Connect with us

‘Are We Fake News?’: Kellyanne Conway Hammered by CNN’s Jake Tapper Over Trump’s ‘False, Offensive’ Attacks

Published

on

Claims Trump’s Muslim Ban the Result of Insufficient Coverage of Underreported Attacks

After being banned by CNN for the past few days Kellyanne Conway was invited to speak with Chief Washington Correspondent Jake Tapper Tuesday afternoon. A clearly less combative and more respectful Conway still managed to deliver false information but it was Tapper who won the show.

The anchor of “The Lead” and “State of the Union” point-blank asked Conway, “Are we fake news, Kellyanne?”

“I don’t think CNN is fake news,” Conway, breaking with her boss’ false pronouncement, stated. But immediately, unable to control herself, Conway moved into attack mode.

“I think there are some reports, everywhere, in print, on TV, on radio, in conversation, that are not well researched and are sometimes based on falseness,” Conway, who coined the term “alternative facts” when defending White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer, and who lied about a “Bowling Green massacre” that never happened, said.

On that Bowling Green massacre lie, Conway claimed she “was misquoting.”

‘I should have said, ‘masterminds,’ and I’ve talked about all that,” she insisted. “But let me just say this on the broader point, we have a high regard for the facts.”

Any claim that the Trump administration has a “high regard for the facts” is provably false.

Tapper also hammered Conway over President Donald Trump’s lie that the media does not report on terror attacks, does not want to, and his suggestion that the press has some sort of an agenda for why they don’t report on terror attacks. The White House Monday evening released a list of 78 terror attacks it claimed were “underreported,” a way of walking back the President’s lie, but every single one had been reported on, many extensively, as Tapper noted.

“Kellyanne, CNN and other media organizations cover terrorism around the world all the time,” Tapper told the White House Counselor. “Saying that we don’t cover terrorism – that’s just false.”

Conway tried to cover for the president, claiming what he meant was terror attacks don’t get enough coverage, but that’s not the decision of the president to make, and by making that claim he is coming dangerously close to disrespecting the First Amendment. 

“But then she blamed Trump’s likely illegal and unconstitutional Muslim travel ban on what she claims is the lack of network news coverage of terror attacks, which makes zero sense.

“We just can’t allow ourselves to become inured,” Conway said, “to see it as the new normal. If we’re not covering all of the – many different – attacks, that they’re all ISIL inspired attacks, in this case, the ones that he was referring to in the list that was generated, then we want people to realize that’s what leads him to want extreme vetting from seven narrowly-proscribed countries in a very temporary way.”

So, Conway just said that because the president thinks the news media isn’t covering terror attacks enough, he wants his Muslim travel ban.

How does that make any sense?

Moments later, Tapper again slammed Conway for Trump’s lie that the media does not cover these stories because they don’t want to, and because they have some sort of an agenda.

“That’s what he was suggesting,” Tapper said strongly, “and it’s offensive given the fact that CNN and other media organizations have reporters in danger right now in war zones covering ISIS.”

 

Continue Reading
Click to comment
 
 

Enjoy this piece?

… then let us make a small request. The New Civil Rights Movement depends on readers like you to meet our ongoing expenses and continue producing quality progressive journalism. Three Silicon Valley giants consume 70 percent of all online advertising dollars, so we need your help to continue doing what we do.

NCRM is independent. You won’t find mainstream media bias here. From unflinching coverage of religious extremism, to spotlighting efforts to roll back our rights, NCRM continues to speak truth to power. America needs independent voices like NCRM to be sure no one is forgotten.

Every reader contribution, whatever the amount, makes a tremendous difference. Help ensure NCRM remains independent long into the future. Support progressive journalism with a one-time contribution to NCRM, or click here to become a subscriber. Thank you. Click here to donate by check.

News

Trump Adviser Scanned and Saved Contents of Box That Had Classified Docs: Report

Published

on

An unnamed witness, reportedly an adviser to Donald Trump, scanned the contents of a box that had contained classified documents, and saved those digital files to her laptop, which belongs to a political action committee which pays Donald Trump’s legal expenses.

The stunning revelation was tucked away in the footnote of an 87-page court document unsealed by U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell on Tuesday, in response to a separate filing in which Trump’s attorneys are claiming prosecutorial misconduct, according to Politico’s Kyle Cheney who reported the details.

