Every morning, Politico’s “Playbook” newsletter is emailed to thousands of people in Washington, D.C. and beyond, and every weekend, The Daily Caller News Foundation exposes the most biased, hysterical, and insane quotes and commentary it features.
This week, Politico Playbook writers Anna Palmer, Jake Sherman and Daniel Lippman framed President Donald Trump as dishonest because he played golf, insinuated Trump — not North Korea– is the real threat, and still couldn’t figure out that Trump is the highest-ranking executive official.
Below are the most egregious examples from the past week:
1. Trump says he’s not on vacation, but due to some deep investigative journalism, writers found he golfed Saturday! Trump + golf = vacation = Trump’s a liar. That’s some serious math right there.
Good Sunday morning. THE NEXT FEW WEEKS — @mkraju: “On Trump’s first full day of vacation, WH does not disclose any of his activities, per pool report.” THE PRESIDENT also tweeted at 6:36 p.m.: “Working in Bedminster, N.J., as long planned construction is being done at the White House. This is not a vacation – meetings and calls!” But according to pictures posted on Instagram, he did play golf Saturday [emphasis mine].
2. Politico: We are going to try our best to push the Trump-is-a-liar narrative.
“And one’s president. Trump biographer Michael D’Antonio says the president has been lying reflexively since he was a kid bragging about home runs he didn’t hit. He gets warped satisfaction from making up stuff, like those calls from the head of the Boy Scouts and the president of Mexico that the White House just admitted never happened.”
3. See! He’s a liar. Got it, liar?
– JACK SHAFER, “Gone Fishing for Donald Trump: Robert Mueller’s grand jury has a big hole to fill:” “The Constitution plus decades of judicial precedent have endowed grand juries with legal superpowers. … Think of a grand jury as an insatiable maw and you begin to understand Mueller’s task and Trump’s terror. Mountains of phone records, business records, emails, and all manner of paperwork are likely to be subpoenaed by Mueller. … Like Bill Clinton before him, Trump will be compelled to give testimony. He might want to start working on that honesty thing [emphasis mine] so the special counsel doesn’t nail him on that perjury thing, like independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr did Clinton.”
4. Politico highlights the over-simplistic, incorrect take on the Google memo that provided an argument to overhaul Google’s failed and expensive efforts to create more diversity. Why try to actually solve the problem? Just accuse the guy of sexism instead.
VALLEY TALK — “Google employee’s anti-diversity memo prompts company rebuke,” by Reuters’ Sam Forgione: “Google executives over the weekend rushed to denounce an engineer’s memo that ascribed gender inequality in the technology industry to biological differences [emphasis mine], a view that sparked outrage at the internet giant and inflamed tensions over sexual harassment and discrimination in Silicon Valley. The unnamed engineer asserted in the 3,000-word document that circulated inside the company last week that ‘Google’s left bias has created a politically correct monoculture’ which prevented honest discussion of the issue. ‘Distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ in part due to biological causes and that these differences may explain why we don’t see equal representation of women in tech and leadership,'” he wrote.
5. What does the value of White House senior policy adviser Stephen Miller’s home have to do with Jim Acosta’s cosmopolitanism?
— WAPO’S RELIABLE SOURCES: “Stephen Miller blasted a reporter as ‘cosmopolitan.’ But he lives in a $1 million CityCenter condo.”
6. North Korea’s missile capabilities were developed partly during Panetta’s time as secretary of defense, yet Politico highlights his claim equating Trump and Jim Kung-un as “bullies.”
FORMER DEFENSE SECRETARY LEON PANETTA via California Playbooker Carla Marinucci: “You’ve got two bullies chiding each other with outrageous comments — and it doesn’t help the situation in terms of trying to resolve something that has to be resolved peacefully … because the consequences of nuclear war would be devastating … The question is: ‘Does (Trump) get so frustrated with the North Korean leader — who’s yelling every other day — that he feels that somehow the North Korean leader is attacking his manhood?’”
7. Let me get this straight, it isn’t unprecedented that North Korea can miniaturize a nuclear bomb, attach it to an ICBM and reach the U.S., but it’s Trump’s rhetoric that is the real threat?
TOP-ED — SUSAN RICE in the NYT, “It’s Not Too Late on North Korea:” “We have long lived with successive Kims’ belligerent and colorful rhetoric – as ambassador to the United Nations in the Obama administration, I came to expect it whenever we passed resolutions. What is unprecedented and especially dangerous this time is the reaction of President Trump [emphasis mine]. Unscripted, the president said on Tuesday that if North Korea makes new threats to the United States, “they will be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen.” These words risk tipping the Korean Peninsula into war, if the North’s leader, Kim Jong-un, believes them and acts precipitously.
8. Trump probably used “fire and fury” because Steve Bannon invests in a video game, according to Politico. No, really. Read it.
Good Thursday morning. COINCIDENCE?: “Fire and fury” is a mission in the videogame “World of Warcraft.” Who had a business and personal connection to “World of Warcraft”? Stephen K. Bannon.
9. Put the president in a cage? Donald Trump is the BOSS. He was elected to be president, not White House Chief of Staff John Kelly or White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders. Obviously, this is a still a sore point — seven months and still running.
PHIL RUCKER in Bedminster: “‘When you put this guy in a cage and think you’re controlling him, things like this happen’:” “Midway through President Trump’s second media availability in a single afternoon here Thursday, his press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, held up a sign signaling to the boss that it was time to drop the curtain on the show. ‘One more question,’ it read. The president either did not see her plea or opted to disregard it, because he kept answering questions — for 20 minutes straight, after having already fielded them for seven minutes in the earlier session. This was Trump in his element: At his luxurious private golf club here in Bedminster, the cameras trained on him, his vice president and national security advisers looking on admiringly, he parried queries — at times even gleefully — like a tennis player.”
“Engaging with people — journalists, advisers, friends and even foes — is Trump’s lifeblood. His Oval Office has felt like a busy train station, with people breezing in and out to share a juicy tidbit or to solicit the president’s opinion on a pressing issue or to chew over something in the news. He likes to watch cable television news shows with other people, sometimes only through the phone. … ‘This is what General Kelly will learn very quickly, which is when you put this guy in a cage and think you’re controlling him, things like this happen [emphasis mine],’ said one Trump confidant, who requested anonymity to speak candidly. … Kellyanne Conway, counselor to the president, said Trump in recent days has been restless to share his thoughts on what she termed ‘one of the juiciest, newsiest periods of his presidency.’”
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