Tag: journalist
Trump And Vance Offer Bizarre Responses To Russia Prisoner Swap

Trump And Vance Offer Bizarre Responses To Russia Prisoner Swap

President Joe Biden on Thursday announced the finalization of a 24-prisoner exchange involving five different countries that resulted in the release of falsely imprisoned journalist Evan Gershkovich and other American captives. But the 2024 Republican presidential ticket's response to the news has prompted head-scratching.

On Thursday afternoon, former President Donald Trump notably did not express any appreciation for the safe return of Gershkovich or former U.S. Marine Paul Whelan, who have been held prisoner in Russia since early 2023 and 2018, respectively. Instead, he lamented about the complexity of the deal and suggested without evidence that the Biden administration gave cash to Russian President Vladimir Putin in exchange for the American hostages.

Sen. JD Vance (R-OH) — whom Trump selected as his running mate last month – had a puzzling response of his own when asked about the prisoner exchange. According to CNN, the Ohio Republican acknowledged that the news of U.S. citizens and residents being released as part of the deal was "great news, at least what little we know," and that it was "ridiculous that they were in prison to begin with." However, he then pivoted to suggesting that Trump was more responsible for the safe return of the hostages than the Biden administration.

"But we have to ask ourselves, why are they coming home?” Vance told the network. “And I think it’s because bad guys all over the world recognize Donald Trump’s about to be back in office, so they’re cleaning house. That’s a good thing, and I think it’s a testament to Donald Trump’s strength.”

Vance's statement drew mockery on social media. Matt Steinglass — a Europe correspondent for The Economist posted sarcastically to the social media platform Bluesky: "Why did the sun go down? I think it’s because it’s scared. Scared of Donald Trump. It’s a tribute to Donald Trump’s unimaginable majesty." Former New York Daily News journalist Helen Kennedy piled on, noting that "even Trump didn't have the chutzpah to claim credit."

Northwestern University law professor wrote that her "mind goes immediately to this," and posted a screenshot of the 1962 film The Manchurian Candidate, in which Frank Sinatra's character (who has been brainwashed) repeats the mantra, "Raymond Shaw is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I’ve ever known in my life."

Vance's argument that Trump's "strength" resulted in the release of the American captives makes even less sense when considering that Trump said in May that only he would be able to negotiate the release of the prisoners, and that he would do so during Biden's lame-duck period after the election. On his Truth Social platform, Trump promised that Putin would release Gershkovich "for me, but not for anyone else."

"Evan Gershkovich, the Reporter from The Wall Street Journal, who is being held by Russia, will be released almost immediately after the Election, but definitely before I assume Office. He will be HOME, SAFE, AND WITH HIS FAMILY," Trump wrote.

In addition to his comments about the prisoner swap, Vance was also asked about what he thought of Trump's comments during a live interview at a National Association of Black Journalists event on Wednesday. During that interview, Trump suggested that Vice President Kamala Harris only recently started to identify as Black (she attended Howard University, which is a historically Black college, and joined the historically Black sorority Alpha Kappa Alpha).

Vance, who has three biracial children with his Indian American wife, Usha, said the former president's comments were "totally reasonable" and that they "don’t give me pause at all."

"Look, all he said is that Kamala Harris is a chameleon," said Vance, who once referred to Trump as "America's Hitler" in a text message. "She is everything to everybody, and she pretends to be somebody different depending on which audience she is in front of. I think it’s totally reasonable for the president to call that out, and that’s all he did."

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

Joe Biden

Murdoch Journal's Story About Biden 'Slipping' Is Comically Weak

Republicans and their right-wing media propagandists have spent the last four years smearing President Joe Biden as mentally infirm. That argument keeps exploding in their faces when Biden appears before a national audience in debates and speeches, but the president’s mental acuity is a frequent subject of media attention, and polls show voters are concerned about Biden’s age.

That’s the context for the 3,000-plus-word investigation that The Wall Street Journal published Tuesday night, which concludes that “Behind Closed Doors, Biden Shows Signs of Slipping,” based largely on the complaints of anonymous Republicans who hope Biden loses to Donald Trump in November so the party can implement its agenda of tax cuts for the wealthy, restrictions on abortions, and political retribution. The Republican National Committee, Trump’s campaign, and the legion of MAGA supporters, eager for a subject that isn’t their candidate's felony conviction, instantly jumped on the story.

The Journal notably provides no on-the-record statements from anyone speaking against their partisan interests. It would be genuinely revelatory if the Journal found Democrats willing to offer on-the-record comments about Biden’s mental acuity that remotely approached the public statements from former senior Trump aides describing him as “an idiot” who does “crazy” things and lacks understanding of basic concepts.

But the paper spent months conducting interviews with several dozen “Republicans and Democrats who either participated in meetings with Biden or were briefed on them contemporaneously” and came away with nothing like that.

