In a back and forth on the New York Times editorial page, conservative columnist Bret Stephens trashed the "institutional Christian right" for remaining in bed with President Donald Trump despite credible revelations that he had an affair with adult film star Stormy Daniels.
Taking part in the conversation with liberal Gail Collins, Stephens was asked what to make of the sex scandal that, if it involved a Democrat, would have Christian conservatives up and arms and moving towards impeachment, as was the case with former President Bill Clinton.
"Did you find the Stormy Daniels interview sort of … boring? I did, and it seems like a tribute to Donald Trump that I could be listening to a woman talking about how she swatted his rear end with a magazine that had his picture on the front and think, 'Well, at least he had underwear on,'" Collins wrote before adding, "It’s just that we now have a president whose sleaze rating is so high it’s hard to get shocked by anything."
Stephens agreed before accusing Christians of hypocrisy.
"Exactly. It’s boring because nothing about this president scandalizes us anymore," Stephens wrote. "I can remember when news of Bill Clinton’s alleged affair with Gennifer Flowers broke when he was running for president in 1992. Conservatives erupted: The man was not fit to sit in the Oval Office!"
"Nowadays it’s a different story," Stephen's continued. "Right-wing political culture, including the institutional Christian right, has been pornogrified. The Stormy Daniels affair isn’t a shock to that culture; it’s a representation of it. This is the bed conservatives made, so to speak, when they adopted Trump as one of their own, so they shouldn’t be surprised by anyone who turns up in there with them."
Stephens later called out Trump as an "incompetent executive."
"The departures of Gary Cohn, Rex Tillerson and H. R. McMaster confirm the central truth of the Trump presidency: He’s an incompetent executive," he wrote. "He offers no loyalty to his subordinates but expects flattery from them in return. He provides no direction but refuses to take direction when it is offered to him. People call him the chaos president, which he thinks is a compliment because it hints at the possibility that there’s method to the madness. There isn’t. It’s just a personality disorder with command authority over nuclear weapons."
The attorney for adult actress Stormy Daniels took to Twitter on Sunday morning to promise the public -- and likely taunt President Donald Trump - that the blockbuster 60 Minutes interview to be shown later in the evening will just be a taste of the evidence to be revealed about a sexual affair the porn actress allegedly had with Trump.
Continuing his efforts to hype up the Anderson Cooper interview with the actress -- whose real name is Stephanie Clifford -- attorney Michael Avenatti tweeted, "Note: (a) not all of our evidence will be mentioned/displayed tonight – that would be foolish; (b) we are not sure what CBS will include but we know a lot from the full interview will have to be cut bc of the time allowed; (c) tonight is not the end – it’s the beginning. #basta."
Earlier in the week, Avenatti tweeted out a picture of a DVD which reportedly contains proof of the sexual liaison between Trump and Daniels at a time when the president's wife, Melania, had just given birth to their son, Barron.
Bob Murray was labeled “a geriatric Dr. Evil” in an episode of Oliver's HBO show, which highlighted incidents like a 2007 collapse caused by unauthorized mining practices in Utah which killed six miners, and which Murray claimed at the time was caused by an "earthquake."
"The jobs of our 6,000 coal miners depend on me and my reputation," the letter said. "I am a dying old man, but our employees will suffer as a result of your decision."
Murray also complained of getting mocked by the show's fans in letters that said things like "consume defecation, Bob" and "congrats on having HBO make you look like a big fat lardass loser in court. Idiot."
The judge noted that Murray's letter constituted improper contact with the judge, and the judge warned Murray and his attorneys to not send another lest he face sanctions from the court.
You can watch the hilarious original segment which prompted the dismissed lawsuit below.
Fox News host Sean Hannity on Saturday asked former FBI director James Comey to come on his program after the firing of Andrew McCabe.
Following a Twitter rant in which Hannity lobbed a number of questions at Comey, the conservative pundit invited him on his Fox News television and radio programs.
McCabe was the FBI's deputy under Comey. Both former FBI officials are believed to be key witnesses in Robert Mueller's Russia probe.
Comey said earlier in the day that the American public would hear his story "very soon."
Cambridge Analytica, the company who led data mining and analysis for the Trump campaign, has been suspended from using the Facebook social media platform for the misuse of personal information involving 270,000 people.
