Tag: davos
#EndorseThis: Tucker Carlson Explodes (And Then Hides The Video)

#EndorseThis: Tucker Carlson Explodes (And Then Hides The Video)

Rarely does a blustering, bullying Fox News Channel host get the comeuppance he most deserves — but it can happen. And it did happen yesterday, at long last, to Tucker Carlson.

Trying to reposition himself as a tribune of the working class, Carlson recorded a segment with a Dutch historian named Rutger Bregman on Feb. 11. But when Bregman didn’t play along with the phony “anti-elite” script, and demanded real change instead, an infuriated Carlson started sputtering obscenities.

Naturally, Fox News ever aired this humiliating exchange. But the resourceful Bregman has the video in full, which he released yesterday.

Click and laugh.

At Davos, Trump Is Loudly Booed For Self-Pitying Attacks On The Press

At Davos, Trump Is Loudly Booed For Self-Pitying Attacks On The Press

Reprinted with permission from Shareblue.com

Foreign journalists let Donald Trump know that his authoritarian claims of fake news aren’t going to be shrugged off, the way so many American journalists now do when the president unleashes reckless, dangerous attacks on the free press.

After delivering a speech to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Trump agreed to a brief question-and-answer session, where he was asked what in his life had prepared him for the presidency.

The narcissist in chief immediately started taking about his press coverage and how much media attention he’s received his entire adult life.

“And throughout my whole life — someone will explain someday why — but I’ve always gotten a lot. And as a businessman I was always treated really well by the press. You know, the numbers speak and things happen, but I’ve always really had a very good press.”

The lifelong publicity hound then complained his favorable press coverage vanished when he decided to run for office.

That thin-skinned charge was immediately met with a wave of boos and jeers from foreign press.

Foreign journos sitting next to me booed Trump’s attack on the press.

By contrast, Trump’s attorneys refused to deny the story.

As for Trump’s whining about his campaign coverage, many studies have shown that he benefited from the media’s relentless and mindless obsession on Hillary Clinton’s emails during the campaign.

Not only did Trump receive far less negative coverage than Clinton in 2016, according to an exhaustive review by the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy, but Trump received more overall press attention. Additionally, Clinton’s so-called scandals got more press coverage than Trump’s.

As president, Trump’s vicious attacks on the free press have earned him the “top oppressor” label from the Committee to Protect Journalists, beating out some of the world’s worst dictators, including Russian President Vladimir Putin, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi.

Trump’s “fake news” attacks and insistence that he’s a victim might work with his conservative media enablers at home — but as he found at Davos, the rest of the world knows better.

Eric Boehlert is a veteran progressive writer for Media Matters and Salon and author of two books: Lapdogs: How The Press Rolled Over for Bush, and Bloggers On The Bus. Follow him on Twitter @ericboehlert.

World Leaders Plan Walkout Protest During Trump’s Davos Address

World Leaders Plan Walkout Protest During Trump’s Davos Address

Reprinted with permission from Common Dreams.

Several attendees of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland are planning to walk out of President Donald Trump’s speech at the summit on Friday afternoon, in protest of his recent reported remarks about countries whose citizens he deems undesirable immigrants.

In an open letter, Business Leadership South Africa CEO Bonang Mohale denounced Trump’s alleged statement, confirmed by Republican and Democratic lawmakers, that more immigrants from “countries like Norway” should come to the U.S. instead of people from “shithole countries” such as Haiti, El Salvador, and African nations.

When Trump arrives in Davos, Mohale wrote, “it will be clear exactly what it is you mean when you lay out your ‘America First’ doctrine. Rather than the laudable ethos upon which modern America is built, namely a nation of immigrants free to strive for excellence and success, regardless of their provenance, it appears you want to pull up the drawbridge for people who are not white, and engineer an exclusive, less diverse America.”

Mohale did not name other attendees who will be boycotting the speech, but said several leaders plan to walk out and encouraged “likeminded peers to do the same.”

According to Quartz, “Leaving Trump’s speech after he starts is probably more powerful than boycotting it entirely, some Davos attendees speculate.”

African business leaders have called on Trump to address and apologize for his comments. The president has denied denigrating African countries, and said of the reports only that he is “not a racist,” while the White House dismissed the incident as evidence of Trump’s “passionate” views on immigration.

