News media finally admit role as Trump's accomplice before and after 2016 election

Freelancer Milt Priggee of PoliticalCartoons.com and other editorial cartoonists have treated Donald J. Trump far more harshly than newspaper, TV and radio reporters. Here, Priggee shows two migrant children impaled on Trump's Statue of Liberty crown, basically calling the president a murderer.

Cartoonist Bill Day labels Trump's claim of a crisis or emergency at our southern border just another lie.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

HACKENSACK, N.J. -- The New York Times is the first major news organization to concede the media acted as Donald J. Trump's willing accomplice during the 2016 presidential campaign.

On the cover of last Sunday's Opinion section, Frank Bruni's byline appears over these headlines:

Will the Media

Be Trump's

Accomplice 

Again?

We have a second chance in 2020.

Let's not blow it.

Bruni questions the degree to which the media will "let him [President Trump] set the terms of the 2020 presidential campaign, about our appetite for antics [such as Trump's frequent insults] versus substance, and whether we'll repeat the mistakes that we made in 2016 and continued to make during the first stages of presidency. There were plenty."

2015 and 2016

In 2015, when the New York developer declared his candidacy, "the number of stories about Trump in the country's most influential newspapers and on its principal newscasts significantly exceeded what his support in the polls at the time justified," said Bruni, quoting Harvard's Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy.

"The volume and tone of the coverage helped propel Trump to the top of Republican polls," wrote the center's Thomas Patterson.

"In stark contrast," Bruni said, "stories about Hillary Clinton in 2015 were mostly negative."

In the first half of 2016, Trump commanded much more coverage that any other candidate from either party, and it was evenly balanced between positive and negative appraisals -- "unlike the coverage of Clinton, which remained mostly negative," Bruni said.

Only during their general election face-off, "on topics relating to the candidates' fitness for office, Clinton and Trump's coverage were virtually identical in terms of its negative tone," Patterson wrote.

"'Regarding their fitness for office, they were treated identically?' In retrospect, that's madness. It should have been in real time, too," Bruni concludes.

And at another point, he notes "The president doesn't hate journalists, not at all. He uses us."

Read: Will the Media Fail Again?

Endless lies

Although The Times and the Washington Posts have led the media in fact-checking every Trump statement and claim, both have been reluctant to label them as lies, preferring "false and misleading claims" and similarly weak language.

And no White House reporter has told Trump to his face, "Please stop lying to the American people."

Instead, most have knocked themselves out to be first to send his endless lies around the nation and world in yet another one of those maddening sound bites.

Bruni's opinion piece in The Times followed by one week "The People vs. Donald Trump," David Leonhardt's argument that "the United States has never had a president as demonstrably unfit for office as Trump," and he should be removed from office.

Jimmy Margulies, former editorial cartoonist for The Record of Woodland Park, notes furloughed government workers support the wall, "if it keeps out bill collectors."

Cartoonist Christopher Weyant of the Boston Globe also invokes the con job of a crisis on our southern border. Here, Trump is nothing less than a con artist.

GOP controls all branches of government, answers to an unhinged President Trump

Jimmy Margulies, former editorial cartoonist at The Record of Woodland Park, suggesting the wild week on Wall Street and Kanye West's visit to the White House weren't unrelated (Margulies calls it "the Trump-Kanye West merger"). You can find more Margulies and other cartoons at The Cagle Post.

VOTE ON NOV. 6 TO RESTORE

DEMOCRACY'S CHECKS, BALANCES

By VICTOR E. SASSON

EDITOR

HACKENSACK, N.J. -- The only time President Trump seems sane is when he invites a wacko like Kanye West to the Oval Office.

Last week, West's rant silenced Trump in a way we haven't ever seen.

One pop music critic claimed West was "sucking up" to the president. 

And did you see how uncomfortable Trump looked when West, in his red MAGA baseball cap, stood up, walked behind the president's desk and bent down to hug him as he remained seated?

GOP and 1%

Still, the Republican Party continues to allow Trump to destroy our democracy and dismantle the legacy of former President Barack Obama -- while so-called tax reform lines the pockets of the 1%.

The GOP controls all three branches of government.

Meanwhile, with the Nov. 6 mid-term congressional elections fast approaching, "many ... Republicans -- including those on the Supreme Court -- have engaged in a deliberate campaign to make voting harder," says Op-Ed Columnist David Leonhardt at The New York Times.

"They've reduced voting hours and added cumbersome identification requirements, among other things," Leonhardt wrote last week.

Obama weighs in 

Also last week, Leonhardt quoted Barack Obama saying:

"My message in this upcoming election is very simple: It's vote.

