Comments Off on Exclusive:CEO Who Just Went Toe-To-Toe With Donald Trump
This issue has many Faces. MA
Exclusive: CEO who just went toe-to-toe with Donald Trump says there was ‘no quid pro quo’ about Carrier
Abigail Stevenson,CNBC Mon, Dec 5 3:25 PM PST
Exclusive: CEO who just went toe-to-toe with Donald Trump…
United Technologies (UTX) CEO Greg Hayes told Jim Cramer in an exclusive interview on Monday about his conversation with Donald Trump last week, and says there was no “quid pro quo” with the president-elect.
“I think we came up with a relatively good solution for everybody … We still got to do the preponderance of the restructuring, which we were going to do anyways. So it’s — I would say no ‘deal,’ but at the end of the day a good deal for UTC,” Hayes told the ” Mad Money ” host.
United Technologies is the parent company of furnace and air conditioner maker Carrier, which was under fire by Trump on the campaign trail because of its plans to move some manufacturing operations to Mexico from Indiana. Trump used Carrier as an example to highlight the decline of manufacturing in America.
Ultimately, United Technologies agreed to receive $7 million in tax credits from the State of Indiana, issued at $700,000 per year for 10 years. Carrier also agreed to invest approximately $16 million in its Indiana facilities, and will keep more than 1,000 people employed in Indianapolis.
Hayes stated that he received a phone call from Trump a week before Thanksgiving, with a request from the president-elect to reexamine the decision to close the Indianapolis Carrier factory.
“He said, ‘We are going to do a lot of things in this country that are going to make it a lot more conducive to manufacturing. We are going to take the tax rate down; we are going to reduce all of this burdensome regulation. When all that happens you are going to be printing money, but I need you to relook at your decision to close the factory in Indiana,'” Hayes said.
Hayes confirmed that there is approximately 1 million manufacturing square feet in Mexico already, thus he considered it to be a natural evolution to close facilities in Indiana and move them to Mexico .
“Nor was there any, I would say, deal,” Hayes said about his conversation with Trump, “There was no quid pro quo for him to say ‘look, I am not going to tax you, if you don’t do this.’ He simply said ‘take a look at this.'”
And while Hayes did agree to keep employees in Indiana, he said he still considers free trade to be essential for the growth of the U.S.
“This country was founded on two principles, right – immigration and free trade. And that is what made America great over time because we had to develop and innovate in the U.S. and take those products and sell them around the world,” Hayes said.
Carrier will still close its Huntington, Indiana facility and move 700 jobs to Mexico
Comments Off on McConnell Cautions Replacement To Health Law To Take Time
This little article caught my attention because the current Congress (Dupublicans) have had years to alter the Affordable Care Act and have done nothing about it. Had the Congress done their job, the current Act would have been a better functioning LAW! It has surely helped millions but at the cost of others having no coverage and possibly dying for the lack of care. The time to act was sooner rather than later (now). MA
Many US cities are named after European cities but do not use the same pronunciation. Lima, Peru is pronounced LEEma, Lima Ohio is pronounced Lyma. Athens Greece is pronounced Athens (short A) and Athens, Georgia and Illinois are pronounced Athens,( long A). Cairo Egypt is pronounced Kyro, in Illinois its called Kayro. How about Worchester Ma. in England it’s Wooster. Leicester is Lester and it is the same in The U.S. New Ulm (MN, & Texas)) is pronounced New “oolm”. This is the process of Americanization of languages and people. Ulm as pronounced in the Original German is very different from the way it is pronounced in Oklahoma and Louisiana. In Germany its OOLM, in English its Ohm, the l is not as pronounced as heard in New Ulm (Texas). This a common occurrence in many Cities and areas in the US as the population changes from generation to generation becoming more Americanized. Some names remain primarily in tact from the original language while the pronunciation changes to become Americanized or more like original English words or names. Example : Los Angeles originally Los (long O) Angeles (g is pronounced ga as in gas). Yet we are against immigrants when immigrants are what we are. Imagine how the Native Americans felt when we encroached upon their lands, then under the guise of friendship fought them for their own lands, moved them in to ever shrinking “tribal lands” and confiscated those same legally given lands for the profit of big money people while the Native Americans got squat except the bias and derision of the ” emigrants” to North America. Now this confiscation is still evident in the pipeline stalemate. If this is not the same as the prior acts of aggression against Native people then what would we call it? This action is for short term gains with potential long term consequences as with so many previous historic takeovers. Apparently greed supercedes!