The filing revealed that at least four more classified documents had been found at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence and resort, in his bedroom, even after FBI agents executed and completed a search warrant months earlier, in August of 2022.

Judge Howell, Politico reports, “noted that [a] Trump adviser connected to his Save America PAC had acknowledged scanning the contents of the box that contained the classified materials in 2021 and storing them on a personal laptop provided by the PAC.”

READ MORE: Republican Calls for Economic ‘Shut Down’ While Accusing Biden of Marxist Agenda

In the footnote Judge Howell writes, “on January 6, 2023, the former president’s counsel informed the government that, in 2021, WITNESS scanned the contents of the box—produced on January 5, 2023, and previously containing classified documents—onto a laptop in her possession owned by the Save America Political Action Committee (‘PAC’), a PAC formed by the former president in 2020. … The former president’s counsel saved those scans onto a thumb drive and provided the thumb drive to the government that day.”

Axios adds: “A witness scanned the contents of the box containing the classified materials and stored them on a laptop in her possession owned by Trump’s Save America PAC, according to a footnote in the opinion.”

The Guardian’s Hugo Lowell, pointing to the Politico report, adds: “This was the incident where Trump aide Chamberlain Harris — known as ROTUS, short for Receptionist of the United States — scanned and uploaded classified docs onto her laptop … Guardian reported this contemporaneously last year, as did CNN.”

Lowell also pointed to The Guardian’s report.

The Save America PAC according to Open Secrets, raised well over $108 million in the 2021-2022 cycle, and spent over $121 million. In the 2023-2024 cycle, the PAC has raised over $76 million, and spent well over $85 million.

“Since leaving office, former president Trump has been involved in an array of criminal and civil litigation — some that relates to his campaigns and presidency and some that does not. To cover the enormous legal bills, estimated at more than $100 million, he has turned to his political action committees (PACs), essentially having campaign donors pay costs for which he would otherwise be on the hook personally,” the Brennan Center for Justice reported earlier this month.

READ MORE: ‘Not an Accident’: Trump’s ‘Unified Reich’ Video Alarms Historians and Fascism Experts

“Following his 2020 election loss, Trump received more than $250 million in donations from supporters to fuel an ‘election defense fund.’ He divided that money between two campaign entities: his 2020 presidential campaign committee, which he subsequently converted into a freestanding PAC called Make America Great Again (MAGA) PAC, and a second entity called Save America PAC, which is a so-called ‘leadership PAC‘ (a type of PAC that a federal candidate can establish for the ostensible purpose of supporting other candidates).”

National security attorney Brad Moss on Tuesday, commenting on Politico’s report of the additional classified documents at Mar-a-Lago wrote: “Reminder that the MAL docs case was and will always have been the cleanest, most straightforward criminal prosecution of the four against the former president. That the public won’t see it brought to fruition before they go to the voting booth is a stain on the judicial system.”

This article has been updated with the details from The Guardian’s Lowell.

 

 

 

Continue Reading

News

‘Incomprehensible’: More Classified Docs Were Found at Mar-a-Lago, Unsealed Court Filing Reveals

Published

on

Donald Trump had more classified documents at Mar-a-Lago that were not originally found when the FBI completed its execution of a search warrant, according to a recently unsealed 87-page court document in Special Counsel Jack Smith’s prosecution of Donald Trump in the Espionage Act case. Trump faces 40 felony charges in the case, including 32 directly related to classified documents..

“No excuse is provided as to how the former president could miss the classified-marked documents found in his own bedroom at Mar-a-Lago,” U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell wrote, according to Forbes. Judge Howell “notes the government forced Trump’s attorneys to search Trump’s properties even after FBI investigators searched Mar-a-Lago in August 2022.”

Trump’s attorneys conducted searches of some of his other properties after the FBI “raid,” including his Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey, Trump Tower in Manhattan, and other storage units and offices.

More classified documents were located at “an off-site office, a storage unit and at Mar-a-Lago, Howell wrote, noting Trump’s lawyers found a box with four documents that included classified materials in a Mar-a-Lago closet.”

READ MORE: Republican Calls for Economic ‘Shut Down’ While Accusing Biden of Marxist Agenda

Politico added, “The FBI’s August 2022 search of Mar-a-Lago confirmed that dozens of other classified documents remained on the property — but as Howell notes, there were at least two more rounds of classified materials found on Trump’s property following additional searches.”

