And we've gutted the education department

 Facepalm emoji.

I'll be surprised if she gets dumped.  (She may get impeached.) Trump likes "sicko fans" like her (Pam Bondi and Karoline Leavitt), because they're dedicated to whoring for him.

The Mob

 

They already shook down Amazon for a Melania documentary. 

Another loss for mainstream media

CNN joins the kneeling crowd

The Orange King will still see it, so CNN is perhaps hoping Acosta will object and quit.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE 04:51 pm:

The hits just keep on coming...

WTAF, CNN?

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

The biggest loser loses again

A federal judge late Friday dismissed Donald Trump’s $475 million defamation lawsuit against CNN, in which the former president argued that the cable network’s statements about his false 2020 election fraud claims likened him to Adolf Hitler.

In the lawsuit, Trump’s team argued that CNN writers and television anchors’ use of the phrase the “Big Lie,” in five specific incidents, incited “readers and viewers to hate, contempt, distrust, ridicule, and even fear” him.

  Politico

For the love of Pete, inciting "readers and viewers to hate, contempt, distrust, ridicule, and even fear" someone is Trump's signature m.o. - often multiple times in one day.

The phrase “big lie” historically has referred to a propaganda technique so powerful that people who believe in its message could not believe that someone could have distorted it. It has popular origins in German from Adolf Hitler in his memoir, Mein Kampf.

[...]

U.S. District Judge Raag Singhal, who Trump appointed in 2019, reasoned that because all of CNN’s statements were opinion, Trump could not legally sue the network for defamation.

“Being ‘Hitler-like’ is not a verifiable statement of fact that would support a defamation claim,” Singhal wrote in his dismissal. “CNN’s statements while repugnant, were not, as a matter of law, defamatory.”

[...]

“The Court finds Nazi references in the political discourse (made by whichever ‘side’) to be odious and repugnant. But bad rhetoric is not defamation when it does not include false statements of fact.” Singhal wrote. “CNN’s use of the phrase ‘the Big Lie’ in connection with Trump’s election challenges does not give rise to a plausible inference that Trump advocates the persecution and genocide of Jews or any other group of people. No reasonable viewer could (or should) plausibly make that reference.”

Look out Judge. You'll be the next person Trump incites his readers and viewers to hate.

PS, when did "contempt" become a verb?

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Consequences are a beast

Not to mention that disastrous decision to do a Trump town hall with a MAGA audience.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE 06/07/2023:

They thought maybe people would keep watching?

So what they got for their effort was a day of infamy and a shitload of contempt.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Hillary was right

“What kind of a woman meets somebody … and within minutes you’re playing hanky panky in a dressing room,” he sneered.

  Public Notice

Sounds like an admission to me.

Trump’s cruel monologue was repulsive. But what was even more disgusting was the audience reaction. CNN had shamelessly filled the room with Trump supporters. And as the former president mocked Carroll, those supporters laughed like he was a witty comedian delivering a punchline.

[...]

Trump is Trump; he was a horrible person long before he was president, and he will go to his grave a liar, a bully, and a bigot. When CNN put Trump on the air for ratings and clout, they knew he would spread election lies. They knew he would demean E. Jean Carroll. They knew he would direct abuse at moderator Kaitlin Collins (he called her “nasty,” his standard epithet for women who challenge him).

But commentators like to think that most Americans are better than Trump. The college students, the small businesspeople, and even the Republican activists who vote for Trump do so, pundits hope, despite his manifest cruelty, rather than because those good Americans enjoy laughing at sexual assault victims.

But CNN’s town hall was a reminder that Trump supporters are in fact bad people — in the sense that to support Trump, and defend Trump, requires them to become their absolute worst selves.

[...]

Trump’s voters empathize with Trump, and he in turn empathizes with them, assuring them that they are persecuted and under assault. And then, empathizing together in an organic community of amity, he tells them that the solution to their ills is atrocity. And they enthusiastically agree.

Deplorables.

Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton was widely excoriated when she said in 2016 that half of Trump’s voters were “racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, and Islamophobic” — a “basket of deplorables,” as she memorably put it. In 2022, Shadi Hamid of the Brookings Institute worried that “to say that tens of millions of supporters of the other party … are fascists, fascistic, or semi-fascistic is to use the language of national emergency.”

