Mediaboss Marketing

"The Fake News Media hates when I use what has turned out to be my very powerful Social Media - over 100 million people! I can go around them," Trump tweeted.

If Trump believes this -- and he certainly seem to -- it shows a fundamental misunderstanding of how the media views the president's Twitter feed and how he employs it.

The reality is this: Every political journalist in the world is absolutely thrilled that Donald Trump not only tweets but does with the frequency and bluntness that he does. NO reporter wants Donald Trump to stop tweeting. Not one.

Trump's Twitter feed gives the political media -- and anyone else who follows him -- a direct look into his thought processes. We know what he is thinking about -- or angry about -- at all times of day. That's absolutely invaluable. It's "The President: Raw and Uncut."

Even as his White House will be excoriating the media for focusing too little on some policy roll-out or another, Trump will drop a series of tweets about the "witch hunt" Russia investigation or complain, as he did yesterday, about why the Justice Department isn't investigating alleged improprieties surrounding Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign.

All presidents have private thoughts that sometimes (often?) run counter to the official message the White House is pushing in a given day, week or month. But, no past president has been willing to put those discrepancies on public display in front of the tens of millions of people who follow him on Twitter before Trump.

What sort of reporter would want that pipeline to end?

The people who do want Trump to stop tweeting or to tweet less aren't the media. They're Republicans and Trump loyalists who believe his willingness to tell people exactly what is on his mind at any minute of the day fundamentally undermines the White House's efforts to find some consistent messaging and build the momentum the administration has been sorely lacking to date.

"[Twitter is] a powerful tool, but I do believe that it can be used more effectively to achieve his purpose," New York Rep. Lee Zeldin, a Trump supporter, said on CNN Friday morning. "I don't know the strategy behind, you know, this morning -- this latest tweet you are asking me about. But if there is a bigger strategy that makes sense, I'm all ears."

If you're reading this, Mr. Trump, let me be crystal clear as a card-carrying member of the media: Please keep tweeting. It provides us insight into how you think that we have never had before and may never get again from a president. Period.

See the original post:
The one big thing Donald Trump gets totally wrong about the media - CNN

And, man, did she have something to say Friday. Here's her full statement on President Donald Trump's latest tweets about the special counsel investigation being led by former FBI Director Bob Mueller:

"I'm growing increasingly concerned that the President will attempt to fire not only Robert Mueller, the special counsel investigating possible obstruction of justice, but also Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein who appointed Mueller.

"The message the President is sending through his tweets is that he believes the rule of law doesn't apply to him and that anyone who thinks otherwise will be fired. That's undemocratic on its face and a blatant violation of the President's oath of office.

"First of all, the President has no authority to fire Robert Mueller. That authority clearly lies with the attorney generalor in this case, because the attorney general has recused himself, with the deputy attorney general. Rosenstein testified under oath this week that he would not fire Mueller without good cause and that none exists.

"And second, if the President thinks he can fire Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein and replace him with someone who will shut down the investigation, he's in for a rude awakening. Even his staunchest supporters will balk at such a blatant effort to subvert the law.

"It's becoming clear to me that the President has embarked on an effort to undermine anyone with the ability to bring any misdeeds to light, be that Congress, the media or the Justice Department. The Senate should not let that happen. We're a nation of laws that apply equally to everyone, a lesson the President would be wise to learn."

Just a few lines worth reading again:

* "The message the President is sending through his tweets is that he believes the rule of law doesn't apply to him."

* "If the President thinks he can fire Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein and replace him with someone who will shut down the investigation, he's in for a rude awakening."

* "It's becoming clear to me that the President has embarked on an effort to undermine anyone with the ability to bring any misdeeds to light."

* "We're a nation of laws that apply equally to everyone, a lesson the President would be wise to learn."

Any one of those lines is a 99-mile-an-hour fastball thrown way, way inside. Taken all altogether, it's a statement very clearly designed to send a message to Trump.

That message? Enough! Time to start acting like a president.

To be clear: Feinstein is a Democrat. She represents one of the most Democratic states in the country and risks absolutely nothing, politically speaking, by issuing a statement like this one that blisters Trump.

But she is also one of the institutions in the Senate, having spent the last 25 years in the chamber. Unlike her longtime colleague Barbara Boxer, who retired in 2016, Feinstein is not seen as terribly partisan and generally enjoys strong across-the-aisle relationships.

"Every conversation that I've had with her now that she's ranking member has been not only friendly, but has been productive, and these little heads-to-heads that you see us having when the committee's actually functioning, work things out right then."

In short: Feinstein isn't just a predictable partisan or someone who pops off at the slightest political provocation. This statement is a purposeful attempt to make clear that Trump has crossed a line and that he needs to take one big step back.

My prediction: He won't.