We have 4 years of wondering, assessing and regretting (in any order) what is ahead of us with the Trump Presidency. Since the new method of mass communication is the tweet, the next state of the Union will be about 15 minutes and will have no details. It will be interesting to see how the neer do well Congress does with “their” candidate. It is my hope that nothing dire occurs during his tenure but looking at the candidates’ selections for his cabinet one has to wonder what can we expect and the long-range effect. Looking at the first campaign promise to be kept:The Carrier deal is no deal for 1300 people and not much of a deal for the 700 who will remain. Looking at the numbers:7 million is what carrier gets in tax incentives this amounts to three hundred & fifty thousand dollars per (retained or not) worker. Needless to say not many if any of the remaining workers will be compensated anywhere near the saved thousands per year even with benefits. This leaves the question of where is this money going? Some may go to severance, pension payouts, unemployment or perhaps factory upgrades (robotics?). In the end there will be 1300 fewer jobs in Indiana and 1300 more jobs behind the Southwestern wall. A promise kept on the backs of the workers who supported the Boy King.
Illinois issues appear to be more apolitical and inane than based in reality. The current governor in my opinion won based on the weakness of the former governor and the publicly perceived impotence of the legislature. Since Mr. Rauner has had the office, the state has rapidly gone down a dimly lit path to stability. A State is NOT a business! The statement of running the state like a business is a great sound bite but just another election ear grabber. Most voters have no idea what that statement means but in the Governor’s mind it means running the state in the same pinch penny fashion as he has apparently run his businesses. In business these are the facts: you produce a product of some sort. You hire people to manufacture this product and of course you pay what is required for these hires to get the job done. Next you price the product to sell and pay for the labor and material including cost of shipping , receiving and other business expenses. As costs rise for whatever reason you have to adjust your selling price accordingly. This is not how it works in Government where your product is public service and the raising of costs is tied to taxes. So it appears that the way to make a Government solvent is to raise taxes in a way that still will benefit the population. Raising taxes is one way but if you stated that you would not raise taxes when you were running for office it becomes a bit hard to then raise taxes. So the issue is how do you fund a government without taxes? Attack the workers whose Union you see as the problem? Or take a sit down with the Unions to determine what can be done? How about starting a full blown assault on the Unions and the established political system (no matter how flawed)? I would offer that perhaps explaining to the taxpayers how their demands influence spending in relation to the basic needs of running a Government (which includes infrastructure maintenance and the agencies that provide services). Meanwhile this long lasting stalemate has cost jobs, stopped education for some and caused untold issues for others. It appears that this business model has failed and looks a lot like the companies that have gone under due to this impasse. I do not see a second term in the Governors future and of course it is not an issue as his financial picture is quite rosy unlike many Illinoisans who have suffered under his actions or lack of.
This election is a dream come true for the Dupublicans as they feel now they can run the country as they see fit ( notice I said as “they” see fit) no matter what is desired by the voters and needed to run the country. Since the existing Congress has done nothing of merit except obstruct, what do you suppose they will do for (or to) us now? My expectations are that the Congress will create another pre 2008 scenario where the neediest will still be needy, the economy will still slide and we could very well still be at full-out war in the middle east.
Will the new President truly be President or just a shill for the Dupublican Party? After denouncing the candidate earlier, the main Dupublicans , Ryan and McConnell seem to be smiling through clenched teeth (in photos published).There are several possible scenarios for the next 4 years:
Some good things will be done
Our allies will be still our allies (or not)
The Congress will continue their anti citizen activities
None of his agenda will be accomplished but stifled by the Congress or replaced with what they like.
Trumps backers will remember him for what he did not do and not elect him
Trump will find that the Presidency is not another Trump Company that he can control.
The Trump method of lashing out at the media over what is reported (true or not) will be watched and tested.
