EXEC SUMMARY: Here's how Michael Bloomberg's run affects Bloomberg LP... Plus, my interview with Katie Hill, a record-breaking weekend for "Frozen 2," Taylor Swift at the AMAs, and more...
Believing Trump means believing this...
What skills are required to be a member of the pro-Trump media in good standing? Dramatic leaps of logic, for one. Adherence to debunked conspiracy theories, to name another. An absolute willingness to excuse all of the president's exaggerations and lies.
Here, an incomplete list of what it takes to be a "loyal" Republican in 2019. According to Trump, you're supposed to believe that:
-- The Ukraine whistleblower made up a "false story" that's been mostly debunked.
-- The legal impeachment process is actually an illegal coup.
-- The probe of Russia's actual interference in 2016 was a deep state plot to sabotage Trump.
-- With regard to the Russian cyber-attack, it might have been a 400-pound guy "sitting on their bed."
-- When the DNC was hacked, it gave the server to "a company owned by a very wealthy Ukrainian."
-- The real scandal is that Ukraine is guilty of meddling in 2016 to help Hillary Clinton.
-- President Obama sent only "pillows and sheets" in aid to Ukraine.
-- Ukraine is the "third most corrupt country in the world."
-- European countries refused to give aid to Ukraine.
-- Adam Schiff "made up a phone call, and then when I released it, everybody was embarrassed."
-- Marie Yovanovitch wouldn't hang Trump's photo in the embassy.
-- "Polls have now turned very strongly against impeachment."
Wallace v. Kennedy, fact v. ignorance
Fact-check after fact-check has showed that these beliefs do not hold up to scrutiny. But Trump expects his congressmen and commentators to stay in line. That's how we end up with moments like this -- from "Fox News Sunday" -- when, per The Daily Beast, GOP Senator John Kennedy "said he still wasn't sure that Russia was responsible for the DNC server hack during the 2016 election, even though the intelligence community has concluded that Russia is the culprit." Chris Wallace rightly pushed back -- here's the exchange:
WALLACE: "Who do you believe was responsible for hacking the DNC and Clinton campaign computers, their emails? Was it Russia, or Ukraine?"
KENNEDY: "I don't know. Nor do you. Nor do any of us. Ms. Hill is entitled to her opinion--"
WALLACE: "Let me just interrupt to say, the entire intelligence community says it was Russia."
KENNEDY: "Right, but it could also be Ukraine. I'm not saying that I know one way or the other. I'm saying that Ms. Hill is entitled to her opinion, but no rebuttal evidence was allowed to be offered."
>> Kennedy should read Marshall Cohen and Olanma Mang's latest for CNN: "Debunking the Trump-backed conspiracy theory on Ukraine election meddling"
>> And he should watch Sunday's "60 Minutes" story, "How the Russians hacked the 2016 election," featuring DOJ Assistant Attorney General John Demers...
What they're banking on... | | Former Fox News host Juliet Huddy on "Reliable Sources:" Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson et al are "banking on the fact that they've done a good job of convincing" people that "the media is lying, that critics of Donald Trump are liars and are the enemy of the state. They're banking on the fact that everybody's going to stick with them..."
More bluster by Devin Nunes...
Vicky Ward's Friday night scoop for CNN was in the news all weekend long. She reported that a lawyer for Lev Parnas, a lawyer for an indicted associate of Rudy Giuliani, "told CNN that his client is willing to tell Congress about meetings the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee had" -- that would be Devin Nunes -- "in Vienna last year with a former Ukrainian prosecutor to discuss digging up dirt on Joe Biden."
Okay, so Parnas says Nunes met with Victor Shokin in Vienna. How did Nunes react? By threatening to sue both CNN and The Daily Beast, which has also been on top of the story.
"We've got all the facts on our side, and we're going to file in federal court," said Nunes, who has acquired a reputation for suing news outlets. As I mentioned last month, his existing suits are viewed, in media law circles, as troubling distractions -- part of a troubling trend of nuisance suits against media companies.
As for the new threat, the Beast said in a statement, "We don't comment on threats of litigation but stand by our reporting and are happy to defend it." CNN declined to comment, but Ward continued reporting on air and online all weekend long. She noted that Parnas's attorney "has told me that his client would not be making these claims if he didn't have text messages and other such evidence to back them up."
And on Sunday, when Fox's Maria Bartiromo point-blank asked Nunes, "were you in Vienna with Shokin?" he didn't say yes or no -- he rambled in response and said "I really want to answer all of these questions," but didn't.
