Tag: CNN

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CNN’s Jim Acosta: White House Spokesman Sean Spicer Is “Kind Of Useless”

CNN’s Jim Acosta is pretty much DONE with the lack of communication coming out of the White House these days.

Today saw the White House daily press briefing devolve into an off-the-air, no cameras, no audio recording “gaggle” where Spicer basically offered no answers to questions asked by the White House press corp.

“The White House press secretary is getting to a point, Brooke, where he’s just kind of useless,” Acosta told CNN’s Brooke Baldwin. “You know, if he can’t come out and answer the questions and they’re not going to do this on camera or audio…why are we having these briefings or gaggles in the first place?”

According to Politico, Spicer is pushing to move into a new position that would oversee communications for the entire White House, advocating for a new press secretary to take his place. Fox News personality Laura Ingraham has apparently met with the powers that be in the Trump administration about the position.

The president hasn’t held a true press conference since February.

Watch Acosta’s justified frustrations below.

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Wild And Wilder: White House Alleges UK Spied On Trump For Obama, UK Slaps Back

Donald Trump’s allegation that President Obama ordered “surveillance” on Trump during the presidential campaign continues to get even more unbelievable.

On Thursday, during a White House press briefing, spokesman Sean Spicer cited comments by Fox News contributor Andrew Napolitano asserting a British spy agency was involved in the alleged surveillance of Donald Trump during the presidential campaign.

Napolitano had stated on-air that President Obama had asked Britain’s Government Communications Headquarters, the intelligence collection agency known as the GCHQ, to surveil Mr. Trump.

Said Sean Spicer:

“Three intelligence sources have informed Fox News that President Obama went outside the chain of command. He didn’t use the N.S.A., he didn’t use the C.I.A., he didn’t use the F.B.I., and he didn’t use the Department of Justice. He used GCHQ. What is that? It’s the initials for the British intelligence spying agency. So simply, by having two people saying to them, ‘The president needs transcripts of conversations involved in candidate Trump’s conversations involving President-elect Trump,’ he was able to get it and there’s no American fingerprints on this.”

The British government immediately denied the allegation on Thursday in a statement issued by the spy agency, labeling the assertions “nonsense” and “utterly ridiculous.”

Today, President Trump was asked about the kerfuffle at a press event with German Chancellor Angela Merkel by a German reporter. Trump answered, “We said nothing. All we did was quote a certain very talented legal mind who was the one responsible for saying that on television. I didn’t make an opinion on it. You shouldn’t be talking to me. You should be talking to Fox.”

Shortly after Trump’s comments, Fox News’ Shepard Smith issued this strongly worded statement from his network: “Fox News cannot confirm Judge Napolitano’s commentary. Fox News knows of no evidence of any kind that the now president of the United States was surveilled at any time in any way, full stop.”

CNN’s Jake Tapper has clearly had just about all the BS he can handle from Trump. Tapper opened his show on CNN thusly:

“In a fevered effort to try to force this outlandish claim into something remotely resembling – passably, perhaps, maybe – the truth, the White House appears actually willing to repeat another wild accusation that potentially could alienate our nation’s most important ally.

“Does smearing British intelligence make your family more safe? No? So why is the White House doing it? What is the White House defending here? Because it damn sure isn’t national security or American credibility before the world.”

How does any of this “make America great again?”

Watch Tapper below:

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Shep Smith Defends CNN Again: “CNN’s Reporting Is Not Fake News”

Shep Smith

Yet again, Fox News’ Shepard Smith took to the airwaves today to defend CNN after White House press secretary Sean Spicer excluded CNN and others from a closed door press “gaggle.”

“For the record, ‘fake news’ refers to stories that are created, often by entities pretending to be news organizations, solely to draw clicks and views and are based on nothing of substance.

“In short, fake news is made up nonsense delivered for financial gain. CNN’s reporting was not fake news. Its journalists followed the same standards to which other news organizations, including Fox News, adhere.”

Watch below:

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Anderson Cooper’s Fiery Interview With Trump Advisor Kellyanne Conway

Don’t let the length of the clip fool you. This was quite riveting to watch.

Good on Anderson that he doesn’t back down. Make sure you watch to the end when he CONFIRMS that CNN never linked to the document dump or to Buzzfeed.

Conway is wrong, spinning for the Trumpers, and never acknowledges she’s wrong.

What’s clear is Team Trump has a huge chip on it’s shoulder that folks didn’t think he would win.

Near the end Conway asks why 8 years ago at this time CNN was reporting that President Obama was headed to Oslo to pick up a Nobel Peace Prize, but no one’s reporting that about Trump today.

Umm, maybe because Trump hasn’t won a Nobel Peace Prize???

From CNN:

In a fiery exchange, Trump senior adviser Kellyanne Conway and Anderson Cooper clash over CNN’s reporting of the classified documents presented to President Obama and President-elect Donald J. Trump http://cnn.it/2jG0Mom

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Fox News Defends CNN: No Journalists Should Be ‘Belittled’ By A President

Fox News’ Shepard Smith

In a bit of surprise, Fox News’ Shep Smith issued a statement today on behalf of Fox News defending CNN for the report it posted last night regarding a collection of what appeared to be “opposition ammo” meant to possibly attack Donald Trump during the presidential campaign. The main point being that CNN’s reporting was “distinctly different” from BuzzFeed’s which drew Trump’s ire.