There are a number of unknowns for the actions of this President who in my opinion has a business (his) as usual attitude toward the top office. Unfortunately the proof of good or bad will come at a cost to all of us. It has become a national concern and not just the cause of fringe elements. Our only job in this is to start now and assessing what your elected officials have done in the past 4 years, pay more attention to the news (real news) about politics. The key to good government is a well informed public.
The current political after “party” is a watchable event. The Dupublicans are still in a quandary as to what to expect from “their” President. Their expectations are high in getting “their” agenda in place. Our expectations as voters is preparing for the worse and hoping for the best. Our first issue is to insure all eligible voters do vote in upcoming local, State and Federal elections. Since we do not know who will be running for what offices aside from the existing office holders we need to pay attention to any upcoming potential candidates. The Trump administration will be a demonstration of disarray that will affect us all for years to come. The people in his administration are not dumb people but true idealists who have lost sight of what Government is about. Their focus is on converting Mr. Trumps statements into implementable items. The issue will be what the Dupublican Congress will allow to be done and what the Congress will push for. Either way there is a boil brewing in government that will not move us too far ahead of where we are now. The primary things to watch” Education, The High court, International relations and Health care. The smaller issues are the rise of the Racist fringe and the unenlightened who only want something better for themselves and their families. At some point the unenlightened will become enlightened and understand their situation has not changed much since their Congressional representatives are not doing anything different. You can be sure that the Pro-Trump media and the near to far right media will be extolling the actions of the Trump administration while the “main stream media” will be trying to keep the truth out there.
This article caught my eye while scanning news for this blog. Even though I already know that Racists do what Racist do, Bigots- religious, gender, ethnic or any other types do what they do. These are the folks emboldened by Mr. Trump. His tolerance of their actions before and now after the election amounts to abetting criminals as evidenced in the article below. This is not just about Race, this is about America as we want it to be and as the Constitution provides. MA
They said despicable things about the Obamas but say they’re not racists. Yes, they are
President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama arrive for a Presidential Medal of Freedom ceremony in the East Room of the White House, Tuesday, Nov. 22, 2016, in Washington. Andrew HarnikAP
President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama arrive for a Presidential Medal of Freedom ceremony in the East Room of the White House, Tuesday, Nov. 22, 2016, in Washington. Andrew HarnikAP
By Roger Guffey
(This column first appeared in the Lexington (Ky.,) Herald-Leader.)
Psychologists have long recognized rationalization as a defense mechanism that people use to excuse unacceptable or offensive behaviors by offering some pseudo-logical reasoning or self-serving explanations.
Perhaps we justify that sumptuous dessert because we have earned a reward for sticking to our diet. Or we tell our boss we are sick, when we really want to go to the last game of the season. Some of these excuses are harmless, but far too often they are not.
For the last eight years, people who have mounted despicable attacks on President Obama and his family have tried to rationalize their bigotries. Consider these examples:
A Republican candidate here in Kentucky won a legislative seat, even though he had posted images of the Obama family as a band of monkeys, but he says he is not a racist.
Yes, you are.
A public official in West Virginia said she will be glad to have a dignified white first lady, instead of seeing an ape in high heels. But she says she is not a racist.
Yes, you are.
In Sheridan, Ind., people made a parade float of President Obama in a toilet, but said they are not racists.
Yes, you are.
A mayor in Pennsylvania ran a picture of Michele Obama on a wagon of orangutans under the caption ‘Move-in day at the White House’, but denied being a racist.
Yes, you are.
The people who insist that President Obama is not a native-born American deny they are racists.
Yes, you are.
A candidate in Tennessee posted a billboard with the caption “MAKE AMERICA WHITE AGAIN,” but he denied that he is a racist.
Yes, you are.
A mayor in Washington State ran an image of Michelle Obama as a gorilla, saying she could be attractive only to another monkey like her husband. Of course, he says he is not a racist.
Yes, you are.
When a gorilla escaped from a zoo in South Carolina, a GOP politician in South Carolina posted a Facebook page telling people to be on the lookout for Michelle Obama’s ancestor, but he says he is not racist.
Yes, you are.
