| | | | "Our democracy is in serious danger," Thomas L. Friedman wrote. "President Trump is either totally compromised by the Russians or is a towering fool, or both, but either way he has shown himself unwilling or unable to defend America against a Russian campaign to divide and undermine our democracy."
That's a quote from Friedman's newest column, which came out on NYTimes.com Sunday night. His column normally appears in print on Wednesdays, so this one was just for the web. It has received an enormous amount of attention. More than 2,600 comments and still growing. As Friedman told me: "Not my day. Not in print. And it may be the most widely circulated column I've ever written."
His column -- titled "Whatever Trump Is Hiding Is Hurting All of Us Now" -- has been at the top of the NYT's "most emailed" and "popular on Facebook" lists all day. I noticed people who are usually virulent Friedman critics praising him for writing it. There's something about the last paragraph, in particular, that struck a chord. "This is code red," he wrote. "The biggest threat to the integrity of our democracy today is in the Oval Office."
So I called Friedman to find out how the column came about... | | Friedman: Something about Trump is "deeply off" | | On Sunday morning Friedman was driving up to Baltimore for a golf lesson... On the ride, he was thinking about Trump's tweets reacting to the new indictments... And he felt like he had to write something... Friedman: "Mueller told us the core of our democracy -- our electoral system -- had been attacked by Russia. And Trump was focused exclusively on what Mueller's report said, or did not say, about him."
"To me, it really crossed a line," Friedman told me. While Trump has "broken many norms as president," last weekend belonged in a different category. In Friedman's view, "he's no longer violating norms of the presidency, he's actually violating his oath to defend and protect the Constitution." So he emailed a paragraph-long pitch to Jim Dao and James Bennett -- saying he had to write a column, just for the web, to express himself -- something he's done from time to time. "Hey, go for it," was the response from the editors, he said.
Later in the day, back at home, he wrote the column in two hours and ten minutes. "What I've learned as a columnist over the years is, when you write the right column at the right time, articulating a feeling that many people have but maybe didn't know quite how to express, you can get a big reaction." He cautioned: "This doesn't happen very often."
Bottom line: Friedman said "there was something in Trump's reaction to Mueller that was deeply off." It was "so unpresidential, it was frightening..." | | Fox News launching streaming service for "superfans" | | On Tuesday, the NYT's Michael Grynbaum reports, "Fox News is set to announce Fox Nation, a stand-alone subscription service available without a cable package. The streaming service, expected to start by the end of the year, would focus primarily on right-leaning commentary, with original shows and cameos by popular personalities like Sean Hannity."
Click here for Grynbaum's scoop. "Fox Nation" is currently the name of the company's conservative opinion site. The "Fox Nation" streaming service won't carry the existing Fox News -- that would violate its cable deals -- so it'll include all-new content. He says "the network is planning to develop hours of new daily programming with a mostly fresh slate of anchors and commentators." When Fox hired Tomi Lahren, this is what it had in mind... | | Brand-new streaming services are very, very hard to launch. But as Grynbaum says, Fox Nation "may prove more consequential to the country's political life than the average streaming service." Is it just a "new option" for consumers? Or a new layer of soundproofing for people who are already in an echo chamber?
--> Dylan Byers tweeted: "Welcome to the world of 48-hour cable news… I question who would want to live there..." | | My personal favorite headline of the day | | Ken Meyer's latest for Mediaite: "Tucker Carlson Hits Columnist For Trump Criticism…After Brian Stelter Predicted It Would Happen."
Yep, when Karen Tumulty invoked Pearl Harbor on Sunday's 'Reliable," comparing FDR's response to the bombings with Trump's response to the Russia attacks, I said "someone on Fox News will take what you just said and say 'How dare you compare thine to Pearl Harbor.'" Sure enough, Carlson objected...
>> What Tumulty told me in a followup on Monday: "I'm totally at peace with my Pearl Harbor comparison..." | | Only a few Trump tweets today... | | Compared with Sunday, Monday was downright tranquil. @realDonaldTrump only tweeted four times... His newsiest comment came around 3pm when he appropriated a talking point from his media allies... It was the "this is really Obama's fault!" talking point that I noted on Sunday's "Reliable Sources."
Flashback to Sean Hannity last Friday: "Where the hell was the Obama administration" when the Russians were meddling?
The Obama admin DID try to alert the public about the Russian attack, as it was happening, but there's widespread agreement that he should have done MORE. Trump's tweet -- "why didn't he do something about Russian meddling?" -- ignored the historical record... | | Tuesday: First W.H. briefing in a week... | | | Per the W.H. guidance, the briefing is scheduled to start at 2pm ET... | | March 3: Trump to break bread with reporters at tony Gridiron Dinner | | CNN's Dan Merica reports: POTUS will attend the March 3rd Gridiron Club dinner in Washington, "putting the President in the same room with many of the country's top journalists he has castigated in his first year in office." He skipped the event last year...
