Years of lies...
The Trump years have been defined by dishonesty. Fibs, falsehoods and outright lies. This was on display again at Wednesday's presser... As Jim Acosta said afterward, Trump was "just not in touch with reality." But now...
A moment of truth?
Christine Blasey Ford and Brett Kavanaugh will both testify on Thursday starting at 10 a.m. ET. The hearing is about both alleged misconduct and about lying. Is he lying about his high school and college innocence? Is she lying about his behavior? Will we ever know the truth of what happened in 1982? Maybe not, but Kavanaugh's statements from the past two weeks are also being tested. His recent assertions about his teenage years will be under severe scrutiny on Thursday...
>> Related: CNN.com has a list of 21 Q's he may be asked...
"Yet another case study..."
I asked Michiko Kakutani, author of "The Death of Truth," for her impressions. What does this moment mean for the court and the country?
"Republican senators' eagerness to rush Kavanaugh's SCOTUS nomination through without a real investigation into the allegations of sexual assault against him is yet another case study in the toxic disregard for truth that has taken hold in Trump's Washington," she said.
And "Kavanaugh's own statements -- about his school years, about his role in a controversial Bush-era judicial nomination, and his sycophantic remarks about President Trump -- suggest that he has a casual, if not troubled relationship with the truth. All this is a distressing mirror of the tribal politics and disdain for truth that has become a hallmark of the Trump era..."
Thursday's most likely outcome?
Will people end up even more polarized, even further apart on perceptions of the truth? That's my wager. Laura Ingraham was on Fox just now complaining about Ford not handing over her therapy session notes: "There was no therapist! It's a big lie! Lie! Lie! Lie!" It's just going to get more and more heated.
As Nate Silver tweeted: "I keep thinking about those studies where, the more evidence you show a committed partisan against their case, the more it entrenches their original viewpoint..."
40 days til the midterms
CNN's Dana Bash, honored at the Moment Magazine luncheon at the Yale Club on Wednesday, talked with the mag's editor Nadine Epstein about the "#MeToo missile that just landed at the U.S. Senate," among other topics...
"It's hard to imagine some of the female vote being more energized than it is right now pre-Kavanaugh," Bash said. "But if it is possible, [Kavanaugh being confirmed] will energize them more. The flip side of that – because there is a ying to every yang in politics – if Kavanaugh goes down, the Republican base, which is not very energized right now, will then be energized. They understand they've been waiting a generation to replace Anthony Kennedy..."
Coverage plans
Every major player will be carrying the hearings live, including all the broadcast networks.
-- On CNN, Wolf Blitzer and Jake Tapper will anchor starting at 8:30... CNN's cable coverage will be live streamed on CNN.com, no login needed...
-- On Fox News, Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum will anchor starting at 9...
-- NBC's special coverage will start at 9:30, with Lester Holt, Savannah Guthrie, Chuck Todd, Megyn Kelly and Andrea Mitchell...
-- ABC's special will start at 10... George Stephanopoulos in NYC, David Muir in DC...
-- CBS's morning and evening shows will both be live from DC. Norah O'Donnell will be on Capitol Hill. At 10, O'Donnell, Gayle King, John Dickerson and Jeff Glor will co-anchor the special...
Trump 81-minute presser
Politico's Blake Hounshell summed it up in four words: "Trump can't help himself."
Everyone has an opinion about Wednesday's presser. My POV: More, please. The more Q's he takes, more often, from more outlets, the better informed we all are... | | Two must-reads
Ashley Parker's WaPo recap: "For a president facing one of the most consequential weeks of his presidency — and fighting for his Supreme Court nominee's political life — Trump at times seemed blissfully unaware of the stakes, deeply enjoying himself as he bantered with his press corps..."
Michael Grynbaum's NYT piece about the prez and the press: "Trump made clear that he is never more comfortable, never more engaged, than when he is sparring with the news media that he loves to say he hates..."
Four sharp questions
ABC's Jon Karl: "Can you understand why a victim of sexual assault would not report it at the time? Don't you understand?"
NBC's Hallie Jackson: "Has there ever been an instance when you've given the benefit of the doubt to a woman?"
CNBC's Eamon Javers: "You made a significant allegation against the Chinese government, you suggested that the Chinese had meddled in, or are meddling in the 2018 midterm election. What evidence do you have of that, sir?"
CBS's Steven Portnoy: "What messages do you have for the young men of America?"
Six key quotes
-- Check with Sean: "I was accused by -- I believe it was four women." (False.) "You can check with Sean Hannity, you can check with Fox because they covered it very strongly."
