RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/465726-false-combat-video-raises-many-questions-cautions-for-media

I feel pretty safe in saying that most Americans can’t tell you off the top of their head who the Kurds are or what the U.S. relationship with them is — let alone how that factors into Iran, Russia, China, Turkey and Syria.

Without explaining as much, the topic of President Trump’s “abandonment” of the Kurds and how it will surely put a resurgence of the Islamic extremist terrorist group ISIS on Trump’s shoulders, has dominated news coverage for much of the past week.

Now comes word from ABC News that it has pulled down video that aired on its flagship broadcasts, which claimed to show a “slaughter” by Turkey on the Syrian border after President Trump’s announced withdrawal of U.S. troops.

ABC correspondent Ian Panell reported on Sunday that the video “obtained by ABC News, appears to show the fury of the Turkish attack on the border town of Tal Abyad two nights ago.”

The pictures show massive explosions lighting up the night sky. But it turns out ABC may have been hoodwinked, according to its own account.

A tweet issued by ABC News on Monday morning reads: “CORRECTION: We’ve taken down video that aired on ‘World News Tonight’ Sunday and ‘Good Morning America’ this morning that appeared to be from the Syrian border immediately after questions were raised about its accuracy. ABC News regrets the error.”

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/abc-news-issues-correction-after-airing-kentucky-gun-range-footage-during-syria-segment/

ABC News issued a correction Monday after it aired footage from a 2017 Kentucky military demonstration in the middle of a segment on the war in Syria.

“This video, obtained by ABC News, appears to show the fury of the Turkish attack on the border town of Tal Abyad two nights ago,” said foreign correspondent Ian Panell during the Sunday “World News” segment.

The clip was also featured on “Good Morning America” on Monday morning. It depicts explosions that occurred at the Knob Creek Gun Range in West Point, Kentucky during an event called “Military Gun Shoot and Military Gun Show.”

“CORRECTION: We’ve taken down video that aired on “World News Tonight” Sunday and “Good Morning America” this morning that appeared to be from the Syrian border immediately after questions were raised about its accuracy,” ABC wrote in a Monday tweet. “ABC News regrets the error.”

https://amgreatness.com/2019/10/12/trumps-latest-move-against-the-press-get-to-da-choppa/

Originally published at New York Post.

Since abandoning the daily press briefing, which had sunk into an embarrassing spectacle where journalists would bully former press secretary Sarah Sanders, the White House now favors “chopper-pressers” where the boss interacts with the media while his helicopter idles nearby.

In his latest battle with the American news media, President Trump is bringing out the heavy artillery: Marine One.

Since abandoning the daily press briefing, which had sunk into an embarrassing spectacle where journalists would bully former press secretary Sarah Sanders, the White House now favors “chopper-pressers” where the boss interacts with the media while his helicopter idles nearby.

Like his use of Twitter, Trump’s impromptu gaggles frustrate the media and enable him to control the message for the day.

There is no camera on the press, only Trump. You usually can’t hear the questions on television, only the answers. It takes away the media’s ability to grandstand. There are no Jim Acosta moments.

It also requires journalists to yell over each other and outshout the deafening blades of the president’s waiting ride, conduct that undoubtedly amuses the commander-in-chief.

Trump has held three chopper-pressers in the past 10 days. Thursday’s briefing lasted 11 minutes — the president fielded a number of questions related to Ukraine, Turkey, Joe Biden and his rally in Minneapolis that evening. In one exchange, Trump forced a reporter to ask about the so-called “whistleblower” three times before he answered:

Reporter: Do you know the whistleblower’s name?
Trump: What?

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/10/about_that_fox_poll.html

Journalism and those claiming to be journalists in the America have not only been increasingly and overtly partisan over the past 25 years but also increasingly indolent.  Far too many rely on the lunacy, vitriol, and rumormongering on social media as the primary source of many of their stories and to make assumptions as to what American society thinks on any particular issue.  Another source of so-called “news” is generated by their ideological cohorts in the polling industry. 

Polling in modern America has degenerated into a vehicle to create news, headlines and to shape public opinion on an issue or an individual.

 Over the past few days the lead on every cable news channel and the headline in virtually all newspapers is Fox News claiming in their exclusive poll that 51% of Americans now favor impeachment and removal of President Trump. 

How did the Fox polling unit come up with this number?

The Fox news polling companies interviewed 1,003 registered voters ostensibly throughout the length and breadth of the United States.  Many polling companies use either all adult Americans (254 million) or registered voters (158 million in 2016) as their universe for polling.  Obviously the greater the number of potential people to contact and question the easier a poll is to complete and to skew a result.  In reality, what matters is who votes in an election.  In 2016 86% (or 136.6 million) of registered voters cast a vote.  A poll of likely voters would inherently be more reliable but more difficult to achieve.  Currently only Rasmussen among national polls uses exclusively likely voters and they are among the most reliable.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/10/the_nyt_and_shooting_migrants.html

The crazy story of “getting Trump” is like a modern episode of “The Twilight Zone.”    

This is the latest:    

The Times report, published on Tuesday, included an excerpt from a book by two of the paper’s reporters. 

It read: “Privately, the president had often talked about fortifying a border wall with a water-filled trench, stocked with snakes or alligators, prompting aides to seek a cost estimate.   

“He wanted the wall electrified, with spikes on top that could pierce human flesh. After publicly suggesting that soldiers shoot migrants if they threw rocks, the president backed off when his staff told him that was illegal.

“But later in a meeting, aides recalled, he suggested that they shoot migrants in the legs to slow them down. That’s not allowed either, they told him.”

A source who was in the room at the time confirmed the conversation about shooting migrants in the legs to Fox News late Tuesday.

Where is Rod Sterling when we really need him?

It’s hard for me to believe that a story like this makes it out of a newsroom.   

A serious editor would have looked the reporters in the eyes and said: “Are you (expletive deleted) me?”

So the ‘resistance’ goes on and now has alligators and “shooting migrants in the legs” to entertain the crazy left with!

https://thefederalist.com/2019/10/01/cnn-uses-andrew-mccabe-question-validity-investigation-into-himself/

During “CNN Newsroom” with Brooke Baldwin today, former acting FBI director Andrew McCabe questioned why anyone would investigate the beginnings of the Russia probe. Perhaps it’s because the available evidence suggests he might have been involved.

Baldwin asked McCabe why Attorney General William Barr is meeting with foreign counterparts to find out more about the hoax that duped the U.S. government into spending two years and millions of dollars unsuccessfully searching for Russian collusion with the Trump campaign to steal the 2016 election.

“The first question you have to ask is, ‘Why is he doing this at all?’ The circumstances behind the opening of the Russia case are not a mystery,” McCabe said. “I have testified under oath about them as early as December 2017, Jim Comey has made comments about them publicly, I have, we both wrote books that touched on the issues, so the circumstances behind the case are widely known.”

While being paid to talk on-air as a contracted CNN contributor, McCabe questioned the validity of an investigation into his and James Comey’s misconduct. McCabe is being investigated for repeatedly lying to the FBI’s inspector general about his decisions while at the FBI. Comey has been criticized by the Justice Department watchdog for violating FBI rules. Both are implicated in applications to a secret court to spy on the Trump campaign.