Der Trumpenführer to Sign Executive Order on Social Media Companies,

The day after Twitter felt compelled to attach a warning to some of Donald Trump's tweets containing gross falsehoods (to thereby prompt readers to fact-check Trump's claims), much like a (i) petulant self-absorbed child or (ii) banana  republic dictator, Donald Trump claims he will sign an executive order likely punishing social media companies that resist giving a platform for his lies and deliberately false propaganda.  Spokeswoman Kayleigh McEnany (who is severely challenged herself when it comes to truth and veracity) confirmed Trump's intentions to reporters aboard Air Force One, traveling with Trump to Washington from Florida. Trump's threatened action confirms that he sees himself as a monarch accountable to no one.  In reality, questions remain as to what Trump can realistically do to get revenge on those who will not disseminate his lies.   CNN Business looks at the controversy:

Donald Trump threatened to "regulate" or even "close" down social media platforms in a series of tweets over the last day after Twitter added a fact-check label to some of his posts. But Trump's options for cracking down on Twitter and other platforms over how they moderate their platforms are somewhat limited, legal experts say.

The options at Trump's disposal could range from pushing for new legislation to pressuring US regulators to sue the companies, none of which are guaranteed to accomplish what the president is threatening to do. The most "obvious" course of action would be for Trump to seek changes to the Communications Decency Act, which shields tech platforms from legal liability for a wide range of online content, according to Andrew Schwartzman, senior counselor at the Benton Institute for Broadband and Society.
 There has been an ongoing push, led by the Justice Department and Republicans in Congress, to do just that. But changing the law would require building broad consensus in a deadlocked Congress. The Trump administration could not go it alone. And a new law that specifies how tech companies must police their platforms could raise questions about the law's constitutionality. 

Trump could pressure agencies such as the FTC and the Federal Communications Commission to take action against social media companies. But the agencies have previously resisted efforts by the White House to transform them into arbiters of political speech, with officials privately voicing opposition to a draft executive order that experts at the time said tested the limits of agency jurisdiction. The FCC regulates phone and broadband infrastructure, said Schwartzman, and lacks much jurisdiction over Twitter (TWTR) and Facebook (FB) in the first place. Schwartzman said one way Trump could seek to "harass" social media companies would be to pressure the FCC to deny those companies licenses for unrelated experiments involving satellite internet or wireless spectrum. Last week, the Wall Street Journal reported that Trump has considered establishing a White House commission to study allegations of conservative bias. But that only underscores the limits of Trump's direct influence on the matter.
 Despite the limitations, growing tensions with the White House could still be perceived as a threat to the companies. Twitter and Facebook saw their shares dip on Wednesday on a day when the overall market was up.

Others argue that Trump should be allowed to lie and show his true self, but that argument forgets that a wide swath of the public lacks the knowledge - dare I say, intelligence - recognize the level of the untruthfulness.  A column in the Washington Post makes the case of allowing Trump to hang himself.  Here are excerpts:

Timothy Klausutis is right: His late wife deserves better than a president who has cynically seized on the tragic circumstances of her death at 28 and “perverted it for perceived political gain.”

Basic human decency, a quality manifestly lacking in Trump, argues in favor of granting Klausutis’s request. Yet, while my heart aches for him and his family, I think that, on balance, deleting the tweets would be a mistake.

Twitter is both a private company and a powerful public platform. Once it assumes the role of deciding what speech by public officials is to be allowed and what is to be taken down, it has ventured onto the slipperiest of slopes. I’m not sure I want Dorsey or his team deciding what the public should and shouldn’t see from the elected president of the United States. Even this one.

[U]nder Twitter’s ordinary terms of service, the platform would not only remove the tweets but also perhaps even Trump himself; some people have advocated for just that. But the president, like any world leader — except more so, with his 80 million followers — is no ordinary tweeter. The argument over what to do about Trump on Twitter is a subset of the larger debate about how to treat his outbursts and falsehoods, in particular whether the media becomes complicit simply by presenting them to a wider public. Thus, stretching back to the 2016 campaign, there has been vigorous debate over whether and how to cover Trump’s misinformation- and venom-filled campaign rallies. [B]ut I would argue that shining sunlight on Trump’s idiocy is the best disinfectant. Let the public witness him in his full glory and make its own judgment about whether he deserves a second term. Combine that with real-time chyrons and commentary calling out his falsehoods.

