Trumpnami 2 by Rayne for Emptywheel.net

Trumpnami: Someone Tsurfed the News Tsunami?

It’s a Category 5 hurricane of news when the pros can’t keep up. I laughed when I saw this tweet by Mother Jones’ Clara Jeffrey this Friday. It looked and felt like everyone in the news industry was flailing, dog paddling as fast as possible to stay afloat of this tick-tock:

Around noon: the news day erupted when Sean Spicer’s exit and Anthony Scaramucci’s entrance as White House Communications Director is announced. Media blew up the internet with all manner of content related to Spicer including Melissa McCarthy skits on Saturday Night Live and Scaramucci’s climate change tweets.

About 4:00-ish or earlier: some outlets reported on former national security adviser Susan Rice meeting with Senate Intel Committee about the Russia probe; Sen. Richard Burr disclosed it was Rep. Devin Nunes who created the “unmasking thing.” Again, media generated more chatter.

After 4:00 p.m.: all hell broke loose when the Washington Post reported on Attorney General Sessions undisclosed and intercepted conversation with Russia’s Kislyak. WaPo has a really annoying habit of removing the original time stamp on their story and leaving only the last updated time under the hed; the last update was 9:49 p.m.

There was another important story published amid all the hubbub, but it didn’t get anywhere near the same level of attention as the change in White House comms staff or Sessions’ perjury. I can’t find the original time the Wall Street Journal published its piece on Jared Kushner’s latest financial disclosures, but it was neatly sandwiched between Spicer’s hand-off to Scaramucci, and the Washington Post’s report on Sessions’ convo with Kislyak.

WASHINGTON— Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and a senior White House adviser, on Friday released a revised version of his personal financial disclosure showing his initial filing omitted dozens of assets, including commercial real estate, bonds issued by the New York water and sewer authority, a personal art collection and a New Jersey liquor license.

According to the disclosure, 77 assets were “inadvertently omitted” from Mr. Kushner’s earlier form and were added during what the form’s footnotes describe as the “ordinary review” process with the government ethics office. Some 60 of those were related to one collection of bonds. The updated form also provides additional information about 77 other assets, offering more detail about the structure of Mr. Kushner’s real estate assets. Mr. Kushner’s initial disclosure, released in March, hadn’t then been certified by the Office of Government Ethics.

How interesting — a Kushner-centric story about yet more inadequate and untimely disclosures, published late on a Friday afternoon, closing the window of availability for comment given the impending Sabbath.

And the same story, appearing in WSJ, wouldn’t appear in the print edition until Saturday morning. It’s DOA by the time folks on Wall Street get the story, including the BILLION in loans the WSJ’s analysis team found Kushner had not previously reported — and WSJ itself had been sitting on this information until OGE certified Kushner’s latest report.

Suspicions run high that the White House leaked the intelligence on Sessions’ to WaPo. We know now WaPo had the story a month ago but didn’t run it; they were likely waiting for corroborating source(s). Presto, one just shows up; who had access to that intelligence besides the Gang of Eight?

The White House also had complete control over the announcement of the communications director change-over.

What’s the chances the Kushner story was likewise nudged to fit inside the news storm so that Jared could surf his way out undeterred by the press? Sourcing on the article appears immaculate; perhaps the reporters call the Office of Ethics in Government every day, perhaps they watch a feed, but the timing is so incredibly perfect to assure this particular story doesn’t get a lot of traction.

And dear Crazy-Tweeter-in-Law did his thing from the can the following Saturday morning — tweeting a spume of crazy, ensuring there’s little afterthought given to a gnarly hang-ten off yesterday’s massive wave.

The nifty little kicker is that it wasn’t just Jared Kushner who released belated financial data.

So did Ivanka.

Ms. Trump received $2.5 million in “salary and severance” from her father’s business operations, according to Friday’s disclosure. She also received a $787,500 advance for her book, “Women Who Work.”

