FOX News as Trump's STATE TV | Trump and FOX News: Samantha Bee explained how Fox News, during the Trump era, has “grown from a simple old-fashioned propaganda factory into a new kind of state television.” Samantha Bee Points Out Long-Term Pitfall Of Donald Trump-Fox News Love Fest | HuffPost - Thursday March 7th, 2019 at 8:06 AM
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Trump and FOX News: Samantha Bee explained how Fox News, during the Trump era, has “grown from a simple old-fashioned propaganda factory into a new kind of state television.”
Samantha Bee Points Out Long-Term Pitfall Of Donald Trump-Fox News Love Fest | HuffPost
Samantha Bee explained how Fox News, during the Trump era, has “grown from a simple old-fashioned propaganda factory into a new kind of state television.”
Bee noted on Wednesday’s “Full Frontal” that the conservative network’s bias toward President Donald Trump’s administration “isn’t exactly a big secret.”
In fact, she said, it is now “arguably as powerful as the president it created.”
“But at least Trump is term-limited,” said Bee. “We’ll be living under Fox’s influence as long as there’s a supply of fresh teenage blood to keep Rupert Murdoch undead.”
Check out the full segment here:
And watch the “Full Frontal” video explaining Britain’s Brexit vote to leave the European Union here:
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The day is coming when voters in Ukraine will be able to give the incumbent head of state a mandate for the next five years or replace him. There are three weeks left.
According to the Constitution, the regular election of the president of Ukraine is held on the last Sunday of March of the fifth year of office of the president of Ukraine. That is, the vote will take place on March 31, 2019.
Citizens who have reached the age of 35, who have lived in Ukraine for the past ten years and are fluent in the Ukrainian language have the right to run for the presidency. Candidates can be nominated from political parties or participate in the election as self-nominees. Each presidential candidate must provide a passport, autobiography, election program, application, asset declaration and post a deposit of UAH 2.5 million (about $90,000 at the current exchange rate). The National Agency for the Prevention of Corruption verifies the candidates' asset declarations.
The current presidential election campaign began on December 31 last year. On February 8, the Central Election Commission (CEC) completed the process of registration of candidates for the post of the head of state. In all, 92 applications were submitted and 44 candidates were registered - the largest number in Ukraine's history. A person cannot hold the post of the head of state for more than two terms, but incumbent President Petro Poroshenko is finishing only his first term so he is running for a second term and is among the candidates.
March 7 is the deadline for a candidate to withdraw from the presidential race and take the deposit back. One candidate used this right on March 6. Another one stated such an intention but a respective application has not yet been submitted to the CEC.
The Central Election Commission also registers official representatives of candidates and Ukrainian and foreign official observers.
On February 18, the CEC formed 199 district election commissions consisting of representatives from registered candidates.
A polling station, no later than five days before the election day, that is before March 24, sends an invitation to each voter, announcing that he or she has been included in the voter list, as well as stating the address of the polling station, the time and place of voting. Voters who cannot move independently report that they should be given an opportunity to vote at their place of residence. Each voter can independently check the availability of his or her data in the electoral lists, using the online service "Personal Voter Cabinet" in the State Register of Voters.
Until March 29 inclusive, candidates have an opportunity to campaign and distribute their election programs. The last day before the election is a "day of silence" when any campaigning is prohibited.
It is prohibited to conduct pre-election campaigning, which is accompanied by the provision of voters with money or goods, services, works, securities, loans, and lotteries free of charge or on preferential terms. It is also prohibited to distribute deliberately untrue information about a candidate. It is illegal to distribute materials containing calls for the liquidation of Ukraine's independence, the violent change of the constitutional order, violation of the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the state, undermining its security, propagating war, violence and inciting interethnic, racial, religious hatred, as well as encroaching on human rights and freedoms.
The current election is taking place amid Russian aggression, due to which about 7% of Ukraine's territory was occupied and about 1.5 million people were forced to change their place of residence. The CEC simplified the procedure for changing the place of voting for those living in temporarily occupied territories. This can be done on any day but no later than five days before the election day. It is necessary to come with a passport to the nearest point of the State Register of Voters and write an application asking for a temporary change in the place of voting.
The war caused the cancellation of the vote for Ukrainian citizens living on the territory of Russia, which Ukraine recognized at the legislative level as an aggressor state. Ukraine's Central Election Commission closed polling stations in Russia and relocated them to foreign polling stations located on the territory of the Embassies of Ukraine in Georgia, Kazakhstan, and Finland. Citizens of Ukraine temporarily staying in Russia may also exercise their right to vote at their place of residence in Ukraine.