CNN’s story, unlike Buzzfeed’s, specifically did not include the unedited dossier of unverified allegations made about Trump’s ties to Russia. Nor did CNN include any “details” of the items from the report. Smith added that no journalists should be treated in the way Trump treated CNN’s Jim Acosta, who got into a brief contretemps with Trump today at the president-elect’s first press conference since last summer.

Trump refused to take any questions from Acosta today despite continued requests, and Acosta later shared that Trump’s press secretary threatened to have him thrown out of future press events if he continued to press the president-elect.

Here’s part of Smith’s statement today:

“President-elect Trump today told CNN’s Jim Acosta that his organization amounts to fake news. CNN’s exclusive reporting on the Russian matter was separate and distinctly different from the document dump executed by an online news property.

“Though we at FOX News cannot confirm CNN’s report, it is our observation that its correspondents followed journalistic standards and that neither they nor any other journalists should be subjected to belittling and delegitimizing by the President-elect of the United States.”

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CNN Cuts Ties To DNC Chair Donna Brazile

DNC chair Donna Brazile

CNN has severed all ties with DNC chair Donna Brazile after the latest WikiLeaks email dump seems to show Brazile sharing debate questions with the Clinton campaign.

CNN says it is “completely uncomfortable” in continuing with Brazile as a political contributor in light of the hacked emails, and as such, Brazile has resigned her position with CNN.

Via Politico:

Hacked emails posted by WikiLeaks show Brazile, whose CNN contract was suspended when she became interim DNC chair over the summer, sharing with the Clinton campaign a question that would be posed to Hillary Clinton before the March CNN Democratic debate in Flint, and sharing with the campaign a possible question prior to a CNN town hall also in March.

In a statement, CNN spokeswoman Lauren Pratapas said that on Oct. 14, the network accepted Brazile’s resignation.

“On October 14th, CNN accepted Donna Brazile’s resignation as a CNN contributor. (Her deal had previously been suspended in July when she became the interim head of the DNC.) CNN never gave Brazile access to any questions, prep material, attendee list, background information or meetings in advance of a town hall or debate. We are completely uncomfortable with what we have learned about her interactions with the Clinton campaign while she was a CNN contributor,” Pratapas said.

A CNN employee, speaking on background, suggested Brazile may have met the woman who was supposed to pose the question about lead poisoning during a service event planned the day before the debate.

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Melania Trump: Billy Bush “Egged” My Husband On To Say “Inappropriate” Comments

After spending months attacking the “biased” mainstream media, it is interesting that Donald Trump dispatched his wife, Melania, to do a one on one interview with Anderson Cooper of CNN.

I guess he knows where the audience is.

Melania Trump says her husband was “egged on” in the 2005 tape in which he made lewd comments about his own sexually aggressive behavior toward women — remarks she says were “boy talk.”

“I said to my husband that, you know, the language was inappropriate. It’s not acceptable. And I was surprised, because that is not the man that I know,” the wife of the Republican presidential nominee said in an exclusive interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper, which is set to air at 8 p.m. ET Monday.

“And as you can see from the tape, the cameras were not on — it was only a mic. And I wonder if they even knew that the mic was on,” she said, referring to Trump and NBC’s “Access Hollywood” host Billy Bush. She said they were engaged in “boy talk, and he was led on — like, egged on — from the host to say dirty and bad stuff.”

I’m not sure exactly how to take that “egged on” comment. Does that mean that a 59 year old Donald Trump was too weak willed to be his own man? That Billy Bush was the “alpha” and Trump the “beta?”

If you can’t handle yourself against the mental machinations of Billy Bush, how are you going to stand up to the leaders of foreign nations?

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Media Matters To CNN: Cut Ties With Corey Lewandowski

How is it possible that former Donald Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski is still receiving pay from the Trump campaign while currently on payroll at CNN as “political analyst?”

From Media Matters:

CNN hired Corey Lewandowski in late June after Donald Trump relieved him of duties as campaign manager. What looked at first like an indefensible hire has mushroomed into perhaps the worst conflict-of-interest problem in the history of cable news. It’s time to send a message to Jeff Zucker and CNN: Cut ties with Corey Lewandowski at once.

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Trump Goes Whiny-Baby When Not Congratulated On GOP Nomination

Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump whines that CNN’s Chris Cuomo didn’t begin this morning’s interview with a “congratulations” on becoming the GOP nominee, even though Cuomo had already congratulated Trump the last time they spoke.

Lord, the ego.

From Mediaite:

Cuomo started off by asking Trump about a line of rhetoric that has emerged from the campaign trail — “you are attacking Hillary Clinton for the sexual past and indiscretions of her husband,” he noted — a tactic that may give voters pause. “What is your thinking on this line of attack?” Cuomo furthered.

Did Trump answer the question? Not even close. “Well this is a nice way to start off the interview,” the presumptive nominee said with all the sensitivity of a kid in a candy store who was denied his Sour Patch Kids. “First of all, you should congratulate me for having won the race. I thought, you know, at least there would be a small congratulations but I’m not surprised with CNN because that’s the way they treat Trump.”

“You know, they call it the ‘Clinton Network,’ and I believe that. So, uh, let’s start off right there,” Trump continued to say during his phone-in hit. “I said congratulations the last time we spoke!” clarified Cuomo.