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Tag: npr
Donald Trump

Polls: Trump Still Leads GOP Primary But Enthusiasm Is Waning

While Donald Trump is still dominating the 2024 Republican primary in national polls, signs of trouble are starting to emerge as his legal peril mounts.

An NPR/PBS/Marist poll released Friday found a nine-point drop since last month among Republicans and GOP-leaning independents who say Trump has done "nothing wrong," from 50 percent to 41 percent.

Trump also lost support from the Republican cohort, with 58 percent now saying they are likely to back Trump in the primary, down six points from 64 percent last month.

The survey was in the field from July 24 - 27, before Thursday afternoon’s announcement of a superseding indictment in the classified documents case added more heft to Trump's criminal count haul.

Normally, a stand-alone poll finding notable swings from one month to the next is cause for caution. But in this case, the NPR/PBS/Marist poll isn't a singular outlier.

The July Daily Kos/Civiqs poll fielded last week also showed flagging enthusiasm for Trump. The survey found that if Trump was the Republican nominee, 31 percent of the electorate said they would "definitely" vote for him in the general election—an eight-point drop from a month earlier, when 39 percent of voters said they would "definitely" vote Trump in 2024.

Between June and July, some of Trump's “definite” voters appear to have downgraded themselves to "probably" vote for him, while his "vote for someone else" category rose 3 points, from 50 percent to 53 percent.

CIVIQS: IF TRUMP WERE THE 2024 GOP NOMINEE, WOULD YOU...

JuneJulyNet
Definitely vote for him39%31%-8
Probably vote for him6%10%+4
Probably vote someone else3%3%0
Definitely vote someone else50%53%+3
Unsure2%3%+1

It's not a wholesale collapse, but it could be an opening for one of Trump's Republican rivals. The problem, of course, is that none of them have proven capable of consolidating the not-Trump vote (anti-Trumpers plus pro-Trumpers looking for an alternative).

As Sarah Longwell, host of The Focus Group podcast and executive director of the Republican Accountability Project, told the New York Times this week, "The No. 1 reason Trump is dominating right now is because of lack of political talent from the people who are challenging him.”

That is a perfect explanation of why Trump's support could be softening even as he remains top dog in the 2024 GOP field. If that is indeed true and Trump still manages to limp across the finish line in first place next year, he will be an even weaker general election candidate than initially anticipated.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

Michael Pack

Trump Appointee Who Ran Voice Of America Accused Of Gross Political Abuses

Michael Pack, the Chief Executive Officer of the United States Agency for Global Media (USAGM), which oversees Voice of America, was recently found responsible for several instances of misconduct, according to a federal inquiry, Rolling Stone reports.

Per NPR, the former President Donald Trump appointed leader, in 2020, "met with a career employee to discuss which senior leaders at the agency and the Voice of America should be forced out due to their perceived political beliefs," and "firing someone over political affiliation is typically a violation of federal civil service law."

Rolling Stonereports:

The Office of Special Counsel found that 'during his less-than-eight-month tenure CEO [Michael] Pack was responsible for numerous improper activities,' including 'abuse of authority, gross mismanagement, a gross waste of funds, or a violation of law, rule, or regulation.' The OSC's report concluded that Pack 'abused his authority and retaliated against career USAGM executives who engaged in whistleblowing.'

Furthermore, according to Rolling Stone ,"the OSC found that Pack interfered with independent journalism at Voice of America and other outlets he oversaw; retaliated against executives who filed whistleblower complaints; and mismanaged and wasted funds by paying $1.6 million in a confidential, no-bid contract to a Virginia law firm to investigate USAGM executives. Pack also 'restricted employee communications with outside parties [and] failed to exempt legally protected disclosures.'"

Regarding what was said about employees' political beliefs, NPR reports an employee wrote "Hates Republicans" in a memo, while another said, "Openly despises Trump and Republicans."

David Seide, a lawyer "with the Government Accountability Project, a nonprofit public interest law firm which has represented more than 30 whistleblowers at USAGM, VOA and its sister networks since Pack took office," according to NPR, said, "This report is remarkable in its breadth and depth and detail of the wrongdoing that was underway at these agencies in the last six months of the Trump administration."

He added, "It just takes one's breath away."

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

Elon Musk

NPR Drops Twitter After State-Financed Musk Appends 'State-Affiliated' Label

National Public Radio has announced that it will suspend use of Twitter after platform owner Elon Musk inserted a tag last week falsely claiming that NPR was “U.S. state-affiliated media,” placing it in the same category as propaganda outlets like Russia’s RT or China’s Xinhua. NPR will not only stop posting updates to its existing main account, but will end posts to 51 other accounts that were specific to programs or areas of coverage.

The label was reportedly placed on NPR at the express order of Musk. Twitter’s own rules included text that explained why outlets such as RT, which serve as a mouthpiece for the Russian government, were labeled as “state media,” but NPR and the British Broadcasting Corporation did not have such labels because they had editorial independence. When this text was pointed out, Twitter responded by editing NPR out of the example, leaving only the BBC.

After an outcry from journalists and NPR listeners, Musk later changed the label on NPR to “Government-funded Media.” It then added the same label to BBC News. However, this ignores the fact that only 8% of NPR’s funding comes from the government in any form, and less than 1% comes from the federally funded Corporation for Public Broadcasting. That’s a much smaller percentage of government funding than many other companies receive—including Elon Musk’s own SpaceX and Tesla.