-- Trump was crediting Hannity with covering the claims that "women were paid to say bad things about me." But in the next breath, he distanced himself from Hannity: "Believe it or not, I don't speak to him very much, but I respect him."
-- CNN's Jim Acosta was the fourth male reporter to be called on, so he asked Trump to take a Q from a female colleague next. Trump did, though The Daily Beast's Matt Wilstein observed that he repeatedly interrupted and talked over female reporters. CBS's Weijia Jiang persisted when Trump tried to cut her off, and asked how the accusations against him "impact your opinions on the allegations against Judge Kavanaugh..."
-- Trump's love for the NYT shone through. He called it "failing" and said it was "a paper I once loved," but then a few minutes later, he admitted, "I still love the paper."
-- When the NYT's Mark Landler told him "We're kind of thriving, not failing these days," Trump said, "You're doing very well. Say thank you, Mr. Trump." Landler, politely: "I think I'll stop short of that."
-- When Hannah Thomas-Peter said she was from Sky News, Trump said, "Congratulations on the purchase..."
Some flagrant falsehoods
Trump keeps saying that he won the women's vote in 2016. He's been saying this for more than six months. "52% of women," he said again Wednesday. Well, he won 52% of white women voters, and 52% of men, but only 41% of all women voters. The first time he said this, it might've been a mistake. But now? After he's repeated it over and over?!
Earlier this year George Mason professor James Pfiffner wrote "Trump's lies corrode democracy" for Brookings... On Wednesday evening, he told me, "Trump's lies are often an assertion of power. He expects others to agree with, go along with or repeat his lies. This demonstrates their loyalty to him, especially if it evident to most people that he and they are lying..."
FOR THE RECORD, PART ONE
-- Bob Woodward's "Fear" is No. 1 on the NYT's print and ebook best seller list for the second straight week. How long will his streak last?
-- BTW: "Fear" has moved into second place on Amazon's list of the site's best sellers of 2018. The "Last Week Tonight" Pence bunny book is now No. 3. "Fire and Fury" remains No. 1 for the year...
-- There are lots of new books on the Times list this week: Sally Field's "In Pieces" debuts at No. 2, Doris Kearns Goodwin's "Leadership" at No. 3, Jill Lepore's "These Truths" at No. 5, Jason Chaffetz's "The Deep State" at No. 6...
-- Meantime, on the NYT's children's best sellers list, Savannah Guthrie holds the top two spots: Her first "Princesses" book is #2 while her newest release is #1...
FIRST LOOK
This week's TIME cover
TIME contributor Irin Carmon has the cover story in this week's mag, officially out on Thursday. She visited Sweden "to understand what the country most focused on gender equality might teach the U.S., even if it means learning that it's harder than Americans hoped." A striking cover image here, asking, "CAN WE GET THERE?"
| |
Robin Roberts scores first interview with Michelle Obama Announced on Wednesday: Michelle Obama's first interview about her forthcoming book, "Becoming," will be with ABC's Robin Roberts. ABC isn't saying exactly when, but the interview will be part of a prime time special airing sometime before the book comes out on November 13. Roberts will also interview Obama live on "GMA" on book launch day...
FOR THE RECORD, PART TWO
By Daniella Emanuel:
-- A must-read by Will Oremus: "The Temptation of Apple News." It's about media outlets that are seeing "little to no revenue from Apple News." Credit to Slate for sharing some internal #'s here... (Slate)
-- Social media is the "cancer of our time," according to LA Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong... (CNBC)
-- Fox has revealed the slogan for its Fox Nation streaming service: "Opinion Done Right.." (Variety)
-- A new Gallup survey shows that "those who are most distrustful of the news media, and those with more extreme political views, tend to be the most biased readers..." (NYT)
-- David Beard writes about how members of the University of Michigan community are fighting to help an award-winning Mexican journalist stay in the United States... (Poynter)
| | New nonprofit news org in NYC
"A new nonprofit website called The City is teaming up with New York magazine in hopes of replacing some of that lost local accountability and investigative journalism," the NYT's Jaclyn Peiser reports. Jere Hester, a former city editor at the NYDN, will run the newsroom. Per Peiser, "the site has raised nearly $8.5 million in funding — including $2.5 million each from the Leon Levy Foundation, the Charles H. Revson Foundation and Craig Newmark, the founder of Craigslist."
BuzzFeed's Ben Smith, the chairman of the board of directors, told me: "It's incredibly heartening to see philanthropists look to local news as a key resource, and we're going to take a lot of inspiration from outlets like the Texas Tribune and ProPublica. But this is New York, and we want to build something new, ambitious, and aggressive about holding power accountable -- an outlet whose attitude matches the city..."
