Where to begin?
I start with how I began my morning watching TV.
This morning on MSNBC with Stephanie Rhule it was Steve Cortes vs. David Corn… it was quite a battle between the hapless surrogate and the unrelenting truth-speaker. Rhule weighed in with some fact checking too. She also had to admonish Cortes and Corn to be respectful of each other or she’d end the interview.
She showed these Tweets and asked whether Trump should be engaged in show business Tweeting while there were important issues confronting the country.
Cortes tried to defend Trump saying he was speaking to the entire nation and made a feeble attempt to normalize the narcissist.
Corn laughed at this and Rhule noted that New York City and LA were part of the country too.
A follow-up segment continued discussing this and played a video of Arnold Schwarzenegger he just posted reading a Lincoln speech. Then she said “look what Trump has gotten us to do, we’re covering this story instead of the intelligence briefing."
Trump continued to distance himself from Schwarzenegger by calling out his allegiances during the election. “But who cares, he supported Kasich & Hillary,” Trump wrote.
Schwarzenegger, who served as Governor of California for the Republican Party for two terms, announced that he would endorse Kasich in March 2016. Later in October, he said that he would “not vote for the Republican candidate” shortly after Trump’s now-famous vulgar “Access Hollywood” tape made its rounds.
It’s no secret that Trump has an obsession with his own ratings as host of “The Apprentice.” In a photo of Trump’s recent meeting with Kanye West in Trump tower, a framed chart of Nielsen ratings from Variety is visible over Ivanka Trump’s shoulder.
The Friday morning tweets were sent the same day that Trump is expected to meet with all the top editors at Conde Nast publications including Anna Wintour and Graydon Carter. variety.com/...
We have a surreal situation where headline stories from Variety can make the national news because our incoming president is so concerned about bragging about his show-biz accomplishments that he has to stay up in the wee hours Tweeting before the most important briefing he’ll be getting so far.