SHAME OF THE NATION: 533,074 articles have been published about Russia and Trump… Networks Gave Whopping 2,284 Minutes to Probe… CNN STILL sitting outside Mueller’s office…
By Rich Noyes | March 25, 2019
The amount of time and energy that the media elite — cable news, big newspapers, etc. — have spent talking and writing about the notion that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia is incalculable, but here’s one calculable slice: From January 20, 2017 (Inauguration Day) through March 21, 2019 (the last night before special counsel Robert Mueller sent his report to the Attorney General), the ABC, CBS and NBC evening newscasts produced a combined 2,284 minutes of “collusion” coverage, most of it (1,909 minutes) following Mueller’s appointment on May 17, 2017.
That’s an average of roughly three minutes a night, every night, for an astonishing 791 days — a level of coverage normally associated only with a major war or a presidential election. In fact, TV reporters devoted more airtime to the Russia investigation than any of the Trump administration’s policy initiatives — immigration, tax reform, trade, North Korea, ISIS, the economy, veterans’ affairs, the opioid epidemic, to name but a few. Since his presidency began, nearly one-fifth (18.8%) of all of Trump’s evening news coverage has been about this one investigation.
The networks’ fixation on scandal over substance is one reason their coverage of the President has been so preposterously lopsided. From January 1 through March 21 of this year, the spin of Trump coverage on the evening newscasts has been 92% negative vs. just eight percent positive — even worse than the 90% negative coverage we calculated in 2017 and 2018.
[To determine the spin of news coverage, our analysts tallied all explicitly evaluative statements about the President or his administration from either reporters, anchors or non-partisan sources such as experts or voters. Evaluations from partisan sources, as well as neutral statements, were not included.]
For those who spend all of their time on their phones or glued to 24-hour cable news, note that these shows still matter: despite today’s fractured media environment, the Big Three evening newscasts still have a larger audience than either their morning show counterparts or even the biggest cable news shows — a combined 24 million people, according to ratings compiled the week of February 25.
Back on March 10, two weeks before the Mueller report was delivered, ABC’s Terry Moran publicly warned that there would be “a reckoning for the media” if there report failed to deliver evidence to validate journalists’ years-long suspicion that the “current President of the United States assist[ed] the Kremlin in an attack on our democracy.” According to the summary delivered Sunday afternoon, “the Special Counsel’s investigation did not find that the Trump campaign or anyone associated with it conspired or coordinated with Russia in its efforts to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election.”
Even before that conclusion was made public, anti-Trump journalist Matt Taibbi argued that the “news that Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller is headed home without issuing new charges is a death-blow for the reputation of the American news media.”
As much as any of their hyperbolic spin, the massive onslaught of coverage during the past two years starkly reveals the media’s mindset. Now that the investigation they relentlessly touted has ended with an outcome favorable to the President they despise, it does seem a good time for that “reckoning.”
The ACLU Lobbies the United Nations to Assist Migrant Invasion at US Southern Border
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The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) claims to defend the rights of Americans, but the liberal organization tends to spend most of their resources on promoting migrants and abortions. They are even lobbying the United Nations (UN) to override the sovereignty of the United States to force them to accept more “refugees.”
Jamil Dakwar, the foreigner who serves as the director of the ACLU’s Human Rights Program (HRP), issued a statement to the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva. He is complaining that the Trump administration is ignoring the UN’s requests to meddle at the border.
“The Trump administration has escalated its hostility toward human rights bodies including the apparent severing of relationships with independent experts appointed to monitor and report on human rights violations,” Dakwar wrote in his statement.
Under Trump’s ‘America First’ policy, the UN has been frozen out of the oversight process. The Trump administration considers this a defense of US sovereignty, as the UN’s stated goal is to relocate third-world refugees into Western nations whenever possible regardless of the consequences for the host population.
“The United States remains engaged in the work of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights,” the State Department said in a statement released to The Guardian, “and strongly supports those special procedures and mandates that have proven effective in illuminating the most grave human rights environments, including in Iran and DPRK [North Korea].”
Felipe González Morales, the UN monitor on the human rights of migrants, is another globalist foreigner who is bemoaning President Trump’s ‘America First’ immigration policies.
“Passing the responsibility for the protection of these migrants to the Mexican authorities without proper guarantees as to their protection from return defies both the spirit and letter of international obligations,” he wrote.
While these globalists whine, Trump faces a serious crisis on the US southern border. More migrants are coming across the border than they have in over a decade, and it is causing disease and crime to arrive into the nation.
