDaniel told Banderas.

Sorry, Mme. Chairwoman. A “human” doesn’t have to resort to such degrading personal attacks to make whatever point he sought to make. Someone will have to inform me on precisely what the president’s point actually was.

He tweeted something about Brzezinski “bleeding badly from a facelift.” He called her “Crazy Mika.” He attacked yet another female in public life, using language not fit for a junior high school playground, let alone from the commander in chief and head of state of the world’s greatest nation.

Chairwoman McDaniel’s use of the word “human” also should include the word “decency.” If the president had a hint of human decency buried somewhere in his DNA he would have refrained from attacking another human in such a personal and undignified manner.

Julie Banderas was absolutely correct to call the president out for his latest moronic Twitter tirade.

media news

Twitter insult might doom health care overhaul

Donald J. Trump’s latest Twitter tantrum bodes potentially disastrous for a legislative goal he and congressional Republicans have established.

They want to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act. A U.S. Senate bill is hanging by a thread. Senators postponed their vote on it until after the Fourth of July recess.

So what does the president do? He fires off a vulgar, insulting tweet this morning about two MSBNC talk show hosts, ratcheting up his idiotic war against the media. The tweet makes some bizarre reference to Mika Brzezinski “bleeding badly from a facelift.” He refers to her as “Crazy Mika” and her co-host Joe Scarborough as “Psycho Joe.”

Republicans upon whom the president depends to help him approve this ACA repeal/replace idea now are running like thieves away from Trump.

It’s fair to wonder: Is the president’s lack of discipline, decorum and dignity going to cost him a victory that — frankly, it must be said — was tenuous?

This is no way at all at how you govern.

media news, national news

Memo to Melania: Rein in your husband

Dear Melania …

I hope you don’t object to my addressing you by your first name. I mean no disrespect. To my point …

I greeted your call for an end to cyber bullying with a bit of skepticism. My first reaction, along with that of millions of other Americans, was that you need to start at home in that noble effort.

You need to curtail your husband’s use of Twitter, I suggested, as a weapon to bludgeon foes and assorted critics.

Later I posted a blog entry extolling the virtue of your effort. You are right to use your high profile as first lady of the United States to end this scourge of Internet bullying. I applauded you then and I applaud you now.

However, your husband is at it again. I’m sure you’ve heard about that ghastly tweet he posted this morning about Mika Brzezinski, about how she was “bleeding from a facelift.” He called her “Crazy Mika.” Then he aimed his Twitter barrel at Joe Scarborough, her MSNBC morning talk show co-host, calling him “Psycho Joe.”

Just as a reminder, here is what he wrote: “I heard poorly rated Morning Joe speaks badly of me (don’t watch anymore). Then how come low I.Q. Crazy Mika, along with Psycho Joe, came …” Trump tweeted before adding “to Mar-a-Lago 3 nights in a row around New Year’s Eve, and insisted on joining me. She was bleeding badly from a face-lift. I said no!”

The recriminations are going to come quickly over a period of time, Melania. Your husband’s fellow Republicans are incensed. Some of them are as incensed as the rest of us who didn’t vote for your husband.

I am reminded of the question leveled at the reviled late U.S. Sen. Joseph McCarthy, who in the 1950s said there were communists employed at the State Department. “Have you left no sense of decency?” came the question from U.S. Army counsel Joseph Welch to Sen. McCarthy during one of those infamous Senate hearings.

It’s time to ask the same thing of your husband. I never thought I’d wonder this about the president of the United States: Has he no sense of decency, or decorum? Does he disrespect the high office he holds so much that he stoops to the level of juvenile petulance to communicate in such a crude, hostile and undignified manner?

I guess, Melania, we’re back to where we began. Isn’t it time you reined in that husband of yours before you launch your campaign against cyber bullying?

media news, political news

POTUS has sunk yet again to another new low

Donald John (Internet Bully in Chief) Trump has done it yet again.