After the 2008 election, some right-wing extremists circulated bumper stickers, quoting Psalm 109, that pray for God to kill President Obama, leaving his wife a widow and his children orphans, but they denied they are racists.
Yes, you are.
One of my favorite Abraham Lincoln stories relates his encounter with an elitist lawyer who, during a trial, dismissed him as a rustic bumpkin. Lincoln posed him a simple riddle. “If we call a tail a leg, how many legs does a horse have?’ The smug lawyer replied, “Five.” Lincoln corrected him. “No, he still has four legs, because calling a tail a leg does not make it one.”
People are free to engage in self-delusion if they wish, but if it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck and swims like a duck, it is a duck, and these comments are racist. But perhaps these bigots should heed the poet Robert Burns’ advice in the poem “To A Louse.”
‘O would some power the gift give us to see ourselves as others see us.’
(Roger Guffey lives in Lexington, Ky., and is a math professor and a Sunday school teacher.)
Comments Off on We Tracked Down A Fake-News Creator In The Suburbs. Here’s What We Learned
I am hoping enough people read this to understand how they are manipulated into poor choices and opinions, I have mentioned many times the way we are “advertised” into saying, thinking and acting in a certain way. MA
“The whole idea from the start was to build a site that could kind of infiltrate the echo chambers of the alt-right.”
A lot of fake and misleading news stories were shared across social media during the election. One that got a lot of traffic had this headline: “FBI Agent Suspected In Hillary Email Leaks Found Dead In Apparent Murder-Suicide.” The story is completely false, but it was shared on Facebook over half a million times.
We wondered who was behind that story and why it was written. It appeared on a site that had the look and feel of a local newspaper. Denverguardian.com even had the local weather. But it had only one news story — the fake one.
We tried to look up who owned it and hit a wall. The site was registered anonymously. So we brought in some professional help.
By day, John Jansen is head of engineering at Master-McNeil Inc., a tech company in Berkeley, Calif. In the interest of real news he helped us track down the owner of Denverguardian.com.
Jansen started by looking at the site’s history. “Commonly that’s called scraping or crawling websites,” he says.
Jansen is kind of like an archaeologist. He says that nothing you do on the Web disappears — it just gets buried — like a fossil. But if you do some digging you’ll find those fossils and learn a lot of history.
The “Denver Guardian” was built and designed using a pretty common platform — WordPress. It’s used by bloggers and people who want to create their own websites. Jansen found that the first entry ever for the site was done by someone with the handle LetTexasSecede.
“That was sort of the thread that started to unravel everything,” Jansen says. “I was able to track that through to a bunch of other sites which are where that handle is also present.”
The sites include NationalReport.net, USAToday.com.co, WashingtonPost.com.co. All the addresses linked to a single rented server inside Amazon Web Services. That meant they were all very likely owned by the same company. Jansen found an email address on one of those sites and was able to link that address to a name: Jestin Coler.
Online, Coler was listed as the founder and CEO of a company called Disinfomedia. Coler’s LinkedIn profile said he once sold magazine subscriptions, worked as a database administrator and as a freelance writer for among others, International Yachtsman magazine. And, using his name, we found a home address.
On a warm, sunny afternoon I set out with a producer for a suburb of Los Angeles. Coler lived in a middle-class neighborhood of pastel-colored one-story beach bungalows. His home had an unwatered lawn — probably the result of California’s ongoing drought. There was a black minivan in the driveway and a large prominent American flag.
We rang the front doorbell and a man answered, his face obscured by a heavy mesh steel screen. I asked for Jestin Coler. The man indicated that’s who he was. But when I asked about Disinfomedia, he said, “I don’t know what to tell you guys. Have a good day.”
We left Coler our contact information thinking he wasn’t likely to talk. But a couple of hours later he had a change of heart. He sent us an email and we set up an interview.
Coler is a soft-spoken 40-year-old with a wife and two kids. He says he got into fake news around 2013 to highlight the extremism of the white nationalist alt-right.
“The whole idea from the start was to build a site that could kind of infiltrate the echo chambers of the alt-right, publish blatantly or fictional stories and then be able to publicly denounce those stories and point out the fact that they were fiction,” Coler says.