"We are suspending Strategic Communication Laboratories (SCL), including their political data analytics firm, Cambridge Analytica, from Facebook," Paul Grewal, the company's vice president and deputy general counsel, stated Friday.
The statement said the action followed reports that all information was not deleted, following earlier revelations that "a research app used by psychologists" had legitimately collected the data, a transfer of the data to SCL/Cambridge Analytica.
"In 2015, we learned that a psychology professor at the University of Cambridge named Dr. Aleksandr Kogan lied to us and violated our Platform Policies by passing data from an app that was using Facebook Login to SCL/Cambridge Analytica, a firm that does political, government and military work around the globe," Facebook explained.
"Although Kogan gained access to this information in a legitimate way," they acknowledged, "by passing information on to a third party, including SCL/Cambridge Analytica ... he violated our platform policies."
Facebook demanded in 2015 that all the violators certified that all of the data had been destroyed.
"We will take legal action if necessary to hold them responsible and accountable for any unlawful behavior," Facebook added.
Appearing on CNN's Reliable Sources, regular contributor April Ryan gave a harsh dressing down to a conservative reporter from the New York Post who dismissed Trump's media baiting at rallies as harmless "shtick" designed to rile up the crowd.
Referring to Trump's raucous Pennsylvania rally on Saturday night, where the president once again encouraged his followers to to boo the fake media, host Brian Stelter asked journalist Salena Zito if it bothered her.
"I wonder, Salena, when you're there at the rally, is it ever uncomfortable when "the fake news media' is being booed?" the CNN host asked.
"It's part of the shtick. I don't think anybody felt unsafe when it happens," the conservative journalist responded. "So it's hard to unpack, in that it's part of his deal, it's sort of like the 'Lock her up.' You can't lock her up anymore because he's not running against her. So this is a continuation of reminding his voters that people are against him and he is there for them. And also, he speaks in such a stream of consciousness."
Seeing Ryan grimace, Stetler asked her to respond.
"I'm sorry, Salena, I totally disagree," a fuming Ryan replied. "This is not shtick, it's not comedy. This is real and it's dangerous. During the campaign, this president talked about kicking people out, beating them up. People did get beat up, and the problem is now, you know, when you make the press the enemy, which he has, there are people out here who are crazy enough to really feel that, and to act on it, and some of my dear colleagues who are going to some of these rallies, some of these rallies have been so tense, they've been fearful for their safety at times."
"All the president has to say is act on it, and people will turn," she lectured. "This is someone who has the power of life and death in his tongue and in his pen, and also the fact that people will turn on the press in a moment's notice. So this is not shtick. This is real for us, and we are covered by the founding fathers, these white men, who covered all of us not knowing that there would be social media or people like us covering the White House."
"So this is a dangerous game, and this president vowed to uphold the constitution, and the free press is part of that, and he's going against his vow when he was inaugurated," Ryan concluded.
The wife of Fox News personality Jesse Watters has filed for divorce after learning her husband had an affair with a 25-year-old producer working on his show.
According to the New York Daily News, Noelle Watters -- the mother of the couple's twin daughters -- filed for the separation back in October.
The report states that the controversial host, who was briefly taken off the air by the conservative news network for inappropriate comments about Ivanka Trump, admitted to the affair at his place of employment.
According to the NYDN, Watters, 39, went to his superiors at the network and disclosed his relationship with associate producer Emma DiGiovine shortly after his wife filed papers.
DiGiovine was immediately transferred to “The Ingraham Angle,” with host Laura Ingraham, claims the network.
“Within 24 hours of Jesse Watters voluntarily reporting to the Chief of Human Resources in November 2017 that he was in a consensual relationship with a woman on his staff, management met with both parties and a decision was made for the woman to be transferred to work on another program on the network where she currently remains,” Fox News aid in a statement.
According to the report Watters and DiGiovine are still dating.
NOW WATCH: 'Very dishonest -- you're a fool!' Trump storms out of interview after Piers Morgan says 2020 election wasn't stolen
Trump storms out of interview after Piers Morgan says 2020 election wasn't stolen
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A middle school teacher in Orange County, Florida is under fire after parents of students discovered virulently anti-Muslim posts on her Twitter account, reports the Orlando Sentinel.