--> What does this mean for the WHCA dinner? Sarah Sanders said "no decision" has been made about attending the correspondents' dinner... | | There are a bunch of reasons why the "Oprah 2020" idea is staying alive, despite Oprah Winfrey's carefully worded remarks downplaying interest in a run. Among the reasons: President Trump is talking about it. His Sunday night tweet slamming her "60 Minutes" story brought this storyline back to the forefront.
If you haven't watched or read her "60" story, featuring a focus group of Michigan voters, you should check it out here...
HERE'S THE THING: Winfrey says she is "not running" for president right now. But in private conversations with friends, she has not ruled out a run in the future, according to three confidants. That + Trump's tweet + voter interest + media attention = this idea is not fading away anytime soon. Here's my column about it for CNNMoney... | | A Presidents Day sighting... | | | CNN's Ed O'Keefe emails: Grandparents Bill and Hillary Clinton took in the matinee performance of "Sesame Street Live! Let's Party!" at MSG Theatre in NYC on Monday... Chelsea Clinton, her husband, and their two kids were in tow. Bill had one grandchild, and Hillary had the other, dancing and singing along most of the show. The letter of the day was "C" for "Community" -- and the theme of the show was respect and kindness... | | -- Recommended read: "Confessions of a Russiagate Skeptic" by Blake Hounshell... (Politico)
-- "Fortunately, even as journalists bend over backwards to credit the right's distraction crusades, Mueller's investigation shows every sign of rolling on undistracted," Todd Gitlin writes... (CJR)
-- National Review's redesigned web site is up and running... (NRO)
-- Lucia Moses reports: "Just a month after Facebook said it'd show less news in its news feed, news publishers are already feeling the brunt, multiple data sources show..." (Digiday)
-- "Of all the realms of media that have been shaken by the #MeToo movement, perhaps the most surprising has been public radio, the home of virtuous journalism and thoughtful, warm-voiced commentary," Ben Sisario writes... (NYT) | | This is how it works. Sadly, this is how it works. Trump boosters like "The Gateway Pundit" feel compelled to tear down the survivors of the school shooting in Parkland. On Monday the "Pundit" published an item pointing out that survivor David Hogg's father used to work for the FBI. (All of a sudden, invoking the letters FBI is supposed to cast suspicion on the right!) The terrible blog post also said Hogg "appears to have been coached on anti-Trump lines." Gimme a break. He appears to be like countless other interviewees -- stopping and restarting during a taped interview in order to get his points across...
--> Nick Confessore is right: He tweeted Monday night, "It's a sign of how potent these kids are, just speaking for themselves, that the pro-Trump media has turned to efforts to discredit and slime them..." | | Trump is scheduled to hold a "listening session" with students on Wednesday, the same day as a CNN town hall in Florida...
On MSNBC's "MTP Daily" on Monday, Susan Del Percio said the grieving students have power specifically because "Donald Trump can't pick on them. He can't belittle them. He's got to play up to them. Those kids, I think, are going to continue to make a statement and--"
Host Katy Tur interjected: "He picks on Gold Star families. Why do you think he won't--"
"I don't think he's going to pick on these children," Del Percio said.
Howard Dean jumped in: "I wouldn't be surprised if he does. He just can't help himself. He just can't help himself. He has no judgment whatsoever..." | | "What does it take to establish something as fact? Do the old ways still work? And if not, how does democracy function when we can't agree on a baseline set of facts? What if the public rejects the very idea of an independent arbiter of what's true and false?"
--WashPost exec editor Marty Baron delivering the Reuters Memorial Lecture at the University of Oxford... | | Ingraham v. LeBron: Lowry's take | | | Brian Lowry emails: It's hard to avoid seeing a sense of calculation in conservatives repeatedly trying to stoke animus toward wealthy African-Americans, including Fox's Laura Ingraham telling LeBron James to "shut up and dribble" and now Trump's criticism of Oprah's "60 Minutes" segment. Ingraham's targeting, in particular, appeared designed to stir that pot, especially since she chose not to address recent comments by two white NBA coaches, Golden State's Steve Kerr -- who weighed in on the gun-control debate -- and San Antonio's Gregg Popovich, who cited the importance of Black History Month by saying, "We live in a racist country that hasn't figured it out yet, and it's always important to bring attention to it, even if it angers some people." | | -- DC readers: Joanne Lipman will be speaking about her new book "That's What She Said" with Susan Page at Politics & Prose on Tuesday...
