| Happy Fathers Day: 15:57 - Jun 17 with 25299 views | Shaky |
How Trump Came to Enforce a Practice of Separating Migrant Families
By Julie Hirschfeld Davis and Michael D. Shear
NYT, June 16, 2018
WASHINGTON – Almost immediately after President Trump took office, his administration began weighing what for years had been regarded as the nuclear option in the effort to discourage immigrants from unlawfully entering the United States.
Children would be separated from their parents if the families had been apprehended entering the country illegally, John F. Kelly, then the homeland security secretary, said in March 2017, “in order to deter more movement along this terribly dangerous network.”
For more than a decade, even as illegal immigration levels fell overall, seasonal spikes in unauthorized border crossings had bedeviled American presidents in both political parties, prompting them to cast about for increasingly aggressive ways to discourage migrants from making the trek.
Yet for George W. Bush and Barack Obama, the idea of crying children torn from their parents’ arms was simply too inhumane – and too politically perilous – to embrace as policy, and Mr. Trump, though he had made an immigration crackdown one of the central issues of his campaign, succumbed to the same reality, publicly dropping the idea after Mr. Kelly’s comments touched off a swift backlash.
But advocates inside the administration, most prominently Stephen Miller, Mr. Trump’s senior policy adviser, never gave up on the idea. Last month, facing a sharp uptick in illegal border crossings, Mr. Trump ordered a new effort to criminally prosecute anyone who crossed the border unlawfully – with few exceptions for parents traveling with their minor children.
And now Mr. Trump faces the consequences. With thousands of children detained in makeshift shelters, his spokesmen this past week had to deny accusations that the administration was acting like Nazis. Even evangelical supporters like Franklin Graham said its policy was “disgraceful.”
Among those who have professed objections to the policy is the president himself, who despite his tough rhetoric on immigration and his clear directive to show no mercy in enforcing the law, has searched publicly for someone else to blame for dividing families. He has falsely claimed that Democrats are responsible for the practice. But the kind of pictures so feared by Mr. Trump’s predecessors could end up defining a major domestic policy issue of his term.
Inside the Trump administration, current and former officials say, there is considerable unease about the policy, which is regarded by some charged with carrying it out as unfeasible in practice and questionable morally. Kirstjen Nielsen, the current homeland security secretary, has clashed privately with Mr. Trump over the practice, sometimes inviting furious lectures from the president that have pushed her to the brink of resignation.
But Mr. Miller has expressed none of the president’s misgivings. “No nation can have the policy that whole classes of people are immune from immigration law or enforcement,” he said during an interview in his West Wing office this past week. “It was a simple decision by the administration to have a zero tolerance policy for illegal entry, period. The message is that no one is exempt from immigration law.”
The administration’s critics are not buying that explanation. “This is not a zero tolerance policy, this is a zero humanity policy, and we can’t let it go on,” said Senator Jeff Merkley, Democrat of Oregon.
“Ripping children out of their parents’ arms to inflict harm on the child to influence the parents,” he added, “is unacceptable.”
Beyond those moral objections, Jeh C. Johnson, who as secretary of homeland security was the point man for the Obama administration’s own struggles with illegal immigration, argued that deterrence, in and of itself, is neither practical nor a long-term solution to the problem.
“I’ve seen this movie before, and I feel like what we are doing now, with the zero tolerance policy and separating parents and children for the purpose of deterrence, is banging our heads against the wall,” he said. “Whether it’s family detention, messaging about dangers of the journey, or messaging about separating families and zero tolerance, it’s always going to have at best a short-term reaction.”
And that view was based on hard experience.
When Central American migrants, including many unaccompanied children, began surging across the border in early 2014, Mr. Obama, the antithesis of his impulsive successor, had his own characteristic reaction: He formed a multiagency team at the White House to figure out what should be done.
“This was the bane of my existence for three years,” Mr. Johnson said. “No matter what you did, somebody was going to be very angry at you.”
The officials met in the office of Denis R. McDonough, the White House chief of staff, and convened a series of meetings in the Situation Room to go through their options. Migrants were increasingly exploiting existing immigration laws and court rulings, and using children as a way to get adults into the country, on the theory that families were being treated differently from single people.
