HINDSIGHT - WRITE SOMETHING WORTH READING ABOUT OR DO SOMETHING WORTH WRITING ABOUT
Friday, January 31, 2025
Jim Acosta defined CNN under Trump.
Jim Acosta defined
CNN under Trump. Now he’s gone ‘independent.’
The longtime anchor
signed off with a typically defiant message.
January
31, 2025 at 6:30 a.m. ESTToday at 6:30 a.m. EST
On Tuesday morning, Jim Acosta said goodbye to
his 10 a.m. CNN audience with a familiar message: “Don’t give in to the lies.
Don’t give in to the fear. Hold on to the truth and to hope. … I will not give
in to the lies. I will not give in to the fear.”
That’s a sampling of the anchor-chair defiance that CNN’s
leaders wanted to move to a time slot when much of the United States is asleep.
Prior to his departure, Acosta was offered a
two-hour show from midnight to 2 a.m. Eastern time — one hour longer than his
morning gig and airing from 9 p.m. to 11 p.m. on the West Coast. That offer was
part of a CNN schedule realignment that saw Wolf Blitzer move to a 10
a.m.-to-noon slot, in a partnership with co-host Pamela Brown, along with a
number of other adjustments.
“I think that there was an effort on both sides to make it
work,” said a knowledgeable CNN source, adding that the offer would have
enabled Acosta to dominate late-breaking news events, such as Wednesday
night’s plane crash over
the Potomac River.
Acosta turned down the offer to become CNN’s midnight guy.
President Donald Trump reveled in the goings-on in a Truth Social post, calling Acosta a “sleazebag” and mocking the proposal to
move him to the “Death Valley” of the cable news lineup. Not a great moment for
CNN.
Acosta’s decision prompted a fair bit of commentary that
he’d be a fine fit on
MSNBC. He went, instead, to an outlet with a bit more ideological diversity.
“As you could see earlier today, this was my last day at CNN, and I did want to
jump on Substack Live here for a moment and say, welcome to my new venture.
I’m going independent, at least for now.” He has already racked up 109,000
subscribers.
Planted amid a flurry of headlines from the Trump White
House, Acosta’s move was a moment unto itself, if only because it punctuated a
sharp break from how CNN approached the first Trump presidential term. It’s all
about tone: CNN reacted again and again with chyronic outrage to the first-term
initiatives and antics of Trump, with Acosta a prominent representative. He
antagonized Trump at news conferences, sparred with the president’s press
secretaries at briefings and saw his White House press pass revoked in 2018
after he refused to surrender the microphone during a Trump news conference.
CNN rallied around him and filed suit to have it reinstated.
“Thanks to everybody for their support,” Acosta tweeted at the time. “Let’s get back to work.”
Acosta forged his public news persona when CNN was under
the leadership of Jeff Zucker, a zone-flooding sort of news boss who leveraged the chaos of the Trump era for ratings
and buzz. CNN was out front as a target of Trump’s media-bashing and out front
in pushing back. In a memorable August 2018 clash, Acosta asked White House
press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders to declare that the news media assembled
in the briefing room were not the “enemy of the people,” a phrase that had been
used by Trump. She declined the invitation.
CNN has undergone a great deal of management turnover since
those contentious days and is now under the ownership of Warner Bros.
Discovery. Chairman and CEO Mark Thompson, formerly of the New York Times, runs
the organization. As reported by Oliver Darcy of Status, Thompson instructed top network talent before the
inauguration “to be forward-thinking and to avoid pre-judging Trump.” Darcy, a
former CNN reporter, also remarked in a recent podcast that the current management has fostered a “very
different CNN in tone” when it comes to coverage of Trump.
Maybe so, though it’s easy to romanticize the pugilistic
version of CNN under Zucker. Remember, for example, that CNN, amid its zeal
over the first-term Trump, attributed undue credibility to the Steele dossier,
a document claiming all sorts of Trump-Russia collusion that has fallen apart
under the scrutiny that time affords. Pressed to come clean in 2020, CNN did not. Former CNN staffer Chris
Cillizza recently posted a thread on X explaining
that he’d “screwed up” in dismissing Trump’s
pet theory that the coronavirus originated in a Chinese lab.
