President Trump’s art of making a deal includes the art of cutting to the chase, boldly spelling out the goals, sizing up the competition, mapping out the landscape and articulating the strategy with candor and clarity. Mr. Trump did just that before a large, enthusiastic crowd attending the National Republican Congressional Committee dinner Wednesday evening.
“These days, there’s no such thing as a blue dog Democrat, a red state Democrat, or a conservative Democrat because they are all Pelosi Democrats: weak on crime, weak on terrorism and weak on national defense. Democrats like to campaign as moderates, but they always govern like radicals,” Mr. Trump told his audience.
“That is why I am going to campaign all across this country to elect Republicans so that we can reduce taxes further, reduce crime, increase jobs and make our communities safe and prosperous and secure. And I’ll be all over the country,” the president said.
VOTERS FROWN ON MEDIA TREATMENT OF TRUMP
Meticulous analysis of the content and tone of broadcast news coverage of President Trump and his administration by the Media Research Center already has revealed that 91 percent of this coverage has been negative since Mr. Trump took office. Researchers found there has been continual emphasis on scandal and outrage rather than policy or bona fide accomplishments, such as job creation or new economic gains.
It may come as a surprise to these broadcasters and other news organizations that the American voting public does not much care for such coverage. No, really. Many of them don’t. A new Quinnipiac University poll asked 1,300 registered U.S. voters this question: “Do you approve of the way the news media has covered President Trump?”
The numbers: 59 percent of all voters said they disapprove. That includes 91 percent of Republicans, 59 percent of independents, 31 percent of Democrats, along with 68 percent of men, 50 percent of women, 56 percent of those voters who hold a college degree and 72 percent of those who don’t.
JUST ‘HIPSTER TECH’
The fuss continues over allegations that Cambridge Analytica used improperly obtained data from Facebook for the Trump campaign in 2016. There was no such outrage when President Obama’s reelection campaign did the same thing in 2012.
“The establishment media didn’t frame Obama’s data operation as invasive or sinister,” writes Allum Bokhari, who covers technology for Brietbart.com and parsed the Obama-era coverage.
“It was just ‘hipster tech,’ in the words of Wired magazine. It was a ‘dream team of engineers from Facebook, Twitter and Google’ who won the 2012 election, according to an Atlantic piece titled ‘When The Nerds Go Marching In.” Obama’s data team were the ‘real heroes’ of the election, wrote Rolling Stone,” Mr. Bokhari wrote, citing similar positive treatment by other news organizations.
“There was virtually no mention of the invasiveness of the Obama campaign’s data-gathering operation,” he said, noting that the Trump operation was referred to as a “dark art” and a “threat to democracy.”
KAREN ARRIVES
Though 80 percent of Americans have heard news about the ongoing saga of adult film star Stormy Daniels and her claims of having an affair with President Trump, the circumstances are not registering as a significant phenomenon for the public. Only 19 percent say the matter is of “high importance to the nation” and only 5 percent say the allegations would have prompted them to change their vote for Mr. Trump had they known about them in 2016. So says a Economist/YouGov poll released Tuesday.
But wait, there’s more. The public will soon have another story to consider.
Former Playboy model Karen McDougal — who also says she had a liaison with the president — will have a showcase for her story Thursday. A single tweet from CNN prime-time host Anderson Cooper tells all: “Exclusive: Karen McDougal, a former Playboy model who claims she had a 10-month affair with President Donald Trump, will speak with @AndersonCooper in her first TV interview, Thursday, 8 p.m. ET, on @CNN.”
It’s complicated. Ms. McDougal is endeavoring to be released from a legal agreement with the National Enquirer to provide them an exclusive story. She is suing the publication. Meanwhile, the busy Mr. Cooper will feature Ms. Daniels in another exclusive interview to air Sunday on CBS’ “60 Minutes.”
Ms. Daniels elaborates on the relationship she says she had with Mr. Trump in 2006 and 2007, “revealing details that bring her story up to the present. It is the first and only television interview in which she speaks about the alleged relationship,” CBS said in production notes.
“I guess I’m not 100 percent sure why you’re doing this,” Mr. Cooper says in a brief video clip the network has released in advance.
FOXIFIED
It is one of the few stable measurements in the often fragile media realm. Fox News still leads its cable rivals, rated No. 1 by Nielsen Media Research. Fox News has held this title for the last 16 years. The network typically drew 2.4 million viewers in prime time last week, compared to 2 million for MSNBC and 1.1 million for CNN. Fox New also led the overall cable realm, rated No. 1 by Nielsen for the 10th week in a row, ahead of non-news competitors such as TBS and HGTV.
Likewise, Fox Business Network continues to dominate CNBC, with a 24 percent advantage in audience share, according to Nielsen, the network also scored seven of the 10 top news programs on business television.
POLL DU JOUR
• 75 percent of Americans say federal legislation should include funding to better protect the national electric grid from physical and cyberattacks.
• 69 percent are aware of potential threats to the grid from such attacks.
• 66 percent would feel unsafe if a power outage lasted more than two weeks.
• 55 percent say they could go without electricity for a week before they experience “significant harm” to their daily life.
• 21 percent could go for one to two weeks, 16 percent could go more than two weeks.
• 8 percent say an significant electrical outage of would not affect their daily life.
Source: A Protect Our Power/SurveyMonkey poll of 1,239 U.S. adults conducted March 1-7 and released Wednesday.
• Happy talk and churlish remarks to [email protected]
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