April 7, 2017: Spinning Bannon | Trump Slumps in Poll | O’Reilly Troubles
1. The Perfect Storm: Susan Rice Furor Explained
The Red Media have been pounding Susan Rice over reports that the former national security adviser asked the intelligence agencies to “unmask” the names of Trump associates who had been picked up incidentally as part of the wiretapping of foreign operatives. The issue has set the Right on fire --even though Rice did nothing illegal and could just have been doing her job in learning who in the incoming Trump administration might be colluding with a hostile foreign power.
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April 3, 2017: The Gorsuch Bluff | Bill O’Reilly v Mike Pence | South Korea Sexism
1. Playing Chicken, Gorsuch Style
So this week, the Trump administration is looking for its first big victory on anything. It expects the Senate will approve Neil Gorsuch for the Supreme Court even without a filibuster-proof 60 votes. The belief is that the Senate will get rid of the filibuster -- the so-called “nuclear option.” Last week, we reported that many in the Red Press were actually rooting for the nuclear option. Over the weekend, however, we detected a new strain of thinking that the option probably won’t be necessary, that the Democrats will cave on a floor vote.
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March 30, 2017: Don’t Cooperate | Fox Tops Itself | Ivanka’s Beauty
1. The Nuclear Option: Work with The Democrats or Not?
As the Senate approaches a vote on the appointment of Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court, many in the Red Press have been rooting for the “nuclear option.” That is, conservatives would like Republican senators get rid of the filibuster, which would mean Gorsuch would only need a majority to get on the bench instead of 60 votes.
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March 27, 2017: The Blame Game | Mainstream Media Bias | Chainmail
1. The Blame Game: Trump is Illin’, too
There is no doubt that Paul Ryan has taken the brunt of the blame for the GOP’s failure to Repeal and Replace. As we started noticing two weeks ago, alt-right publications like Breitbart were letting President Trump largely off the hook while drubbing the House Speaker. It appeared DJT himself was joining in the party when he tweeted out Saturday that his followers should watch Judge Jeanine Pirro’s show on Fox. She opened by calling for Ryan’s resignation. (It emerged later that his motivation might have been a promo that had promised big news related to Obama wiretapping.)
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March 23, 2017: Drip, Drip Defend | Repeal, Replace, Retreat | Pundit Death Watch
1. How to Combat Drip, Drip…? We List the Strategies.
For the Trump loyalists in the Red Media, this has been a difficult week on the Russian front. On Monday, the F.B.I. director, James Comey, confirmed at a House Intelligence Committee hearing that the bureau is investigating possible ties between the Trump campaign and Russia. He also confirmed that there was no evidence that Barack Obama ordered a wiretap on Donald Trump. Then, yesterday, The Associated Press dropped a Paul Manafort bombshell: Trump’s former campaign manager had taken $10 million a year starting in 2005 from a Russian oligarch looking to “advance the interests of Russian President Vladimir Putin.”
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March 20, 2017: Spank North Korea | Judge’s Pants on Fire | Meals on Spinning Wheels
1. Gorsuch Defenders Rising
As we’ve noted here before, there has been a massive effort by conservatives to mobilize grassroots support for the nomination of Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court, particularly in states with Democratic senators who might vote against his confirmation. Early signs this morning on Twitter are that the base is all in. Here is just a sampling from Trump supporters. Many of these people don’t have particularly large followings, but they do show how fired up the base is:
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March 16, 2017: Rough Day on the Right | Early Budget Reactions | Who Is Paul Joseph Watson? | The Return of #Iamaclimatechangedenier
1. The President’s No Good, Terrible, Really Bad Day
Like so many news cycles in the Trump era, yesterday’s moved at lightning speed. There was a lot of news for the president, almost none of it good. Some of it, like the Dutch election going to conservatives not populists and the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee saying that Obama never wiretapped him, we’ll get to later .
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March 13, 2017: Purge Reaction | Unmanly Trump | Other People’s Babies
1. Preet Purge Outrage: A Show About Nothing
The Tump administration's decision to get rid of all 46 leftover Obama U.S. Attorneys on Friday night -- including the Southern District of New York’s crusading Preet Bharara -- drew a lot of attention over the weekend. Most stories noted, too, that just the evening before, Fox’s Sean Hannity warned of “deep state Obama holdovers embedded like barnacle in the Federal bureaucracy” and called for a purge.
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March 10, 2017: Trump v. McConnell | 300 Terrorists | Sam B. Takedown
1. Clash of the TItans: Trump vs. McConnell
The Far Right Media doesn’t have a lot of patience for the stately pace of legislative politics or Trump critics. (Unless, of course, they're the ones giving the criticism.) Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell crossed both lines yesterday. First, he said a tax cut would likely not be completed by August. Then, McConnell retorted to a question about whether Mexico would pay for the border wall with an “Uh, No.”