There’s an editorial lane for CNN as it approaches Trump’s
second term: Investigate the daylights out of Trump’s initiatives; grill his
top lieutenants in prolonged interviews; and report the results to CNN’s
audience. Meanwhile, ditch the editorial froth that piled up in the early Trump
years — a more sober approach that appears to be taking hold among CNN’s
mainstream peers as well. “The philosophy now is to cover this administration
in a tough but fair way based on reporting,” said the CNN source.
CNN on Tuesday issued a cheery press release touting
its digital performance in 2024 and healthy TV ratings in key categories. And
last week, Thompson announced layoffs as
well as a new digital strategy — fueled by a $70 million investment from its
parent company — to capture an audience that is gradually but inexorably
migrating away from linear television to everything else. That makes CNN about
the millionth company in recent decades to pair staff reductions with plans for
digital conquest. Don’t dismiss the company’s prospects, however, considering
that Thompson was a key player in
bringing about the financial recovery of the New York Times from 2012 to 2020.
Thompson’s initiatives will all collide with CNN’s peculiar
audience crisis. No matter how it positions itself vis-à-vis Trump 2.0, the
network’s public image remains rooted in its treatment of first-term Trump —
meaning conservatives would sooner pony up for the DEI Network than for CNN
subscription products. Hold on to hope, as Acosta might say.
WE USED TO HAVE HEROES - NOW WE HAVE LYING SCUMBAGS LIKE TRUMP
“Not surprised. Disgusted.” — Capt. Chesley
“Sully” Sullenberger¹, on Donald Trump’s
attempt to blame the DCA tragedy on DEI.
Sully is the pilot who safely landed a
passenger plane in the Hudson River in
2009, in what became known as the
“Miracle on the Hudson.” He made the
comment on Lawrence O’Donnell’s show
after what seemed an heroic effort not to
He Is the Same Awful Man
"Yesterday was a stark and sad reminder that winning — in any walk of life — does not change a person’s character."
He is still awful. As awful as ever.
I have sincerely tried to look at this man through fresh eyes since his election. The part of me that believes that politics and human beings are complicated compelled me to give him a fresh chance.
But he is still the same despicable person.
He openly proved his awfulness with his vile and dishonest response to the instant deaths of 67 people in Wednesday’s air crash over the Potomac. He stood in front of the nation and repeatedly lied while bitterly placing the blame for the tragedy on DEI policy. With no foundation.
He is a deeply troubled man.
I honestly did not think that this person could do anything that would really surprise me anymore. I thought that he’d enact policies that might have major impacts on the country, and it would be up to Americans to decide if they were ultimately good or bad decisions. Governing.
But the vile remarks he made to all Americans made my stomach sick. Literally.
Lots of folks who vigorously opposed this man have asked me since the election what I thought would happen to the country under his second watch. Friends have been surprised at my lack of concern or emotional response. I generally tell them that I don’t know any better than they do, and that he won. It’s over. Wait for the midterms and vote to put a check on him.
But yesterday I was reminded of just how awful he really is. Sixty-seven families are in shock and mourning. And they got nothing from their president. Less than nothing. The received vitriol, lies, and a thorough lack of compassion.
A stark reminder that winning — in any walk of life — does not change a person’s character.
I don’t write about politics near as much anymore. I’ve grown more and more weary of it every year since 2016. I now find much more meaning writing about the hidden lessons I see all around us, and how applying fresh wisdom from them can make our lives better.
But there are times when a president has acted so ghastly that I can’t hold it in. So atrociously that it almost defies human logic.
The saddest part of yesterday’s awful speech, beyond the pain caused to the families, is that it can only serve to cleave the country further. In political campaigns, nothing is off limits. It’s hardball, and voters are wise to take all candidates’ claims and accusations with full shakers of salt. For or against DEI? Okay. Then go vote.
But the campaign is long over. The nation needs an American president. He is the one elected leader that every citizen gets the chance to cast a ballot for or against. He is our president.
Yet what we still have, just 10 days into his second term, is the same shock jock. A petulant child, who cannot rise up to meet a national moment. Not even minimally.
At the same time that I felt sick yesterday, I also felt sad. Not only for the crash victims and their families, but for our country. And a little embarrassed myself, as I thought this president might settle down a bit and just let his victory and policy decisions speak for themselves.