He was amazed at how quickly fake news could spread and how easily people believe it. He wrote one fake story for NationalReport.net about how customers in Colorado marijuana shops were using food stamps to buy pot.
“What that turned into was a state representative in the House in Colorado proposing actual legislation to prevent people from using their food stamps to buy marijuana based on something that had just never happened,” Coler says
During the run-up to the presidential election, fake news really took off. “It was just anybody with a blog can get on there and find a big, huge Facebook group of kind of rabid Trump supporters just waiting to eat up this red meat that they’re about to get served,” Coler says. “It caused an explosion in the number of sites. I mean, my gosh, the number of just fake accounts on Facebook exploded during the Trump election.”
Coler says his writers have tried to write fake news for liberals — but they just never take the bait.
Coler’s company, Disinfomedia, owns many faux news sites — he won’t say how many. But he says his is one of the biggest fake-news businesses out there, which makes him a sort of godfather of the industry.
At any given time, Coler says, he has between 20 and 25 writers. And it was one of them who wrote the story in the “Denver Guardian” that an FBI agent who leaked Clinton emails was killed. Coler says that over 10 days the site got 1.6 million views. He says stories like this work because they fit into existing right-wing conspiracy theories.
“The people wanted to hear this,” he says. “So all it took was to write that story. Everything about it was fictional: the town, the people, the sheriff, the FBI guy. And then … our social media guys kind of go out and do a little dropping it throughout Trump groups and Trump forums and boy it spread like wildfire.”
And as the stories spread, Coler makes money from the ads on his websites. He wouldn’t give exact figures, but he says stories about other fake-news proprietors making between $10,000 and $30,000 a month apply to him. Coler fits into a pattern of other faux news sites that make good money, especially by targeting Trump supporters.
However, Coler insists this is not about money. It’s about showing how easily fake news spreads. And fake news spread wide and far before the election. When I pointed out to Coler that the money gave him a lot of incentive to keep doing it regardless of the impact, he admitted that was “correct.”
Coler says he has tried to shine a light on the problem of fake news. He has spoken to the media about it. But those organizations didn’t know who he actually was. He gave them a fake name: Allen Montgomery.
Coler, a registered Democrat, says he has no regrets about his fake news empire. He doesn’t think fake news swayed the election.
“There are many factors as to why Trump won that don’t involve fake news,” he says. “As much as I like Hillary, she was a poor candidate. She brought in a lot of baggage.
Coler doesn’t think fake news is going away. One of his sites — NationalReport.net — was flagged as fake news under a new Google policy, and Google stopped running ads on it. But Coler had other options.
“There are literally hundreds of ad networks,” he says. “Early last week, my inbox was just filled every day with people because they knew that Google was cracking down — hundreds of people wanting to work with my sites.”
Coler says he has been talking it over with his wife and may be getting out of the fake-news racket. But, he says, dozens, maybe hundreds of entrepreneurs will be ready to take his place. And he thinks it will only get harder to tell their websites from real news sites. They know now that fake news sells and they will only be in it for the money.
Below are highlights of NPR’s interview with Coler.
Interview Highlights
Tell me a little about why you started Disinfomedia?
Late 2012, early 2013 I was spending a lot of time researching what is now being referred to as the alt-right. I identified a problem with the news that they were spreading and created Disinfomedia as a response to that. The whole idea from the start was to build a site that could infiltrate the echo chambers of the alt-right, publish blatantly false or fictional stories and then be able to publicly denounce those stories and point out the fact that they were fiction.
What got you engaged in this?
My educational background is in political science. I’ve always enjoyed the ideas of propaganda and misinformation. Then I coupled that with an interest in what makes things go viral. So that led me to finding those groups and ultimately to finding contributors. But it was just something I had an interest in that I wanted to pursue.
When did you notice that fake news does best with Trump supporters?
Well, this isn’t just a Trump-supporter problem. This is a right-wing issue. Sarah Palin’s famous blasting of the lamestream media is kind of record and testament to the rise of these kinds of people. The post-fact era is what I would refer to it as. This isn’t something that started with Trump. This is something that’s been in the works for a while. His whole campaign was this thing of discrediting mainstream media sources, which is one of those dog whistles to his supporters. When we were coming up with headlines it’s always kind of about the red meat. Trump really got into the red meat. He knew who his base was. He knew how to feed them a constant diet of this red meat.
