Tag Archives: nbc

Meet the Press just modeled what it looks like to take climate change seriously

by millieharpur33 Posted on December 31, 2018

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On Sunday morning, NBC’s Meet the Press did what no other weekend news program had ever done before: They discussed climate change for a full hour.

Host Chuck Todd led off the hour with what amounted to a bold line in the sand: Climate denial is no longer welcome on our airwaves. It’s a statement that hopefully sets the tone for media coverage as a new year begins and 2020 Presidential campaigns gets underway. It was a glimpse of what it would look like if we took climate change seriously.

Although an episode like this was a long-time coming and the debate itself was a little underwhelming (and maybe the show’s forward-looking ban should have come with an apology for past sins), it was still a watershed moment for the media when most shows have long-ignored the most important issue facing humanity in our collective history. And it was refreshing to see a real-life climate scientist speaking freely about the urgency of our present moment and unimpeded by stale talking points.

If you break down the 60-minute episode, solutions-focused politicians took up most of the time. The show focused on long interviews with outgoing California Governor Jerry Brown and ex-New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg — past and (maybe) future presidential candidates who have devoted large portions of their careers to addressing climate change head-on. The only member of Congress to appear on the program was Republican Carlos Curbelo of Florida, who will give up his Congressional seat in three days.

Notably absent from the conversation were direct voices from the current generation of climate leaders — Representative-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who helped change the national conversation on climate change by advocating for a Green New Deal during the last half of 2018, and young Sunrise Movement activists who, in a tweet, claimed partial credit for the show’s topical focus. As a result, the episode barely mentioned bold science-based policies to rapidly decarbonize the global economy.

Still, since talking about climate change is the most important thing any of us can do about it, the show was significant. It amounted to a call-to-action for the media: Debates over the science of climate change are no longer welcome. It’s high time to focus on solutions. We also need to be thinking about the kinds of climate conversations we should be hearing in the next election cycle.

The New York Times’ David Leonhardt made the claim on Sunday that climate change was the biggest story of 2018. If that’s true, then this Meet the Press episode was a signal to candidates like Elizabeth Warren, who have yet to endorse officially the Green New Deal, to pay even closer attention to the issue.

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Meet the Press just modeled what it looks like to take climate change seriously

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Chris Christie Warned Trump Against Hiring Michael Flynn Last Fall

by GenevaBarringer Posted on May 22, 2017

Mother Jones

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie advised Donald Trump against hiring Michael Flynn, both before the November election and afterward, Christie said on Monday. This warnings came when Christie served as chairman of Trump’s transition team and before the team was made aware that Flynn, who served briefly as Trump’s national security adviser, was under federal investigation.

“I didn’t think that he was someone who would bring benefit to the president or to the administration,” Christie said at a news conference. “And I made that very clear to candidate Trump, and I made it very clear to President-elect Trump. That was my opinion, my view.”

Christie made clear that he did not believe Flynn was a suitable choice. “If I were president-elect of the United States, I wouldn’t let General Flynn in the White House, let alone give him a job,” he said.

Shortly after the election, Vice President Mike Pence took over the transition team from Christie. Christie was recently named the head of a White House commission to combat drug addiction, and he has been mentioned as a potential addition to the White House staff. Flynn was forced to resign in February after it became public that he had lied to Pence about his contact with the Russian ambassador.

Christie reportedly clashed with Flynn, who was an adviser to Trump during the campaign last year. According to NBC News, both men were present at Trump’s first intelligence briefing last August.

Meanwhile, four people with knowledge of the matter told NBC News that one of the advisers Trump brought to the briefing, retired general Mike Flynn, repeatedly interrupted the briefing with pointed questions.

Two sources said Christie, the New Jersey governor and Trump adviser, verbally restrained Flynn—one saying Christie told Flynn to shut up, the other reporting he said, “Calm down.” Two other sources said Christie touched Flynn’s arm in an effort get him to calm down and let the officials continue.

Both Christie and Flynn denied this at the time. But if it’s true, it would help explain why Christie on Monday said that Flynn was “not my cup of tea” and that they “didn’t see eye to eye.”

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Chris Christie Warned Trump Against Hiring Michael Flynn Last Fall

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Trump: Comey Was Disloyal, a Showboat, and Wouldn’t Kill the Russia Probe

by HeidiTIGvdfi Posted on May 12, 2017

Mother Jones

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On January 26, deputy AG Sally Yates informed the White House that Mike Flynn had been compromised by the Russians. The next day, according to the New York Times, Donald Trump invited FBI director James Comey over for dinner:

As they ate, the president and Mr. Comey made small talk about the election and the crowd sizes at Mr. Trump’s rallies. The president then turned the conversation to whether Mr. Comey would pledge his loyalty to him.