The first round of the election will be held on March 31. About 30 million Ukrainian citizens will be able to vote at 29,824 polling stations.
The results of the first round should be announced before April 10 inclusive, and, if necessary, the second round will be announced the same day if none of the candidates gains 50% plus one vote. The results of the first round should be published in the official newspapers Holos Ukrainy and Uriadovy Kurier before April 13. The presidential run-off will see two candidates who receive the highest number of votes during the March 31 vote.
The election debate between them will be held on April 19. April 20 is again a "day of silence" before the vote so appeals and statements made by candidates during the debate will be the latest information for voters.
The second round of the election will take place on April 21. The CEC should publish the results of the run-off before May 1, 2019 (official results will be published on May 4).
The inauguration will take place by June 3 (under the Constitution, "no later than 30 days after the official announcement of election results"). A new head of state will assume office after a swearing-in ceremony in the Verkhovna Rada.
For the first time in the election there is no competition between two major candidates. Previously, two presidential election favorites were always predictable. Now, the competition for winning through to the second round is very high. According to surveys, the best chances of reaching the second round are enjoyed by incumbent President Petro Poroshenko, former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko and a candidate who represents those disappointed with professional politicians – comedian and showman Volodymyr Zelensky. Their ratings have changed dynamically in recent months in the range from 15 to 25 percent of supporters.
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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - From breaking into computers to paying for a megaphone, Russian efforts to undermine the U.S. political system have been spelled out in detail by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who has described an elaborate campaign of hacking and propaganda during the 2016 presidential race.
FILE PHOTO: Russian flag flies with the Spasskaya Tower of Moscow's Kremlin in the background in Moscow, Russia February 27, 2019. REUTERS/Maxim Shemetov/File Photo
While Mueller has yet to submit to U.S. Attorney General William Barr a final report on his investigation into Russia’s role in the election, the former FBI director already has provided a sweeping account in a pair of indictments that charged 25 Russian individuals and three Russian companies.
Key questions still to be answered are whether Mueller will conclude that Trump’s campaign conspired with Moscow and whether Trump unlawfully sought to obstruct the probe. Trump has denied collusion and obstruction. Russia as denied election interference.
Here is an explanation of Mueller’s findings about Russian activities and U.S. intelligence assessments of the ongoing threat.
WHAT IS KNOWN ABOUT RUSSIAN “TROLL FARMS”?
On Feb. 16, 2018, Mueller charged 13 Russian individuals and three Russian entities with conspiracy to defraud the United States, wire and bank fraud and identity theft. It said the Internet Research Agency, a Russian-backed propaganda arm known for trolling on social media, flooded American social media sites Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram to promote Trump and spread disparaging information about his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton. The indictment said the Russian efforts dated to 2014, before Trump’s candidacy, and were intended to sow discord in the United States. [nL2N1Q61CL]
The St. Petersburg-based so-called troll farm employed hundreds of people for its online operations and had a multimillion-dollar budget, according to the indictment. It had a management group and departments including graphics, data analysis and search-engine optimization. Employees worked day and night shifts corresponding to U.S. time zones.
Its funding was provided by Evgeny Prigozhin, a businessman who U.S. officials have said has extensive ties to Russia’s military and political establishment, and companies he controlled including Concord Management and Consulting and Concord Catering. Prigozhin has been described by Russian media as being close to President Vladimir Putin. He has been dubbed “Putin’s cook” because his catering business has organized banquets for Russia’s president.
The Russians targeted Americans with information warfare, adopting false online personas and creating hundreds of social media accounts to push divisive messages and spread distrust of candidates and America’s political system in general, the indictment said. They aimed to denigrate Clinton and support the candidacies of Trump, who won the Republican presidential nomination, and Bernie Sanders, her rival for the Democratic nomination.
HOW WERE AMERICANS UNWITTINGLY RECRUITED?
In Florida, a pivotal state in U.S. presidential elections, the Russians steered unwitting Americans to pro-Trump rallies they conceived and organized. The indictment said the Russians paid “a real U.S. person to wear a costume portraying Clinton in a prison uniform at a rally” and another “to build a cage large enough to hold an actress depicting Clinton in a prison uniform.”
The accused Russians used false Facebook persona “Matt Skier” to contact a real American to recruit for a “March for Trump” rally, offering “money to print posters and get a megaphone,” the indictment said. They created an Instagram account “Woke Blacks” to encourage African-Americans not to vote for “Killary,” saying, “We’d surely be better off without voting AT ALL.” Fake social media accounts were used to post messages saying American Muslims should refuse to vote for Clinton “because she wants to continue the war on Muslims in the Middle East.” Alternatively, they took out Facebook ads promoting a June 2016 rally in Washington, “Support Hillary. Save American Muslims” rally. They recruited an American to hold up a sign with a quote falsely attributed to Clinton that embraced Islamic sharia law, the indictment said.