Mohale acknowledged Trump’s plummeting approval ratings in the U.S., noting that many in the international community view the president as separate from the broader U.S. population.

“It’s encouraging to us that so many of your countrymen and women, who treasure this ideal of the U.S.—including many from within your own Republican party—are already rejecting your monochrome vision. We join hands with them, in the same spirit of solidarity that many of your citizens showed in rejecting Apartheid and isolating those who sought to entrench racism, segregation and discrimination.”

At Davos, Trump will meet one-on-one with Rwandan president Paul Kagame—also the head of the African Union, which condemned Trump’s comments after they were reported.

The AU demanded “a retraction of the comment as well as an apology, not only to the Africans, but to all people of African descent around the globe.

 Julia Conley is a staff writer for Common Dreams. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.
The Swiss mountain resort of Davos in file photo. REUTERS/Arnd Wiegmann/Files
Davos Frets Over Popularity Of Trump, Sanders

Davos Frets Over Popularity Of Trump, Sanders

By Matthew Campbell, Jacqueline Simmons and Simon Kennedy, Bloomberg News (TNS)

DAVOS, Switzerland — The collapsing center of U.S. politics poses a growing threat to global business, according to Davos delegates who say they’re watching anxiously as Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders ride a populist wave in the presidential election.

“Trump is right now busy chasing the Mexicans,” T.K. Kurien, the chief executive officer of Indian information-technology services firm Wipro Ltd., said in an interview at the Swiss mountain resort, where the World Economic Forum meets this week. “But after he finishes with the Mexican story, I am pretty sure he’ll train his guns on us.”

Wipro gets about half its revenue from the U.S. Kurien said he’d be equally concerned if Sanders, a self-proclaimed socialist seeking the Democratic nomination on a platform of reining in corporate power, were to win the presidency in November.

The turbulent American election season is near the top of a long list of concerns weighing on the 2,500 corporate executives, political leaders and financiers at this year’s gathering in Davos. With less than two weeks before voting in primaries gets under way, Trump has led the Republican field for months, while polls show Sanders is catching up with Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton.

As usual, Trump is grabbing the most attention, even though the real-estate magnate’s blond mop and booming voice aren’t among the sights and sounds in Davos this year. His dominance of the race for the Republican nomination has attendees fretting that appeals to xenophobia and protectionism are taking hold in the world’s largest economy.

Trump has endorsed a “temporary” ban on Muslims entering the country and the building of a wall on the Mexican border. He rails at the loss of U.S. jobs to overseas competitors, and on Tuesday said that as president he would “get Apple to start building their damn computers and things” in the U.S., instead of China.

While political change is essential, Trump is offering the wrong kind, according to BlackRock Inc. founder Larry Fink.

“For those constantly focused on re-election and nothing more, we need a revolution,” Fink, a major donor to past Democratic Party campaigns, said Wednesday in Davos. “Unfortunately, now the revolution may be Donald Trump.”

If Trump has grabbed the most headlines, the rise of Sanders is “almost more stunning,” according to Stephen Schwarzman, chief executive of Blackstone Group LP. In Iowa and New Hampshire, the first two states to vote, the Vermont senator is running neck-and-neck with Clinton or ahead of her, according to recent polls.

“What’s remarkable is the amount of anger, whether it’s on the Republican side or the Democratic side,” Schwarzman told Bloomberg Television in Davos.

Anti-establishment candidates are making inroads because “Middle America has lost faith in the economy,” said Tim Adams, head of the Institute of International Finance, and a U.S. Treasury official under the George W. Bush administration. That “leads people to extreme options and outcomes.”

While the U.S. economy has recovered faster than other developed nations from the global slump of 2008 and 2009, wages haven’t kept pace with a rebound in corporate profits. That’s helping candidates like Trump and Sanders who say the system is rigged against average Americans.

Johan Dennelind, head of Swedish phone giant TeliaSonera AB, called the current phase of the presidential contest “fascinating” — but said he hopes it won’t last too much longer.

“It’s hugely important that you don’t get this populism to spread on too large a scale. It’s not just bad and ugly, it can be dangerous,” Dennelind said in an interview in Davos. “Hopefully it will get sane leading up to the real race.”

©2016 Bloomberg News. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Photo: Republican U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks at the 10th Annual Iowa Renewable Fuels Summit in Altoona, Iowa, January 19, 2016. REUTERS/Scott Morgan