“The agencies were surfacing every possible idea,” Cecilia Muñoz, Mr. Obama’s top domestic policy adviser, recalled, including whether to separate parents from their children. “I do remember looking at each other like, ‘We’re not going to do this, are we?’ We spent five minutes thinking it through and concluded that it was a bad idea. The morality of it was clear – that’s not who we are.”
They did, however, decide to vastly expand the detention of immigrant families, opening new facilities along the border where women and young children were held for long periods while they awaited a chance to have their cases processed.
Mr. Johnson wrote an open letter to appear in Spanish-language news outlets warning parents that their children would be deported if they entered the United States illegally. He traveled to Guatemala to deliver the message in person.
Opening a large family immigration detention facility in Dilley, Tex., he held a news conference to showcase what he called an “effective deterrent.”
The steps led to just the kind of brutal images that Mr. Obama’s advisers feared: hundreds of young children, many dirty and some in tears, who were being held with their families in makeshift detention facilities.
Immigrant advocacy groups denounced the policy, berating senior administration officials – some of whom were reduced to rueful apologies for a policy they said they could not justify – and telling Mr. Obama to his face during a meeting at the White House in late 2014 that he was turning his back on the most vulnerable people seeking refuge in the United States.
“I was pissed, and still am,” said Ben Johnson, the executive director of the American Immigration Lawyers Association. “I thought that he had a shocking disregard for due process.”
Before long, the Obama administration would face legal challenges, and be forced to stop detaining families indefinitely. A federal judge in Washington ordered the administration in 2015 to stop detaining asylum-seeking Central American mothers and children in order to deter others from their region from coming into the United States.
Under a 1997 consent decree known as the Flores settlement, unaccompanied children could be held in immigration detention for only a short period of time; in 2016, a federal judge ruled that the settlement applied to families as well, effectively requiring that they be released within 20 days. Many were released – some with GPS ankle bracelets to track their movements – and asked to return for a court date sometime in the future.
It was Mr. Bush, who had firsthand experience with the border as governor of Texas and ran for president as a “compassionate conservative,” who initiated the “zero tolerance” approach for illegal immigration on which Mr. Trump’s policy is modeled.
In 2005, he launched Operation Streamline, a program along a stretch of the border in Texas that referred all unlawful entrants for criminal prosecution, imprisoning them and expediting assembly-line-style trials geared toward quickly deporting them. The initiative yielded results and was soon expanded to more border sectors. Back then, however, exceptions were generally made for adults who were traveling with minor children, as well as juveniles and people who were ill.
Mr. Obama’s administration employed the program at the height of the migration crisis as well, although it generally did not treat first-time border crossers as priorities for prosecution, and it detained families together in Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody – administrative, rather than criminal, detention.
Discussions began almost immediately after Mr. Trump took office about vastly expanding Operation Streamline, with almost none of those limitations. Even after Mr. Kelly stopped talking publicly about family separation, the Department of Homeland Security quietly tested the approach last summer in certain areas in Texas.
Privately, Mr. Miller argued that bringing back “zero tolerance” would be a potent tool in a severely limited arsenal of strategies for stopping migrants from flooding across the border.
The idea was to end a practice referred to by its detractors as “catch and release,” in which illegal immigrants apprehended at the border are released into the interior of the United States to await the processing of their cases. Mr. Miller argued that the policy provided a perverse incentive for migrants, essentially ensuring that if they could make it to the United States border and claim a “credible fear” of returning home, they would be given a chance to stay under asylum laws, at least temporarily.
A lengthy backlog of asylum claims made it likely that it would be years before they would have to appear before a judge to back up that plea – and many never returned to do so.
The situation was even more complicated when children were involved. A 2008 law meant to combat the trafficking of minors places strict requirements on how unaccompanied migrant children from Central America are to be treated.
Minors from Mexico or Canada – countries contiguous with the United States – can be quickly sent back to their home countries unless it is deemed dangerous to do so. But those from other nations cannot be quickly returned; they must be transferred within 72 hours to the Office of Refugee Resettlement at the Department of Health and Human Services, and placed in the least restrictive setting possible. And the Flores ruling meant that children and families could not be held for more than 20 days.
In October, after Mr. Trump ended Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, the Obama-era program that gave legal status to undocumented immigrants raised in the United States, Mr. Miller insisted that any legislative package to codify those protections contain changes to close what he called the loopholes encouraging illegal immigrants to come.