But he still has to actually speak, and sometimes, like after a tragedy such as this, we are instinctively compelled to listen. If only for a few minutes.
What an awful few minutes. That revealed, yet again, a truly awful man.
MICHAEL GOLDEN is the cofounder of One Million Degrees, a national award-winning journalist and author of the new book STAYING ALIVE.
Thursday, January 30, 2025
Trump’s Chaos Strategy Is Already Blowing Up in His Face
Trump’s Chaos Strategy
Is Already Blowing Up in His Face
An interview with New Republic writer
Timothy Noah, who argues that Trump’s funding-freeze fiasco shows that he’s a
“weak president” whose vaunted “chaos strategy” is already running into
trouble.
r/GGreg Sargent: This
is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and
presented by the DSR network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.
On Wednesday, Donald Trump’s administration rescinded the memo that instituted his disastrous
spending freeze in what looks like a surrender in the face of a national
outcry. Soon after, Trump went before the cameras and pushed
a bizarre lie about $50 million in U.S. taxpayer money supposedly
being spent on condoms for Hamas in Gaza. This kind of thing is often described
as a “flooding the zone” strategy, in which Trump throws so many lies and
abuses of power at us that we can’t keep up. Checkmate libs, Trump wins! But
what if this chaos strategy actually isn’t all that clever after all? What if
it’s more likely to backfire? Today, we’re talking about this with The New
Republic’s Timothy Noah, author of a good
new piece arguing that Trump’s chaos strategy is all about creating a
pretext to consolidate power. Tim, thanks for coming back on.
Timothy Noah: Thanks for having me.
Sargent: Let’s start with Trump’s lie about condoms.
Here’s what Trump said on Wednesday about the process of rooting out waste,
fraud, and abuse that his government is supposedly undertaking now.
Donald Trump (audio voiceover): In that process, we
identified and stopped $50 million being sent to Gaza to buy condoms for Hamas.
Fifty million. And you know what’s happened to them? They’ve used them as a
method of making bombs. How about that?
Sargent: Tim, MAGA is pushing this one hard. Press
secretary Karoline Leavitt made this claim from the White House press podium; a
State Department spokesperson also pushed it. The Washington Post’s Glenn
Kessler looked at it and found that it’s made up. He asked
Leavitt and the State Department spokes for documentation, and they had
nothing. They’re really struggling to prove that their hunt for waste and abuse
is yielding anything at all. What are they trying to do with this?
Noah: Yeah, it is entirely made up. Trump says things
because he likes the way they sound. I do put forward this theory in my piece
that the way authoritarians consolidate power is to manufacture crises. And
that is clearly what the Trump team is doing. But I should add an
important caveat, which is that chaos comes naturally to Donald Trump. He is a
mentally disabled president of the United States—I think that’s the only way
you can describe it. He has a narcissistic personality disorder that’s well documented,
and he has had some decline in cognition that’s also been documented and
observed by a number of medical professionals and others.
So you have this crazy guy who is president of the U.S.
saying all sorts of things, and it creates mayhem. This is being channeled by
his aides to, as I say, manufacture crisis and manufacture chaos, but it
isn’t working.
Sargent: At least not yet, that’s for sure. The
administration has now rescinded the memo instilling that massive spending
freeze, which had caused chaos and confusion and threatened to have a huge
impact on all kinds of government programs. It’s a little unclear what happened
here. They seem to be still trying to pause some spending but this is
clearly a surrender, I think. You wrote in your piece that Trump probably
thinks turning off all that federal spending was also beneficial to his larger
strategy of consolidating power. How would that work exactly?
Noah: I don’t believe that either Donald Trump nor
Russell Vought, who is Trump’s yet unconfirmed nominee to run the Office of
Management and Budget, who the White House more or less confirmed has been
running this operation. I don’t think either one of them really understands
what they were talking about in this memo. It concerns something called federal
financial assistance. What is federal financial assistance as opposed to other
kinds of spending? This is outlined in a 1977 law that doesn’t make it hugely
clear.
What we know is that procurement of an object like an
aircraft carrier is not federal financial assistance. However, the purchase of
services is sometimes federal financial assistance, and sometimes not. As a
consequence, you had every agency in the federal government switching off every
switch it could because nobody really knows which falls into which
category. It was utter mayhem.