"This isn't really a 50-50 country. It's like a 60-40 country," Obama said, adding:

"Democrats could and will do even better, if everyone ... not only votes but makes sure that all your wishy-washy, excuse-making, Internet-surfing, TV watching, grumbling-but-not-doing-nothing friends and family members get to the poles. Vote."

Your vote to shift control of Congress to the Democrats could restore the checks and balances laid out in the U.S. Constitution.

Cartoonist Joe Heller of the Green Bay Press-Gazette in Wisconsin refers to an alarming report on climate change from a United Nations panel of scientists. "Do you smell something burning?"

Six months in, Trump lurches from one disaster to another with no end to the lies

Jimmy Margulies, onetime editorial cartoonist at The Record of Woodland Park, and others are having a field day with President Trump's failure to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act and, in the process, screw tens of millions who got health insurance under the law.

This gem is from cartoonist Rick McKee at The Augusta Chronicle in Georgia.

-- HACKENSACK, N.J.

By VICTOR E. SASSON

EDITOR

The collapse of Republican efforts to overhaul health care puts President Trump's entire legislative agenda at risk, USA Today reports:

"Trump and aides have repeatedly said that their hopes for tax reform hinged on a new health care law, because it included changes to the tax code.

"Plans for an infrastructure bill, a budget plan and raising the debt ceiling may also be in doubt because of bruised feeling left over from the health care fight," USA Today reporter David Jackson says in The Record of Woodland Park (9A).

According to New York Times Op-Ed Columnist David Leonhardt, the No. 1 lesson to take from the collapse of the Republican health care bills is this:

"They have demonstrated that facts still matter and that the truth has some inherent advantage over falsehood," Leonhardt says.

The Times columnist reminds us "Trump, after all, won the presidency despite a constant stream of falsehoods" [and those tweeted and spoken lies continue unabated].

"He launched his political career with a lie about Barack Obama's birthplace and just kept on lying about almost every imaginable subject. He also admitted to being a sexual molester. He refused to release his tax returns.... And yet he was elected president.

"There was, and still is, ample reason for despondence."

Now, Trump claims President Obama's Affordable Care Act is collapsing, "when in fact it has mostly worked well -- and its flaws, while real, are eminently fixable through bipartisan legislation," Leonhardt reports.

A Record editorial today says "now's the time to work with Democrats" (10A).

Of course, the paper's Editorial Board could have and should have run that editorial every week since 2010, when Republicans won a majority in the House and the Tea Party ignited racial warfare against Obama.

Putin bromance

The latest legislative disaster comes not long after Trump jumped back into bed with Russian dictator Vladimir Putin at the G-20 summit.

Then, before The Times published them, Donald Trump Jr. released emails about his excitement over meeting during the 2016 presidential campaign with a Russian lawyer who promised to deliver "dirt" on Democratic Hillary Clinton.

And, remember, Trump took office on Jan. 20, just six months ago, and has already earned the title of worst U.S. president ever.

Local news?

On The Record's Local front today, two photos show the Englewood Night Market, but there is no mention the event was sponsored by a unit of Gannett Co.'s North Jersey Media Group, which publishes the paper.

Today's Better Living cover on dining near Grand Central Terminal -- from USA Today -- is aimed at people who live in New York State and Connecticut, and ride Metro-North Railroad.

Very little of the food shown on the cover, 2BL and 3BL is suitable for people who don't eat meat.

Next: Do auto media

 exist solely to sell cars?

As Trump keeps on lying about everything, voters come to their senses in Hackensack

Hackensack Mayor John Labrosse and Deputy Mayor Kathleen Canestrino embracing at the Stony Hill Inn on Tuesday night after their campaign's own count showed they and their running mates had been elected to four-year terms on the City Council.

-- HACKENSACK, N.J.

By VICTOR E. SASSON

EDITOR

In Tuesday's non-partisan City Council election, Hackensack avoided becoming a microcosm of the United States, rejecting the lies told by candidates who opposed Mayor John Labrosse and his running mates.

In unofficial results, the entire Labrosse Team was elected, defeating two other slates, including one backed by the Zisa family political machine.

The City Clerk's Office today released vote totals, which don't include mail-in ballots:

Mayor Labrosse, 1,828; Deputy Mayor Kathleen Canestrino, 1,738; Councilman David Sims, 1,817; Councilman Leo Battaglia, 1,659; and Stephanie Von Rudenborg, 1,671.

All will be sworn to four-year terms on July 1. 

The totals for the Zisa-backed Hackensack United for Progress slate are: Lara L. Rodriguez, school board vice president, 1,197; former Councilman Jason Some, 1,249; Michael Williams, 1,161; Carlos Merino, 1,117; and Rommy Buttafuoco, 1,089.