According to the report, Sundai Brown, 51, a teacher at Bridgewater Middle School, has been tweeting racist comments about Muslims dating back to 2017, and parents just became aware of them -- with the school administrators admitting that the teacher was warned about them last year.
In one post Brown wrote, "Imans worldwide instruct muslims to invade western countries, outbreed them, overthrow governments, kill infidels and implement sharia law.” In another, she quipped, "If you think Hurricane Irma is bad, wait till you get a load of Hurricane Allah.”
The report goes on to note that Brown has also favorably retweeted content from adherents on white supremacists including a far-right Dutch politician and a post by "Identity Evropa," which calls itself a group “for people of European heritage.”
As news broke about her posts she took her Twitter account down, and the school has had to admit that they were aware of her racist leanings previously.
In a telephone message sent out to parents of Bridgewater students, principal Andrew Jackson pointed out that the social media posts were made 2017 and added, “We addressed these concerns with the teacher at the time."
Jackson went on to assure the parents that school does not condone her message of hate.
“The school district does not condone or interfere in social media posts of employees unless there is a violation of the professional code of ethics," the statement read.
A school district spokesperson refused to confirm whether Brown is under investigation again, saying it is a personnel matter.
Brown has since taken her Twitter account down, although Orlando Weekly has preserved some screenshots of the offensive posts.
Actor and comedian Alec Baldwin called into his brother's Syracuse-based radio show where he impersonated the president and mocked him for being obsessed with his Saturday Night Live impersonation.
According to Syracuse.com, the two Baldwins were responding to Trump's early Friday morning tweet --that includes multiple misspellings --and read: "Alex[sic] Baldwin, whose dieing (sic) mediocre career was saved by his impersonation of me on SNL, now says playing DJT was agony for him. Alex, it was also agony for those who were forced to watch. You were terrible. Bring back Darrell Hammond, much funnier and a far greater talent!"
With Daniel Baldwin saying he had a special caller to the show, his brother was already in character and immediately attacked -- himself.
"First of all, everybody knows that Stephen Baldwin is the best Baldwin, OK?" Alec said while using Trump's voice, referencing the one Baldwin brother who is a supporter of Trump.
Baldwin's Trump then proceeded to talk about all the great work he was doing when he wasn't at the golf course while continuing to attack Baldwin for hurting America.
What started as a clear joke by a Seinfeld parody Twitter account turned into a fake threat of legal action on Friday after a user referenced the Italian food chain in a quip about AR-15s.
"Respect to @olivegarden for no longer selling AR-15s at all their locations," the @Seinfeld2000 account tweeted, referencing the popular corporate decision to quit selling assault rifles in the wake of the Parkland mass shooting on Valentine's Day.
@Seinfeld2000 then either received a fake cease and desist letter or crafted their own claiming Olive Garden was demanding the tweet be removed.
"Olive Garden has spent years building its reputation as a family friendly restaurant that is safe for all patrons to dine in," the fake email read. "Our client has learned that you have engaged in spreading false, destructive, and defamatory rumors about it."
It went on to demand the tweet be deleted. However, it turns out the parody account was also parodying a conflict.
"Our legal team has not been in contact with this individual or sent them the message that was posted," Darden Restaurants public relations spokesperson Jessica Dinon told Raw Story.
It didn't stop onlookers, including Raw Story, into falling for the con.
"What the f*ck," read the parody account's caption on a screenshot of the email.
Fellow Twitter users, naturally, got in on the joke.
"I love it when #brands f*ck up," journalist Ashley Feinberg tweeted, before joking that they are "very sad to hear that olive garden [sic] continues to sell ar-15s as part of their endless pasta bowl promotion."
"Appalled to discover that Olive Garden is standing by its Unlimited Boomsticks policy," user Cody Johnston joked, linking to the Seinfeld2000 screenshot.
In a related incident, a Miami Herald reporter was targeted with a screen capture of a fake tweet alleging she was searching for Parkland survivors who had photos or videos of dead bodies, something that she never tweeted.
In that case, she reported each instance of the false image, but Twitter refused to act, saying the account has to be fake for them to get involved. Fake news is not something they get involved with because who are they to determine what is fake.
"It seems pretty clear-cut to me. This is obvious fake news," Herald reporter Alex Harris told NPR. "It is obviously a hoax. And it is obviously being sent out there so people can harass me and target me with abuse."
