| | | | Good evening and welcome to the Reliable Sources newsletter! This is Oliver Darcy filling in for Brian Stelter, who is on vacation this week. There's a lot of news to get to tonight, so let's get started...
| | Trump goes after WaPo in late tweetstorm | | Usually, President Donald Trump turns his attention to Twitter in the morning. Not tonight. The president spent the 10 o'clock hour railing against The Washington Post, one of his favorite targets...
THE PRESIDENT'S TWEETS: 10:23 p.m. ET: The Amazon Washington Post fabricated the facts on my ending massive, dangerous, and wasteful payments to Syrian rebels fighting Assad..... 10:28 p.m. ET: So many stories about me in the @washingtonpost are Fake News. They are as bad as ratings challenged @CNN. Lobbyist for Amazon and taxes? 10:36 p.m. ET: Is Fake News Washington Post being used as a lobbyist weapon against Congress to keep Politicians from looking into Amazon no-tax monopoly?
>> Trump seemed to be responding to a widely-read report published last Wednesday by the Post's Greg Jaffe and Adam Entous. The story, citing US officials, said Trump "decided to end the CIA's covert program to arm and train moderate Syrian rebels battling the government of Bashar al-Assad, a move long sought by Russia."
>> Hadas Gold over at Politico notes that it appears Trump was tweeting in reaction to a segment on Tucker Carlson's program which discussed the Post's report. You can watch the segment here...
>> Former National Security Council spokesman Ned Price responds: "If the media reports are true, the President of the United States just confirmed a CIA covert action program. On Twitter." | | Will Jeff Sessions survive the Trump White House? | | Trump publicly lambasted Attorney General Jeff Sessions this morning in a demeaning tweet. He described Sessions, one of his earliest supporters, as "our beleaguered A.G." The tweet came after Trump said last week he would not have appointed Sessions had he known the Alabama Republican would recuse himself in matters related to the probe into Russian election meddling. But the news didn't stop with Trump's tweet. News organizations pushed the story forward throughout the day...
>> Mike Allen of Axios reported, citing West Wing sources, that Trump has considered nominating Rudy Giuliani for attorney general.
>> White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci told CNN that Trump and Sessions "need to sit down face to face and have a reconciliation and a discussion of the future." Scaramucci would not say whether Trump wants Sessions to resign...
>> And The Washington Post reported tonight that Trump and his advisers are discussing replacing Sessions. The newspaper said Giuliani and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz were names being floated around. | | 'I hate to see him being treated this way' | | The way Sessions is being treated really seems to have bothered some in the conservative media universe, where the former senator is revered as a conservative icon. The sentiment is starting to show on programs usually quite favorable to Trump.
>> Rush Limbaugh said on his radio program he understood Trump's frustration with Sessions, but that he still found it "a little bit discomforting" and "unseemly" for Trump to "go after such a loyal supporter that way." Limbaugh added, "I hate to see him being treated this way. He's a really fine man, and he is a fighter in his own way."
>> Last week, Fox News host Tucker Carlson also pleaded with Trump to stop attacking Sessions. "Attacking Jeff Sessions was ... a useless, self destructive act," Carlson said. "The first rule in politics, as in war, as in life, don't shoot the friendlies." | | The "MOOCH": Turn the cameras back on! | | Tom Kludt emails: Sean Spicer is out, and the cameras at the White House are back on. A day after saying he preferred having the press briefing broadcast on television, newly-minted WH communications director Anthony Scaramucci made that happen. "The TV cameras are back on," he tweeted Monday morning. Scaramucci confirmed hours later that the era of off-camera briefings is over, and said that Sarah Huckabee Sanders will be conducting the briefings.
Tom adds: That puts a lid on one of the biggest (and unnecessary) sources of acrimony between the White House and the press corps, part of Scaramucci's public efforts to smooth things over. But if you were wondering if tension still figures to linger, you needed only to check what Trump tweeted hours before Scaramucci on Monday...