We’ve tried to do similar things to liberals. It just has never worked, it never takes off. You’ll get debunked within the first two comments and then the whole thing just kind of fizzles out.
How many domains do you own and run?
Well, I would say there’s somewhere around 25 domains that I am currently managing. National Report has been my bread and butter, where I’ve spent most of my time. I have people who work with me and for me in developing and maintaining the other sites and social media kind of stuff. [Coler later said not all his sites are fake news.] So I, for the most part, focus on National Report, and a lot of the other stuff is run by other folks on the team.
So, you’re the publisher of an empire.
Well I wouldn’t go so far as to call it an empire but, yes, its several sites [chuckle].
How many people do you have writing for you?
It comes and goes, and as for actual employed writers, again these guys sort of make their own money through ad code. So I don’t say, ‘Hey, you have to write 10 stories this week’ and this and that. Really, we have a more free-form idea where people, when their creativity strikes them then they can write something. And if they’re in a slump then they just go dormant for a while. With that said, at any given time there’s probably 20, 25 contributors all over the country. …
Talk about the “Denver Guardian.”
Well, it’s kind of a side project. We have some people working on next steps in the fake-news industry, and that came from that whole discussion. We had purchased several domain names that sounded legitimate. … More local news sort of stories. The idea was to make the sites look as legit as possible so the home page is going to be local news and local forecast, local sports, some obituaries and things of that nature, and then the actual fake news stories were going to be buried off the home page.
We’ve tried lots of things in the past. The dot-com-dot-co domains were something I toyed in for a while. Those I quickly got away from because you don’t get away long with borrowing someone’s copyright or trademark. That was something that worked very well from a fake-news perspective. People were fooled into the domain name, but that wasn’t so much what we were after. So again, the next step was to go after more city-type sites. And the “Denver Guardian” was one of those sites.
You’re talking about the future of this (fake-news business) which looks more insidious because it’s more real?
That’s the way that it’s going to be. Not just from where I am. I mean, this is probably going to be my last run in the fake-news biz, but I can promise you that it’s not going to go away. It’s even going to grow bigger and it’s going to be harder to identify as it kind of evolves through these steps. …
Do you know who wrote the actual FBI Clinton story?
I do know who wrote the story, but only through an anonymous pen name. Privacy is something that we take very seriously in our writers group. The actual reasonings behind that story … it’s one of hundreds that have been written about mysterious deaths of Clinton associates or political foes. This one kind of took off more than others, I believe, just because of the nature of the story. The people wanted to hear this. So all it took was to write that story. Everything about it was fictional. The town, the people, the sheriff, the FBI guy. Then, we had our social media guys kind of go out and do a little dropping it throughout Trump groups and Trump forums and boy it spread like wildfire.
Why hide your identity?
This isn’t the safest business to be in, to be honest. Just the number of death threats I’ve received. I have a beautiful family, a beautiful life.
Some of these people that we … bait is probably the right word — are often — let’s call them the deplorables, right? They’re not the safest crowd. Some of them I would consider domestic terrorists. So they’re just not people that I want to be knocking on my door.
It seems like National Report is getting spoofier.
If you went to National Report today, it’s specifically satire. “Chris Christie nominated to Supreme Food Court.” “Sarah Palin Banning Muslims from Entering Bristol Palin.” They’re a little bit more offensive than some people care for their satire. I mean fat-shaming and slut-shaming isn’t something that is normally met with applause. But again, it’s a lot more fun in nature.
Do you make serious money?
It depends on what you would call serious money. I think I do pretty well.
Can you say how well?
I would rather not. There have been some people who have been reported on recently. The folks in Long Beach that were doing just all right stuff. They were reporting $10,000 to $30,000 a month; I think that’s probably a relative ballpark.
So you’re doing as well as those?
Yes.
You’re making money through the ads?
Yes.
Who do you work with?