The Hackensack Strong slate trailed:

Councilwoman Deborah Keeling-Geddis, 1,026; Angelica Carfi-Meneses, 801; David Dungey, 769; Rafael Del Rosario, 743; and Rich Cerbo, son of a former mayor, 816.

In a city with more than 22,000 registered voters, only about 4,000 votes were cast. Mail-in ballots aren't expected to affect the election of the Labrosse Team.

Zisas = Greed, Nepotism, Partisan Politics

"Trump Nixon," a cartoon by R.J. Matson, compares the President Trump's firing of FBI Director James Comey to President Nixon's firing of the Watergate special prosecutor in the 1970s.

Trump lies again

"The president of the United States is lying again," The New York Times' Opinion Pages declared today.

"He is lying about the reason he fired James Comey, the FBI director," Op-Ed Columnist David Leonhardt writes.

"First, it's important to remember how often [President] Trump lies. Virtually, whenever he finds it more convenient to tell a falsehood than to tell the truth, he chooses a falsehood.

"An incomplete list of things he has lied about include:

"Barack Obama's birthplace, Obama's phone 'tapp," John F. Kennedy's assassination, Sept. 11, the Iraq war, ISIS, NATO, military veterans, Mexican immigrants, anti-Semitic attacks, the unemployment rate, the murder rate, the Electoral College, voter fraud, the size of the inaugural crowd, his health care bill and his own groping of woman."

Today's Record

Trump's firing of Comey dominates Page 1 of The Record today.

But the editors decided to have fun with the despicable act, using a big black "YOU'RE FIRED" to recall the reality TV show Trump once had.

Meanwhile, The Record's Editorial Board had other fish to fry, so the Woodland Park daily carries no editorial or opinion column on the uproar Trump is causing by apparently trying to disrupt the probe into ties between the Russians and his campaign.

The Record did come down hard on White House adviser and Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner and his sister for pitching $500,000 investments in a Jersey City project that could get a Chinese family visas to enter the United States (10A).

Mother's Day

The Better Living section is urging readers, "GIVE MOTHER THE ROYAL TREATMENT" (1BL).

But whose mother could possibly eat the spread shown in the huge photo on the cover without checking into a hospital to recover, and just how much would all that food cost?

No prices are given. Ingredients include butter, ham, coconut milk and edible gold sheets.

Such lavish treatment seems designed to ensure that nothing gets in the way of the inheritance.

Trump-speak for lies -- alternative facts, truthful hyperbole --flummoxes media

From cartoonist Adam Zyglis of The Buffalo News.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

One look at the huge Pompton Lakes story on Page 1 today clearly shows the editors of The Record are fiddling while Washington, D.C., burns.

Completion of Phase 1 of a lake cleanup isn't news outside the small Passaic County community -- especially in view of all of the lies the Trump administration has been peddling since the inauguration on Friday.

Even more troubling is President Trump's attempt to dismantle the Obama administration's clean-energy and clean-water initiatives.

The editorial board in Woodland Park hasn't commented on the lies or the assault on the environment.

But today, OP-Ed Columnist David Leonhardt of The New York Times wrote:

"The Trump administration -- and the president himself -- have shown a shocking disregard for the truth in their first days on the job.

"This disregard puts the media in a tricky spot, because calling out the president of the United States and his staff for untruths will inevitably upset his supporters.

"But the media cannot waver. We cannot use euphemisms for 'false' and 'untrue' when those are the accurate terms."

'Alternative facts'

Trump White House adviser and former campaign manager Kellyanne Conway likely told more lies than the candidate himself, if you can imagine that.

Now, she is labeling the shocking disregard for the truth shown by Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary, as "alternative facts."

They go perfectly with the president's own "truthful hyperbole," including the dark vision in his inaugural speech of "American carnage."

The environment

Trump's "America First Energy Plan" includes reviving the coal industry, which would ensure we'd have to deal with elevated levels of mercury in fish for years to come.

Coal generating plants contaminate water sources with methylmercury, which is absorbed into the body of fish.

Click here for commentary from the Gas2 blog, "America First Energy Plan Puts Americans Last."

Class v. crass

In a Sunday opinion column, editorial writer Bruce Lowry "looks back once more at the class act that was the Obama presidency" (Sunday's 2O).

Lowry doesn't contrast Obama with the crass Trump (stupid, coarse, gross, etc.); his former supermodel wife's nude photos; or the rest of the family, including children from two other wives.

But he does recall Trump's so-called birther lie that Obama was not actually a U.S. citizen, and shouldn't be able to hold the office of president.

Lowry says Trump's charge carried "racial overtones."