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March 9, 2017: Feuding Republicans | Jobs Jobs Jobs | Those Angry Women
1. Trump and Ryancare: Now or Never
The White House projected the message that President Trump was all-in behind Ryancare, the GOP proposal to replace Obamacare. Standing fully behind Ryancare is a hard place to be, however. Not only is the bill being hammered by the left, it is being hammered by the Far Right base, which has typically been Trump’s staunchest supporters.
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March 8, 2017: All About Women on A Day Without Women
1. Buzz on Right: WikiLeaks Proves Our Point
We promise we will get to women as the main theme of our newsletter, but first we have to start off with the story that dominated conservative radioland: WikiLeaks. Wikileaks released thousands of pages it claims are from the C.I.A.’s secret files, allegedly showing that the spy agency is capable hacking phones and communication apps like WhatsApp and Signal.
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March 7, 2017: Abortion Disinformation| Lynch Mob | A Movie to Hate
1. Repealing and Replacing?
Last night, the Red Media responded cautiously as Republicans unveiled their plan to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act. Under the GOP plan, instead of mandating that nearly all Americans have health insurance, the government would introduce a new form of individual tax credits and grants. In keeping with Obamacare, young adults would still be able to stay on parents’ health plans until the age of 26 and insurers would still be forbidden to deny coverage or charge more to those with pre-existing conditions.
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March 6, 2017: Towergate | Mark Levin 101 | Middlebury Madness
1. Towergate: Spreading the Blame
After Donald Trump’s Saturday twitterstorm accused Barack Obama of wiretapping his phone -- denied by former Obama administration officials, other sources and the F.B.I. -- the president was hammered in the Mainstream Media. The more conservative Red Media like Independent Journal Review and InfoWars were giving Trump air cover. But the rest of the Red Media seemed to stake out a more nuanced position.
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March 2, 2017: Sessions the Victim | Ingraham Grills Pence | Oprah v. Trump 2020
1. Sessions the Victim
Last night, The Washington Post broke the news that, according to Justice Department sources, Attorney General Jeff Sessions spoke twice with the Russian Ambassador to the U.S., Sergey Kislyak, when he was a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee last year. Sessions, a key Trump supporter during the campaign, had denied during his confirmation hearing that he had had any contact with the Russians.
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March 1, 2017: SOTU Joy, Astonishment | Muddying the Waters
1. Reaction to SOTU: Whew! That Went Well. However.....
President Trump’s address to Congress largely left the Red Media elated and relieved that the commander-in chief finally seemed restrained and presidential. However, there were signs that his populist-style promises don’t always sit well with many of his reflexively anti-government constituencies:
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Feb 28, 2017: Budget Schism | 'Most Dangerous' Man | Bush Betrayal
1. Budget Battles: Trump Treads Treacherous Territory
Trump said yesterday that he is set to introduce a budget that doesn’t cut entitlements like Medicare and Social Security and yet ups military spending by 10 percent -- or a hefty $54 billion dollars. To fiscally focused Republicans like Paul Ryan, those numbers just don’t add up. But they also don’t add up to radio conservatives like Rush Limbaugh and Alex Jones, who have been agitating for big tax cuts and now seem, well, a little concerned.
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Feb 27, 2017: Spicer Plays Rough | Oscars Go Left | Witches' Revolt | Trump's Steak
1. Going Rogue: The Spicer Defense
All weekend long, the Blue Twittersphere hammered Press Secretary Sean Spicer for being paranoid and out of control. First, he excluded some big media outlets from an off-camera media gaggle. Then Politico reported he was checking the phones of White House staffers for leaks.
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Feb 24, 2017: Restlessness on the Right | Pot Shot | L.A. Lawless
1. Rising Impatience on the Right?
Donald Trump has signed a whirlwind of executive orders, but there is growing impatience in the Red Media about the progress (or lack thereof) -on repealing Obamacare and passing tax reform.
On Tuesday, Conservative Review asked: “Why is the GOP just sitting around on repealing Obamacare after winning the impossible?”
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Feb 23, 2017: Oscars So Liberal | Poll Picking | Planetary Spin
1. Town Halls: The Real Story Is the Press Is Making It Up
On Laura Ingraham’s radio program yesterday, the Virginia congressman Dave Brat said he didn’t mind sparring with so-called “organized liberal hecklers” at his own recent town meeting, but he did object to the press coverage: “Politico — I fell off my chair. They did a great job of reporting on what actually happened,” Brat told Ingraham. “But The Washington Post, on the other hand, is just fake news. Oh, my word.”
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Feb 22, 2017: We’re Not Anti-Immigrant | Anne Frank Fraud | RNC Rakes it In
1. Crackdown on Illegal Immigrants… Emphasis on Illegal
The Red Media frequently portrays immigrants as violent welfare cheats. But the emphasis has shifted in the wake of Trump’s announcement yesterday of stricter enforcement of immigration laws and his intention to hire more border patrol agents.
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