Twitter's Jack Dorsey has posted that they are looking into solutions for civility, collective health and openness. At no point in his thread did he mention a strive for the corporation to fight fake news.
Facebook, by contrast, has taken steps to employ journalists to flag fake news. It's unclear if anything is being done once it is flagged, but they've gone further than Twitter at this point.
Raw Story has reached out to @Seinfeld2000 for comment but has not heard back.
Fox News chief White House correspondent John Roberts on Friday laid out the “one thing” fueling Donald Trump’s relentless criticism of Jeff Sessions, explaining when the president sees his hand-picked attorney general. “he sees the world ‘recusal’ pasted on his forehead.”
Roberts was speaking with host Shep Smith about Rod Rosenstein’s keynote address Friday at the American Bar Association’s annual white collar crime conference, during which the deputy attorney general reinforced “ethics and professionalism” at the Department of Justice.
“I can assure you the department leadership team appointed by President Trump is very strong on ethics and professionalism,” Rosenstein told white collar lawyers in San Diego.
“The Justice Department's number 2 official is defending the attorney general, Jeff Sessions, after Donald Trump attacked Sessions on Twitter,” Smith reported. “The deputy attorney general, Rod Rosenstein said history will show that the DOJ acted with integrity under his watch.”
“On this matter, the criticism of Jeff Sessions is about one thing, isn't it?” Smith wondered. “Isn’t just the one thing?”
“Yeah, the one thing is that every time the president sees Jeff Sessions, he sees the word ‘recusal,’” Roberts said. “Because of the fact that Sessions recused himself from the Russiainvestigation, which led to the appointment of the special counsel, which goes and on and on from there.”
“But the Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, speaking to the American Bar Association, defended the leadership saying he and Jeff Sessions are bound and they're determined to not repeat the mistakes of past leaders at the DOJ,” Roberts added.
“The team that was appointed by President Trump very strong on ethics and professionalism,” Roberts said, quoting Rosenstein. “Let’s see, the president is upset at Jeff Sessions. Again, every time he sees him, he sees the word ‘recusal’ pasted on his forehead. He doesn’t particularly like Rod Rosenstein either, and he doesn't like the way he’s overseeing the [special counsel Robert] Mueller investigation.”
“The best job security that Jeff Sessions has right now is Rod Rosenstein,” Roberts said, adding “Democrats would slow-walk any attempt by the president to nominate somebody to replace Jeff Sessions and install his own political leadership at the Department of Justice.”
“Slow walk like the beltway in morning rush,” Smith surmised. “Hardly moving at all.”
As the National Rifle Association, the most influential gun rights advocacy group in the U.S., comes under pressure from victims’ groups and gun control advocates, internet companies like Amazon, Apple and YouTube are finding themselves uncomfortably close to the center of the controversy. These are among the companies that currently stream the NRA’s official video channel, NRA TV.
NRA TV has become a central focus in what could be a threshold moment in the national gun debate. In the wake of the school shooting in Parkland, Florida, that claimed 17 lives, a consumer activist movement has worked to peel back the tight grip the NRA holds over the country’s gun policy. The effort has driven some airlines, insurance companies, car rental companies and banks to sever their commercial and professional ties with the NRA. Now gun control activists are turning their full attention to the internet.
In the world of online politics, it’s not unusual to find videos inciting hostility. On Feb. 12, just days before the Parkland shooting, one such YouTube video featured a pundit smashing a sledgehammer through a TV set that featured liberal commentators, later declaring, “If we want to take back this nation from socialists who are out to destroy it … you better believe we’ll be pushing the truth on them.” But that video was not the seething production of an obscure far-right blogger. It was the latest episode of the official video channel of the NRA.
NRA TV is not merely a platform for promoting Second Amendment rights or engaging gun enthusiasts. As a researcher of online extremism, I’d contend it has become one of the web’s most incendiary hotspots for stoking outrage at liberal America, attacking perceived enemies like Black Lives Matter and the Women’s March, and promoting the message that America is under threat from the so-called “violent left” – an especially alarming term, coming from a gun lobby.
NRA TV presents itself as a part of a movement for truth and facts.
Given the channel’s association with the NRA, a newcomer to NRA TV might reasonably expect information on gun safety, Second Amendment rights and a community for firearms enthusiasts and collectors. Its focus is none of those things. Instead, visitors find a virtual hornet’s nest of hard-right politics.