-- Richard Deitsch talked with NBC Sports chairman Mark Lazarus about the Olympics' performance to date... (SI)
-- DirecTV is raising the price for NFL Sunday Ticket... There are caveats, but "the base price of the package is higher than ever..." (Pro Football Talk)
-- Maya Kosoff's latest: "How Twitter Lost The Internet War..." (VF) | | ICYMI: Ronan on "Reliable" | | Ronan Farrow talking about National Enquirer parent American Media on Sunday's "Reliable Sources:"
"This company knows where the bodies are buried, so even when they're working in a friendly way to bury a story for someone, there's always the implicit threat of, 'We have the dirt. We could release it...'"
>> Watch our discussion here... | | Lowry recommends this Oscar-nominated film short | | Brian Lowry emails: News viewers are no stranger to the aftermath of a police stop gone wrong. "Traffic Stop," an Oscar-nominated film short, provides a helpfully detailed account of one incident that, through extensive dash-cam video, exposes how that can happen, in a thankfully not fatal incident involving a Texas police officer and a young African-American woman in 2015.
"Traffic Stop" aired on HBO on Monday evening... It'll be available on-demand... | | "The world has embraced Black Panther" | | | Here's what Bob Iger said about the film on Monday: | | | Frank Pallotta emails: The revised numbers are in. "Black Panther" made even more money than expected. The Marvel film brought in $201.8 million in the U.S. (up from the estimated $192 million) and is now looking at a four-day weekend of $235 million. I did a bunch of TV hits on Monday about the film's huge box office, and my favorite exchange was with HLN's Michaela Pereira, who asked me if I thought Hollywood is going to "finally notice that, yes, box office draws are people of color?" My response: "If they don't, they're incredibly dumb and they don't like money..." | | | -- More via Lisa Respers France: "Winston Duke's portrayal of M'Baku is heating up 'Black Panther' fans..." | | | Brian Lowry emails: As I noted on Sunday, "Black Panther's" huge box-office performance has invited all sorts of analysis -- from strained to simply premature -- to grab onto its web-traffic coattails. In today's edition, that included THR conflating Michelle Obama's congratulatory tweet into a "review" of the film and Variety speculating about the movie's Oscar prospects, roughly 11 months before those nominations will be unveiled... | | "You have to bite the hand that feeds you" | | Megan Thomas emails: This quote from Variety's interview with Joel McHale about his days at E! and his new Netflix series was interesting:
--> So were you expected to cover certain topics and not cover others, while hosting "The Soup?" "When Ted Harbert got in there, he basically said the sky is the limit and do what you want to do. Way back when, Kris Kardashian would complain about our jokes, and Ted would literally go, 'Hey man, Kris called, can you just lay off of her for a week?' It was like our softball went into our yard and they were like, 'Just don't throw it over the fence.' So that was cool and that's as far as it went with him, but when he left, things changed and they definitely had a different feeling. The next administration, the president said to my face, 'Don't make fun of the Kardashians. We don't want you to make fun of the Kardashians anymore.' So I was like, oh this show is doomed because that's why the show worked, because we would make fun of ourselves. It's like when Letterman made fun of GE in the '80s. You have to bite the hand that feeds you." | | Fergie performed the national anthem... What happened? | | It was rough at the NBA All Star Game! So rough that Fergie released a statement on Monday saying that "this rendition didn't strike the intended tone." She said "I love this country and honestly tried my best."
-- Lisa Respers France adds: Fergie wasn't the first celeb whose National Anthem performance that wasn't music to fans' ears... | | | "Reliable Sources" highlights | | | Debunking pro-Trump media talking points | | | Obviously the special counsel still has lots to investigate. But, as I showed on Sunday's "Reliable," some members of the pro-Trump media are pretending like the investigation is over. Really, they're doing a disservice to their viewers... Here's my essay, a three-minute video clip on CNN.com... | | I was most struck by David Gergen's crystal-balling about where Trump's attacks against the FBI and the media might lead us. "We have an election that's just around the corner, later this year," he said. "What if the Democrats, you know, take the House back? Is that all going to be blamed on 'Fake News?' What if they fall short? Are Democrats going to think, 'You know, it was all that meddling?"
"This," he said, "is what split a country apart... In many other countries, it's been the beginnings of an authoritarian rule. And that's the larger threat hanging over us now... I find that the threat is growing..." | | "Unfollow President Trump" | | | Former Obama admin official Sam Vinograd on the show: "My best advice from a national security perspective right now is, sadly, to unfollow President Trump. His Twitter feed, which is arguably U.S. policy, is filled with gross inaccuracies, misinfo, disinfo and lies, and that makes Vladimir Putin very happy..." | | | Email brian.stelter@turner.com... the feedback helps us improve this newsletter every day... Thanks! | | | Get Reliable Sources, a comprehensive summary of the most important media news, delivered to your inbox every afternoon. | | | | | |
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