And she took a whole lot of shit for doing it.

Robert O. Paxton argues that a core characteristic of fascism is “an obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victimhood” paired with “compensatory cults of unity, energy, and purity.” Fascists claim that they, the pure bearers of the nation’s pride, are being assaulted, smeared, and debased (generally by marginalized people). They then use that as an excuse for extremes of violence in the name of revenge and purity.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

No, I didn't watch CNN's town hall with Trump

We should remember that Trump regularly refers to CNN as “fake news,” and has trained his cult to see all media that is critical of him as the “enemy of the people.” As a result, CNN had to evacuate its NYC headquarters in 2018 due to a bomb threat. The next year, Cesar Sayoc, who sent functional pipe bombs to Trump’s critics, including CNN, was sentenced to 20 years in prison.

In turn, CNN decided to reward Trump for his reckless and dangerous behavior by giving him a 70-minute Festivus to air his grievances and lies in front of a fawning cult of 400 sycophants in New Hampshire, which reflected the full spectrum of whiteness and cruelty.

[...]

When CNN anchor and moderator Kaitlin Collins attempted to interject with actual facts, Trump simply doubled down on his bullshit and gave red meat in the form of rage, lies, and conspiracies, which the audience and his MAGA base heartily ate up. An hour into the circus, Trump called Collins a “nasty person”—simply because she stood her ground and asked follow-up questions.

  Daily Beast

Sounds like the Trump we all saw for four awful years.

To make matters worse, a day after Donald Trump was held liable by a jury of his peers for sexual battery and defamation against journalist E. Jean Carroll, CNN’s new leadership deemed it wise to let the twice-impeached vulgarian mock Carroll. [...] Trump bragged that his poll numbers went up after the verdict. The audience, which allegedly included “independents,” laughed and clapped.

[...]

In defense of the Dobbs case, Trump took full credit for the Supreme Court decision and boasted he did more for the “pro-life” movement than any other president in the past 50 years. He repeated the hateful and dangerous lie that, pre-Dobbs, babies were being killed after birth. He said this three times, and Collins failed to correct him each time.

[...]

Trump spent the entirety of the Town Hall repeating his Big Lie and election fraud conspiracies.

[...]

He also managed to lionize Ashli Babbit, who was shot and killed by a Capitol Hill police officer as she was trying to illegally enter the building. Trump praised her and called the officer, who happens to be Black, a “thug.” Trump then made a both-sides equivalence between the Jan. 6 insurrectionists and BLM protesters, who were overwhelmingly peaceful and simply demanded that police officers refrain from shooting and killing innocent Black people. Trump’s comment went unchallenged.

CNN has been trying to compete with Fox for some time now.  Sounds like they've made it.

Jack Smith is about to jog Trump's memory.

The Town Hall was, however, an important reminder of the Upside Down where the entire conservative movement now currently resides. In this perverse and deplorable Earth-3, the election was “rigged” against Trump, Nancy Pelosi was to blame for the failure of law enforcement to stop the violent insurrections, and Trump “completed” his wall, which, of course, was never completed. [...] When asked if Trump still wants to terminate the Constitution, he said he wouldn’t—even though he recently posted he would on Truth Social.

Does he actually think he can?

What was gained from giving Trump a 70-minute platform to spew lies and bullshit? How did this help inform Americans about the truth? How did it help defend democracy? How did it help CNN gain right-wing viewers, especially as their own anchor was humiliated and mocked by Trump in front of 400 Trump supporters?

[...]

Hopefully the money and ratings were worth the masochism and self-immolation.

[...]

When he was asked about Jan. 6, Trump called the Capitol Police officer who fatally shot Ashli Babbitt “a thug.” He said he would pardon “a large portion” of the Jan. 6 rioters, blamed the attack on Nancy Pelosi—“Crazy Nancy, as I affectionately call her”—and refused to apologize to his former vice president for endangering his life. Instead, Trump said Mike Pence “should’ve put the votes back to the state legislatures.”