And in April, after the border numbers reached their zenith, Mr. Miller was instrumental in Mr. Trump’s decision to ratchet up the zero tolerance policy.
“A big name of the game is deterrence,” Mr. Kelly, now the chief of staff, told NPR in May. “The children will be taken care of – put into foster care or whatever – but the big point is they elected to come illegally into the United States, and this is a technique that no one hopes will be used extensively or for very long.”
Technically, there is no Trump administration policy stating that illegal border crossers must be separated from their children. But the “zero tolerance policy” results in unlawful immigrants being taken into federal criminal custody, at which point their children are considered unaccompanied alien minors and taken away.
Unlike Mr. Obama’s administration, Mr. Trump’s is treating all people who have crossed the border without authorization as subject to criminal prosecution, even if they tell the officer apprehending them that they are seeking asylum based on fear of returning to their home country, and whether or not they have their children in tow.
“Having children does not give you immunity from arrest and prosecution,” Attorney General Jeff Sessions said in a speech on Thursday in Fort Wayne, Ind.
“I would cite you to the Apostle Paul and his clear and wise command in Romans 13 to obey the laws of the government,” said Mr. Sessions, quoting Bible verse as he took exception to evangelical leaders who have called the practice abhorrent. “Because God has ordained them for the purpose of order.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/16/us/politics/family-separation-trump.html [Post edited 17 Jun 2018 15:57]
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| Happy Fathers Day: on 09:11 - Jun 21 with 2586 views | Shaky |
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| Happy Fathers Day: on 11:55 - Jun 21 with 2536 views | Shaky |
I don't think liberals and the mainstream media are giving Trump enough credit for taking steps that may halt the forced separation and imprisonment of children and babies.
Sure it was his policy in the first place, but now he has signed a piece of paper to review the policy he should be congratulated warmly for his spirit of humane generosity in clawing back his own monstrous policy.
Bet you wont see it from the libs though, right Tummer? | |
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| Happy Fathers Day: on 16:33 - Jun 21 with 2482 views | Tummer_from_Texas |
| Happy Fathers Day: on 11:55 - Jun 21 by Shaky |
I don't think liberals and the mainstream media are giving Trump enough credit for taking steps that may halt the forced separation and imprisonment of children and babies.
Sure it was his policy in the first place, but now he has signed a piece of paper to review the policy he should be congratulated warmly for his spirit of humane generosity in clawing back his own monstrous policy.
Bet you wont see it from the libs though, right Tummer? |
Nice wind up, but a point of clarification: there is nothing "lib" or "progressive" about the collectivist, anti-liberty Left. To me, it's just the Left.
But I really don't care if the Left ever shows the ability to give DJT credit for anything. Hell I hope they never do, at least not before the 2020 re-election. The Center is catching on to their TDS. |  |
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| Happy Fathers Day: on 16:41 - Jun 21 with 2472 views | Shaky |
| Happy Fathers Day: on 16:33 - Jun 21 by Tummer_from_Texas |
Nice wind up, but a point of clarification: there is nothing "lib" or "progressive" about the collectivist, anti-liberty Left. To me, it's just the Left.
But I really don't care if the Left ever shows the ability to give DJT credit for anything. Hell I hope they never do, at least not before the 2020 re-election. The Center is catching on to their TDS. |
Certainly hardcore Trump fans are onto the lib dirty tricks. Lots of interviews in recent days showing they are convinced that pictures of children in cages have been photoshopped. No doubt using child crisis actors as Coulter has asserted.
Propaganda, disinformation, and baby jails. You're on the wrong side of history, matey. | |
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| Happy Fathers Day: on 17:21 - Jun 21 with 2445 views | Tummer_from_Texas |
| Happy Fathers Day: on 16:41 - Jun 21 by Shaky |
Certainly hardcore Trump fans are onto the lib dirty tricks. Lots of interviews in recent days showing they are convinced that pictures of children in cages have been photoshopped. No doubt using child crisis actors as Coulter has asserted.
Propaganda, disinformation, and baby jails. You're on the wrong side of history, matey. |
No, just the wrong side of every shamelessly slanted piece of hysterical Leftist propaganda you search day and night to cut and paste here, and then try to pass off as fact.