Sargent: Not only that but it’s clearly illegal. I want
to read a line from your piece, “No president in history, not even Trump in his
first term, ever logged so many illegal actions in so short a time.” So we’ve
got the purge of inspectors general, which was likely illegal designed to make
it a whole lot easier to be really profoundly corrupt at the
agencies. We’ve got the threat to prosecute state officials who refuse to
implement Trump’s mass deportations; that was clearly legally ungrounded. And
now this effort to usurp congressional power and turn off federal spending that
Trump doesn’t like—clearly illegal. I really do think we haven’t seen an effort
to consolidate power quite like this one, have we, Tim? Beyond the whole
question of what the role of chaos is, there’s a mechanical effort to
consolidate power unlike anything we’ve seen.
Noah: Right. And there’s even more impeachable offenses
that you didn’t mention. You mentioned one or two that I hadn’t mentioned. As I
said in my piece, it’s become kind of a parlor game. How many are there at this
point, nine days in? But it looks like he’s doing more than he really is, and
Trump thrives on the playacting part of being president. He says he’s done
things that he hasn’t done, claims credit for things that he can’t claim credit
for. And you’re seeing that here.
The main purpose, I think, of that OMB memo was to assert
that the president has the power to impound appropriated funds. Trump was
trying to just blunder his way into asserting this power over appropriations
that he doesn’t have. It led immediately to all sorts of lawsuits, entirely
foreseeable, and Trump withdrew. Trump is, I have argued, not a strong
president. He is a weak president. He has authoritarian tendencies,
but he’s weak. He’s mentally weak. He is subject vulnerable to all sorts
of manipulation by his aides. He tries to do all sorts of contradictory things.
He is not competent.
And on the evidence of this particular example, neither are
his enablers. Surely, Vought have understood that this memo was going to
be challenged immediately in court. He ought to have been able to anticipate
that Trump could not tolerate the bad publicity surrounding it so that Trump,
even before there was a court judgment, withdrew the memo. These are all signs
of a weak presidency, but weakness can cause chaos too. And we’re
certainly experiencing a lot of chaos, a lot of fear, and a real degradation
of the ability of government to perform its functions.
Sargent: I want to get at your point about weakness and
failure here. An interesting thing is how this contrasts with Trump/MAGA
propaganda right now. That propaganda is relentlessly pushing the idea that
Trump and his allies are ruthlessly forging ahead with his agenda. You see it
all over Twitter. All of MAGA’s tweeting immense congratulations to
Trump, he’s crushing the libs, he’s doing this, he’s doing that.
Noah: You even saw it pronounced by John Harris in Politico, which I have to
say, I still haven’t gotten over reading that piece. I was deeply troubled by
that piece.
Sargent: And The New York Times had an absurd
piece today, essentially saying Trump has got his opponents on the run with this “flood the zone” strategy. The
amount of credulousness, the portrayal of Trump’s strategy as something savvy
and clever and effective, is just so deeply offensive coming from journalists,
isn’t it?
Noah: Yeah, it’s a transference because it’s hard for
us journalists to keep track of everything Trump is doing. But I guarantee
you it is not hard for the people who are going to be making court challenges
to these individual actions because each action has a different constituency
that is focusing on a particular topic and is at the ready to take Trump to
court when he does something illegal.
Sargent: Exactly. The real story here is that they’re
actually screwing up already. The spending freeze is getting reversed. ICE is
already leaking like crazy about how Trump’s demand for much higher arrest is
going to create major problems. The effort to undo birthright citizenship has
stopped in court. I don’t want to be too optimistic here. They’re going to do a
lot of damage—already are doing a lot of damage. But clearly what we’re seeing
now is that they’re not going to be able to roll over the bureaucracy and our
institutions, as easily as they thought, as easily as John Harris thinks, as
easily as that credulous New York Times piece portrayed, right?
Noah: That’s right. Even in the Republican Senate,
Trump was only barely able to get his defense secretary choice, Pete Hegseth,
through. I don’t believe he’ll be able to get Robert F. Kennedy Jr. through.
His whole decision to nominate Kennedy was really a reflection only of
Trump’s vanity.
