The great Stephanopoulos mess
Former Clintonland insider George Stephanopoulos, who has excelled at both politics and journalism, appears to have failed both professions with a single transgression. As my POLITICO colleague Dylan...
View ArticleWhat the left still doesn’t understand about Fox News
And it came to pass that the earth turned and another campaign season spun into view and the liberal commentariat rose from its siesta to begin its usual moping about the perverse political powers...
View ArticleRupert Murdoch’s empire may yet crack apart
Thursday’s news stories about Rupert Murdoch’s “plans” for succession at his media conglomerate won’t be taken very seriously by those who have followed the career of the “genocidal tyrant.” He’s been...
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Donald Trump, American Demagogue
Demagogues like Donald Trump exhaust the patience of the political press corps because reporters fundamentally misunderstand the candidate’s appeal. Reporters like to think that logic and reason hold...
View ArticleDonald Trump talks like a third-grader
Donald Trump isn’t a simpleton, he just talks like one. If you were to market Donald Trump’s vocabulary as a toy, it would resemble a small box of Lincoln Logs. Trump resists multisyllabic words and...
View ArticleThe myth of the terrorist mastermind
Now that French authorities have named a suspected chief planner of the Paris attacks — 27-year-old Belgian ISIS veteran Abdelhamid Abaaoud — the press is building him up as if he’s 100 feet tall....
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Why the press can’t (and shouldn’t) quit Trump
Ever since Donald Trump appeared on Campaign 2016’s horizon, journalists have been imploring other journalists not to cover him. This began, amazingly, five months before he announced he was running...
View ArticleTime for Chelsea Clinton’s easy ride to end
When precisely did Chelsea Clinton complete her transition from a White House kid whom journalists agreed to treat as off-limits to a public figure deserving of the full scrutiny of the press corps?...
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Donald Trump’s exceptionalism explained
Donald Trump doesn’t cross the line. He erases it. Time and again Mr. Mouth Almighty has recklessly insulted, defamed, mocked and affronted his fellow citizens. He has instigated stupid feuds and is...
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Did the media create Trump?
Just a month after Donald Trump announced his run for president, people were already blaming “the media” for creating his candidacy. That theme has been sounded again and again, by NBC News, which...
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How Donald Trump destroyed the interview
The interview is the Niagara that fills the news ocean. A quick check of the front page of the New York Times, a scan of any 30-minute block of CNN, or a few clicks on the POLITICO home page establish...
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Donald Trump is a 2-year-old. It’s time for the press to treat him like one
On Tuesday during a nationally televised news conference, the Republican presidential nominee experienced a towering meltdown. Reporters asked Donald Trump to account for the millions he claimed to...
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The Trump show
Who’s looking forward to the Republican National Convention in Cleveland — besides presumptive nominee Donald J. Trump, that is? Damn few top Republicans, according to a report this week in POLITICO by...
View ArticleWhy print news still rules
Each time my newspaper delivery runs late, as it did last Saturday morning, and I’m forced to the Web for my early dose of news, I’m reminded how reading the news online pales compared to reading it in...
View ArticleWhat if the newspaper industry made a colossal mistake?
What if almost the entire newspaper industry got it wrong? What if, in the mad dash two decades ago to repurpose and extend editorial content onto the Web, editors and publishers made a colossal...
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The new rules for covering Trump
Donald Trump leveled Twitter yesterday with a 100-megaton stink bomb, asserting without a scrap of evidence that if millions of illegal ballots were deducted from the totals, he would have won the...
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Who’s afraid of a little Russian propaganda?
Propaganda has a way of making the soberest and most responsible elements in our culture go all wiggy. Washington Post columnist David Ignatius filed a fretful column this week based on his interview...
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Pravda on the checkout line
The 2016 campaign hadnât even begun when Americaâs supermarket tabloids picked their guy. âNew Poll: Donald Trumpâs The One!â the National Enquirer breathlessly announced in February 2015,...
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Trump the bully
Writers have fracked the literary canon in search of a character who best resembles Donald Trump. Is he Richard III? Nah, Richard III was witty and Trump isnât. Is he Willie Stark, the protagonist...
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Time to put Rupert Murdoch on notice
When Rupert Murdoch bid on the Wall Street Journal in 2007, his critics unleashed their stores of rhetorical ammo. Murdoch, they hollered, was an apologist for the Chinese regime. He was a political...
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