Some of the accused Russians traveled around the United States to gather intelligence, the indictment said, visiting at least 10 states: California, Colorado, Georgia, Illinois, Louisiana, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, New York and Texas.
WHAT ROLE DID RUSSIAN MILITARY OFFICERS PLAY?
On July 13, 2018, Mueller charged 12 Russian military intelligence officers with hacking Democratic Party computer networks in 2016 to steal large amounts of data and then time their release to damage Clinton. The Russian hackers broke into the computer networks of the Clinton campaign and Democratic Party organizations, covertly monitoring employee computers and planting malicious code, as well as stealing emails and other documents, according to the indictment. [nL1N1U90YU]
Using fictitious online personas such as DCLeaks and Guccifer 2.0, the hackers released tens of thousands of stolen emails and documents. The Guccifer 2.0 persona communicated with Americans, including an unidentified person who was in regular contact with senior members of the Trump campaign, the indictment said. Guccifer 2.0 cooperated extensively with “Organization 1” - the WikiLeaks website - to discuss the timing of the release of stolen documents to “heighten their impact” on the election.
On or about July 27, 2016, the Russians tried to break into email accounts used by Clinton’s personal office and her campaign, the indictment said. The same day, candidate Trump told reporters: “Russia, if you are listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing,” referring to emails from a private server Clinton had used when she was secretary of state.
To hide their identity, the Russians laundered money and financed their operation through cryptocurrencies including bitcoin, Mueller’s team said.
House panel casts wide net in obstruction probe
IS THE THREAT OVER?
The U.S. intelligence community’s 2019 Worldwide Threat Assessment report cited Russia’s continuing efforts to interfere in the American political system. It stated, “Russia’s social media efforts will continue to focus on aggravating social and racial tensions, undermining trust in authorities, and criticizing perceived anti-Russia politicians. Moscow may employ additional influence toolkits - such as spreading disinformation, conducting hack-and-leak operations or manipulating data - in a more targeted fashion to influence U.S. policy, actions and elections.”
The report said Russia and “unidentified actors” as recently as 2018 conducted cyber activity targeting U.S. election infrastructure, though there is no evidence showing “any compromise of our nation’s election infrastructure that would have prevented voting, changed vote counts or disrupted the ability to tally votes.”
Reporting by Doina Chiacu; Editing by Will Dunham
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"Weisselberg's family is deeply entwined in the company. His son Barry has managed the Trump Wollman Rink in Central Park. Another son, Jack, is an executive director at Ladder Capital, the biggest lender to the Trump Organization behind Deutsche Bank. Ladder had more than $100 million lent out to Trump's company last year, according to the president's financial disclosure report."
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DNC announces Fox News will not be a media partner for 2020 debates
New research into Donald Trump’s speeches reveal why the president’s scripted brand of populism doesn’t come easy
Donald Trump spent much of his presidential campaign mocking his rivals for relying on teleprompters – until, reluctantly, he was forced to do the same. “If you run for president you shouldn’t be allowed to use teleprompters,” he complained. “Because you don’t even know if the guy’s smart.”
But intelligence isn't the only trait that politicians can fake by relying on automated scripts. New analysis suggests Trump struggles to express populist ideas unless he’s reading remarks prepared by his scriptwriters.
The research by Team Populism, a network of political scientists, analysed Trump’s speeches – both scripted, and off-the-cuff – looking for three core elements of populist discourse.
Manichean world view
Depicting a moralised battle between good and evil.
People-centrism
Portraying a romanticised vision of a common popular will
Anti-elitism
Blames the people’s difficulties on a malign establishment that had subverted the system for their benefit
This piece is best experienced with sound
Kirk Hawkins, an associate professor at Brigham Young University, said there was a “dramatic difference” in the language in Trump’s speeches, depending on whether or not they were scripted. “Trump’s speeches with teleprompters all have longer words, longer sentences, and less frequent use of his pet words. And they have much higher levels of populism,” he said. “This is powerful evidence that Trump’s populism is not entirely his own.”
No other Republican candidate, aside from Ted Cruz, scored as highly as Trump in the populism grade that researchers gave speeches. But what really stood out was the remarkable inconsistency in levels of rightwing populist discourse in Trump’s speeches.