When Trump was asked about a jury on Tuesday finding him liable for sexual battery and defamation—to the tune of $5 million—Trump repeated many of the same misogynist tropes he based his failed defense on. He called his accuser, E. Jean Carroll, a “wackjob,” and he repeated his claims that, “unfortunately or fortunately,” celebrities get away with sexual assault. His mention of “hanky-panky in a dressing room” elicited hysterical laughter from the adulating audience.

When he was asked about the debt ceiling, Trump openly rooted for economic pain—and suggested that pain was politically the right thing to do.

[...]

When Collins called Trump out for saying the debt ceiling shouldn’t be used as “a negotiating wedge,” he acknowledged that he said that when he was president, but followed it up by saying, with a shrug, he could change his tune now “because now I’m not president.”

The crowd, once again, laughed and applauded.

[...]

Throughout the 70-minute town hall, Trump refused to accept reality. When Collins tried to fact-check him, Trump just spoke over her and repeated his falsehoods.

[...]

Collins repeatedly tried to rectify the record, but Trump just kept forging ahead. When he said the “government cameras” showed “people going to 28 different voting booths”—something that never happened—Collins tried to correct him to no avail.

Halfway through the town hall, CNN staffers were acknowledging the event was a disaster for the truth.

“This is so bad,” one of CNN’s on-air personalities told The Daily Beast before the first commercial break. "I was cautiously optimistic despite the criticism... it is awful. It’s a Trump infomercial. We’re going to get crushed.”

Anyone who hadn't already figured how this would turn out should not be running a company. Kaitlin Collins should have read Mehdi Hasan's new book, "Win Every Argument", or at least listened to one of the many interviews he gave about it.

Trump’s game plan seemed to be a familiar one: spew so many lies that fact-checking him would be impossible. Before Collins could correct him on one lie, he was talking over her and telling another.

Which Hasan warns as "the Gish Gallop," and specifically naming Trump as one of the world's top gallopers.

To end the night, Collins asked Trump if he would commit to supporting the results of the 2024 election.

“If it’s an honest election, correct, I will,” Trump said, in less than definitive fashion

Which is exactly what he said in 2020. It was a stupid question.

CNN later released a statement in support of Collins: “Tonight Kaitlan Collins exemplified what it means to be a world-class journalist. She asked tough, fair and revealing questions. And she followed up and fact-checked President Trump in real time to arm voters with crucial information about his positions as he enters the 2024 election as the Republican frontrunner. That is CNN’s role and responsibility: to get answers and hold the powerful to account.”

Cleanup on aisle 3.

If you didn't watch, and you want to see highlight (I guess that should be lowlight) clips, Aaron Rupar has it for you.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE 11:43 am:  Putting the best spin on it they can...

UPDATE 09:31 pm:

I'll tell you what I think, Coop.  I think you're a talented, honest, and honorable journalist, and you should use your talents somewhere else.

UPDATE 05/12/2023:  

But it did for CNN exactly what they were going for.

More than 3 million people watched Wednesday night’s town hall, early data from Nielsen Media Research showed, representing a more than 300 percent increase from a typical weeknight at 8 p.m. for a network consistently running behind Fox News and MSNBC.

[...]

“I’m not sure we made enough news to counterbalance just giving Trump a perch to lie from with a laugh track,” another employee at the network said.

  The Hill

I'm sure the CNN executives would disagree with that. It's exactly what Trump was saying: he is the one who gets ratings. And CNN needed ratings. But did they have to fill the audience with MAGA heads? That was a choice.  Perhaps that was part of the deal they mde with Trump to get him on.

David Zaslav, the media mogul who runs the network’s new parent company [...] last week defended the company’s decision to host a town hall with Trump, saying “we need to hear both voices,” and noting the company’s investors are looking forward to a “great political season coming.”

[...]

CNN on Thursday clarified it had curated the audience through community, student politics and government, faith groups, as well as agriculture and education organizations. The school and campaign also invited guests, the network said.

[...]

“It felt like we got some of these people from a MAGA rally,” the on-air talent said.

Actually, what CNN aired was, in fact, a MAGA rally.

And Trump still punished them for it.  He owned them.