Even the smear artists at the New York Times was forced to cover the news backing up Trump’s rhetoric about a national emergency:
“More than 76,000 migrants crossed the border without authorization in February, an 11-year high and a strong sign that stepped-up prosecutions, new controls on asylum and harsher detention policies have not reversed what remains a powerful lure for thousands of families fleeing violence and poverty.
“The system is well beyond capacity, and remains at the breaking point,” Kevin K. McAleenan, commissioner of Customs and Border Protection, told reporters in announcing the new data on Tuesday.
The nation’s top border enforcement officer painted a picture of processing centers filled to capacity, border agents struggling to meet medical needs and thousands of exhausted members of migrant families crammed into a detention system that was not built to house them — all while newcomers continue to arrive, sometimes by the busload, at the rate of 2,200 a day.
“This is clearly both a border security and a humanitarian crisis,” Mr. McAleenan said.”
The ACLU, the UN, the Democratic Party, and other entities benefiting from the refugee resettlement industry are happy to facilitate this crisis for their own ends. Trump would be wise to continue ignoring them if he intends to fulfill his mandate and secure the border.
FIREWORKS! GOP Rep. Jim Jordan GOES OFF at Cohen Hearing, “CNN had Evidence Before We Did!” (VIDEO)
February 27, 2019
President Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen is testifying before the House Oversight Committee on Wednesday morning as the president holds high-level peace talks with North Korean leader in Vietnam.
Cohen told the House committee that Trump had advance knowledge of plans to release Democratic emails during the 2016 campaign.
Republican Rep. Jim Jordan went off at the start of the hearing.
Jordan slammed the Democrats and Cohen team of leaking his testimony to CNN before the GOP had a chance to review the material.
Rep. Jim Jordan: “You know who had this material before all the members of the committee? CNN had it before it we did. CNN had the evidence before we did. I want to be recognized.”
Wow!
“You know who had this material before all the members of the committee? CNN had it before it we did. CNN had the evidence before we did. I want to be recognized.”
Justice Department preparing for Mueller report as early as next week
By Evan Perez, Laura Jarrett and Katelyn Polantz,
Attorney General Bill Barr is preparing to announce as early as next week the completion of special counsel Robert Mueller‘s Russia investigation, with plans for Barr to submit to Congress soon after a summary of Mueller’s confidential report, according to people familiar with the plans.
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The preparations are the clearest indication yet that Mueller is nearly done with his almost two-year investigation.
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The precise timing of the announcement is subject to change.
The scope and contours of what Barr will send to Congress remain unclear. Also unclear is how long it will take Justice officials to prepare what will be submitted to lawmakers.
But with President Donald Trump soon to travel overseas for a summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, Justice officials are mindful of not interfering with the White House’s diplomatic efforts, which could impact the timing.
The Justice Department and the special counsel’s office declined to comment.
Barr has said that he wants to be as “transparent” as possible with Congress and the public, “consistent with the rules and the law.”
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Under the special counsel regulations, Mueller must submit a “confidential” report to the attorney general at the conclusion of his work, but the rules don’t require it to be shared with Congress, or by extension, the public. And, as Barr has made clear, the Justice Department generally guards against publicizing “derogatory” information about uncharged individuals.
As a result, one of the most pressing questions Barr will face in the coming weeks is the extent to which Mueller’s findings should be disclosed to Congress.
The regulations require Mueller to explain in his report all decisions to prosecute or not prosecute matters under scrutiny. Barr would also need to inform Congress if the Justice Department prevented the special counsel team from pursuing any investigative steps.
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Trump said Wednesday that it’s “totally up to Bill Barr” as to whether Mueller’s report comes out while he is overseas in Vietnam next week.
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“That’ll be totally up to the new attorney general. He’s a tremendous man, a tremendous person, who really respects this country and respects the Justice Department, so that’ll be totally up to him,” Trump told reporters in the White House.
Speculation about the end of the probe has been running rampant in Washington. NBC News reported recently the probe would be done by mid-February.
Life after Mueller
While the Mueller investigation may soon come to a close, there continue to be court cases that will be handled by other federal prosecutors.
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In addition, Mueller has referred certain matters that fell outside the scope of the Russia probe to other US Attorneys to pursue. Some of those investigations have already been revealed, including the investigation in New York into former Trump’s former lawyer, Michael Cohen. That probe has spawned subsequent federal investigations in New York into the Trump Organization and the Trump Inaugural Committee. It is possible the special counsel’s team has referred other matters that have not yet come to light.
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For close watchers of the federal courthouse and the Mueller team, small changes have added up in recent weeks.
