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      in US Politics

      As our former lives dissolve into uncertainty, facts are something solid to cling to | Lenore Taylor

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      I have always worked with facts. I have sifted them for relevance, assembled them to make sense of things, and used them to construct an argument or to disagree with another point of view. Facts are, for journalists, the essential ingredient, like flour for bakers or clay for sculptors. So I recall very clearly how disconcerted I felt when I first sensed they were turning to liquid and sliding through my hands.It was during Tony Abbott’s campaign against the Labor government’s carbon pricing scheme – the policy he dubbed a “great big tax on everything”. There were, for sure, some factual arguments that could have been deployed against that policy, or alternative ideas that could have been raised. The then opposition leader opted for neither of these methods. Instead, he travelled the country saying things that were patently nonsensical. But most news outlets reported them uncritically, and this firehose of nonsense proved impossible to mop up. More

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      in US Politics

      Trump says he will not cut funding to Stars and Stripes newspaper

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      Donald Trump tweeted on Friday that he “will not be cutting funding to Stars and Stripes”, a newspaper that has served US armed forces since 1861, despite a Pentagon memo obtained by USA Today saying the title would close by the end of the month.“The United States of America will NOT be cutting funding to Stars and Stripes magazine under my watch,” Trump wrote. “It will continue to be a wonderful source of information to our Great Military!”News that the venerable paper was in peril had landed as the White House reeled from a report in the Atlantic which said the president disparaged US marines killed in France in the first world war and made disrespectful remarks about both John McCain, a late political rival and Vietnam veteran, and wounded soldiers in general.Trump rubbished that report, insisting: “I never called our great fallen soldiers anything other than HEROES”.In the case of McCain, observers pointed to a tweet from 2015 in which Trump called the senator and presidential nominee, who died in 2018, a “loser”.Trump also said the Atlantic, which was founded in 1857, was “dying, like most magazines”, and said its report had been refuted.Stars and Stripes traces its origins to Bloomfield, Missouri, in November 1861, when troops under the future president Ulysses S Grant took over the printing press of a Confederate sympathiser.It has traditionally provided news free of government censorship, often critical of military and civilian commanders, and is delivered daily to troops around the world, even on frontlines.According to USA Today, the Department of Defense ordered the publisher of Stars and Stripes to provide a plan to “dissolve” it by 15 September, including a “specific timeline for vacating government owned/leased space worldwide”.“The last newspaper publication (in all forms) will be 30 September 2020,” the author of the memo, Col Paul Haverstick Jr, was quoted as writing.Haverstick is director of Defense Media Activity (DMA), based at Fort Meade, Maryland. According to the Pentagon website, DMA is “a mass media and education organisation that creates and distributes Department of Defense content across a variety of platforms to audiences around the world”.Moves to close Stars and Stripes began in February, when the Pentagon announced plans to reallocate funding to projects including the Space Force, a much-maligned and satirised Trump pet project.On Wednesday, Military.com reported that a bipartisan group of senators led by the California Democrat Dianne Feinstein had written to the defense secretary, Mark Esper.“Stars and Stripes is an essential part of our nation’s freedom of the press that serves the very population charged with defending that freedom,” the 15 senators wrote. “Therefore, we respectfully request that you rescind your decision to discontinue support for Stars and Stripes and that you reinstate the funding necessary for it to continue operations.”Tammy Duckworth, an Illinois Democrat who lost both legs when her helicopter was shot down in Iraq, signed the Feinstein letter. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a close Trump ally who was a lawyer in the US air force, wrote a letter of his own.Stars and Stripes did not immediately comment on Wednesday, but it did share a tweet from one of its writers, Steve Beynon.“I read Stars and Stripes on a mountain in Afghanistan when I was a 19-year-old aspiring journalist,” he wrote. “Now I work there. This doesn’t stop the journalism. I’m juggling three future news stories today.”Beynon shared recent stories including a report on women commanding combat units and employees alleging “ingrained racism” at the Department of Veterans Affairs.Kathy Kiely of the Missouri School of Journalism, who published news of the memo in USA Today, wrote: “Even for those of us who are all too wearily familiar with President Donald Trump’s disdain for journalists, his administration’s latest attack on the free press is a bit of a jaw-dropper.”Stars and Stripes later retweeted Trump’s promise not to close it.Before the presidential fiat by tweet, as news of the Pentagon memo echoed through the US media, one former cavalry officer who twice deployed to Iraq spoke to the Guardian on condition of anonymity.“Having an independent media outlet focused totally on the military and its communities,” he said, “should be a priority for the Department of Defense, to keep these communities informed and together – even while physically separated.”The same veteran expressed sadness about Trump’s reported remarks about soldiers killed in action, wounded or taken prisoner.“Anyone who is shocked or surprised at any of this simply hasn’t been paying attention,” he said. “Look at his comments about prisoners of war when talking about McCain.” More