He has demonstrated that there is no bottom to the level of crassness he is able and quite willing to exhibit on social media.

The president of the United States of America has decided to engage in a vile insult campaign against a member of the media, this time suggesting this individual was “bleeding from a facelift.”

The target is Mika Brzezinski, co-host of the MSNBC morning talk show “Morning Joe.” What did Trump say about this women, whose father, former national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, recently died? He called her “Crazy Mika” and said she and her co-host, former U.S. Rep. Joe Scarborough, wanted to spend some time at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort. “She was bleeding badly from a facelift. I said no,” Trump said this morning on Twitter.

Read the NY Times story here.

According to the Times: The graphic nature of the president’s suggestion that Ms. Brzezinski had undergone plastic surgery was met with immediate criticism on social media. Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina wrote on Twitter, “Mr. President, your tweet was beneath the office and represents what is wrong with American politics, not the greatness of America.” And a spokesman for NBC News, Mark Kornblau, wrote on Twitter: “Never imagined a day when I would think to myself, ‘It is beneath my dignity to respond to the President of the United States.’”

I am running out of ways to express my revulsion over the president’s conduct. His “war” against the media rages on.

This individual was elected to the nation’s highest office. It demands respect from those of us who revere what it stands for. It also would seemingly demand respect from those who occupy it. That the current White House resident, the commander in chief of our armed forces, our head of state and government would resort to this kind of ghastly insult campaign denigrates the office to a whole new level.

Now, I fully expect some criticism of this blog post from those out there who are going to change the subject by suggesting that other presidents have acted badly while holding this office. Spare me the diversionary tactic. This has nothing to do with them. It has everything to do with the here and now — and the individual who was elected to be our national ambassador on the world stage.

If only I could expect that there is nothing more hideous that the president can do. Sadly, I now fully expect him to go even lower.

Let’s all just wait for it.

legal news, media news

Is a ‘culture change’ in store at cable network?

21st-Century Fox made it official today: Bill O’Reilly, the company’s No. 1 blowhard and ratings juggernaut is gone.

He won’t be returning from his “long-planned vacation,” which commenced suddenly in the middle of this past week.

The reason for O’Reilly’s departure? A steady stream of negative publicity relating to sexual harassment complaints leveled against the veteran TV talk-show host.

O’Reilly paid out millions of bucks to women who had filed the complaints, all the while maintaining his innocence. Interesting, yes? Well, I think so. Fox News Channel coughed up a lot of cash, too, to women who had griped about O’Reilly’s treatment of them.

These media stories usually become the stuff of inter-network gossip. Competing networks — chiefly CNN and MSNBC — have had a field day covering this story for their audiences; Fox, meanwhile, hasn’t done much reporting at all on the difficulties that O’Reilly has brought to the network.

He’s gone now.

For me, it’s no great loss. I quit listening to O’Reilly a couple of Christmas seasons ago when he would allege that some phony “war on Christmas” was being waged by the “mainstream media” and assorted “left-wing pinheads.”

O’Reilly will get a big chunk of cash for, essentially, being fired for cause by Fox. That’s another part of these celebrity stories that baffles me. A big-ticket media talking head screws up, makes a big mistake — in this case, allegedly, several big mistakes — and he’s still able to walk away with a hefty severance package.

Whatever …

See ya in the funny papers, Bill.

As for the network, it lost its news boss — Roger Ailes — over similar accusations. Women have suggested there exists a “culture” of sexual harassment at Fox.

Perhaps we are witnessing a fundamental change in that culture and that female journalists and other “contributors” will feel more welcome and accepted for the talent they bring.

business news

Trump tax return reveals … that he’s real rich!

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The release of one year of Donald J. Trump’s tax returns has a kind of Al Capone’s vault feel to it.

Remember when Geraldo Rivera found the vault of the late mobster? He opened it and found — nothin’ man!