And gladly so. | |
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| Happy Fathers Day: on 17:30 - Jun 21 with 2439 views | moonie |
Tummer. Seeing the relentless left wing mantra on here and the persistent rubbishing of your great country ,surely you must get pisssed off and want to walk away from our club .
I'm no fan of Trump but the relentless BRitish hounding of all things American is rather embarrassing and yes, I d trust the Yanks before the Russians ,Italians, French and Spanish every day of the week
Hope Lisa had the grace to apologise over her patronising deeply personal bilge |  | | |
| Happy Fathers Day: on 19:24 - Jun 21 with 2409 views | Shaky |
| Happy Fathers Day: on 17:21 - Jun 21 by Tummer_from_Texas |
No, just the wrong side of every shamelessly slanted piece of hysterical Leftist propaganda you search day and night to cut and paste here, and then try to pass off as fact.
And gladly so. |
Exactly right, Tumms, because for satanists, the devil is the Lord God! | |
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| Happy Fathers Day: on 20:43 - Jun 21 with 2387 views | Tummer_from_Texas |
| Happy Fathers Day: on 19:24 - Jun 21 by Shaky |
Exactly right, Tumms, because for satanists, the devil is the Lord God! |
Ya know, I've been around 4 years now, and I'm quite sure I've never even referenced God in any way on this board. Other than perhaps "taking the Lord's name in vain" as they say, on occasion.
That would be a presumptuous, sanctimonious, and at the very least an ineffective way to try to make my point to people who may or may not share my religious views.
And quite opposite of you, I try to show respect and open-mindedness towards any individuals who happen to disagree with me, until they make it personal first. | |
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| Happy Fathers Day: on 20:47 - Jun 21 with 2381 views | moonie |
I'm with you tum
People cannot resist posting purely to insult .
I don't start but finish it. | | | |
| Happy Fathers Day: on 20:58 - Jun 21 with 2368 views | Tummer_from_Texas |
| Happy Fathers Day: on 17:30 - Jun 21 by moonie |
Tummer. Seeing the relentless left wing mantra on here and the persistent rubbishing of your great country ,surely you must get pisssed off and want to walk away from our club .
I'm no fan of Trump but the relentless BRitish hounding of all things American is rather embarrassing and yes, I d trust the Yanks before the Russians ,Italians, French and Spanish every day of the week
Hope Lisa had the grace to apologise over her patronising deeply personal bilge |
Nah, thanks but no chance of that happening.
Do agree though that Lisa should apologize for implying you disagree with her because you must be a sexist. That random, bizarre accusation out of nowhere was really uncalled for, and is an insult to the countless women who actually do have to deal with sexism. | |
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| Happy Fathers Day: on 21:03 - Jun 21 with 2357 views | moonie |
Lisa is revered on here ,hence what she posts is rarely questioned and when it is ,her fans jump in to defend . They do this by insults
Clear gang culture on here .
My father was disrespected on here by omarjack, just a week after I left the Crem. The result? Apology, retraction ? Nah just more from Darren And crew . Lisa is at least more articulate but no more worthy of " respect" .
I can guarantee this will perpetuate | | | |
| Happy Fathers Day: on 21:09 - Jun 21 with 2350 views | Humpty |
| Happy Fathers Day: on 21:03 - Jun 21 by moonie |
Lisa is revered on here ,hence what she posts is rarely questioned and when it is ,her fans jump in to defend . They do this by insults
Clear gang culture on here .
My father was disrespected on here by omarjack, just a week after I left the Crem. The result? Apology, retraction ? Nah just more from Darren And crew . Lisa is at least more articulate but no more worthy of " respect" .
I can guarantee this will perpetuate |
"I would also like to apologise if you saw what I said as an insult to your late old man. I certainly didn't mean it to be. And if you saw it as a low shot from my part I'm sorry. "
From Omar, June 17th.
Looks like an apology to me.
Stop lying Perch. |  | | |
| Happy Fathers Day: on 21:12 - Jun 21 with 2345 views | exiledclaseboy |
Right wing snowflakes been triggered again. They need a safe space. |  |
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| Happy Fathers Day: on 21:13 - Jun 21 with 2343 views | Humpty |
| Happy Fathers Day: on 20:58 - Jun 21 by Tummer_from_Texas |
Nah, thanks but no chance of that happening.