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      in Elections

      Five bizarre moments from Trump's interview with Laura Ingraham

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      Donald Trump

      In a particularly odd Fox News interview, the president riffed on Biden’s ‘shadow people’ and compared police shootings to golf

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      ‘Dark shadows’ are controlling Joe Biden, claims Trump – video

      On Monday night, Fox News broadcast the first part of an interview between Donald Trump and Laura Ingraham. The primetime host is one of the president’s chief boosters, having spoken on his behalf at the Republican convention in 2016.
      But things did not go entirely smoothly.
      Echoing the fallout from recent one-on-ones with Chris Wallace of Fox and Jonathan Swan of Axios, much tougher interrogators, Trump’s rambling, confused, conspiracy-tinged answers swiftly dominated the news agenda. Even by his own standards, the interview contained some bizarre and outrageous statements.
      Part two is due on Tuesday night. But according to the influential Politico Playbook newsletter, “very many people in the White House who would like Trump to win re-election are against the sit-down TV interviews the president has been doing.”
      Here are five reasons why:
      1. Biden and the shadow people
      Amid an extended riff about the Democratic nominee being a “weak person” unable to deal with protests over racism and police brutality in many US cities, Trump said: “I don’t even like to mention Biden, because he’s not controlling anything. They control him.”
      Ingraham gave Trump a chance to develop the thought: “Who do you think is pulling Biden’s strings? Is it former Obama officials?”
      Trump didn’t think that.
      ‘People that you’ve never heard of,” he said. “People that are in the dark shadows. People that –”
      Ingraham interjected: “What does that mean? That sounds like conspiracy theory. Dark shadows, what is that?”
      “No,” said Trump. “People that you haven’t heard of. They’re people that are on the streets. They’re people that are controlling the streets.” More

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      in US Politics

      Melania Trump taped making derogatory remarks about Donald and Ivanka – report

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      Melania Trump will speak at the Republican national convention on Tuesday night, in the shadow of an extraordinary report that she was taped making derogatory comments about her husband’s adult children and even Donald Trump himself.On Monday the media reporter Yashar Ali cited unnamed sources in reporting that Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, a former friend and adviser, “taped the first lady” and plans to share the remarks in her book.They include “harsh comments about Ivanka Trump, the president’s elder daughter and a senior adviser”, Ali wrote.Melania & Me is out on 1 September.The US continues to digest the publication, by the Washington Post, of tapes of Donald Trump’s older sister, Maryanne Trump Barry, calling the president “cruel” and criticizing his character and behavior.Those tapes were made surreptitiously but legally by Mary L Trump, the president’s niece, who released a bestselling book in July, Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man.Simon & Schuster published Mary Trump’s book and one by John Bolton, Trump’s former national security adviser. It will publish Melania & Me.In publicity material, the publisher says Wolkoff, a long-term friend of Melania Trump “was recruited to help produce the 58th presidential inaugu­ration and to become the first lady’s trusted adviser”.“… Then it all fell apart when she was made the scapegoat for inauguration finance irregularities. Melania could have defended her innocent friend and confidant, but she stood by her man, knowing full well who was really to blame. The betrayal nearly destroyed Wolkoff.”Fundraising for Trump’s inauguration has been the subject of investigations by the special counsel and authorities in New York, New Jersey and the District of Columbia, which alleged fundraising was used to enrich Trump family members.The White House did not immediately comment on reports about Wolkoff’s book but last weekend, responding to his sister’s comments, the president indicated he has grown used to such news.“Every day it’s something else,” Trump said. “Who cares?”Evidently, publishing companies do. Melania & Me is the latest in a stream of tell-alls due out before the election in November. The former personal lawyer Michael Cohen and former campaign aide Rick Gates – both convicted in cases arising from the work of special counsel Robert Mueller, Gates a figure in the inauguration case – have books on the way. So does the former Mueller prosecutor Andrew Weissmann.HR McMaster, national security adviser before Bolton, has a memoir coming out this month. The Watergate reporter Bob Woodward also has a new Trump book coming.Melania has been the subject of previous books including Free, Melania by Kate Bennett and Melania: The Art of Her Deal by Mary Jordan.From Wolkoff, Simon & Schuster promises a “candid and emotional memoir” which will answer questions about many of the most scandalous and salacious moments of the Trump presidency. Among them: “How did Melania react to the Access Hollywood tape” – in which Donald Trump infamously boasted of grabbing women “by the pussy” – “and her husband’s affair with Stormy Daniels”, which Trump denies but which remains a cause of legal trouble and political jeopardy.“Does she get along well with Ivanka?” the publisher asks. “Why did she wear that jacket with ‘I really don’t care, do u?’ printed on the back? Is Melania happy being first lady?“And what really happened with the inauguration’s funding of $107m? Wolkoff has some ideas …” More