GOP leaders say yes to Fox, no to other networks
We did some research... examined three months of TV news transcripts... and found that members of the GOP leadership frequently say yes to Fox News interviews but say no to other networks. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy has been on Fox at least 19 times in the past three months, on CBS two times, and that's it -- we couldn't find any other sit-downs with big national TV networks. House Minority Whip Steve Scalise has been on Fox at least 18 times, and practically nowhere else. I'm going to write more about this on Monday, because I think it reveals something about the party's strategy, or lack thereof.
And what about Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell? He holds a weekly press conference, but he spurns virtually all interview requests, even from Fox... | |
Bloomberg is running...
Michael Bloomberg's plans were starting to leak, so his 2020 announcement had to be moved up... He made it official on Sunday morning with a TV ad and a website... CNN's team has details about his candidacy here...
Now what does it mean for his media company?
"No previous presidential candidate has owned a journalistic organization of this size," Bloomberg EIC John Micklethwait noted in a Sunday morning memo to staff.
Micklethwait is right. This is unprecedented. Bloomberg employs about 2,700 journalists and analysts around the world. Bloomberg News generates approximately 5,000 stories a day.
"For weeks, Bloomberg News's top editors have wrestled with how they could fairly report on their boss if he decided to run while being fair to his political rivals," as WaPo's Paul Farhi wrote.
So here's the plan, per Micklethwait: "We will describe who is winning and who is losing. We will look at policies and their consequences. We will carry polls, we will interview candidates and we will track their campaigns, including Mike's. We have already assigned a reporter to follow his campaign (just as we did when Mike was in City Hall). And in the stories we write on the presidential contest, we will make clear that our owner is now a candidate."
But, Micklethwait wrote, "We will continue our tradition of not investigating Mike (and his family and foundation) and we will extend the same policy to his rivals in the Democratic primaries. We cannot treat Mike's Democratic competitors differently from him. If other credible journalistic institutions publish investigative work on Mike or the other Democratic candidates, we will either publish those articles in full, or summarize them for our readers -- and we will not hide them."
This next part is stoking controversy: Bloomberg's Projects and Investigations team will, "for the moment," continue to investigate the Trump administration, "as the government of the day," he wrote. "If Mike is chosen as the Democratic presidential candidate (and Donald Trump emerges as the Republican one), we will reassess how we do that."
Former editor says she would have quit...
Former Bloomberg Businessweek editor Megan Murphy expressed sympathy for her former colleagues on Sunday. "For the record," she tweeted, "I was presenting with a near identical 'memo' during his 2016 flirtation. And I was very clear that I would quit the second it ever saw the light of day."
She said the staffers "deserve a hell of a lot better treatment than this. But I know they will continue to bust their asses to do great work, because *that's* journalism..."
Opinion staffers are joining the campaign
"David Shipley and Tim O'Brien, executive editors of Bloomberg Opinion, will take a leave of absence to join the campaign," Oliver Darcy reports.
For the time being, Bloomberg's editorial board will be suspended, and "our columnists, who produce the majority of Bloomberg Opinion's content, will continue to speak for themselves," Micklethwait wrote...
What's going to happen to the company?
Last year Bloomberg told an interviewer in Iowa that if he ran for POTUS, "the company would either go into a blind trust or I would sell it. But I think at my age, if selling it is possible, I would do that." But those comments were later walked back... WWD's Kali Hays reported that Bloomberg "is said to have no intention of selling his media company..." And that remains true to this day.
"The company is not for sale," Ty Trippet, Bloomberg LP spokesman, told me when I inquired on Sunday. Bloomberg would more likely look to set up a blind trust in the event he is elected...
FOR THE RECORD, PART ONE
-- An extraordinary and confusing story: "The Pentagon chief 'fired' the Navy secretary for going outside his chain of command by proposing a 'secret agreement with the White House,' according to a senior defense official..." (CNN)
-- This case revolves around the case of a Navy SEAL, Eddie Gallagher, "who posed for a photo next to an Islamic State terrorist's corpse in Iraq." Gallagher was convicted of bringing discredit to the armed services. Fox's Pete Hegseth has staunchly supported Gallagher and urged Trump to reverse Gallagher's demotion. On Sunday night, Gallagher thanked Hegseth by name in a statement... (Fox)
-- Fox has played a key role in this case. Per the NYT, when Trump signaled that he would clear three members of the armed services "who have been accused or convicted of war crimes," SEAL leaders "first learned of the plans from the Fox News broadcast," and then "lobbied against clearing Gallagher..." (NYT)
-- No. 1 most-read story on the Post's website on Sunday evening: "White House review turns up emails showing extensive effort to justify Trump's decision to block Ukraine military aid..." (WaPo)
Week ahead calendar
Tuesday: Ronan Farrow starts the "The Catch and Kill Podcast..."
Tuesday: "Crime in Progress," by the co-founders of Fusion GPS, and "Impeach," by Neal Katyal, hit bookshelves...