NPR is leaving it up to individual reporters to decide whether they continue on Twitter and says the network has enacted a “two week grace period” for employees to work out how they will handle social media. Some reporters, including Pentagon correspondent Tom Bowman and tech reporter Bobby Allyn, have gone silent over the past two days, but not made any official announcement. Others, such as All Things Considered host Mary Louise Kelly, have said that they will remain on Twitter for now.

“NPR’s organizational accounts will no longer be active on Twitter because the platform is taking actions that undermine our credibility by falsely implying that we are not editorially independent.

We are not putting our journalism on platforms that have demonstrated an interest in undermining our credibility and the public’s understanding of our editorial independence.” — Isabel Lara, NPR Chief Communications Officer

A letter from NPR management to staff warned that Twitter’s actions are meant to “tarnish the independence of any public media institution, are exceptionally harmful and set a dangerous precedent.”

In past interviews, SpaceX officials have admitted that the company was at least 85 percent funded by the federal government in its early development. Despite a growing commercial presence, Payload Space shows that half of SpaceX’s launch revenue in 2022 still came from government flights, and that’s not counting additional multibillion dollar contracts SpaceX holds, including one to help develop a moon lander for NASA. That single contract is nine times larger than NPR’s total annual revenue, and almost 100 times as much as NPR’s government funding.

In 2021,Business Insider reported on how Musk was raking in billions in government subsidies at the same time he was vocally opposing higher taxes for the wealthy and complaining about government regulations on capital.The Los Angeles Timesestimated that Musk had swallowed up $4.9 billion in government support for Tesla and SpaceX by 2015. As one business analyst put it:

“He definitely goes where there is government money. That’s a great strategy.”

Somehow, this did not earn either of Musk’s companies a “government-funded” label.

As usual, efforts to solicit reasonable discussion from Musk—who on Monday relabeled his personal Twitter account as “Harry Bolz”—generated something less than rational discourse.The New York Times sent a question concerning the change in labeling for NPR, which “was returned with a poop emoji autoreply.”

Last December, Musk promised to abide by a poll in which Twitter users said they wanted someone else for CEO. Since then, Musk has limited polls to those who buy into his Twitter Blue monthly fee. There has been no mention of naming a new CEO since early February. On Monday, Musk declared that Twitter “no longer exists” as a company and is just one part of the “everything app” he calls ‘X.’

Also on Monday, Musk claimed that Twitter is now “roughly breaking even.” However, as noted by Forbes, the first earnings report posted under Musk’s control showed Twitter failing to meet targets and reporting higher than expected losses. In March,The Wall Street Journalreported that Twitter’s adjusted earnings at the end of 2022 were down by 40 percent when compared to the previous year after advertisers fled from Musk’s erratic comments and his restoration of accounts that have included white supremacists and those associated with the January 6 insurrection.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

Elon Musk

Elon Musk's Ongoing Twitter Tantrum Targets National Public Radio

We don't know why tantruming billionaire child Elon Musk is engaged in a one-sided war against NPR, but he doesn't show signs of stopping.

Last week Musk's Twitter slapped a "state-affiliated media" label on NPR's Twitter account, despite NPR not being a candidate for such a label according to Twitter's own definition of the term, and despite Twitter's own Help Center specifically singling out NPR as an example of a corporation that wouldn't meet the definition. NPR is not "state-affiliated."

Somebody inside the now-skeletal company got embarrassed when news pieces about their move pointed that out, after which Twitter deleted the use of NPR as its Help Center example rather than admitting they weren't following their own rules. NPR itself expressed outrage that Elon was falsely lumping it in with the foreign state-sponsored propaganda outlets that the Twitter label is meant to warn users about and announced that they'd no longer be posting on Elon's site until the label was removed.

Faced with perhaps more public mockery than he expected, now Musk has flinched again. He's still lying his ass off, though. Now Musk's engineers have changed NPR's designation to read "Government Funded Media," which is ... still not accurately correct. And now Musk is claiming that he'll be applying it to more media outlets than just NPR, though apparently he hasn't worked it out enough to figure out how not to be wrong about it.

The catch here remains the same: NPR is not "state-affiliated." It's also not "government funded." NPR is a nonprofit corporation that gets somewhere around 1% of its funding from government grants and relies on donations, grants, and station dues for the rest. As Republican politicians have groused repeatedly over the years, the federal government has no ability to dictate NPR's news coverage.

What Musk here is attempting to do is to find a designation he can tar insufficiently friendly media outlets with as a way of discrediting them when they (repeatedly) report on his pandemic misinformation, his business flubs, or his fawning over internet white nationalists. Since Musk is a habitual liar in the best of times we can expect he's going to go through a few more iterations of these labels before he settles on one that the lawyers think they can defend. Perhaps he'll settle for a "Was Once Mean To Elon" label for his fanboys and then call this done?

The other catch here, though, is that Elon Internet Whiner Musk is the poster child of "government funded." Neither Tesla nor SpaceX would even exist right now if it were not for Musk sucking up government funds by the billions; his companies had guzzled nearly $5 billion in government money as of 2015, and both companies were saved from bankruptcy directly because of government credits or government contracts.

If there's anyone else in the world whose wealth is more tied to getting government cash than Elon's is, that person isn't coming to mind.

For Musk, though, this isn't about accuracy. It's never about accuracy. Elon Musk is mad at NPR for NPR's coverage of his own antics, and Musk purchased Twitter specifically so he would have the tools to get back at journalists and media outlets who he's felt disrespected by. He's a big whining baby and he's going to keep having this tantrum until he tires himself out and his handlers put him down for a nap.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.