Instead, the Journal uncovered negative anecdotes about Biden’s performance in three negotiations dating back to May 2023.

According to the paper, “most of those who said Biden performed poorly were Republicans.” Among Democrats, “some” — apparently speaking anonymously — “said that he showed his age in several of the exchanges” while others — often on the record — “found no fault in the president’s handling of the meetings.” And the Journal further acknowledged that “members of the Biden administration offered numerous examples of other situations that they said showed the president was sharp and engaged.”

The story gets even thinner upon closer inspection.

The sole named critical source for any of the anecdotes is former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who claimed Biden is “not the same person” he was as vice president and said the president would “ramble” and “always had cards” during some of their debt ceiling negotiations in May 2023.

But McCarthy is a notoriously dishonest person, an election denier who lost his speakership because he was widely distrusted and is now attempting a rebrand based on what Politico called “clever truth-bending and big omissions.” And true to form, the record shows that in the lead-up to the debt ceiling negotiations, McCarthy had publicly portrayed Biden as “doddering,” even as he privately “told allies that he has found Mr. Biden to be mentally sharp in meetings,” The New York Timesreported at the time.

A second anecdote relies on current House Speaker Mike Johnson’s (R-LA) apparent recollection of a February one-on-one meeting with Biden in which they discussed his administration’s pause on permit approvals for new liquified natural gas terminals, relayed through “six people told at the time about what Johnson said had happened.”

Johnson, who has every incentive to put their conversation in the worst possible light, reportedly “worried the president’s memory had slipped about the details of his own policy.” But the description of whatever the mix-up was supposed to be is extremely vague — the Journal reports that “Biden said … that the new policy was only a study, according to several people familiar with Johnson’s version of what happened” while a White House spokesman responded by calling the reported version of the conversation “a false account” and explaining that “the study is part of the new policy, and that the pause doesn’t affect current exports.”

The third anecdote features a January 17 meeting at the White House in which Biden discussed the need for military aid to Ukraine with “nearly two dozen congressional leaders.” Here the critique, as provided through anonymous accounts, is that Biden used notecards, reargued points already conceded, slowly worked his way around the room greeting people, spoke softly, and repeatedly deferred to other lawmakers and staffers.

But on the record, one top Biden aide said the use of notecards is standard practice for presidents; another said Biden turned to aides to answer questions only twice; and several Democrats who attended the meeting provided statements describing Biden’s performance in the meeting as, in the words of House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, “incredibly strong, forceful and decisive.” Indeed, the Journal apparently got so many positive comments from Democratic attendees that some were left on the cutting room floor.

The Journal is perhaps the most credulous of the major newspapers when it comes to the GOP’s campaign to convince the public that Biden’s stammer and occasional verbal stumbles indicate he has dementia. A 2023 Media Matters study found that over several months, the Journal published more than twice as many articles mentioning Biden’s age as Trump’s, and it was less likely to mention Trump’s age in articles mentioning Biden’s than the other papers we reviewed.

The paper was burned on this topic just a few months ago, after then-special counsel Robert Hur, a former clerk to right-wing judges and a Trump administration appointee, took a shot at Biden as seeming like “an elderly man with a poor memory” in their interview. The Journal ran 18 reports on Biden’s mental fitness in the four days following Hur’s report, according to Popular Information. Upon the release of the interview transcript, however, the paper reported that it showed Biden “veering into frequent digressions, but not stumped on basic factual questions.”

The Journal apparently responded to that embarrassment by conducting a monthslong investigation finding that Republicans who want Biden to lose the presidential election say that their talking point that he is failing mentally is correct. The result is a telling sign of the news media’s asymmetry: It is impossible to imagine the analogue to this story, in which a news outlet widely read by Republicans would commission and run a story built around Democrats’ anonymous, critical comments about Trump.

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters.

Former President Donald Trump

'Sad Way To Dishonor Our Fallen Heroes': Trump Ripped For Memorial Day Whining

Former President Donald Trump's Memorial Day remarks were met with fierce backlash from a slew of journalists, legal and political experts Monday.

The MAGA leader's message — which was posted to Truth Social — included attacks on Judges Lewis Kaplan, who presided over two defamation cases against Trump from veteran writer E. Jean Carroll, and Arthur Engoron, who presided over the ex-president's New York civil fraud case. He also mentioned Judge Juan Merchan, who's presiding over Trump's hush money trial, which is expected to conclude this week.