Mr. Comey declined to make that pledge. Instead, Mr. Comey has recounted to others, he told Mr. Trump that he would always be honest with him, but that he was not “reliable” in the conventional political sense.

….By Mr. Comey’s account, his answer to Mr. Trump’s initial question apparently did not satisfy the president, the associates said. Later in the dinner, Mr. Trump again said to Mr. Comey that he needed his loyalty.

Mr. Comey again replied that he would give him “honesty” and did not pledge his loyalty, according to the account of the conversation.

But Mr. Trump pressed him on whether it would be “honest loyalty.”

“You will have that,” Mr. Comey told his associates he responded.

The White House denies everything about this, of course, though I imagine they’ll scramble to reverse course when Trump fires off a 3 am tweet saying that he fired Comey because he was a double-crossing backstabber or something. After all, that’s what Trump did today in his interview with NBC’s Lester Holt, describing how he decided to fire Comey:

He’s a showboat, he’s a grandstander….Regardless of recommendation, I was going to fire Comey….And in fact when I decided to just do it I said to myself, I said, “You know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made-up story, it’s an excuse by the Democrats for having lost an election that they should’ve won.”

So there’s the president himself, on national TV, telling everyone that the Russia investigation was at the top of his mind when he decided to fire Comey. He was angry that Comey had kept the Russia investigation alive even though it was obviously just a bogus partisan smear, so out he went.

I don’t know about you, but if I did something like that I’d keep it to myself.

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Trump: Comey Was Disloyal, a Showboat, and Wouldn’t Kill the Russia Probe

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New Plan to Crush ISIS Surprisingly Similar to Old Plan

by AnthonyWeidner Posted on March 18, 2017

Mother Jones

Yesterday a reader asked me what was happening with the new plan to annihilate ISIS, which was supposed to be ready to go at the end of February. It’s done, I told him, but it hasn’t been released yet. He wrote back, asking how I knew stuff like this. I told him my secret source: I think I read about it in the New York Times.

All well and good, but what’s in the plan? My secret source this time is NBC News:

Now, the Pentagon has given Trump a secret plan, but it turns out to be a little more than an “intensification” of the same slow and steady approach that Trump derided under the Obama administration, two senior officials who have reviewed the document told NBC News.

The plan calls for continued bombing; beefing up support and assistance to local forces to retake its Iraqi stronghold Mosul and ultimately the ISIS capital of Raqqa in Syria; drying up ISIS’s sources of income; and stabilizing the areas retaken from ISIS, the officials say.

Gee, I thought we were supposed to be bombing the shit out of ISIS and taking Iraq’s oil, but apparently that plan got lost somewhere between Election Day and now. Or did it? After all, there’s no chance that President Trump is going to announce this new plan as an “intensification.” He’s going to go on TV and claim that it’s the biggest military operation since D-Day. It makes Rolling Thunder look like kids with popguns. It’s more strategically brilliant than the Inchon landing. And it will be a more famous victory than even the Gipper’s invasion of Granada.

When you hear all this stuff, just remember that it’s Trump’s usual “truthful hyperbole.” In reality, the new operation is just going to be a modest uptick in the tempo of the Obama plan that’s been gradually and steadily making progress for the past two years.

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New Plan to Crush ISIS Surprisingly Similar to Old Plan

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NBC News: Putin Still Trying to Figure Out Trump’s Brain

by DeidreBarreto Posted on February 20, 2017

Mother Jones

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Bill Neely of NBC News reports on Vladimir Putin’s efforts to understand the psyche of America’s reality-show president:

A dossier on Donald Trump’s psychological makeup is being prepared for Russian President Vladimir Putin. Among its preliminary conclusions is that the new American leader is a risk-taker who can be naïve, according to a senior Kremlin adviser.

….Former Deputy Foreign Minister Andrei Fedorov told NBC News…”Very serious preparatory work is going on in the Kremlin, including a paper — seven pages — describing a psychological portrait of Trump, especially based on this last two to three months, and the last weeks.”

….Putin’s government is growing increasingly concerned about Trump’s battles in Washington, according to Fedorov and former lawmaker Sergei Markov, who remains well-connected at the Kremlin. Fedorov added that Trump’s “constant battle with the mass media” was “worrying us.” The U.S. president “is dancing on thin ice,” he said. “It’s a risky game.”