One of the less attractive qualities of Trump is that he
deeply appreciates seeing people who previously denounced him come crawling on
their knees to him. And that endears him to such people. And in this case, he
rewarded Robert Kennedy Jr. with this nomination to which Kennedy is manifestly
unqualified for, argued with astonishing forcefulness by Carolyn Kennedy yesterday.
Sargent: And by Democratic senators on the Hill, on
Wednesday, we should point out that a number of Democratic senators absolutely
shredded RFK in the confirmation hearing. Can you tell me why you think he’s
not going to get in?
Noah: Well, the basic arithmetic is you’ve got
somebody who isn’t even a Republican, is up against big pharma on all sorts of
bottom-line issues. Republicans don’t like, in the best of circumstances, going
against the business constituency. And I think Trump’s commitment to RFK
Jr. is a weak one. Vaccination and fluoridation are not issues that Trump
really cares about one way or the other.
Sargent: I certainly hope you’re right about that. I
was thinking that he was probably going to get RFK; after today’s hearing, I’m
really not so sure. Tulsi Gabbard looks to me like she might be a very hard one
for some Republican senators to support as well.
Noah: Right. And with RFK, there is a
be-careful-what-you-wish-for component, which is we don’t know RFK to be
committed to eviscerating Obamacare and whoever Trump nominates in RFK Jr.’s
stead, I think, probably will be committed to doing that. And that’s not going
to be very good news.
Sargent: I want to try to pull all this together. Going
back to that ridiculous joke about condoms and Gaza, what we’re seeing here is
an effort across the board to degrade public life in every way possible. Having
the White House press secretary push that absurdity, having ridiculous legal
rationales for immense power grabs, Trump going out there and demanding of his
ICE agents that they hit arrest quotas as has been reported in The Washington Post, everything
is about taking public life and turning it into a big joke.
Noah: Trump offering to buy out federal employees, give
federal employees buyouts to retire. Where the money would come from is
anybody’s guess.
Sargent: Right. And this idea that Trump is this wizard
who can just throw us off with a magical distraction strategy, again, is
constantly treated with unbelievable credulousness by the press. Let’s
talk about that though. The degradation of public life is a thing that’s
happening.
Noah: It is a very, very ugly and mean moment in
American politics.
Sargent: You wrote about the degradation and the
spreading of meanness in U.S. politics and what that means for your newsletter.
Can you talk about that as well?
Noah: Yes, I have a Substack newsletter called Backbencher that
I use mainly to publicize pieces I write in The New Republic. Today,
I wrote about.... Well, I remember my mother telling me in 1968 after Robert
Kennedy was killed—I was 10 years old and my mother said, I don’t
understand what’s happening to this country. I have compared notes with
other people my age and just about everybody I have asked has said yes, they
had a parent say the same thing to them when they were 10 or 9 or 11.
Nineteen-sixty-eight was a terrible, terrible year. We saw
the assassination of Martin Luther King and of Robert F. Kennedy. Later, we saw
this awful mayhem at the Democratic convention. We saw an endless war in
Vietnam. It was a time that was as dismal as can be imagined. People were
saying, I don’t understand what’s happening to this country. And I
think people felt that way during Trump’s first term. I think they feel it more
powerfully now. And I think more and more people will feel that, many
people who voted for Trump in 2024 will feel that. It’s a sad moment. For those
of us who really believe in this country and believe in its government, it is
devastating to see what is being done in its name.
Sargent: Well, just as happened in 2018, we could see
in 2026 some similar backlash, one that is really all about reasserting decency
in public life and pushing back on the degradation of it, don’t you think?
Noah: Yes, I think that there will be a route, but
that’s a long way off. Even longer term ... I don’t know whether you agree,
this is a little out there, but I think the Republican Party is in the process
of disintegrating. Liz Cheney has said that, and I think she’s dead right.
Conservatives, serious conservatives are going to need to start looking for a
new party to create in its stead because the Republicans have really sold out
on just about every principle and have become—this is not an original thought—a
cult of personality. And that isn’t easily undone.
Sargent: Well, one has to hope that you’re right about
that. I’m not sure about the former piece, the idea that the Republican Party
is disintegrating, but the latter piece that any principled conservative really
should have no choice but to seek some alternative is clearly on. Timothy Noah,
thanks so much for coming on, man. Great to talk to you.
