Axios on the BuzzFeed story about Michael Cohen being directed to lie to Congress:
Garrett M. Graff of WIRED, in an email to Axios, pointed out the new political context for journalistic bombshells:
- "You have to think that the special counsel's office is thinking through how to respond to press reports in the era of a Democratic House — they need to now set reasonable (and timely) expectations in order to ensure that Congress doesn't [go] off the rails."
- Graff told me the statement appears to be very careful, disputing specific — although unspecified — allegations.
Henry II: "will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest?"
BuzzFeed: Henry II ordered Becket's death, sources stand by story
TrumpWorld: That is not a direct order. BuzzFeed got it wrong.
Public: We get what he meant.
Rudy: And, besides, if he did, it’s not a crime.
I don’t know if it’s exactly as portrayed, but don’t ever forget How a reporting mistake nearly derailed the Watergate investigation — and how journalists recovered. My main takeaway was that Mueller was defending his investigation from leaks, and the added benefit is Trump endorsed what he’s doing. Some witch hunt, eh? In any case, we just have to wait for what it all means.
WaPo:
Trump two years in: The dealmaker who can’t seem to make a deal
But the data tell a more troubling story for the president. One month into the shutdown, the longest in U.S. history, a preponderance of public polls show Trump is losing the political fight. For instance, a Jan. 13 Washington Post-ABC News survey found that many more Americans blame him than blame Democrats for the shutdown, 53 percent to 29 percent. And the president’s job approval ratings continue to be decidedly negative.
“Even though he thinks he’s doing a great job for his core, it’s ripping the nation apart,” said one Trump friend, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “I don’t think there is a plan. He’s not listening to anybody because he thinks that if he folds on this, he loses whatever constituency he thinks he has.”
Behind the scenes at the White House, some aides acknowledge the difficulties.
“The president is very much aware he’s losing the public opinion war on this one,” one senior administration official said. “He looks at the numbers.”
Trump thinks this is a PR game and don’t understand the basics: the Democrats are not giving in, and Trump’s ridiculous offers aren’t compromises. It doesn’t matter how often they pretend they are and it doesn’t matter what his base thinks, though them not liking it is fun to watch.
Next time, try negotiating with Democrats.
And remember: the Trump family including Jared Kushner are not very bright. That’s why they play themselves into a corner when they can’t cheat.
Quinta Jurecic/twitter:
It is with a heavy heart that I must announce that Rudy Giuliani is at it again
Trump may have talked to Cohen about his testimony before Cohen submitted it:
Trump Tower Moscow negotiations may have gone on through October or November (!) 2016
Will Bunch/Philly.com
The huge problem with Mueller’s Trump-Russia probe that no one talks about
Mueller worship has blinded the majority of Americans who oppose Trumpism to some fundamental truths. Among those is the reality that Mueller and his team aren’t perfect and occasionally reek of arrogance. Whatever emerges about Buzzfeed’s original reporting on Michael Cohen, Mueller’s aides could have acted better both when contacted prepublication and in their vague statement Friday night. (And Big Media is showing its embarrassing tendency to defer to authority by giving all the weight to Mueller’s statement even as Buzzfeed aggressively stands by its reporting.) More importantly, Team Mueller is -- nearly two years into this -- excessively secretive, as we’ve seen from pages after pages of thick black redactions. No one truly knows when Mueller might issue his final report, or whether the public will even see it.
Journalism is under fire today, but the foundational premise of investigative reporting is that it abhors a vacuum -- whether that vacuum is a small town city hall that’s serving real-estate developers instead of the public, or the American political system punting on evidence that the president of the United States may have committed high crimes. Journalists from Buzzfeed News, McClatchy, or other newsrooms are aggressively trying not just to get inside the Mueller probe but the underlying evidence because the public is demanding answers that we’re not getting answers from anywhere else in the system.
David Frum/Atlantic:
The President’s Hostage Attempt Is Going Miserably Wrong
Once again, Trump tried and failed to strike a deal on Saturday.
The shutdown was a demand for unconditional surrender. Unfortunately for him, the president lacks the political realism to recognize that he doesn’t have the clout to impose that surrender. He’s the one who will now have to climb down, and very soon, probably within days. The end of a hostage taking is not a surrender. But it will surely feel that way to the hostage taker—and deservedly, too.
Jennifer Rubin/WaPo:
Five reasons Trump may be a one-termer
Second, Trump’s play-to-the-base strategy was a blunder with enormous ramifications. Sure, about 30 percent of the electorate will believe whatever Trump says, no matter how absurd. The Trump cult however now stands isolated from everyone else. A base-only strategy with a blundering, offensive president — who did virtually nothing for the “forgotten man and woman” and who alienated college-educated voters (in part with his racism and rejection of reality), women and suburban voters — put the House in Democratic hands….
Finally, a primary challenge to Trump was once unthinkable. However strongly Republicans cling to Trump in the face of Democratic attacks and harsh media coverage, Republicans are increasingly open to a primary challenge.
You can’t say this enough times. Trump’s base is not enough to win with.
Maggie Fox/NBC:
State-by-state study links gun ownership with youth suicide
“The availability of firearms is contributing to an increase in the actual number of suicides," one researcher said.
“For each 10 percentage-point increase in household gun ownership, the youth suicide rate increased by 26.9 percent,” they wrote in their report, published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.
“The only other factors that were associated with overall youth suicide rates were the suicide attempt rate and the percentage of youth who were Native American,” they added.
“Together, the model explained 92 percent of the variation in overall youth suicide rates across the 47 states.”
By the way "Donald Trump's stupid and disingenuous plan rejected by weary but determined Democrats" is the headline media should have written.
Margaret Sullivan/WaPo:
Get used to it: The ‘I-word’ — impeachment — is about to dominate Trump coverage
Brian Flood of Fox News, for example, wrote that the mainstream media “continues to lead the charge to impeach President Trump.”
That characterization is misleading. It makes no distinction between commentary and news coverage, between discussion and exhortation, between one columnist’s view and that of, say, the New York Times editorial board.
It will be important to keep those differences in mind as impeachment discussion and coverage grows.
And grow it will.
Because one thing is clear: As of January 2019, the I-word has moved off the sidelines and onto the field. And it’s not going away anytime soon.