A former prime minister under Putin said the Kremlin is taking no pleasure at Trump’s struggles. “Absolutely not — not laughing,” Mikhail Kasyanov said. “The situation is very serious and the whole of Putin’s team, they are nervous.” Many in the Kremlin believe hardliners in America — in Congress and the military — want to sabotage the president and his plans for better ties with Russia.

From Putin’s point of view, there’s good news and bad news. The good news is that Trump can’t control himself. Putin could literally publish his dossier on his Facebook page and it wouldn’t matter. Just as he did in the debates, when Hillary Clinton baited him in the most obvious ways, Trump will respond to provocations the way he always responds.

That’s also the bad news, of course: Trump can’t control himself. He lives in a delusionary world where everything is going great and the White House is a finely tuned machine. This divorce from reality is likely to become ever more cavernous as time goes on, and there’s no telling how long it will be until this produces a disaster of some kind. Eventually it’s going to become clear that trying to run the US government the same way he ran his business—Trump acting as the showman/marketing genius, while professional managers keep the gears turning—isn’t producing any results here in consensus reality. And then the whole delusionary edifice will come tumbling down.

But when? Next week? Next year? Whenever the economy turns down? There’s no telling. Putin better keep that dossier constantly updated.

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NBC News: Putin Still Trying to Figure Out Trump’s Brain

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My Job Just Got a Lot Easier

by LachlanNgw Posted on February 16, 2017

Mother Jones

Donald Trump held a remarkable press conference today—about which more later—but first I have to thank him. Here’s an exchange with NBC’s Peter Alexander:

ALEXANDER: You said today that you had the biggest electoral margin since Ronald Reagan, 304, 306 electoral votes. But President Obama had 365….

TRUMP: Well, I’m talking about Republicans.

ALEXANDER: George H.W. Bush, 426 when he won as president. So why should Americans trust you?

TRUMP: Well no, I was given that information. I don’t know, I was just given—we had a very, very big margin.

ALEXANDER: I guess my question is why Americans should trust you when you use information…

TRUMP: Well, I don’t know, I was given that information. I was given—I actually, I’ve seen that information around.

This is great! I mean, I write for a magazine, and let’s face it: fact checking is a pain. I know my fellow writers will back me up here. I suppose it’s good for readers, who want accurate information, but it’s a huge time sink for us content creators. Next time, my conversation will go like this:

FACT CHECKER: You say in your article that hippos are the largest mammals. Are you sure?

ME: I don’t know, I was given that information. They’re really big.

FACT CHECKER: And mice are the smallest?

ME: I’ve seen that information around.

This is going to make my job a lot easier. Thanks, Mr. President!

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My Job Just Got a Lot Easier

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Reports Suggest Trump Won’t Take Travel Ban to Supreme Court

by PhillipAngulo Posted on February 10, 2017

Mother Jones

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Update, 6:20 p.m.: The White House has apparently changed its mind again and may appeal to the Supreme Court after all.

NBC News and The Hill are both reporting that a White House official has said Trump won’t be appealing to the Supreme Court the 9th Circuit decision not to reinstate his “Muslim ban.”

This doesn’t mean, however, that the ban is dead—it only means the stay against enforcement of the ban will continue until the constitutionality of the executive order itself is ultimately decided in court on the merits.

Earlier Friday, CNN reported that Trump is considering a revised executive order.

This is a developing story. We’ll update when more news is available.

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Reports Suggest Trump Won’t Take Travel Ban to Supreme Court

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Trump’s Taiwan Call Was No Accident

by JavierHibbins Posted on December 3, 2016

Mother Jones

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So—about that call between Donald Trump and the president of Taiwan. First we have this:

A phone call between Donald Trump and Taiwan’s leader that risks damaging relations between the U.S. and China was pre-arranged, a top Taiwanese official told NBC News on Saturday….”Maintaining good relations with the United States is as important as maintaining good relations across the Taiwan Strait,” Taiwanese presidential spokesman Alex Huang told NBC News. “Both are in line with Taiwan’s national interest.”

And this:

The call was planned in advance with knowledge of Trump’s transition team and was the right thing to do, said Stephen Yates, a former U.S. national security official who served under President George W. Bush. Yates denied multiple media reports that he arranged the call, while adding that it doesn’t make sense for the U.S. to be “stuck” in a pattern of acquiescing to China over Taiwan.

Apparently several sources say that Yates was indeed the guy who helped arrange the call, but Yates denies it. You can decide for yourself who to believe. In any case, both sides claim it was done intentionally.