“That was President Donald J. Trump ripping us a new a—— here on CNN’s live presidential town hall,” anchor Anderson Cooper says on the manipulated video, which was posted to Trump’s Truth Social account Friday morning. “Thank you for watching, have a good night.”

The fake video had first been posted on Twitter by Donald Trump Jr., the former president’s eldest son, who often uses social media to mock liberals and media figures critical of his father and other conservatives.

  The Hill

Hoping some day his father will love him.

UPDATE 05/17/2023:

When asked why he took government documents from the White House, Trump answered: “I was there and I took what I took . . . . I had every right to do it. I didn’t make a secret of it. You know, the boxes were stationed outside of the White House.”

With those fateful words, Trump admitted that he was involved in willfully removing the documents from the White House. It is a federal crime to “willfully and unlawfully … remove … any … document … in any public office … of the United States.” Indeed, the Justice Department has identified “improper removal,” or “unlawful” removal, as a key concern in court filings in the Mar-a-Lago litigation.

Before making that admission, Trump might have blamed the removal on his aides. Indeed, his lawyers had recently done just that. In a letter they sent to the Chair of the House Intelligence Committee last month, they claimed the removal of the documents marked as classified was a result of staff error and inadvertence.

But that no longer holds. Trump’s own statement directly implicates him in the deliberate removal of the documents at issue.

It also discards another potential defense. If the documents were taken to Trump’s “southern White House” at Mar-a-Lago months before Trump’s presidency ended and were simply not returned, Trump could argue they were never unlawfully “removed” from a government office; they just “stayed there.” Trump appears to have tossed that argument overboard too.

Suppose, however, that Trump was still president when the documents landed in Mar-a-Lago in the few hours remaining while that resort was still the “southern White House.” He might claim the documents simply remained in that “federal office” and were never “removed.”

[...]

The Sixth Amendment requires that trials occur in the federal “district wherein the crime shall have been committed.” Trump’s admission of his personal role in removing the documents while he was in Washington means that Special Counsel Smith is now on surer footing than ever in bringing the documents case in DC, rather than in Florida.

[...]

Another point as to venue is easily overlooked: an indictment for conspiracy. One potential charge Smith could bring is conspiracy to defraud the United States of its property or lawful functions – functions like maintaining national security documents in secure locations. That charge, of course, depends on Smith’s proof of an agreement between Trump and another person to remove the documents.

Conspiracy charges carry a potential five-year sentence, two years longer than the maximum prison term for unlawful removal of government property.

[...]

Finally, there’s the grave Espionage Act charge of failing to deliver unlawfully possessed defense-related materials to the government. Because the unlawful retention occurred in Florida, whether Smith can try that case in DC will also depend on what other evidence he has, including mailings to Washington. If such evidence is available, Trump’s admission can help Smith show that the unlawful acts in Florida were part of a continuing offense that began in DC.

  Just Security

The man is a defense lawyer's worst nightmare. Well, he's the country's worst nightmare.

What a challenge

However will he meet the moment?

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

And there goes Don Lemon

Taking a little of the news heat off Tucker.

“I am stunned,” Lemon said in a message posted on Twitter on Monday, saying his agent had informed him of his firing by CNN president Chris Licht.

[...]

“Don will forever be a part of the CNN family, and we thank him for his contributions over the past 17 years,” Licht said. “We wish him well and will be cheering him on in his future endeavors.”

  The Hill

Lemon was recently in trouble for misogny. Maybe he can get on at Fox to replace Tucker.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE 12:55 pm:

UPDATE 04:19 pm:

Thwarting the grifting Flynns

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

About time

What the FUCKING PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA is doing at this moment

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:  Twitter has labeled this tweet, marking the video as manipulated.

Jumped up Jesus!

Team Trump lawyers demanded CNN apologize for and retract a poll that has Joe Biden leading Trump by 14 points.

President Donald Trump's campaign is demanding CNN retract and apologize for a recent poll that showed him well behind presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden.

[...]

he Trump campaign argued that the CNN poll is "designed to mislead American voters through a biased questionnaire and skewed sampling."

"It's a stunt and a phony poll to cause voter suppression, stifle momentum and enthusiasm for the President, and present a false view generally of the actual support across America for the President," read the letter, signed by the Trump campaign's senior legal adviser Jenna Ellis and chief operating officer Michael Glassner.