Do agree though that Lisa should apologize for implying you disagree with her because you must be a sexist. That random, bizarre accusation out of nowhere was really uncalled for, and is an insult to the countless women who actually do have to deal with sexism. |
Lisa has had to deal with sexism on here on many occasions.
Such as men making creepy sexual comments, men telling her to go and play with a vibrator and men questioning whether or not she's menstruating.
Men like Perch. That's why she accuses him of sexism, not because he disagrees with her.
I probably shouldn't say it as she's more than capable of defending herself, and I'm sure she will, but what you say is simply untrue. | | | |
| Happy Fathers Day: on 21:17 - Jun 21 with 2332 views | Ace_Jack |
| Happy Fathers Day: on 16:33 - Jun 21 by Tummer_from_Texas |
Nice wind up, but a point of clarification: there is nothing "lib" or "progressive" about the collectivist, anti-liberty Left. To me, it's just the Left.
But I really don't care if the Left ever shows the ability to give DJT credit for anything. Hell I hope they never do, at least not before the 2020 re-election. The Center is catching on to their TDS. |
Do you think Trump deserves credit for reversing his own governments abhorrent policy? |  | | |
| Happy Fathers Day: on 21:50 - Jun 21 with 2316 views | Tummer_from_Texas |
| Happy Fathers Day: on 21:13 - Jun 21 by Humpty |
Lisa has had to deal with sexism on here on many occasions.
Such as men making creepy sexual comments, men telling her to go and play with a vibrator and men questioning whether or not she's menstruating.
Men like Perch. That's why she accuses him of sexism, not because he disagrees with her.
I probably shouldn't say it as she's more than capable of defending herself, and I'm sure she will, but what you say is simply untrue. |
OK, I don't doubt that. But I'm talking about her uncalled for shot at moonie, so what I said is very true. See page 1 of this thread. | |
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| Happy Fathers Day: on 21:56 - Jun 21 with 2305 views | Humpty |
| Happy Fathers Day: on 21:50 - Jun 21 by Tummer_from_Texas |
OK, I don't doubt that. But I'm talking about her uncalled for shot at moonie, so what I said is very true. See page 1 of this thread. |
Moonie is Perch.
He has displayed his sexism on here many times including making creepy sexual comments about Lisa.
Perhaps that has something to do with it. | | | |
| Happy Fathers Day: on 09:28 - Jun 22 with 2215 views | moonie |
Firstly hump.
I haven't seen that apologies as I instantly ignored him . I did pm him.
Now ,I've seen it , the matter is closed .
Lying ,it want not
Second, just wtf do YOU think you are ..." Men like him " clueless.
You show utter distain for anyone not agreeing wi your extreme left wing views so you re really not one to judge anyone . You seem to ignore the many in sexist supportive posts I've appended over the years . | | | |
| Happy Fathers Day: on 09:48 - Jun 22 with 2203 views | dickythorpe |
Save all the abuse for oldjack!!!
Lisa gets some real crap but she ruins the opponent. A pleasure to see. |  | | |
| Happy Fathers Day: on 09:51 - Jun 22 with 2201 views | Shaky |
President Shithole licensing marine pollution:
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Trump scraps Obama policy on protecting oceans, Great Lakes
John Flesher
TRAVERSE CITY, Mich.
The Associated Press, June 21, 2018
President Donald Trump has thrown out a policy devised by his predecessor to protect U.S. oceans and the Great Lakes, replacing it with a new approach that emphasizes use of the waters to promote economic growth.
Trump revoked an executive order issued by President Barack Obama in 2010 following the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The largest offshore oil spill in U.S. history, it killed 11 workers and spewed millions of gallons of crude that harmed marine wildlife, fouled more than 1,300 miles of shoreline and cost the tourism and fishing industries hundreds of millions of dollars.
Obama said the spill underscored the vulnerability of marine environments. He established a council to promote conservation and sustainable use of the waters.
In his order this week, Trump did not mention the Gulf spill. He said he was “rolling back excessive bureaucracy created by the previous administration” and depicted the Obama council as bloated, with 27 departments and agencies and over 20 committees, subcommittees and working groups.