Was it a good idea? In Trump’s defense, if you’re going to do something like this, the only time to do it is right away. That’s especially true if you want to use it as leverage. Who knows? Maybe Trump’s team is planning to quietly pass along word that Trump is willing to maintain our status quo policy toward Taiwan (i.e., not formally recognizing the Taiwanese government), but only if China commits to doing something serious about North Korea.

Or maybe Trump has no bargain in mind at all, and just wants to change US policy toward China. It would be typically Trump to start out with a slap in the face so they know he means business, and then go from there.

Is this wise? I sort of doubt it, but I’m hardly an old China hand. And I have to admit that China hasn’t gone ballistic, as many people predicted. Their response so far has been distinctly low-key:

China’s first official reaction, from Foreign Minister Wang Yi, was fairly benign — though it was firm in reiterating the One China policy, under which the United States formally recognized Beijing as China’s sole government….A follow-up statement from the Foreign Ministry on Saturday, noting that the ministry had filed a formal complaint with the United States government, was similar in tone. It urged “relevant parties in the U.S.” to “deal with the Taiwan issue in a prudent, proper manner.”

Whatever you think of all this, I’m pretty sure it was no accident. Whether it’s meant just to shake up China; to act as leverage for a future bargain; or as a precursor to a policy change—well, that’s hard to say. But there was something behind it. Stay tuned.

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Trump’s Taiwan Call Was No Accident

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Emailgate Takes Yet Another Dismal Turn

by NealHalliday Posted on October 28, 2016

Mother Jones

I slept badly last night and feel kind of crappy this morning. I was hoping I could just stare at the ceiling for a while and then put up some catblogging and call it a week. But no. Email mania is back. Here’s the letter FBI Director Jim Comey sent to a rogue’s gallery of committee chairmen this morning regarding its investigation into Hillary Clinton’s email server:

In connection with an unrelated case, the FBI has learned of the existence of emails that appear to be pertinent to the investigation. I am writing to inform you that the investigative team briefed me on this yesterday, and I agreed that the FBI should take appropriate investigative steps designed to allow investigators to review these emails to determine whether they contain classified information, as well as assess their importance to our investigation.

Although the FBI cannot yet assess whether or not this material may be significant, and I cannot predict how long it will take us to complete this additional work, I believe it is important to update your Committees about our efforts in light of my previous testimony.

Translation: We have some emails we got from somewhere. That’s all I can tell you. NBC’s Pete Williams adds this:

Paul Krugman is PISSED:

Donald Trump is CHUFFED:

“We must not let her take her criminal scheme to the Oval Office,” Trump said, adding, “I have great respect that the FBI and Department of Justice have the courage to right the horrible mistake that they made. Perhaps finally, justice will be done.”

Wasn’t Trump saying just a few weeks ago that the FBI was hopelessly corrupt and couldn’t be trusted? I’m pretty sure he did.

Bottom line: There are some emails. They aren’t from Hillary Clinton. They weren’t withheld from the investigation. The case isn’t being “reopened.” That is all.

Speaking for myself, I’m willing to back any bet that anyone wants to make that this whole thing is a complete nothing. Republicans will be lathering away for the next 11 days, but there’s no there there.

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Emailgate Takes Yet Another Dismal Turn

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New Poll Shows Trump Losing Big League

by MinnieVerret Posted on October 10, 2016

Mother Jones

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This is only one poll, and the sample size is small. Still, it’s the well-respected WSJ/NBC poll, and it suggests the possibility of unprecedented doom for the GOP in November:

In the new survey, Mrs. Clinton jumped to an 11-point lead over Mr. Trump among likely voters on a ballot including third-party candidates, up from 6 percentage points in September….The weekend survey found signs of women moving away from Mr. Trump. Mrs. Clinton’s advantage among women increased to 21 percentage points, from 12 points in the September Journal/NBC Survey. Mr. Trump retained a small, single-point advantage among men.

Eleven points! Among women, Clinton is now 21 points ahead, up nine points since the previous poll. This polling was done over the weekend, after the Pussygate tape was released but before Sunday’s debate.

In other words, it might get even worse. In fact, since the rumor mill suggests that more videos of Trump are coming over the next few weeks, it probably will get worse. Trump seems to think that a press conference with Paula Jones will turn this around, but that’s beyond crazy. Republicans are already jumping ship to save their own skins, and polls like today’s will feed the panic. Soon Trump will have nothing left but the Old Confederacy—a fitting end for a racist, misogynistic, xenophobic creep.

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New Poll Shows Trump Losing Big League

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