In my work, I came across NRA TV while tracking far-right and far-left groups’ activities on Twitter. One such group had retweeted a video from NRA TV featuring host Dana Loesch calling the mainstream media “the rat bastards of the earth” whom she was happy to see “curb stomped.”
The acidic tone of NRA TV represents an astonishing evolution of an organization that began as a rifle club to promote marksmanship. Even the NRA of the 1980s, which ran TV ads on the right to bear arms, would be hard to recognize as a forebear to today’s version. My study of 224 NRA TV videos and tweets over two months in 2017 found that only 34 dealt with topics related to direct gun advocacy or gun ownership. The remaining 190, or about five out of every six posts, were trained on perceived political enemies, trading the core mission of gun rights for incessant attacks on “crazed liberals” and “hateful leftists.”
The dystopian picture that NRA TV portrays includes government officials encouraging violent protests against conservative groups, and a media-sponsored “war on cops.” The NRA believes it must be ready to defend itself and the country against these and other forces.
In addition to publishing its own material, NRA TV also retweets others’ hostile messages.
In a video that streamed to NRA TV’s 260,000 Twitter followers in August 2017, host Grant Stinchfield asked his audience,
“What scares me more than the North Korean crazed tyrant? The violent left and the crazed liberals who lead them. They like North Korea also pose a clear and present danger to America … Make no mistake, the lying leftist media, the elitist cringe-worthy celebrities, and the anti-American politicians – who make up the violent left – don’t just hate President Trump, they hate you.”
The insinuation that left-wing forces are out to destroy the country by sabotaging its institutions is a demagogic refrain with echoes of the anti-communist McCarthy era. But it is particularly unsettling when it emanates from a lobby that simultaneously promotes the necessity of gun ownership. Which brings us back to Amazon.
Pulling the plug
After another shooting at an American high school at the hands of a 19-year-old with an AR-15, the gun-control advocacy movement has turned its attention to its chief opponent, the NRA. The strategy is to dislodge the influence of the NRA by going after its support system. That has led activists to Amazon, Apple, Roku and other services that stream NRA TV content. While other companies support the NRA financially, these internet giants provide perhaps a more valuable currency in their prominent platforms that allow the NRA to distribute its message.
Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America is one organization leading the charge for internet companies to drop NRA TV, citing its “violence-inciting programming.” The group is joined by some of the survivors of the Parkland shooting, such as David Hogg, who is encouraging people to boycott tech companies that carry NRA TV. A petition on Change.org, with 240,000 signatures as of March 1, is simultaneously calling on Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos to purge NRA content from his site’s offerings. And on Twitter, #dropNRATV is gaining steam, even as the channel continues to host controversial content.
The growing wave of consumer activists has effectively placed the internet’s biggest gatekeepers in the middle of America’s hyperpolarized gun debate. As web hosts, their power to amplify or quiet controversial messages is unmatched in the modern media landscape. But in many ways, this is not strictly a gun issue. Rather, a closer look at NRA TV suggests that this is also an issue of community standards, which are well within a web host’s domain.
And in recent months, YouTube and Twitter have each demonstrated a willingness to enforce stricter terms of service prohibiting hateful, dangerous or abusive material from their networks. So the real question that these internet companies now face is whether an NRA tirade about American liberals posing a “clear and present danger” is legitimate gun advocacy, or barefaced incitement.
The FBI on Wednesday posted a link to newly unsealed files on legendary director Stanley Kubrick, best known for films such as "Dr. Strangelove," "2001: A Space Odyssey" and "A Clockwork Orange."
One particularly strange file reveals that a Navy admiral was furious with Kubrick's portrayal of the American military in "Dr. Strangelove," a satirical movie that featured a crazed general intentionally starting a nuclear war with the Soviet Union.
According to the file, Admiral Arleigh Burke contacted the FBI to complain about "Dr. Strangelove," as well as the movie "Seven Days in May" for being derogatory toward the military. He was particularly concerned that the films showed a successful communist influence aimed at getting Americans to question the value of their armed forces.
Despite the admiral's concerns, however, the FBI said that its files "contain no derogatory information regarding Kubrick."
And in recent months, YouTube and Twitter have each demonstrated a willingness to