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On Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday last week, special counsel’s office employees carried boxes and pushed a cart full of files out of their office — an unusual move that could foreshadow a hand-off of legal work.
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At the same time, the Mueller prosecutors’ wo
-rkload appears to be dwindling. Four of Mueller’s 17 prosecutors have ended their tenures with the office, with most returning to other roles in the Justice Department.
And the grand jury that Mueller’s prosecutors used to return indictments of longtime Trump confidant Roger Stone, former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, and several Russians hasn’t apparently convened since January 24 the day it approved the criminal charges against Stone.
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Even with these signs of a wrap up, the DC US Attorney’s office has stepped in to work on cases that may continue longer than Mueller is the special counsel.
That office has joined onto some of the Mueller’s team’s casework, including the cases against Stone, a Russian social media propaganda conspiracy, and in an ongoing foreign government-owned company’s fight against a grand jury subpoena.
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Mueller and his prosecutors are still reporting to work as frequently as ever — with some even coming in on recent snow days and Presidents’ Day. But also visiting them more often than ever before are the prosecutors from the DC US Attorney’s Office and others in the Justice Department who’ve worked on the Mueller cases.
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In one court case, against Concord Management for its alleged support for the social media conspiracy prosecutors told a judge in January there’s still a related “matter occurring before the grand jury.”
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In other cases, including Manafort’s, the Mueller team has made heavy redactions to its recent public court filings, including to protect pending investigations and people who haven’t been charged with crimes.
HUGE: Trump to Hold Second North Korean Summit Next Month
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Continuing to improve diplomatic relations with the Hermit Kingdom of North Korea, the White House announced Friday that it will hold a second summit with North Korea in late February.
“The announcement came minutes after Trump met with a top North Korean official in the Oval Office for over an hour,” according to Politico. “The North Korean official was reported to be carrying a letter for Trump from his country’s leader, the latest of several missives the two heads of state have exchanged.”
Trump continues make progress in securing peace on the Korean Peninsula, despite the fact that the alleged experts in the mainstream press said that he would have us nuked by this point in his presidency.
“President Donald J. Trump met with Kim Yong Chol for an hour and half, to discuss denuclearization and a second summit, which will take place near the end of Februarym [sic]” the White House reportedly said. “The President looks forward to meeting with Chairman Kim at a place to be announced at a later date.”
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According to the report, Vietnam and Thailand have been mentioned as possible locations.
During the last North Korean summit, which took place in Singapore in spring of 2018, North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un verbally committed to full denuclearization. The country has not launched a nuclear test missile since the meeting. North Korea also returned the remains of several U.S. Serviceman killed in the Korean war.
Maddow’s latest crystal ball reading: Putin ‘ordered’ Trump to withdraw from Afghanistan
Rachel Maddow (R) and a US soldier in Afghanistan © AFP / Theo Wargo; Reuters / Shamil Zhumatov
MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow – a pioneer of Putin-ate-my-homework journalism – has predictably mused that Donald Trump is considering pulling troops out of Afghanistan on the orders of Russia’s president. The evidence speaks for itself.
In a segment on her critically-acclaimed show, “Watch Me Scream ‘Russia’ Until I Dislocate My Jaw”, Maddow made an adroit observation of seismic proportions: Reports that Donald Trump is mulling a partial withdrawal from Afghanistan emerged only hours after Vladimir Putin said that the US keeps promising to leave the country but never does! In layman’s terms: Putin ordered Trump to pull troops out of Afghanistan, during a live broadcast? It seems Maddow believes that she decrypted their top-secret communications channel.
Apparently she cannot fathom that there may be any non-Putin related motives for leaving Afghanistan after 17 years. But in August, the MSNBC host accused Trump of “flip-flopping” after announcing that more US troops would be deployed to Afghanistan.
So Rachel Maddow opposes sending more troops to Afghanistan – but anyone who wants to withdraw US forces from the country is a Putin stooge. A daunting pickle, indeed.
As Vox pointed out at the time, Trump “spent years railing against the war in Afghanistan and calling for a US withdrawal from the country.” Before moving into the White House, he made it clear to lawmakers that his administration would not send US troops to fight abroad unless “absolutely necessary.”
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Maddow’s other celebrated Russiagate hits include having a stroke – live on television – after discovering that Russia shares a border with North Korea. She also famously revealed that Rex Tillerson was hand-picked by Putin to serve as Secretary of State – you know, the guy who allegedly called Trump a “f*cking moron”.
Imagine Maddow’s on-air meltdown if Trump really does withdraw troops from Afghanistan.
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