We have several advertisers. Google was one, although they shut down my account last week. We’ve replaced them with other advertisers.
Can I ask who?
There are literally hundreds of ad networks. Literally hundreds. Last week my inbox was just filled everyday with people, because they knew that Google was cracking down — hundreds of people wanting to work with my sites. I kind of applaud Google for their steps, although I think what they’re doing is kind of random. They don’t really have a process in place for identifying these things. I happen to know a very successful site that, as of today, of this morning is still serving Google ads. So it seems to be a kind of arbitrary step that they’re taking either based on, I don’t know if it was my reputation within the industry or specifically the “Denver Guardian” site that angered them, or I don’t know what it is, but back to your question, there’s hundreds of people that will work with me.
What can be done about fake news?
Some of this has to fall on the readers themselves. The consumers of content have to be better at identifying this stuff. We have a whole nation of media-illiterate people. Really, there needs to be something done.
Do you consider yourself an entrepreneur?
Sure.
Are you one of the biggest in the fake-news biz?
If you look at someone who has specifically sometimes peddled in fictional news then I think that I would probably be considered one of the larger sites.
As a liberal, do you have any regrets?
I don’t. Again, this is something that I’ve been crying about for a while. But outside of that, there are many factors as to why Trump won that don’t involve fake news, right? As much as I like Hillary, she was a poor candidate. She brought in a lot of baggage.
You don’t feel responsible.
I do not.
Do you think you would have kept doing it if it wasn’t so lucrative?
Really, the financial part of it isn’t the only motivator for me. I do enjoy making a mess of the people that share the content that comes out of our site. It’s not just the financial incentive for me. I still enjoy the game I guess.
Would you do this all over again?
Well, I guess it came to a head here and we’re talking about it. It’ll be interesting to see what happens moving forward. If I had to, if I knew specifically the “Denver Guardian” situation, that would have been handled differently. But everything else, as far as the work I’ve done with National Report, I’m very proud of, and I’m going to continue doing it.
I’ve written a lot of pretty rough things about Donald Trump over the last 18 months. I’ve called him an entertainer and an emotional extremist, a guy with a black hole t his center. I’ve likened him to P.T. Barnum and a dime store Psychic.
Not once, though, have I suggested that Trump is, personally, a racist or an anti-Semite, which are labels people throw around too often these days. He’s always struck me as an opportunist more than anything else — an act in search of an audience, which he just happened to find in some of the darkest corners of the American psyche.
I figured that if a loud chunk of conservative voters had been anxiously agitating for someone to champion, say, antipoverty programs instead of a wall, Trump would have jumped on that horse just as quickly. Whatever his flaws, I didn’t take him for a devoted bigot.
It’s only now, after another staggering week in our fast unraveling society, that I find myself asking a question I really never imagined asking.
Does the president-elect of the United States feel some genuine kinship with the white nationalists he’s managed to embolden? Or does he just think it’s not a big deal if a bunch of crazy guys go around saluting him like Nazis?
To be clear, I’ve never managed to get very excited about the white power folks who pop up in the news sporadically, marching in parades or holding little conferences in some backwoods Best Western. They’ve always seemed more sad than menacing to me, like the clowns at some crumbling, last-ditch carnival.
But if you haven’t yet watched this video of white nationalists “heiling” Trump in Washington last weekend, you should, because it’s really something.
Here’s a recognized leader of the so-called alt-right movement from which Trump has drawn support and counsel, a guy who wouldn’t look at all out of place as a swastika-clad extra in “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” doing a little Hitler impression in Trump’s honor and railing against the media in the original German. (“One wonders if these people are people at all,” he says, which sounds to me like an invitation to violence.)
And this isn’t in some drab Southern banquet room, but rather in the Ronald Reagan Federal Building, a few blocks from the White House. (You’d think these people would at least have had the decency to walk across the plaza to the building named for Woodrow Wilson, who would have agreed with them when it came to mixing races.)
To keep this in perspective, which is important, we’re talking here about maybe 200 white guys in a country of 300 million-plus; it’s not like they’re goose-stepping through the streets by the hundreds of thousands. It’s also not like Trump endorsed the rally or sent a video expressing his gratitude.