Levente Littvay, an associate professor at Central European University, who also worked on the study, said the president might be best described as a half populist. Others may suggest Trump’s reliance on an automated script for his populism warrants the creation of a new label: telepopulist.
Hawkins and Littvay also identified the specific reason why Trump appeared to stumble when off-script. The president tended to reliably score high on the metric of anti-elitism, lashing out at the so-called Washington swamp or attacking America’s financial heavyweights, even when ad-libbing. But unlike more consistent populists, Trump struggled, whenever he was speaking without a script, to deliver a message that was also people-centric.
“In the extemporaneous speeches he doesn’t really talk a lot about the people; he’ll talk about himself, about people on his team, but he doesn’t say things like, ‘Only you, the people, can rescue our country’. Instead it’s more about him: ‘I’m here, I’m going to do this, my team, we’re awesome’,” Hawkins said. “He is consistently anti-establishment (but) the pro-people part changes depending on whether he’s coached or not.”
The research suggests Trump’s populism should really be credited to the likes of key advisors like Steve Bannon, Stephen Miller, and Vince Haley, who is head of speechwriting at the White House.
Bannon and Miller have strong reputations for populism. Evidence of their influence creeping into Trump’s speeches include the Republican national convention speech in 2016 (“I have joined the political arena so that the powerful can no longer beat up on people who cannot defend themselves”), and an address in West Palm Beach, Florida, that year (“The corrupt establishment knows that we are a great threat to their criminal enterprise. They know that if we win, their power is gone, and it’s returned to you, the people, will be”).
Bannon, a former executive director of Breitbart News, told the Guardian that Trump’s 2015 speechwriting teams were typically small. “It’s a couple of people and Stephen was clearly speechwriter; I would consider myself the architect of the speeches and Trump really a co-writer. It’s very much in his voice. He will change it up and change the cadence and change the sequencing up until the last second.”
Trump, he said, was often provided a speech outline before a rally and then told: “If you want to take a riff, take a riff, and that’s what he does best, when it’s impromptu”. Referring to the teleprompter – a thin, barely-visible glass lectern – Bannon said: “The audience loves it when he goes off the glass and personalises the speech.”
Benjamin Moffitt, a senior lecturer at the Australian Catholic University, who was not involved in the research, said while analysis of the the content of Trump’s speeches was useful, it was also important to consider the symbolic aspects of his delivery. He argued: “Populism is not just about what political actors say, but also how they act.” He gave the example of the occasions on the campaign trail when Trump theatrically ditched his teleprompter, on one occasion even knocking over his glass lectern to raucous applause.
Iactuallylikedmyspeechbetterwithoutteleprompters.WhatIlikeaboutit...waitaminute,letme...youknowwhat,Ilikeitbetterwithouttheteleprompter
“Trump making a big deal out of abandoning the teleprompter on several occasions should be read as something of a populist act,” Moffitt said. Such gestures, he said, were intended to convey that Trump – in contrast to his stiff and scripted rivals – was an entertaining and authentic figure who had common with his audience than professional politicians controlled by their aides. “While critics may see Trump’s ‘gaffes’ and ‘off-script’ remarks as mistakes, they miss the point – these kind of stylistic acts are part and parcel of his populism.”
The latest example occurred last week, during Trump’s speech before the Conservative Political Action Committee. “You know I'm totally off script right now,” he told his audience. “And this is how I got elected, by being off script. True. And if we don’t go off script, our country is in big trouble, folks. Because we have to get it back.”
Trump may have a unique brand of performative populism, but he has also betrayed a misunderstanding of what the term actually means. Back in 2010, when Trump was considering a presidential bid, Bannon visited him in New York. According to Bannon, when he encouraged Trump to run as a populist, explaining the virtues of a disruptive candidacy pitting the common people against nefarious elite, Trump replied: “That’s what I am, a popularist.” Bannon tried to correct him but Trump insisted on “popularist”.
And in remarks last year at a rally in Fargo, North Dakota, Trump even toyed with something akin to reverse-populism when he told supporters that they were the country’s real elite.
Wegotmoremoney,wegotmorebrains,wegotbetterhouses,apartments,wegotnicerboats.We'resmarterthantheyare,andtheysay"theelite".We'retheelite,you'retheelite
It was not the first time Trump had wanted to use this conceit, turning populism on its head and actually praising the elite. “One of the arguments we used to have is about the use of ‘elites’,” Bannon conceded. “He hated Miller and I going after elites because he said, ‘What you’re saying is, we’re not elites. We are elites. I’m the elites. My audience is an elite audience.’ And I said that’s not actually technically correct. He wasn’t having it.”
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