So, now we know that in 2005, the president made about $150 million and paid $38 million in federal taxes. Yes, the guy who told us during the 2016 presidential campaign that he worked to pay “as little as possible” in taxes actually paid a lot of them.

That was a dozen years ago.

What about the more recent returns? What about the money he was making while running for president? And what about those international business interests?

Americans haven’t seen the more relevant tax information from the president of the United States.

He told us he would release the returns once the Internal Revenue Service completed its “routine audit.” Except we don’t even know for certain whether the IRS is actually auditing Trump, who’s provided no proof or evidence that an audit even ongoing.

The White House decided to seek to get ahead of a story that had been hyped by MSNBC host Rachel Maddow, who tonight released the 2005 returns.

As it has been reported, the 12-year-old returns constitute a “nothing burger.”

Where’s the beef? I suspect it lies somewhere within the more recent returns that the president of the United States continues to refuse to release to Americans — such as yours truly — who want to know what is in them.

national news, political news

Paging Kellyanne Conway; hello, Kellyanne?

Is it me or has Kellyanne Conway gone missing?

Is she MIA? Do we need to call out an all-points bulletin to find her?

Immediately after Donald J. Trump was elected president, you couldn’t escape Conway. She was everywhere. Conway was able to make appearances on every cable and broadcast news show on the air. She was seemingly being interviewed by news anchors all at once.

A lot of media talking heads spoke kindly of Conway. She seemed to be on first-name bases with Chuck, George, Sean, Chris, Robin, Jake, Wolf … all of ’em! They welcomed her with open arms.

I used to joke that former Amarillo Mayor Debra McCartt defied the laws of physics by being everywhere at once. The same thing might have been said of Conway, who after the 2016 presidential election  was appointed senior policy adviser to the new president.

Then she spoke of “alternative facts.” She had this way of saying that the president was “100 percent behind me” after she spoke about a terror attack that didn’t occur, the fictitious attack in Bowling Green, Ky.

Oops! “Morning Joe” hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski disinvited her from future appearances on their MSNBC show. Why? She had lost her credibility with them.

Reports abounded that Trump had reeled her in. The White House denied it.

Then again …

Conway has been virtually absent over the past, oh, two weeks.

Hello? Kellyanne? Are you out there? Somewhere?

International news

Trump continues to diss U.S. intelligence agencies

My head is spinning.

Republicans at one time used to condemn Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, for revealing U.S. national secrets to the rest of the world.

Now some of them — including the president-elect of the United States — believe him more than they believe U.S. intelligence officials who contend that Russian spooks hacked into the American electoral system.

What in the world has happened here?

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/trump-cites-assange-claim-about-russia-hacking/ar-BBxT4NI?li=BBnb7Kz

“Julian Assange said ‘a 14 year old could have hacked Podesta’ – why was DNC so careless? Also said Russians did not give him the info!” Trump tweeted Wednesday.

As USA Today reports: “Podesta is the Hillary Clinton campaign chairman whose emails were released by WikiLeaks during the campaign, part of an effort that U.S. intelligence officials attributed to the Russians, perhaps in order to help Trump win the election.”

Trump continues to disparage the intelligence agencies who will be charged with providing him information about our foreign adversaries. Will the president continue to disparage them even as they seek to brief him potential crises?

Presidential historian Michael Beschloss wondered today on MSNBC what might have happened in 1962 had the CIA presented to President Kennedy pictures of “something being built” in Cuba that turned out to be ballistic missile launchers. What if the president had disregarded them? Beschloss asked.

Trump now has sided with someone who has been scorned by politicians within his political party, someone who’s been defending the Russians’ denial of doing anything wrong.

Julian Assange is no friend of the American intelligence network.

Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., said that “I have a lot more faith in our intelligence officers” than in “people like Julian Assange.”

For the ever-loving life of me I cannot figure out what’s happening here. The president-elect of the United States of America is taking the word of a reputed national security threat over the word of those assigned to protecting our national interests?

I need to take something for my spinning head.