TGIT! Here's the latest on Politico, Lara Trump, X, Chris Hayes, OpenAI, Robert Thomson, "Paradise," and more...
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Journalists are in the business of covering reality. But we keep getting sucked into covering President Trump's unreality because of his position and power.
Boastful exaggerations are par for the course when it comes to Trump. Outlandish ideas are common too. Unreality is something different.
Unreality is Trump claiming that Elon Musk found "$100 million on condoms to Hamas." His press secretary Karoline Leavitt had previously claimed the amount was $50 million. Fact-checkers spent all day on that and couldn't find any evidence. Then Trump went and doubled the amount.
Unreality is Trump suggesting that the government's diversity, equity and inclusion efforts were to blame for the deaths of 67 people in last week's midair collision.
Unreality is Trump insisting CBS "defrauded the public" and committed "election interference" by trimming an answer from Kamala Harris on a "60 Minutes" broadcast. This morning he called it "the greatest broadcasting scandal in history."
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CBS didn't commit 'news distortion' |
I have been covering the CBS matter closely, so I can tell you, it's flummoxing. The matter is newsworthy because it's the subject of an active FCC investigation and a pending Trump lawsuit that CBS parent Paramount Global is trying to settle. But it's all based on a faulty premise. There is no "there" there.
Yesterday the FCC released the raw tapes and transcript at issue, which proved that CBS engaged in normal editing, not "news distortion." As FCC chair Brendan Carr himself has said in interviews, the bar for proving "news distortion" is very high – it would apply if someone said "no" in an interview, but a TV station edited the segment to appear like the person said "yes." That's not what CBS did.
Facts be damned, Trump said this morning that "they 100% removed Kamala's horrible election changing answers to questions, and replaced them with completely different, and far better, answers, taken from another part of the interview."
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Carr prolongs the pain for CBS |
Trump went on to say "this was Election changing 'stuff,' Election Interference and, quite simply, Election Fraud at a level never seen before," even though it wasn't (and even though he won the election). He said "CBS should lose its license, and the cheaters at 60 Minutes should all be thrown out, and this disreputable 'NEWS' show should be immediately terminated."
See how we've been dragged into unreality here?
Carr reviewed the tapes and transcript, but instead of concluding there is no "news distortion" and saying "case closed," he opened up the matter to public comment and extended the case for at least another six weeks. Anna Gomez, one of the Democrats on the commission, called it a reckless "fishing expedition" and said it "sets a dangerous precedent that threatens to undermine trust in the FCC’s role as an impartial regulator."
But Carr knows that Trump wants CBS to suffer. Trump is saying so on Truth Social. Overnight the president amplified several people who supported his unreality and insisted this small story is a Very Big Deal. I'm reminded of what Peter Wehner wrote in 2020: "What Mr. Trump requires of his supporters is that they enter his world of unreality."
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Here's another timely example of unreality: The assertion that MAGA's current enemy #1 USAID secretly bankrolled Politico.
X users' feeds are absolutely bursting with wild falsehoods about government spending right now. (Maybe that's just how Musk likes it?) Timothy B. Lee pointed out that "the data on usaspending.gov has been publicly available for years," and Eric Levitz commented that "the GAO identified $233 billion of fraud in 2024," so "we don't need to let a billionaire ignore federal law to do government oversight."
But the unreality is winning. Yesterday, after a right-wing conspiracy theory took root about USAID giving millions of dollars to Politico, Karoline Leavitt said DOGE is "working on canceling" $8 million worth of Politico subscriptions. In reality, that sum represented all the payments for Politico Pro subscriptions from all federal agencies, including USAID, for many years.
"There's no $8 million to cancel," Politico reporter Josh Gerstein pointed out. "This is like saying you're going to cancel your New York Times subscription from 2016 or your car payment from 2018. It's idiotic on its face."
Last night Politico leaders Goli Sheikholeslami and John Harris sent around a memo trying to clean up the misinfo (and defending the value of its pro subscription service), but this noise may have a real bottom line impact on its business.
And it's not just Politico. This morning, in his harshest attack against the media since retaking office, he posted in all caps that it "LOOKS LIKE BILLIONS OF DOLLARS HAVE BEEN STOLLEN AT USAID, AND OTHER AGENCIES, MUCH OF IT GOING TO THE FAKE NEWS MEDIA AS A 'PAYOFF' FOR CREATING GOOD STORIES ABOUT THE DEMOCRATS." He wondered aloud if CBS and The New York Times benefited.
Thus a new conspiracy theory is born – one based on lies and grievances – and one that's sure to have a long MAGA media lifespan. Journalists who try to explain it's nonsense come across like they're defending a corrupt business model. "This seems to be a new vector of attacking the media, saying they're only calling stuff out to protect income," Techdirt's Mike Masnick wrote overnight.
