President (Fake News) Trump apparently is winning a titanic battle with the media

Cartoonists Nate Beeler of The Columbus Dispatch in Ohio, above, and Daryl Cagle commenting on the news media's seemingly insatiable appetite for President Trump's tweets, most of which are filled with lies, exaggerations and empty boasts.

-- HACKENSACK, N.J.

By VICTOR E. SASSON

EDITOR

Almost every day in our long national nightmare, President Trump attacks or tries to dismantle another accomplishment of the Obama administration.

On Monday, Trump sharply reduced the size of two national monuments in Utah, hoping to open the land to more development.

Now, his commerce secretary is recommending three marine national monuments should be reopened to fishing.

Meanwhile, the Senate version of Trump's tax break for the super rich would end health insurance for 13 million Americans under the Affordable Care Act.

One estimate said Trump personally could save more than $1 billion, if the GOP tax plan becomes law.

Tweet storm

However, the news media haven't confronted Trump, and asked him whether he stands for anything except targeting the legacy of our first black president.

Instead, they parse or broadcast every single idiotic tweet from the Liar-In-Chief, even though, as far as I can tell, they have absolutely no obligation to do so.

In a letter to The Record, my local daily newspaper, Michael Konsevick of Vernon says of Trump's offensive tweets:

"The true danger of the ... Trump presidency is the tendency of much of the media to accept his aberrant and irrational behavior as somehow the new norm.

"Although he constantly harangues the mainstream media, Trump's free exposure through that same media helped him vanquish his many Republican opponents during the 2016 election cycle." 

Cartoonist Nate Beeler on Trump's controversial move to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital.

Fake news?

In the past year, Trump has tweeted about "fake news" more than 150 times, and on one day in September, he did so eight times, in apparent frustration over coverage of his administration's response to the hurricane devastating Puerto Rico, The New Yorker says.

"And, of course, Trump regularly invokes 'the fake-news, Russian-collusion story,' as he named it last summer," one of the dozen-plus times he has attacked coverage of the Russia investigation on Twitter, Steve Coll reports.

Trump boasted on Mike Huckabee's talk in show in October that "one of the greatest terms I've come up with is 'fake,'" Coll notes, but the phrase "fake news" has been around for more than a century.

Hackensack news?

Three cheers for Deputy Mayor Kathy Canestrino and Councilman Leo Battaglia, who voted against paying $775,000 to settle a lawsuit by former Hackensack City Clerk Debra Heck, a longtime political foe of the reformers elected in 2013 and again this year.

But the council OK'd the settlement in a 3-2 vote on Tuesday night, Staff Writer Rodrigo Torrejon of The Record says today (1L).

On Wednesday, Torrejon reported the City Council approved $142,382 in retirement payouts to Vincent Riotto, the former commander of a police narcotics unit whose misconduct led to the dismissal of eight criminal cases.

Pearl Harbor

In a Page 1 column today on the anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, Mike Kelly writes about a Maryland trucker who stopped at the Richard Stockton Service Plaza on the New Jersey Turnpike.

Outside a building with food concessions and restrooms, a plaque memorializes the 2,403 service members who died that day.

Is this any reason to write a front-page column that continues on 9A and 11A?

Kelly is so desperate to fill space, his column rambles all over the place:

"As he got out of his truck," Kelly writes of Ray Malone, "a wind blew across the parking lot and the smell of manure wafted off of a nearby farm."

How appropriate. Kelly has been churning out shit for more years than readers care to remember.

Restaurant review?

On Page 2 of Wednesday's Better Living section, an over-the-top appraisal of Trattoria Giotto is labeled "Restaurant Review," but it's missing a rating, prices, a telephone number or even the town where the Italian-American restaurant is located.

The writer is Joyce Venezia Suss, who has been stuffing her face on North Jersey Media Group's dime for many years.

On Twitter, @joycevsuss calls herself a "communicator extraordinaire."

What a joke. I'd call her a B.S. artist extraordinaire.

On the cover of the section, a four-course winemaker dinner at the Saddle River Inn is described in great detail, but the story doesn't say if or when it is being served, and how much it would cost.

Finally, the Better Living cover story on Wednesday urges Jewish readers to throw a latke-vodka party to celebrate Hanukkah. 

Throughout the paper, Gannett Co. editors have bylines appearing over a fictitious publication, "North Jersey Record."

Can't cancel

On NorthJersey.com, readers of The Record complain they've tried unsuccessfully to cancel their subscriptions:

"They have the worst customer service. All I want to do is cancel my subscription and on hold on phone for 30 minutes, then on hold for chat. Then they won't take cancellation over the chat but will take new subscriptions just horrible." -- Sharon Gorey Fanning

More bizarro Trump: Cabinet meets to 'Hail, Caesar,' AG testifies, a new Big Lie

Cartoonist David Fitzsimmons of the Arizona Daily Star in Tuscon lampoons shocking testimony about Attorney General Jeff Sessions from fired FBI Director James Comey. Sessions is scheduled to testify today before the same Senate intelligence panel.

Comey testified President Trump asked Sessions, son-in-law Jared Kushner and others to leave them alone in the Oval Office. Here is a twist on that testimony from Lebanese-Swiss cartoonist Patrick Chappatte.

-- HACKENSACK, N.J.