That is what Twitter usefully and appropriately did Tuesday when it appended a fact check to another set of Trump tweets about the supposed dangers of voting by mail. Twitter should do the same with Trump’s tweets about Scarborough

The fundamental problem isn’t Twitter — it’s Trump. He shouldn’t be de-platformed, but he must be defeated.

The Diminishing Power of Trump's Lies

Outside of Donald Trump's white supremacist and right wing Christian extremist base where the truth and objective facts have never mattered, the Mueller report has helped to do one thing, namely demonstrate just how dishonest Trump and many of his minion - e.g., Sarah Huckabee Sanders who learned to lie from a master liar, her father - have been from day one of the Trump campaign.  Indeed, the volume of lies has only increased. In my view, it is to a point where the press needs to start skipping White House press briefings and cease reporting what are deliberate lies.  Why disseminate Trump's lies for him and a bunch of lies for liars who have proven their credibility to be less than that of a sleazy carnival barker selling snake oil?  Stop amplifying the lies. Thankfully, some in the press seem to be waking up to reality and questioning their actions in broadcasting known lies and untruths. A piece in Politico looks at the growing media reluctance to accept Trump's non-stop lies.  Here are highlights:

President Donald Trump wants New York Times journalists to beg for forgiveness on their knees, and White House aides say they’re ready to accept apologies from the press corps at large. They’re in for a long wait.

Special counsel Robert Mueller’s bombshell 448-page report has unleashed a very different kind of reckoning among Washington reporters and media watchdogs.

The report detailed multiple efforts by Trump and his senior aides to mislead journalists and the public, reigniting a long-running media debate about how to cover such an unprecedented presidency — and when, if ever, to accept White House denials at face value.

The repeated public rejections of key aspects of the report in the face of sworn, on-the-record statements from his own advisers have diminished the power of a denial from the president of the United States — something that once carried weight.

“Reporters have to start assuming that this White House is going to continue to lie and manipulate the media,” Columbia Journalism Review editor-in-chief Kyle Pope said in an interview.

Pope even questioned the value of quoting or interviewing Trump’s principal spokesperson, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who admitted to Mueller’s investigators that she made unfounded claims that the ousted FBI director James Comey had lost support among rank-and-file agents. Sanders later tried to defend her statement, saying the “sentiment” was accurate without offering any proof to support her claim.

“I don’t think Sanders has any credibility whatsoever,” he said.  Sanders did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Trump and his staffers have responded to the Mueller report with nearly simultaneous claims of vindication and frustration. [Trump's] The president’s delight that Mueller was unable to establish that the Trump campaign conspired with Russia to interfere in the 2016 election has been quickly replaced with rage.

After initially claiming “total exoneration,” [Trump] the president now calls some of the report’s findings “total bulls--t,” and he has bashed ex-staffers who supplied detailed notes about crucial behind-the-scenes moments at the White House. Trump is particularly furious with former White House counsel Don McGahn, who told investigators that Trump repeatedly told him to oust Mueller, a directive he ignored. The president denies McGahn’s assertion, although Mueller found ample evidence to substantiate it.

“Journalists shouldn't take anything said by any president at face value, but the Mueller report reminds us that [Trump] this president in particular says so many things that are flatly untrue that we shouldn't trust anything without checking it,” said veteran New York Times White House reporter Peter Baker.

“And we didn't even need Mueller to tell us that,” Baker added. “Every White House reporter has experienced it over the last couple years. Time after time, he has denied things that were confirmed elsewhere.”

Earlier this month, for example, Trump denied reports that he had offered then-Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Kevin McAleenan a pardon had he been jailed for illegally blocking migrant from entering the country.

Privately, White House reporters said they felt vindicated by Mueller’s report, noting that it supported much of their reporting about the president over the past two years. They have no plans to apologize for their coverage.

But that hasn’t stopped Trump and his aides from calling for journalists to beg for forgiveness. . . The New York Times has not apologized to the president for its 2016 coverage.

Asked whether reporters’ approach to White House coverage should change in the aftermath of the report, Bob Woodward said, “I don’t think so. I think, by and large, people have maintained their aggressive edge.”

Woodward, in an interview, added that reporters should focus less on allegations of Russian collusion and more on what he called the “governing crisis” created by the internal chaos in the White House. Issues like Trump’s policy toward Iran are deeply consequential and warrant deeper scrutiny from the press, he said.