This unreality dynamic is a continual challenge for fact-checkers and the wider media. Journalists don't have to spend all day debunking Trump's stuff, but we do have to recognize that it's consuming the feeds of Trump fans. For MAGA media consumers who want to feel like they're "winning" by saving taxpayer dollars, no matter how inconsequential the amount, boring reality is no match for Trump's unreality.
On a related note...
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One of Trump's biggest advantages |
"A chorus of right-wing influencers and media figures has spent Mr. Trump’s first two weeks in office responding to his every move with a unified sense of support and even awe," the NYT's Stuart A. Thompson writes in his latest examination of the MAGA media world. He says "the triumphant tone could reflect an important advantage for Mr. Trump during his second presidential term: In the eyes of right-wing media, he can do no wrong."
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Fox gives Lara Trump a show |
Back in 2020, when I wrote "Hoax," a book about the complex relationship between Trump and Fox, I quoted a former producer who was shocked to write banners and see Trump regurgitate the exact same words on Twitter a few minutes later. The source said "people think he's calling up 'Fox & Friends' and telling us what to say. Hell no. It's the opposite. We tell him what to say."
This time around, maybe it's more complicated, because Fox and Trump are even cozier. Yesterday the network announced that it is giving the president's daughter-in-law Lara Trump a program of her own, "My View with Lara Trump," Saturdays at 9pm ET. As the NYT's Michael Grynbaum wrote, "there is no precedent for a sitting president’s relative to host a show on a major television news channel."
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>> "The Far Right Has a New Hero: Elon Musk," David Gilbert writes. He says "talk of Trump, as well as his policies and speeches have been, for the first time, relegated to an afterthought." (WIRED)
>> Clare Duffy and Hadas Gold's must read: "They lived through Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover. Now, they have advice for federal government employees." (CNN)
>> “Reddit has temporarily banned one of its communities — and removed another — after" Musk "claimed comments made by the site's users about his employees were breaking the law," Tom Gerken reports. (BBC)
>> First Amendment lawyers are paying attention: Seth Stern, director of advocacy at Freedom of the Press Foundation, says "there's nothing more central to the First Amendment than the press and public’s right to criticize those carrying out controversial government work, harshly and by name." (FPF)
>> Musk's power in DC and "the return of big advertisers like Amazon.com have Wall Street clamoring to get a piece of X," Alexander Saeedy and Justin Baer report. (WSJ)
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Trump speaks at the National Prayer Breakfast.
Amazon reports earnings after the bell.
Snoop Dogg hosts the NFL Honors in NOLA.
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>> "The Sirens' Call" by Chris Hayes debuted at No. 1 on the NYT nonfiction best seller list. (NYT)
>> "News Corp. CEO Robert Thomson praised what he sees as the improved business conditions in the U.S. following the election, saying 'the yoke of woke' has been lifted." (THR)
>> OpenAI "is expected to air its first TV commercial during Sunday's Super Bowl." (WSJ)
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Alex Jones settlement is blocked |
A U.S. bankruptcy judge has "blocked a settlement between families who have sued Alex Jones over his false claims about the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School mass shooting, saying their attempt to divide the bankrupt conspiracy theorist's assets exceeded his court's authority," Dietrich Knauth reports for Reuters.
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Intriguing reporting from the Washington Post: TikTok's Chinese owner ByteDance "appears to be slow-rolling negotiations for a sale while waiting for a green light from the Chinese government, even as corporate allies of President Donald Trump race to broker a deal to sell the app to an American bidder," Elizabeth Dwoskin, Naomi Nix, and Drew Harwell report.
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>> "The Academy Awards will apparently avoid a looming embarrassment for this year's show and won't be asking any past winners to take to the stage and speak glowingly about 'Emilia Pérez' star and Best Actress nominee Karla Sofía Gascón" in the wake of the controversy over her "racist and anti-Muslim tweets," Steve Pond writes. (TheWrap)
>> “In a highly unusual situation, ABC is preparing to foot a bill worth more than $460,000 to ensure that contestants on game show ‘Lucky 13’ receive the winnings they are owed,” Jake Kanter reports. (Deadline)
>> "Warner Music Group has acquired a controlling stake in Tempo Music, the owner of a catalog of song rights spanning recordings by Bruno Mars, Adele and Wiz Khalifa," Lucas Shaw reports. (Bloomberg)
>> "Paradise" had a "heavenly opening week, per Disney, which says Hulu's Sterling K. Brown-led drama from 'This Is Us' creator Dan Fogelman drew 7 million views across its first nine days of streaming," Jennifer Maas reports. (Variety)
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