[…]

The disclosure also shows Ms. Trump earned $50,000 for her work overseeing a trust for some of the children of Rupert Murdoch, the executive chairman of both 21st Century Fox and News Corp . Ms. Trump resigned at the end of last year as a trustee. 21st Century Fox and News Corp, which owns The Wall Street Journal, share common ownership.

There was more, but between the limits of Fair Use and just plain disgust, I won’t excerpt it here.

The question remains: by manipulating media, did Daddy give his girl a little push on her own surfboard, too?

Reminder: this is an open thread. Bring your crazy here in comments but behave.

image_print
21 replies
    • harpie says:

      That is really FUNNY! and so creative!

      It’s going in my Things That Make Me Laugh Out Loud file.

      Made my day. Thanks!

  1. person1597 says:

    This is for harpie — in response to the last comment in the last thread. Hey! the likker cabinet is open here…

    New math question for the new world…

    Boo-Boo Bear: ‘If the locus of injection induced seismicity moves in a northwesterly direction at a linear rate of 27 miles per year, how long will it be before the oil industry begins fracking the Yellowstone caldera?

    Yogi Bear: On my 100th Birthday!… What a partee! Just think of all the pick-a-nik baskets everywhere! And no more meddling by Ranger Smith! I’m crackers for frackers!!

    • harpie says:

      Thanks, person 1597…sorry I missed the party.

      “crackers for frackers”—hahahaha. :-)

  2. earlofhuntingdon says:

    Jared and Ivanka have also “earned” $212 million since the end of 2016. That news doesn’t seem to have much legs.

    Another Congress would want to put teeth into the failure to disclose provisions. These congresscritters are themselves lining up to evade disclosure rules. With the Trump/Kushner precedents, who could possibly be sanctioned if the Trump/Kushners escape it?

  3. earlofhuntingdon says:

    Scaramucci also seems to have been added to Trump’s legal defense team, without the liability attendant on giving legal advice.  Nice work if you can get it.  Six months in office and Trump is doing nothing but marketing his properties, complaining that others are not doing their jobs, and trying to avoid legal jeopardy.  Pity about all those supporters in flyover land who believed Trump would actually govern in their interests as president.

  4. earlofhuntingdon says:

    Another tidbit that came out last week, I think, is that Trump “personally” takes as income the sometimes whopping initiation fees charged by his properties to new members.  The highest is about $450,000; Mar-a-Lago doubled its to $200,000 after Trump’s victory.  There are dozens of properties.

    Normally, fees are income to the club, or treated as a kind of paid-in capital, or as a refundable or partially refundable deposit.

    Trump apparently takes the position that the only reason anyone would join a property with his name on it is because his name is on it.  I suppose that means the fees are characterized as marketing or service fees paid to Trump or the entity through which Trump makes his name available to each club.  A startling example of greed, but the sort of arrangement common in privately owned businesses as a way of extracting profits as an operating expense.  Anyone familiar with the machinations of corporate tax avoidance via transfer pricing schemes would also find the Trumpian arrangement familiar.

     

  5. SpaceLifeForm says:

    “There’s obviously a communications problem,” Scaramucci said.

    [Yep. Very clear. Who is looking for a bus?
    Both stories today]

    http://www.cnn.com/2017/07/23/politics/anthony-scaramucci-donald-trump/index.html

    Newly minted White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci said on CNN’s “State of the Union” Sunday that President Donald Trump still does not accept the intelligence community’s conclusion that Russia attempted to influence the 2016 election.

    Scaramucci said he intended to review the intelligence community’s evidence once he had his security clearance and pledged to give Trump his personal thoughts on the conclusions. He said Trump would make up his own mind in time and that if Trump believed Russia was responsible for the 2016 efforts and a threat to future elections, he would act.

    [Now compare]

    https://www.google.com/amp/s/mobile.nytimes.com/2017/07/23/us/politics/trump-russia-sanctions.amp.html

    “The administration is supportive of being tough on Russia, particularly in putting these sanctions in place,” Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who was promoted to press secretary on Friday, said on “This Week” on ABC News.