Trust nothing that Trump and his sycophants say and cease giving him a platform to disseminate lies.  Question everything coming out of his thoroughly dishonest regime. 

Commentators Too Cowardly to Reveal Their Identity

It seems I need to re-post this message regularly in response cowardly commentators who lack the courage of their convictions and reveal their identities  when leaving comments.  This is what I had to say on this issue roughly a year ago which I restate again:

Unfortunately, over the life of this blog I have had to make it clear that those who wish to leave comments on blog posts who lack the spine to reveal their identities and put their name and who they are behind their opinions will not be given a platform.  Since the birth of this blog I have not hidden my identity and who I am, where I live, etc.  Yes, it has brought me death threats - typically from "godly Christian" types - but based on my upbringing and decades of involvement in politics, if you want to voice an opinion, have the balls to stand behind it and do not hide behind an "anonymous" identity.  As I have said before, if you are too gutless and cowardly to reveal your true identity, then do NOT expect me to provide a platform for your noxious commentary.  You will not be provided with a platform.  If you want your comment published, have a profile that reveals your identity. Otherwise, your comment will be deleted and not published. 

FYI - the comment - which was deleted - which prompted this post was from a Christofascist upset with my honest assessment of Mike Pence who ranted (inaccurately) about abortion.  I suspect the individual is a devoted Fox News viewer.

"Unite the Right" Flops - While the Progressives Turn Out in Force

The pathetically small turn out of "Unite the Right" extremists.

The much ballyhooed "Unite the Right" in Washington, DC, was a spectacular flop with only a few dozen (at best) alt-right and neo-Nazis showing up.  The flop was on the scale of the National Organization's last "March for Marriage" that utterly failed to deliver on the hundreds of promised participants, Instead, only a couple of dozen religious extremist showed up.  Already the Unite the Right organizers are making excuses for the pitiful turnout, including whining that "people were too afraid to come."  The obvious take away is that the racists and neo-Nazis prefer to mass only when unsuspecting communities are unprepared and law enforcement is not forewarned and ready/able to stop the extreme right violence.  Meanwhile, peaceful counter protesters showed up en mass and dominated.  The lesson is that the alt-right is a form of vermin that crawled out from under some rock and is not representative of a majority of Americans.  Those of us who are decent and moral must unite to counter the hatred and bigotry that is the stock in trade of  much of the Trump/Pence base.  Here are excerpts from a piece in the Washington Post:

One year after the clashes between white supremacists and counter-protesters in Charlottesville, the two groups were expected to meet again, this time in Washington. The counter-protesters showed up. The racists did not.

Much of the coverage of Sunday’s Unite the Right rally, organized by white nationalist Jason Kessler, will focus on the feeble turnout. And it really was pathetic: Instead of the several hundred the organizers and law enforcement expected, only a couple dozen showed. Even though Metro and local police pulled out all the stops to protect the white supremacists — including a private subway entrance for Kessler and Co. — WUSA reported that Unite the Right members “say people were too afraid to come out today for the rally.” Sure. But we also shouldn’t forget the remarkably large turnout for the counter-protests. Sunday was as much a victory for the left as it was a disappointment for white supremacists.  . . . . The home-field advantage was clear: When a counter-protest speaker asked how many attendees were from Washington, much of the crowd raised their hands. Republicans may hold the power in Washington, but on Sunday the city’s residents sent a very different message.

In the wake of the far right’s flop and the left’s success, it’s worth looking at how both media and law enforcement have treated white nationalists and those protesting them. Police sheltered the Unite the Right attendees from when they arrived at Vienna Metro station in Virginia, through the rally where they were protected by multiple rows of fencing to after the rally when the attendees were loaded into vans and driven away. That law enforcement wanted to avoid violent clashes is understandable. But contrast this with how other protests are often handled both in the District and across the country. As the Atlantic’s Adam Serwer noted, “In Ferguson, black protesters had police snipers trained on them. In DC, the Nazis get a police escort.” If Black Lives Matter is going to be treated as potential troublemakers, white supremacists should at least face the same suspicion.

As for the media, on Friday National Public Radio’s “Morning Edition” gave Kessler seven minutes of airtime (during which, among other things, he ranked races by intelligence). That’s 15 or 20 seconds for every rally attendee — certainly not the ratio that the groups protesting Kessler got or will get. This is not to say Kessler and others like him should be ignored — especially while a white nationalists’ favorite occupies the Oval Office. But the next time white supremacists try to grab the media spotlight, news outlets would do well to remember this pitiful turnout before handing them a platform.