Noah: Thanks for having me, Greg.
Wednesday, January 29, 2025
Chicago mayor's office accepted luxury gifts without properly reporting them: OIG
Chicago
mayor's office accepted luxury gifts without properly reporting them: OIG
By Will Hager
Published January 29, 2025 10:10am CST
Chicago mayor's office accepted luxury gifts without properly reporting
them: OIG
The Chicago Mayor's Office accepted gifts ranging from
designer handbags to jewelry on behalf of the City without publicly reporting
them, according to a new report from the Office of Inspector General.
The Brief
·
·
The Chicago Mayor's Office
failed to publicly report gifts, including designer handbags and jewelry,
accepted on behalf of the City, violating transparency guidelines, according to
a report from the Office of Inspector General (OIG).
·
·
When the OIG attempted to
access the gift log, officials were denied and directed to file a Freedom of
Information Act (FOIA) request, which was also ignored.
·
·
The OIG is now urging the
Mayor’s Office to follow public reporting rules and allow inspections of the
Gift Room to restore public trust.
CHICAGO - The Chicago Mayor's Office accepted gifts ranging from designer handbags
to jewelry on behalf of the City without publicly reporting them, according to
a new report from the Office of Inspector General (OIG).
The OIG said gifts accepted on behalf of the City should be reported to
the Board of Ethics and the city comptroller and those reports are required to
be made publicly available. Under an unwritten agreement dating back to the
late 1980s, gifts accepted by the Mayor's Office were instead logged in a book
that would be available for public viewing on the fifth floor of City Hall,
according to the OIG.
The backstory:
The OIG visited City Hall undercover and requested to see the logbook.
The Mayor's Office denied the request and directed OIG officials to file a
Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request.
Inspector general officials said they filed a FOIA request in a
"covert capacity" and the Mayor's Office failed to respond in a
timely manner, reflecting a denial of the request.
The OIG then sent an official document request to the Mayor's Office for
the logbook and received a spreadsheet detailing 380 gifts accepted by the
Mayor's Office "on behalf of the city" between Feb. 2, 2022 and March
20 of last year. Former Mayor Lori Lightfoot's logs included entries for 144
gifts received while Mayor Brandon Johnson's logs contained 236 entries.
Among the gifts given under the Johnson administration were Hugo Boss
cufflinks; Givenchy, Gucci, and Kate Spade handbags; a personalized Mont Blanc
pen; and size 14 men’s shoes, OIG officials said. Some of the gifts were stored
in the gift room and the others were in Mayor Brandon Johnson's personal
office, the inspector said.
The OIG visited the fifth floor to conduct an unannounced inspection of
the Gift Room and was denied access.
"When gifts are changing hands—perhaps literally—in a windowless
room in City Hall, there is no opportunity for oversight and public scrutiny of
the propriety of such gifts, the identities or intentions of the gift-givers,
or what it means for gifts like whiskey, jewelry, handbags, and size 14 men’s
shoes to be accepted ‘on behalf of the City,’" said Deborah Witzburg,
inspector general for the City of Chicago.
Under the Governmental Ethics Ordinance, city officials are generally
prohibited from accepting gifts of value over $50 unless they are
"accepted on behalf of the city."
What's next:
The OIG recommended that the Mayor's Office comply with "generally
applicable rules" for public reporting of gifts accepted on behalf of the
City. They also recommended that the Gift Room be made available for announced
and unannounced inspection by the OIG.
The Mayor's Office responded that it would allow OIG access to the Gift
Room with only "a properly scheduled appointment."
The Chicago Board of Ethics agreed with the OIG's recommendation of
public reporting. The Mayor's Office said it will work with the board to
transition to the new guidance.
Why you should care:
Witzburg said in a statement that the lack of transparency from the
Mayor's Office erodes public trust.
"It is perhaps more important than ever that Chicagoans can trust
their City government, and for decades we have given people no reason at all to
trust what goes on in the dark," Witzburg said. "These gifts are, by
definition, City property; if they are squirreled away and hidden from view,
people are only left to assume the worst about how they are being handled. If
we do not govern responsibly on the small things, we cannot ask people to trust
the government on the big ones."
FOX 32 has reached out to the Mayor's Office for a statement.
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