>> Speaking of Spicer, according to Politico Playbook, he was spotted relaxing over the weekend at the Army Navy Country Club pool... | | New York Times versus Fox News | | The New York Times is locked in a war of words with Fox News. It all started over the weekend when the Times requested Fox News apologize for what it characterized as a "malicious and inaccurate" report which placed fault on the newspaper for allowing an ISIS leader to evade capture. CNN's Jill Disis has the full backstory here...
>> Fox News updated its story yesterday with a statement from the Times, and "Fox & Friends" co-host Steve Doocy briefly addressed the issue on this morning's program. You can watch that clip here.
>> But the Times never got the on-air apology it had requested. A spokesperson for the newspaper told CNN that Doocy's segment did not "begin to address the larger issues with the Fox & Friends Weekend segment, one of which was sheer hypocrisy."
>> Fox News fired back with a feisty statement Monday evening, claiming, "Neither FOX News' report nor the subsequent on-air coverage was inaccurate." You can read the full statement from Fox News here. A spokesperson for the Times chose not to respond when asked for comment about that latest statement... | | -- Congrats to Ari Melber on the premiere his new MSNBC show tonight. "The Beat With Ari" airs weekdays at 6 p.m. ET. Watch the show's first scene on-air here...
-- Rush Limbaugh says "the Republicans run the show" and need to "start acting like it. More here from Mediaite...
-- CNN's very own media editor Alex Koppelman made a keen observation earlier today. (Editor's note: Nice try, but I'm not going easier on your copy, Oliver...) The difference between the Drudge Report's coverage of Jared Kushner versus its coverage of Donald Trump Jr. is "pretty stark." Kushner has benefited from positive coverage on Matt Drudge's website. DJT Jr.? Not so much.
-- RIP Microsoft Paint? It might be time to bid farewell to the iconic application... | | One network continues to thrive in the Trump era: MSNBC. The network put out a press release on Monday evening, noting that, over the week of July 17-21, it was, for the first time in its history, the most-watched cable network in weekday primetime.
That said, Fox News continues to do well all day long. The network has averaged 1.4 million total viewers in weekday total day, according to Nielsen Media Research. The network has also averaged the most primetime viewers (2.14 million) of the cable news nets for the month of July to date... | | Snopes says it's in 'danger of closing its doors' | | Snopes, the website known for debunking internet rumors, sounded an alarm on Monday. The team posted a letter to its audience explaining that it's facing revenue problems amid a legal battle and asking for contributions. Poynter's Daniel Funke has the full story...
>> From the letter, which you can read in full here: "Snopes.com, which began as a small one-person effort in 1994 and has since become one of the Internet's oldest and most popular fact-checking sites, is in danger of closing its doors. So, for the first time in our history, we are turning to you, our readership, for help."
>> The Snopes team is requesting readers donate $10 or more to help keep the website alive. So far $321,000 has been raised of the $500,000 goal. | | 'The Agony and the anxiety of the New York Times' | | -- Joe Pompeo's first piece in Vanity Fair is out. He examines what he says is "unease" currently "gripping" the New York Times as a large-scale reorganization looms. Read Pompeo's full story here...
>> One editor told him, "The mood at the paper is poisonous in a way I've never seen it in the past 15 years." Another person who has worked there for decades said of the changes, "This is a very big deal." | | Max Tani over at Business Insider had an interesting piece out today, focusing on the Democratic lawmakers who are trying to break through on Fox News. Tani noted that "several younger members of Congress ... have made regular appearances on the network, hoping to bring the Democratic message to voters they know are deeply skeptical of Democrats and rarely hear from the lawmakers unfiltered."
As one Democrat put it: "This is where growth is. While the same people who lost the election are on CNN and MSNBC every day." Read Tani's full piece here... | | "Reliable Sources" CONTINUES TO MAKE HEADLINES... | | By Francesca Giuliani-Hoffman:
-- Erik Wemple weighs in on the New York Times-Fox News dust up. He says it's a matter of differing standards between the network's news and opinion operations...