The Republican president said he was creating a smaller Ocean Policy Committee while eliminating “duplicative” regional planning bodies created under Obama.
But he said federal agencies could participate in regional partnerships formed by states. His administration has encouraged a “co-operative federalism” approach that shifts more responsibility to state governments.
Trump’s order downplays environmental protection, saying the change would ensure that regulations and management decisions don’t get in the way of responsible use by industries that “employ millions of Americans, advance ocean science and technology, feed the American people, transport American goods, expand recreational opportunities and enhance America’s energy security.”
In another reversal of Obama policy, Trump earlier this year called for opening most coastal waters to offshore oil and gas drilling, drawing fierce opposition from many coastal states. His administration also is stepping up federal leases for offshore wind energy development.
“Domestic energy production from federal waters strengthens the nation’s security and reduces reliance on imported energy,” Trump said in his order, which also mentioned shipping, fishing and recreation as among industries standing to benefit from his plan.
The order drew praise from a group representing offshore energy producers.
Jack Belcher, managing director of the pro-industry National Ocean Policy Coalition, said the new approach would remove “a significant cloud of uncertainty” for marine commerce.
Environmentalists said it erases a national mandate to improve ocean health.
“In another attempt to reverse progress made under President Obama, the Trump administration is recklessly tossing aside responsible ocean management and stewardship,” said Arian Rubio, legislative associate for the League of Conservation Voters.
U.S. Rep. Rob Bishop, a Republican and chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee, said Trump’s approach would “help the health of our oceans and ensure local communities impacted by ocean policy have a seat at the table.”
Rep. Raul M. Grijalva, an Arizona Democrat and ranking member of the committee, demanded a hearing and accused Trump of “unilaterally throwing out” years of conservation work.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/world/us-politics/article-trump-scraps-obama-pol | |
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| Happy Fathers Day: on 09:53 - Jun 22 with 2197 views | Ace_Jack |
| Happy Fathers Day: on 21:17 - Jun 21 by Ace_Jack |
Do you think Trump deserves credit for reversing his own governments abhorrent policy? |
i'll take that as a no | | | |
| Happy Fathers Day: on 10:32 - Jun 22 with 2174 views | Batterseajack |
| Happy Fathers Day: on 09:53 - Jun 22 by Ace_Jack |
i'll take that as a no |
For that matter, have any of the #MAGA lot come close to criticizing this child separation policy? I've seen a lot of effort go into pretending that this was an Obama policy, and only dems could overturn it, both of which turned out not to be true. | | | |
| Happy Fathers Day: on 10:57 - Jun 22 with 2158 views | Shaky |
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| Happy Fathers Day: on 11:53 - Jun 22 with 2140 views | Shaky |
Bigly Fake News:
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
National Enquirer sent stories about Trump to his attorney Michael Cohen before publication, people familiar with the practice say
by Sarah Ellison
Washington Post, June 21 at 7:19 PM
During the presidential campaign, National Enquirer executives sent digital copies of the tabloid’s articles and cover images related to Donald Trump and his political opponents to Trump’s attorney Michael Cohen in advance of publication, according to three people with knowledge of the matter – an unusual practice that speaks to the close relationship between Trump and David Pecker, chief executive of American Media Inc., the Enquirer’s parent company.
Although the company strongly denies ever sharing such material before publication, these three individuals say the sharing of material continued after Trump took office.
“Since Trump’s become president and even before, [Pecker] openly just has been willing to turn the magazine and the cover over to the Trump machine,” said one of the people with knowledge of the practice.
During the campaign, “if it was a story specifically about Trump, then it was sent over to Michael, and as long as there were no objections from him, the story could be published,” this person added.
The Enquirer’s alleged sharing of material pre-publication with Trump’s attorney during the campaign highlights the support the tabloid news outlet offered Trump as he ran for president. It also intersects with a subject that federal prosecutors have been investigating since earlier this year: Cohen’s efforts to quash negative stories about Trump during the campaign. As part of that, prosecutors are also looking into whether Cohen broke campaign finance laws, according to people familiar with the investigation.
Federal prosecutors subpoenaed American Media Inc. as part of their investigation into Cohen, the Wall Street Journal reported earlier this week. A Justice Department official said Pecker did not fall under the regulation that governs when and how prosecutors can obtain records of members of the news media.