It is crucial that the far right not be given a platform from which they can spew hate and lies even if Der  Trumpenführer counts them among the core of his political base.  

IS it Time for the News Media to Ditch Trump Press Conferences

Throughout the 2016 presidential campaign the mainstream media provided Donald Trump with free coverage and actively aided in spreading his calls to racism and his outright lies.  Trump's press conference last week was another performance that continued the lies and attacks on the media - indeed, anyone that challenges Trump's dishonest and self-centered agenda. Perhaps the best ting responsible journalist can do is skip the press conferences - assuming Trump has them at all - and simply report on the damage the man is doing and the extremism of a number of his nominees (e.g., Betsy DeVos).  For a narcissist like Trump, few things would hit him harder than simply being ignored.  A piece in Daily Kos argues that the media needs to cease providing Trump with a platform and focus instead on factual news. Here are column highlights:

On the heels of Donald Trump's extraordinarily combative news conference last week came word over the weekend that the incoming administration might relocate the press corps outside of the White House's West Wing.

News outlets, understandably rattled, are searching for traction in a post-fact world so slippery that Trump has turned the term "fake news" against them. The New York Times's Jim Rutenberg deftly diagnosed the problem:

The news media remains an unwitting accomplice in its own diminishment as it fails to get a handle on how to cover this new and wholly unprecedented president.

However, his prescription for White House reporters didn't even come close to reimagining how to approach covering Trump’s presidency. "A united front would have given the reporters stronger footing," he wrote of the melee that broke out during Trump’s press conference. I agree with the sentiment, but as someone who values good reporting and also attended White House briefings for a couple years, I would like to pose something a bit more radical to mainstream new outlets: Why even send reporters to Trump press conferences?

Trump, while a totally repugnant human being, is a master manipulator. The press conferences are sheer sport for him and by continuing to engage in them, reporters are simply setting themselves up as targets on his terrain. A president already has an unfair advantage in the very controlled setting of a presser. The two premises that help level the playing field for reporters when cross examining any president are: 1) that facts matter, and 2) that serving the American people is primary to a president’s own self interests.

Since neither of those two things hold true for Trump, press conferences will be rendered useless for the next four years. They will be nothing but misinformation forums in which Trump spreads lies and feeds his ego by berating and belittling any reporter who asks him a question he doesn't like.

[W]ith a clear sociopath at the helm, leveling shame and guilt will be a little like taking fly swatters to the 800-pound gorilla in the room. . . . the people behind the podium have to buy into the premise that they are there to serve the voters. There has been absolutely no indication—either at the White House or on Capitol Hill—that Republicans believe there should be any check whatsoever on their power. Least of all, a check provided by reporters. 

Here's what a presser would look like [if the mainstream media stayed away]: Breitbart, Infowars, and World Net Daily representatives duking it out to ask Trump or his minion Sean Spicer some eye-popping questions. Talk about must-see reality TV. No joke—this could do a world of good. It would both deprive Trump of the contentious interactions he thrives on, and/or prove deeply revealing to everyone other than the 35-40 percent of Trump followers who are still hoping he guns someone down on 5th Avenue (i.e. sane viewers).

As for what news outlets could do besides be witnesses to a slaughter: They can either go the way of Washington Post reporter David Fahrenthold, doggedly reporting around Trump rather than trying to report through him. 

Or they could make an honest effort to pour resources into hiring local reporters in order to publicize all the ways in which Trump and Republicans will surely fail voters—even and especially those who voted for them. When coal jobs don't come back, give miners a voice. When millions of Trump voters lose their health insurance, give the uninsured a voice. When the elderly start seeing changes in their Social Security benefits, give them a voice. . . . . how about picking 25 swing districts where GOP congressional members will be particularly vulnerable in the 2018 midterms?

For national reporters and editors, this idea of boycotting Trump news conferences is going to sound radical (even if it doesn't to readers of this site). But the goal isn’t to stop covering Trump, it’s to cover him in ways that don’t distort and serve as a distraction to the truth.

 Weak calls for “solidarity,” even if they get a buy in from members of the press, won't provide any protection against a White House that has no ability or interest to act in good faith. 

I believe that Kerry Eleveld is onto something.  Would that the press would follow this suggestion.