See more here:
Dianne Feinstein is done pulling punches when it comes to Donald Trump - CNN

New York Times

Donald Trump, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, 'All Eyez on Me': Your Friday Briefing New York Times Steve Garvey, a former major league star, led a prayer before the congressional baseball game in Washington on Thursday. Credit Al Drago/The New York Times. (Want to get this briefing by email? Here's the sign-up.) Good morning. Here's what you need to ... and more »

Originally posted here:
Donald Trump, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, 'All Eyez on Me': Your Friday Briefing - New York Times

Where Trump falls curiously short, though, is in his day-to-day commitments. They'll come. It'll just be a few weeks, he says. But then the weeks drag on. The phenomenon isn't new, exactly, as his campaign was filled with empty threats -- the infamous "beans" were never spilled on Ted Cruz's wife -- and unfulfilled guarantees, like the press conference Trump said, in early August of 2016, Melania Trump would hold "over the next couple of weeks." It never came.

Trump carried this tic into the White House, where after five months in office, his habit of touting, then failing to deliver either timely policy proposals or evidence to back an assortment of claims, has become a recurring theme of his presidency.

"We're going to be announcing something, I would say over the next two or three weeks, that will be phenomenal in terms of tax and developing our aviation infrastructure," Trump said on February 9. The actual outlines of a tax plan (cuts, not reform) didn't arrive until late April.

On June 5, he held an elaborate signing ceremony for the purpose of suggesting to Congress in a memo it move to privatize air traffic control.

To this day, no clear legislative text has emerged for either issue on Capitol Hill.

Funds to build "the wall" have been a budgetary nonstarter, despite Trump's claim at CPAC in late February that construction "is going to start soon, way ahead of schedule." He came closer to the mark on health care. The House unveiled the first edition of the AHCA on March 6, in the ballpark of what Trump promised on February 18, when he told supporters in Florida, "We are going to be submitting, in a couple of weeks, a great health care plan."

But many of Trump's most high profile dodges and delays have less to do with legislation than his untamed Twitter finger and the administration's subsequent clean-up efforts. The suggestion he was using a secret taping system inside the White House set off a chain of events that led Trump to claim last week that he was "100%" willing to testify, under oath, about his conversations with fired FBI director James Comey.

We'll see how Trump responds now if special counsel Robert Mueller comes calling, but it's hard to imagine he would -- especially with a private lawyer now on the case -- rush to offer sworn testimony. Meanwhile, those alleged "tapes" have been much longer in the offing -- and are, so far as they are real, very much Trump's to deliver. At his convenience.

Speculation over the nature of the would-be recordings began on May 12, when the President threatened his erstwhile FBI chief in a morning tweet.

"James Comey better hope that there are no 'tapes' of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!", Trump said.

The "tapes" tweet echoed an earlier allegation, from March 4, when he alleged -- without any evidence -- that President Barack Obama "had my 'wires tapped' in Trump Tower" before the election. Despite repeated expressions of "confidence" that vindication was near, both by White House press secretary Sean Spicer and Trump, no proof was ever produced.

More recently, Trump and his top aides have been asked repeatedly about the Comey "tapes," and have, repeatedly, declined to provide a definitive answer as to whether or not they exist.

Asked by a reporter at his Monday briefing, Spicer punted again, saying that "the President made clear in the Rose Garden last week that he would have an announcement shortly."

Those comments, made during a joint news conference with Romanian President Klaus Iohannis, came last Friday. Asked on three times in the course of two separate exchanges, Trump first replied, "I'll tell you about that maybe sometime in the very near future," then, "I'll tell you about it over a very short period of time," and eventually, "Oh, you're going to be very disappointed when you hear the answer. Don't worry."

At this point, after all the hints and speculation, there is a precisely zero percent chance a real answer would be in any way "disappointing." Unfortunately, if past performance is any indication, Trump making good on his promise to tell seems about as likely.

Excerpt from:
Donald Trump promised. Now start waiting - CNN International

New York Times

Moving to Scuttle Obama Legacy, Donald Trump to Crack Down on Cuba New York Times WASHINGTON President Trump on Friday will move to halt the historic rapprochement between the United States and Cuba set in motion by former President Barack Obama, delivering a speech in Miami in which he plans to announce he is clamping down ... Donald Trump, in Little Havana, signs order reversing much of Obama's Cuba policySun Sentinel Trump to unveil new Cuba travel restrictions in aim to slam regime's human rights recordCNBC Donald Trump's new hardline policy on Cuba is yet another gift to RussiaQuartz Wall Street Journal (subscription) -The Independent -The Guardian -Politico all 245 news articles »

More:
Moving to Scuttle Obama Legacy, Donald Trump to Crack Down on Cuba - New York Times