-- Digiday profiles Julia Beizer, a WaPo veteran who is now HuffPost's head of product. She oversaw the site's recent rebranding. Great read to grasp how important it is for publishers to be product-minded...
-- Splinter launched today! Here is an intro to the site by EIC Dodai Stewart...
-- Speaking of Splinter, Hamilton Nolan has a great story out today on the DNAinfo-Gothamist workers' union... | | It was quite the scene on Capitol Hill today | | Before Jared Kushner was interviewed by Senate investigators, he kicked things off this morning by releasing a lengthy statement on Russia. You can read it in full here.
>> Then it was onto Capitol Hill where he met with Senate intelligence committee staffers. His arrival and departure was a media spectacle. Reporters shouted questions as he arrived and departed, but Kushner simply smiled and waved...
>> Kushner did give a short statement after the fact once he arrived at the White House. He said he "did not collude with Russia" and added he did "not know of anyone else" on the campaign who did so. CNN's Jeremy Diamond and Pamela Brown have a full recap here... | | 'I for one have had it with senseless hostility' | | Fox News host Kat Timpf tweeted tonight that she was at an event where her friend was speaking when "a guy walks in" and "dumps an entire bottle of water on me."
>> Timpf's tweets following the incident: I'm shocked, I'm stunned. I'm obviously upset. I end up not being able to speak because of it. I've never seen a more disgusting insane cruel climate than the one we're in now. Why? What does that accomplish? I guess I wasn't able to speak so that's great and I guess he wins, but we're just randomly assaulting people in public now? That's what we're doing? Verbal assault on Twitter not enough anymore? I've had it. I'm an actual, human person. I have a soul, a family, I have feelings. I have opinions, some of which some people may disagree with, but I'm a human being. I'm capable of recognizing that people with whom I disagree have souls and families and are humans, why are there so many people who seem incapable of viewing the world that way? Seriously? I work really hard, I feel as though I never stop working, and to have the end result be to not even be able to exist in the world as a human being without being assaulted verbally and now physically by strangers? Complete strangers?
>> More from Timpf's Twitter feed: It's not about specific issues anymore it's about either blindly supporting or blindly hating particular people and for whatever reason, this guy has decided that I am someone who he hates. Not for views, but as a human. Or not a human, because clearly he doesn't see me as one, but as some sort of an abstract entity that stands for something he hates. It's disgusting, I'm disgusted, and everyone needs to do better than this infantile bulls--t because I for one have had it with senseless hostility. It's not activism, it's not in support of anything, it's nothing but sickness and cruelty. I've had it with people behaving like animals. Get it together and grow up. | | Pallotta and me on the latest "Reliable" podcast | | | Frank Pallotta and I joined Brian Stelter this week to discuss all things entertainment. Are people watching less Netflix? How has "Game of Thrones" changed our culture? And we discussed some politics news too... listen here on iTunes or via other podcast services. | | By Lisa France:
-- Here's what you need to know about the breakout star of "Girls Trip," Tiffany Haddish, who at the moment is ruling the world...
-- Lupita Nyong'o isn't letting too much slip about her Rihanna buddy film, but she did talk a bit about why fans want it so badly...
-- Linkin Park paid tribute to their late lead singer Chester Bennington, who died last week at the age of 41. "Our hearts are broken," they said in a letter they wrote to him...
-- Only Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson could sell an Apple ad about Siri as a new "movie" costarring the digital assistant...
And one from Melissah Yang:
-- Is it too late now to say sorry? Justin Bieber unexpectedly canceled the remaining dates of his Purpose Tour "due to unforeseen circumstances." Read the full story here... | | | What do you like about this newsletter? What do you dislike? Email us... we're at reliablesources@cnn.com... we appreciate every email. | | | Get Reliable Sources, a comprehensive summary of the most important media news, delivered to your inbox every afternoon. | | | | | |
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