FOR THE RECORD, PART THREE
-- The Briscoe Center has acquired the papers of reporter, columnist, author turned AP spokesman Paul Colford... it will be announced on Thursday... (UT)
-- Scottie Nell Hughes has settled her lawsuit against Fox News... Most of her claims had already been dismissed... (TheWrap)
-- MSNBC's Joy Reid is being sued for defamation over a tweet, Jon Levine reports... (TheWrap)
-- Dean Baquet speaking at the Texas Tribune Festival on Wednesday night: The Nikki Haley curtains story required "more than a correction. The tone of that story was wrong. And we owned up to it..." (Twitter)
Five years of The Information
Jessica Lessin held her annual fall party for The Information's subscribers and fans in NYC on Wednesday evening... Spotted at Joe and Christine Marchese's home: David and Emma Rhodes, Pam Wasserstein, Jon Miller, Matt Lieber, Lydia Polgreen, Gordon Crovitz, Paul Steiger, Brit Morin, Bernie Gershon, John Batelle, Kevin Delaney, Peter Himler, Jessica Toonkel, more... In December, the site will celebrate five years...
FOR THE RECORD, PART FOUR
By Julia Waldow:
-- Another strike for Facebook in regards to transparency: The platform is giving advertisers access to what Gizmodo's Kashmir Hill calls "shadow contact information" -- phone numbers and email accounts users submit for security purposes, as well as information collected from other people's address books... (Gizmodo)
-- Fox News took out ads in the WSJ and WaPo touting positive reviews of Martha MacCallum's interview with Kavanaugh... (TVNewser)
-- CollegeHumor is now offering "subscription media on demand" with a new platform called Dropout... (TechCrunch)
-- It's now possible to buy items on Amazon through Snapchat... (Forbes)
| | Fox/Disney sell their 39% of Sky
"In light of the premium Comcast has agreed to pay for Sky, we and Disney have decided to sell 21CF's existing 39% holding in Sky to Comcast," Fox said in a statement on Wednesday. "We congratulate Comcast on their pending acquisition." Here's Hadas Gold's full story...
US v. AT&T Nine state AGs are supporting AT&T while the DOJ appeals
Hadas Gold emails: A bipartisan group of nine state attorneys general -- from Wisconsin, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, New Mexico, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Utah and Kentucky -- have filed an amicus brief in support of AT&T ahead of the DOJ's appeal of the Time Warner deal. This is notable because when DOJ first sued to stop the deal, no state attorney general signed on. As the nine AGs noted, it is "rare for the Federal Government to pursue an antitrust case involving major, national companies without support from a State." The group says the lower court's ruling validated why no state decided to sign on, and that the deal should stand...
| | Brian Lowry emails: There's a strong wave of pop-culture nostalgia for the 1970s and '80s, as reflected in all the movies and TV shows being revived. But the Kavanaugh hearings -- and the ensuing discussion -- are a reminder of the problematic aspects of some of those "Animal House," John Hughes-era comedies, especially re: issues like race and exploitation of women.
Read Lowry's full column here...
Paul McCartney on "60" this weekend
"It took 50 years, but fans will find it well worth the wait," CBS says. "Sir Paul McCartney appears in his first '60 Minutes' profile, a report containing surprisingly intimate moments in which he shares rare details from the Beatles years and his subsequent decades as the most successful musician in popular music history." The interviewer is Sharyn Alfonsi... The piece will air on Sunday's season premiere...
Premiere week, continued
Brian Lowry emails: Lead-ins still matter, as "New Amsterdam" (behind "This is Us") and "FBI" (after "NCIS") both got off to solid starts Tuesday. As for NBC's four-hanky drama, "This is Us" fell 26% compared to its season-two premiere but still delivered 10.3 million same-day viewers and a night-leading 2.9 rating among the key demo of adults 18-49, before we see what DVR playback adds to that total.
Personally, I enjoyed the flashback to Jack and Rebecca's relationship quite a lot, but have qualms about the latest wrinkle in terms of the time planes upon which the show operates. Still, I'll reserve judgement till I see where it goes over the next few weeks...
STELTER'S NOTE TO JAMIE: What's this "time plane" wrinkle? We need to watch the season premiere!
Spilling tea
Megan Thomas emails: If the movie is as delightful as this trailer, I need to see "Tea with the Dames" immediately. In the documentary -- which just arrived in theaters -- Dames Maggie Smith, Judi Dench, Joan Plowright and Eileen Atkins share stories -- and throw brilliantly wise octogenarian shade -- about their careers, ex-husbands and aging...
That's a wrap! I'll be back tomorrow. Your feedback is always helpful... Email me here...
| | | |