Thursday: The Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade starts at 9am on NBC, but the balloons might not fly due to strong winds...
Sanders in three parts
1. Sarah Huckabee Sanders lied about the FBI from the press briefing podium. When Mueller's probe exposed the lie, she called it a "slip of the tongue," but the "slip" happened multiple times on two days.
2. "I don't like being called a liar," Sanders said in this new interview with the NYT's Annie Karni, which revolved around her plans to run for political office in Arkansas...
3. Karni's story quotes Carla Shelton, a "small-business owner" who attended a recent Sanders speech, saying "The main thing I like about her is her honesty. She got a bad rap because people are offended that she does tell the truth. I'm 100 percent behind her."
"The Cult of Trump"
That's the title of a new book by Steven Hassan, a leading cult expert with firsthand experience escaping the Unification Church. Portions of my interview with Hassan aired on Sunday's show. He says Trump's cultivation of his base is cult-like... And he stresses the importance of "contact outside the bubble..." A notable message just a few days before Thanksgiving.
Here's the video of our segment... See if you agree or disagree with him... You can also hear the full conversation on this week's "Reliable" podcast...
FOR THE RECORD, PART TWO
-- Asawin Suebsaeng says Trump is privately worried about "what's going on with Drudge" amid impeachment... (Beast)
-- On Sunday's show, Joel Simon and Kathleen Carroll of the Committee to Protect Journalists talked about their recent meeting with the VP... (CNN)
Katie Hill says she will 'continue to be a voice'
On Sunday's "Reliable," I spoke with former Democratic lawmaker Katie Hill, who resigned from Congress last month. Hill said "I have to own up to my responsibility" in the scandal that cost her the congressional seat, but also said "right-wing media and those who attacked me" wanted her to be silenced, but "that's not going to work." Here are recaps from HuffPost and Newsmax...
Behind the scenes of Prince Andrew's BBC interview
Here's the story behind the story of the BBC's interview with Prince Andrew, which has been described as "embarrassing" and "disastrous" for the prince. BBC Newsnight presenter Emily Maitlis told me about her interviewing techniques... And said she knew it would be "watched by women who had been girls whose lives had been turned upside down by Jeffrey Epstein." Here's the full segment...
Following up on Trump's trip to Walter Reed
Quoting from Dr. Sanjay Gupta's newest story for CNN.com: "Over the past week, I have spoken to doctors who've previously worked at the White House and those who are currently in touch with the White House. They all say that what happened last weekend is unusual." Gupta and I spoke about this on Sunday's show as well...
How to catch up on Sunday's show
Watch the video clips on CNN.com... Catch the full episode via CNNgo or VOD... Or listen to the pod via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, TuneIn, or your favorite app...
FOR THE RECORD, PART THREE
-- Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web, is introducing The Contract for the Web, "a global plan of action created over the past year by activists, academics, companies, governments and citizens from across the world to make sure our online world is safe, empowering and genuinely for everyone..." (NYT)
-- Julia Carrie Wong's new report for The Guardian: "White nationalists are openly operating on Facebook. The company won't act" (The Guardian)
| | Disney does it again
Frank Pallotta writes: "Five Disney films have made more than $1 billion at the box office this year. After this weekend, it looks like 'Frozen 2' is on its way to becoming the company's sixth." The sequel "brought in an estimated $127 million in North America this weekend," the "highest-grossing debut ever for Walt Disney Animation Studios, which has been producing films since 1937."
Other records:
-- The film "made more than the opening of the original, which brought in $93 million over the five-day Thanksgiving holiday in 2013..."
-- And it "set the record for biggest global opening for an animated film ever, making $350 million worldwide..."
"1917 is the most impressive cinematic achievement of the year"
Film industry insiders had a first look at Sam Mendes' WWI epic "1917" on Saturday night... And "based on the initial takes, this looks to be a huge Oscar contender despite breaking so late in the race," IndieWire's Ryan Lattanzio reports. The film, "shot by director of photography Roger Deakins to mimic a one-take descent into hell on the battlefield," is set to hit theaters on Christmas Day.
>> Tatiana Siegel: "1917 is the most impressive cinematic achievement of the year."
>> Courtney Howard: "Best war film in decades."
Taylor Swift at the AMAs
Chloe Melas writes: "Taylor Swift seemed to deliver a message at the top of her performance at the American Music Awards on Sunday: She is not backing down. Without directly calling out the public feud between Swift and her former music label, Big Machine Label Group, she sent a not-so-subtle signal with her song choice," by starting with "The Man." Read on...
>> New backstory by the NYT's team: "How Taylor Swift Dragged Private Equity Into Her Fight Over Music Rights..."
AMAs winner list
Sandra Gonzalez has the full list here...
| | | Thank you for reading! We'll be back tomorrow... | | | |