      • greengiant says:

        First, any random link can be a phish for malware or just taking names and numbers.   Second,  the NSA, Mossad, Putin,  Zuckerberg,  Bezos, Mercer and a bunch of other big data miners have your web history.   Your ISP who also sells that info knows, as well as google which your ISP refers every link to see if it is blacklisted.  Not my job to know how to avoid this.

        So wikipedia says Gucifer 2.0 released some DNC data to Wikileaks.  Also it is alleged the DNC was hacked by two different Russian associated groups and of course possibly others.

        The “forensic” analysis showing “stuffformike.zip”  dated July 5, 2016 3:52 PM,   and a series of timestamps that indicated a certain bandwidth for the file copying and so on.   All that can be spoofed.   The “noisy” DNC hacker did not leave such a quit signature but then again to avoid the “dog that didn’t bark” scenario,  a good hack would leave one or more spurious trails. Note that a set of hackers started out with video game hacking and that I have heard it is not unknown for gamers to become proficient with wiping their disks, doing fresh installs,  and analyzing their memory and disk for hacks.

        Was “mike” “meant” to be someone associated with the Trump campaign?   The top two “Trump mikes” in my limited view are the “internet is a weapon” Flynn,  or the lawyer operative “gamergate”  Cernovich.

        So what’s your narrative?   Deepstate prepumping the Jan 11 dossier Buzzfeed release with this?  http://time.com/4625301/cia-russia-wikileaks-dnc-hacking/

        Putin, Trump and Assange love you?

        Mine is the fire is so hot they are spending serious effort to spin the story.  If you want to know this part of the oligarchs’ organizations you can backtrack the political operatives’ smoke and noise on this “but the emails” version June 2017.

         

        • PG says:

          i haven’t got a narrative.  Thanks for your perspective.  VIPS endorsed it so I was curious about the thoughts from those who traditionally comment here and often offer a range of more nuanced and informed insights than your average comment thread.

  6. arbusto says:

    Per reporting on Maddow’s show, Trump shopped a replacement for Shaub in the Ethics office and bypassed the nominal replacement.  That replacement then signed off on the re-re-re-re-revison from the Kuch’

  7. earlofhuntingdon says:

    Forget it Jake, it’s Chinatown.

    Donald is apparently pouting that Goopers are not sufficiently “protecting” their president.  Something tells me that’s not in the oath of office of any congresscritter.  Politically, it’s an option, but it’s ordinarily dependent on mutuality, of which Donald Trump knows exactly nothing.

    Is Donald telling us that regardless of what he does or who he does it to, we all owe him a duty of loyalty because he’s Donald, er the president?  Or is Donald just trying to change the subject because this Russian thing is affecting him like poison ivy in his underpants?

    • P J Evans says:

      Is Donald telling us that regardless of what he does or who he does it to, we all owe him a duty of loyalty because he’s Donald, er the president?  Or is Donald just trying to change the subject because this Russian thing is affecting him like poison ivy in his underpants?

      I’d go with both – he really thinks that  he’s owed stuff because of who he is, and he’s trying to get out from under the Russia thing (probably because it’s going to reveal a lot about his businesses that he doesn’t want public, like the extent of his debts).

  8. Ten Bears says:

    Just go right on ahead and drill holes in the most active super volcano on the planet. I tend to think, person, of The Rockies as an ineffective wall twixt us and them, and chuckle at the thought of the wasteland tween here and Ohio a human induced eruption would create. No better fence, as foretold by a number of old school sci-fi authors.

    Your Boo Boo Bear none-the-less quite accurately describes how over the course of ninety million years Cascadia became adjacent to “North America,” as the Yellowstone Hotspot moved from about Hawaii to it’s present day location.

    • P J Evans says:

      Yellowstone is not connected to Hawaii. Different hotspot entirely – its track would run through Idaho and Washington.

  9. person1597 says:

    The town of Cherokee just had a 3.1 as you posted.

    You may just get your land back. 42.26 years from Ft. Sill is all.

Comments are closed.