But it’s not as if Trump has nothing to do with the brazenness of it, either. Even Republicans have to acknowledge that in his rhetoric and rallies throughout the campaign, Trump relegitimized a kind of racism and xenophobia that had been finally relegated to the margins of public life. He behaved like a human Ouija board, unleashing spirits better consigned to the netherworld.
This is distinct from your run-of-the-mill resentment in white, working-class enclaves, your basic backlash to political correctness gone badly awry, for which I actually have some sympathy. This is taunting Jewish journalists about going to the ovens. This is swastikas popping up again in our cities and suburbs.
This is ordinary citizens walking down the street and being told to go back to their own countries because they aren’t white. This is grown men who run around bullying every guy who doesn’t accept the superiority of white males by calling him a “cuck,” whatever that means.
This is new, or at least resurgent, and it is profoundly frightening to an awful lot of Americans at the moment.
So what is Trump’s response, now that he’s taken on the task of making America great again?
Well, he certainly had no problem summoning outrage this week. On Twitter, he railed against the impertinent cast of “Hamilton,” which he called an overrated show, and against “Saturday Night Live,” which he thought one-sided and not funny. He found time to bitterly complain to the president of NBC News about a photo that made him appear to have a double chin. (Reality is rough, even for a reality TV star.)
But when it came to leading white supremacists raising stiff arms to him as if he were Hitler reincarnate, Trump at first said nothing, and then, under pressure, allowed his spokeswoman to release a terse statement tepidly disavowing their support.
Pushed repeatedly about this at a meeting with reporters and editors from the New York Times, Trump said, “Boy, you are really into this stuff,” as if surprised it should keep coming up. “It’s not a group I want to energize,” he said at one point, “and if they are energized I want to look into it and find out why.”
This, of course, was after he named Steve Bannon, an intellectual hero of the alt-right movement, as his top White House strategist — a pick he much more vehemently defended in the same interview. It was after he chose Jeff Sessions, who was kept off the federal bench because of his ignominious record on race, as the nation’s attorney general, and Michael Flynn, a general who regards all Islam as the enemy, as his national security adviser.
To be clear, Trump isn’t the only Republican who’s oddly reticent when it comes to white nationalists. Where’s Paul Ryan or Mitch McConnell? How about loyalists like Rudy Giuliani, who ran the nation’s most Jewish city, or Chris Christie, who would never let this kind of thing go unanswered in New Jersey?
Where’s Jared Kushner, the omnipresent son-in-law, whom Trump apparently trusts with negotiating Middle East peace, and who is, incidentally, an orthodox Jew? Does he not think this might be a moment to exert some influence?
What about all those “Never Trump” leaders who were supposedly standing for a more enlightened Republican Party? I guess Mitt Romney can’t afford to get sidetracked denouncing racism, now that he’s trying to take back all the things he said about Trump and get himself appointed secretary of state.
(By the way, Mitt, when that phone finally rings, you’d better be prepared to hear laughter on the other end. This whole business of making you grovel is what they call payback in the big city.)
But Trump’s is the voice that matters most. He’s the one who ignited new hope for a racist, authoritarian renaissance — and if those hopes aren’t shared by some vast legion of white Americans, neither are they confined to a few hundred. He has some responsibility to curb that enthusiasm before windows and bones start getting smashed.
My guess is that Trump thinks these people are a little nutty, in the way that fervid supporters often are, but not really worth alienating just to please a bunch of people like me. I’m betting he believes that white men, generally speaking, have been abused by the cultural elite and overlooked by policymakers — but that’s a different thing from espousing white supremacy.
And yet if Trump really is more of an opportunist than an ideologue, then he ought to see the opportunity here, too. Some large segment of Americans voted to give him an audition in office, despite grave reservations about his temperament. The latest Pew Research poll found that a large majority of voters — including a sizable segment of those who voted for him — were disgusted by his campaign.
Trump’s success will depend a lot on how well he channels that emotion. He could do himself a lot of good right now by going after neo-Nazis and the like with at least the same fervor he reserves for Broadway actors and photo editors.
If Trump won’t assail hatred on moral grounds, then surely he can bring himself to capitalize on it.
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