UPDATE: Attorney General Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III vehemently denied colluding with the Russians on the election; President Trump says he has no plans to fire Special Counsel Robert Mueller; and Trump changed his tune on the GOP health care plan, calling it "mean" and "stingy."

By VICTOR E. SASSON

EDITOR

It was a "Hail, Caesar" moment unlike any Cabinet meeting for any other president in the history of the United States.

But as President Trump completes his fifth, illegitimate month in office, his behavior is becoming more bizarre every day, as are his demands for loyalty and praise.

The Washington Post sent out a report on Trump's first full Cabinet meeting on Monday under this headline:

"Praise for the chief: Trump's Cabinet 

 tells him it is an 'honor'
and 'blessing' to serve" 

The Post quoted Trump as claiming he has surpassed most of the greatest U.S. presidents -- one of the biggest lies he's told so far:

“'Never has there been a president, with few exceptions – case of FDR, he had a major depression to handle – who has passed more legislation and who has done more things than what we’ve done,' Trump, referring to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, said during the meeting at the White House."

CNN called the Cabinet meeting "super weird." And MSNBC described the meeting as "surprisingly creepy."

The New York Times reported:

"With his agenda faltering, and public attention focused on accusations from former F.B.I. director and public testimony coming from his attorney general, Mr. Trump held what our reporter described as a 'highly unusual' cabinet meeting.

"He asserted that the U.S. was 'seeing amazing results' from his leadership and then basked in adulatory statements from each of the senior advisers at the table."

Trump acted like some Caesar at the Cabinet meeting, but in Manhattan, sponsors have pulled out of the Public Theater's production of Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar," which depicts the assassination of a Trump-like ruler, The Times said.

Local coverage

Today, I couldn't find a word about the bizarre nature of Monday's Cabinet meeting anywhere in my local daily newspaper, The Record of Woodland Park.

After Sunday's front page ignored the growing conflict between Trump and fired FBI Director James Comey, The Record was all over the story on Monday's front page.

Columnist Mike Kelly wrote a third column from Allendale, where Comey and his wife were visiting his father.

Kelly always makes sure to mention that Comey's 83-year-old father attends Mass, though I'm not sure what significance that has for the veracity of his son's testimony about Trump.

Last week, Comey testified the president asked for for his "loyalty," and directed him to drop the investigation of fired national security adviser Michael Flynn's contacts with Russian officials during the presidential campaign.

Comey also said he wrote memos after each interaction with the president before and after the Jan. 20 inauguration, because he feared Trump would lie about what took place.

The next day, Trump called Comey a liar, and offered to testify under oath.

On Sunday at the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, protesters staged a "Summer of Resistance" in an attempt to disrupt a fund-raiser for Rep. Tom MacArthur, a New Jersey Republican who has been condemned for a draconian proposal to replace the Affordable Care Act.

But Trump ignored the protest to tweet more critical comments about Comey, Kelly reported (1A). 

Why not drive?

Today, a story on Page 3A in The Record reports Governor Christie canceled his keynote address on opioid drug abuse at Harvard Medical School on Monday afternoon, because of "delays and cancellations of flights to Boston."

The story doesn't explain why a state trooper couldn't have driven Christie to Boston in his state-owned SUV.

Christie was tapped by Trump this year to lead a national opioid addiction commission.

How hot was it?

None of the 10 reporters who worked on a story about broken heat records on Monday thought to interview cooks in restaurant kitchens or mail carriers and other people who had to work outside in 96-degree temperatures (today's Local front).

And that goes for the editors who sit on their asses in air-conditioned offices, and order those reporters around.

We don't need a bunch of new supermarkets

Protecting the New Jersey shore

The Record can't keep up with bizarre twists and turns of lying Trump regime

Freelance cartoonist Bob Englehart on President Trump's slow response to the wave of anti-Semitic bomb threats. Forgotten for the moment are Trump supporters' attacks against Jewish reporters covering the 2016 presidential campaign.

-- HACKENSACK, N.J.

By VICTOR E. SASSON

EDITOR

Now President Trump is calling for a congressional inquiry into whether Barack Obama tapped his phones, according to a New York Times breaking news alert sent to my smartphone this morning. 

"He still offered no proof of the charge," The Times added.

The USA Today story on Page 1 of The Record reports:

"Trump, in a Saturday morning tweetstorm, responded to the mounting questions over his ties to Russia by accusing ... Obama of wiretapping him ... just before the November election...."

USA Today labeled Trump's charge an "unsubstantiated outburst," and an Obama spokesman called it "simply false" (1A).

Although Trump has been in office for only six weeks, the number of investigations -- or calls for them -- seems to be unprecedented.

Paterson news

Most  of today's front page is devoted to an upbeat story on the homes built in one of Paterson's worst neighborhoods by Habitat for Humanity (1A).

A second story discusses rumors that police departments in North Jersey are rounding up illegal immigrants in Paterson, Newark and other communities (1A).

In Local, a story reports protesters pushed for a $15 minimum wage on Saturday at the Teterboro Landing Shopping Center in Teterboro (3L).

Their demonstration was aimed at Governor Christie, who vetoed a phase-in of the $15-an-hour minimum.

Thin edition

Once you recycle the useless Real Estate and Sports sections, there are only 40 pages of news and advertising in today's so-called Sunday edition.

In about 20 days, Gannett will lay off about 50 reporters and editors, who are among a total of 141 North Jersey Media Group employees the company is letting go.