In a damning portion of the filing, Forbes also reports, Judge Howell “asserts Trump purposely obstructed the government’s investigation after it subpoenaed him to turn over all the remaining classified documents in his possession, saying the government ‘sufficiently demonstrated’ Trump violated the obstruction statute by showing he ‘intentionally concealed the existence of additional documents bearing classification markings’ from his attorneys.”

Professor of law, MSNBC/NBC News legal contributor, and former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance remarked, “This makes Judge Cannon’s foot dragging on this case even more incomprehensible. Not like it involves serious matters, or anything.”

U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon has ground the trial to a halt, most recently putting an indefinite suspension in place.

ABC News adds that Special Counsel Jack Smith believed Trump “instructed aides to return several boxes they had previously removed from a storage room in the [Mar-a-Lago] club’s basement — without being caught on camera.”

READ MORE: ‘Wack Pack’: Questions Swirl Over ‘Trump Uniforms’ and Who’s Funding ‘Weird’ Trial Surrogates

Judge Howell wrote that after Trump attorney Evan Corcoran “informed Trump of the subpoena for video footage on June 24, 2022, it set into motion a scramble by [co-defendant Walt] Nauta to change his travel plans and fly from Bedminster, New Jersey, to Palm Beach, Florida.”

“The government urged that this scramble to Mar-a-Lago in the wake of the June 24, 2022 phone call reflects the former president’s realization that the removal of the boxes from the storage room before [redacted] search was captured on camera — and his attempts to ensure that any subsequent movement of the boxes back to the storage room could occur off camera,” Judge Howell wrote. She added: “This theory draws support from the curious absence of any video footage showing the return of the remaining boxes to the storage room, which necessarily occurred at some point between June 3, 2022 — when the room had approximately [redacted] boxes, according to FBI agents and [redacted] — and the execution of the search warrant on August 8, 2022 — when agents counted 73 boxes.”

 

 

Continue Reading

News

Republican Calls for Economic ‘Shut Down’ While Accusing Biden of Marxist Agenda

Published

on

U.S. Rep. Victoria Spartz (R-IN) is calling on Congress to “shut down” the U.S. economy over the southern border, while accusing President Joe Biden of Marxist policies and denouncing his border legislation that Donald Trump ordered killed months ago.

Congresswoman Spartz on Tuesday spoke to Fox News Business host Maria Bartiromo in a rambling interview on the Senate bipartisan border bill that Donald Trump ordered killed. Democratic Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is one again trying to pass it.

Rep. Spartz said, “we need to get them back, you know, to really put pressure to control the border. So I just don’t see anything else left there because no one wants to shut down the economy, unfortunately. We should really for such a serious issue, but Republicans are not gonna do it. And, and you know, and we’re not just going to let Democrats have messagings bill with lots of loopholes. There are way more loopholes in that bill than people even realized.”

The economy is a top issue for 2024 presidential election voters.

READ MORE: ‘Not an Accident’: Trump’s ‘Unified Reich’ Video Alarms Historians and Fascism Experts

After calling to shut down the economy, which economists for months have shown is doing extremely well, she then falsely accused President Joe Biden of socialism and enacting “socialist policies by Karl Marx.”

“I think we need to have a serious discussion what really Bidenomics is and how it resembles socialist policies by Karl Marx where it’s not just, you know, Biden administration had failed policy in a lot of fronts with its supply chain, whether we’re dealing with energy, but also they’ve been subsidizing corporations very close to the government in trying to control financial markets, in order in essence control the means of production and financial markets. That’s what socialism really is.”

The Biden administration fixed the supply chain crisis created during the Trump administration, improved the supply chain, and continues to massively invest in it.

“And now they are trying to use you know, the government power to pick losers and winners and you know, this, winners are going to be people who can pay, give campaign contribution to Biden’s reelection campaign, and losers are going to be all of us. And this is a serious discussion we need to have because this level of spending and subsidy cannot continue, it’s destructive and inflation is going to destroy the middle class and people low income.”

Donald Trump recently asked top oil and gas executives to donate $1 billion to his campaign in exchange for lower taxes and a rollback of President Biden’s climate and environmental protections.

Watch the videos above or at this link.

READ MORE: ‘Wack Pack’: Questions Swirl Over ‘Trump Uniforms’ and Who’s Funding ‘Weird’ Trial Surrogates

Continue Reading

Trending

Copyright © 2020 AlterNet Media.