The former president wrote:

Happy Memorial Day to All, including the Human Scum that is working so hard to destroy our Once Great Country, & to the Radical Left, Trump Hating Federal Judge in New York that presided over, get this, TWO separate trials, that awarded a woman, who I never met before (a quick handshake at a celebrityevent, 25 years ago, doesn't count!), 91 MILLION DOLLARS for 'DEFAMATION.' She didn't know when the so-called event took place - sometime in the 1990's - never filed a police report, didn't have to produce the 'dress' that she threatened me with (it showed negative!), & sung my praises in the first half of her CNN Interview with Alison Cooper, but changed her tune in the second half - Gee, I wonder why (UNDER APPEAL!)? The Rape charge was dropped by a jury! Or Arthur Engoron, the N.Y. State Wacko Judge who fined me almost 500 Million Dollars (UNDER APPEAL) for DOING NOTHING WRONG, used a Statute that has never been used before, gave me NO JURY, Mar-a-Lago at$18,000,000 - Now for Merchan!

Veteran congressional reporter Jamie Dupree replied, "Memorial Day started after the Civil War, as a tradition to honor U.S. soldiers who died in military service."

Daily Beast columnist Barry Markson wrote: "Pres. Biden is laying a wreath at the tomb of the unknown soldier and this is Trump’s message. Not one mention of a fallen soldier who died for our country because Trump calls them losers. Just more grievance about him. Trump doesn’t care about you or the country."

KTLA journalist David Lazarus said: "The simple fact is that if we did away with the archaic Electoral College, a man like this would never again get within reach of the presidency."

Former chief White House ethics lawyer Richard W. Painter commented: "What a sad way to dishonor our nation’s fallen heroes."

Deadline.com DC correspondent Ted Johnson replied: "As Joe Biden visits Arlington for Memorial Day…"

The Hill notes that Trump's "statement is a stark difference from President Biden, who gave a somber address at Arlington National Cemetery on Monday. Biden used the opportunity to remark on the death of his own son, Beau Biden, who died from brain cancer believed to be caused by exposure to toxic chemicals during his service in the Iraq War."

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

Jury Orders Trump To Pay $83 Million In E. Jean Carroll Defamation Case

Jury Orders Trump To Pay $83 Million In E. Jean Carroll Defamation Case

Donald Trump will have to pay journalist E. Jean Carroll $83.3 million in total damages in her defamation case, after nine jurors – seven men and two women – deliberated for just under three hours in a lower Manhattan federal courthouse Friday afternoon.

This is the second civil defamation and sexual abuse case Carroll brought against the ex-president, who is facing 91 state and federal criminal felony charges. Hen is also facing a civil business fraud case in New York, which has the potential to cost him hundreds of millions and bar him from doing business in the Empire State.

E. Jean Carroll’s case surrounded defamatory statements Trump made in June of 2019, and jurors were required to determine compensatory and punitive damages Trump owes for those statements. In the first case a jury determined Trump was liable for sexual abuse and defamation. The judge in both cases, senior U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan determined those facts would hold over for this case. He also had noted after the first case that Trump had effectively been found liable for rape, making the ex-president an adjudicated rapist.

Initially Carroll’s attorney asked for $10 million in compensatory damages in the current case, but expert testimony revealed it would cost the journalist, author, and advice columnist at least $12 million to repair her damaged reputation, and millions more in lost wages and other injuries.

Just Security last week described that as, “economic loss (lost income, career opportunities, or business deals due to damaged reputation) as well as for emotional distress (mental anguish, humiliation, and reputational harm).”

Carroll’s attorneys on Friday asked the jury for $24 million in compensatory damages. During closing arguments Carroll’s attorneys told the jury Trump’s claims of high net worth should be taken in to account when deciding how much to award Carroll in punitive damages.

Throughout the trial, and as recently as 11:30 AM Friday, Donald Trump continued his attacks, calling the trial the “E. Jean Carroll False Accusation Case,” and falsely claiming, “This is another Biden Demanded Witch Hunt against his Political Opponent, funded and managed by Radical Left Democrats. The Courts are totally stacked against me, have never been used against a Political Opponent, like this.”

The jury was required to answer these three “yes” or “no” questions:

“Did Ms. Carroll prove, by a preponderance of the evidence, that Ms. Carroll suffered more than nominal damages as a result of Mr. Trump’s publication of the June 21 and June 22, 2019 statements?”

“In making the June 21, 2019 statement, Mr. Trump acted maliciously, out of hatred, ill will, or spite, vindictively, or in wanton, reckless, or willful disregard of Ms. Carroll’s rights?”

“In making the June 22, 2019 statement, Mr. Trump acted maliciously, out of hatred, ill will, or spite, vindictively, or in wanton, reckless, or willful disregard of Ms. Carroll’s rights?”

During the final day of trial, Donald Trump stormed out of the courtroom when he was criticized by Carroll’s attorney, the highly-respected Roberta Kaplan. Judge Kaplan (no relation) announced that would become part of the trial record.

Trump’s attorney, Alina Habba, repeatedly ignored Judge Kaplan’s directions to not question the facts of the case, that Trump had been found liable for sexual abuse and defamation, yet she repeatedly ignored his warnings.

Judge Kaplan was forced repeatedly to warn and rebuke Habba, and at one point during closing arguments, he threatened Habba with jail if she continued.

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

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