The campaign formally requested that CNN retract the poll and publish a "full, fair, and conspicuous retraction, apology, and clarification to correct its misleading conclusions."

[...]

Trump has regularly chafed at polls that do not reflect favorably on him while promoting ones that do. Last month, Trump bashed Fox News, a network he often touts and gives interviews to, for a telephone-conducted poll that showed him behind Biden by 8 points, and instead pointed to a CNN poll released earlier in the month where he was leading Biden in battleground states. That CNN poll, however, showed Biden had a 5-point lead over Trump among registered voters nationwide.

"Why doesn't @FoxNews put up the CNBC POLL or the (believe it or not!) @CNN Poll? Hope Roger A is looking down and watching what has happened to this once beautiful creation!" Trump tweeted at the time, referring to the late Fox News founder Roger Ailes.

[...]

After CNN released the poll earlier this week, Trump tweeted that he had hired Republican pollster McLaughlin & Associates to "analyze" the survey and others "which I felt were FAKE based on the incredible enthusiasm we are receiving." McLaughlin ranks as one of the least accurate pollsters in the industry, as measured by FiveThirtyEight.

[...]

[S]everal other polls released over the past few weeks -- including polls by ABC News/Washington Post, Monmouth University, NPR/PBS Newshour/Marist College, NBC News/Wall Street Journal, Quinnipiac University and Fox News -- also show Biden well ahead of Trump. These polls, averaged with the CNN poll, find Biden up by double digits, a result well outside any margin of error.

[...]

The campaign's letter, which heavily cites findings by McLaughlin, makes several incorrect and misleading claims.



  CNN

What a surprise.

More proof he watches CNN.

But, wait for it...this is CNN's response:

I wonder if they get tired of answering bullshit like this.

If you want to know what McLaughlin's criticisms were and how they are wrong, that's all in the CNN article, which you can continue reading.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Wait...CNN's general counsel is named Vigilante?  

The never-ending whine

Apparently he has time for tweeting shit.  If that's not stupidity, what is?

Also, you'll have to GET America safe before you can keep it safe.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

He absolutely hates Jim Acosta

I guess he couldn't keep him out of India, like he can out of the White House.

Also, the voices in his head went with him on this trip to India.

I regret to inform you that, much as they worship him in India, he will not be staying.

Things I didn't know about Rick Wilson

Bang bang! Rick Wilson, the controversial former GOP operative, gun enthusiast and NeverTrump TV talking head, has fired back at his critics today, attacking the ‘phony outrage’ against him and the ‘Trump fundraising grifters milking the MAGA herd.’

  Spectator

Devin Nunes for one:



(If you haven't seen the clip, it's at the bottom of this post.)

I had no idea who Rick Wilson was, only that he'd written a book dissing Trump.

The fuss is about a widely shared clip from CNN’s Don Lemon show this weekend, which pro-Trump Twitter has been having conniptions over. In the video, Wilson, Lemon, and Wajahat Ali laugh themselves silly while mocking the stupidity of Trump and the ‘credulous boomer rubes’ who support him.

Ivanka and her daddy's "Real elites".

But Rick Wilson was unapologetic when Cockburn contacted him for comment this morning. ‘Once again, the MAGA tough guy “fuck your feelings” crowd demonstrates that what really drives them is a grinding social anxiety fueled by a weaponized and monetized outrage machine,’ he said.

[...]

‘[W]hat set the White House off’ was really that ‘Trump hates being called out for his utter ignorance of the world; all the phony outrage at me is just Trump fundraising grifters milking the MAGA herd.’

UPDATE:

Ivanka is disgusted on your behalf

Just using the quoted phrase 'Real Elites' is part of the gaslighting of the nation that the Trumps are doing.  Elite actually has a meaning, and it's not the people on whose behalf she is crying crocodile tears.

Also... 

(It's that great CNN clip she's supposedly offended by on your behalf.)

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:  Mike Huckabee joins in...

UPDATE:  Jesus Christ.  Devin Nunes is fundraising off it.  Sorry.  I'm not providing a link.  What a whore.