“American Media Inc., has, and will continue to, comply with any and all requests that do not jeopardize or violate its protected sources or materials pursuant to our first amendment rights,” AMI spokesman Jon Hammond said.
Pecker declined to be interviewed for this story. Dylan Howard, the company’s chief content officer, called it “completely false” that Trump and Cohen “were told in advance, and copies were shared in advance, and that they had some sort of sway over who the magazine attacked on any given week.”
In an interview last week in AMI’s downtown Manhattan offices, Howard said that if stories were shared, “it was not at the behest of me or David. And quite frankly, if they were shared, I’m a little concerned because people are acting as rogues and renegades.”
“We made a very public endorsement of Trump,” he continued. “So it wouldn’t be out of the ordinary for me to commission stories on his opponents given that we had endorsed Donald Trump. And that’s what I did,” Howard said. “I didn’t do that at the behest of candidate Trump or anyone associated with him. I did it because we were chasing good stories.”
Trump “has never been consulted on editorial decisions – or by himself or through intermediaries requested an article be written on a given subject or angled in a certain way,” Howard said. “We do not run or kill stories on the behest of politicians, even if they are the president of the United States.”
Cohen did not return calls or text-messaged requests for comment. The White House referred calls to Trump’s personal counsel, Rudolph W. Giuliani, who did not respond to requests for comment.
Once Enquirer editors sent a story or cover image, sometimes a request for changes came back, according to two of the people with knowledge of the relationship. Stories about Trump were positive in nature, and changes related to the stories were not dramatic, according to one person with knowledge of the matter, who said most of the changes in stories sent to Cohen resulted in more flattering cover photos or changes to cover headlines.
Trump suggested stories to Pecker on a regular basis, one of these people said, and had access to certain pieces – including one about Hillary Clinton’s health – before publication.
These people spoke on the condition of anonymity because they feared legal action or professional retribution if they spoke publicly about Trump or AMI, which publishes other celebrity-focused titles including Us Weekly, the Globe and Star.
AMI’s alleged practice of sharing advance copies of articles with Trump and his intermediaries has not been previously reported. The relationship between Trump and Pecker dates back decades, but the communication between Trump, Cohen and Pecker’s publications ramped up during the presidential primaries and the general election in 2016.
According to Sam Nunberg, an early Trump campaign adviser, the Enquirer was Cohen’s “account,” and the relationship with the Enquirer was “a big commodity” in Trump’s circle.
The tabloid “was such a help to Trump during the primary and even the general,” said Nunberg, who compared the weekly to a campaign mailer. Mailers are expensive to produce and send to prospective voters, only a small percentage of whom actually open them.
However, “If you get something on the cover of the National Enquirer,” Nunberg said, “it’s a publication that people pay attention to in the grocery store. You are conveying a message, and it’s free media.”
During the campaign, in addition to stories written about him, Trump was particularly interested in stories about Clinton’s health, two of the people said. They cited two cover stories: the one published in September 2015 that declared she had “SIX MONTHS TO LIVE!” and another a year later that purported to disclose her secret medical file. The cover on the latter issue portrayed Clinton as so pale and aged that she looked, in the words of one former AMI employee, “like a zombie.”
That cover story was sent to Cohen in advance, according to people with knowledge of the situation.
Howard denied the story was sent outside AMI and said it was not published to advance the agenda or narrative of a particular candidate. “We merely went where the newsstand dictates,” he said. An analysis of the Enquirer’s newsstand performance showed that covers featuring Trump performed above average and negative stories about Clinton resonated with the Enquirer audience, “just like they have for 20 years,” he said.
Cohen, Pecker and Howard communicated about Trump rivals such as Ben Carson, Carly Fiorina and other Republican primary candidates, according to the three knowledgeable people, plus a fourth person aware of the practice. Two of these people cited a story on Carson, a neurosurgeon, about his alleged botched operations as an example of a story Trump suggested to Pecker.
Howard said the story came from legal filings, not Trump. After the story ran, Carson said, “Generally speaking, there is no one who does the number of operations that I did who aren’t going to find some people who are going to be disgruntled.”
The Enquirer had some sway over the news cycle in both the Republican primary and the general election.
During the primary, the paper ran a story on Ted Cruz’s father’s purported link to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy; his campaign called it “garbage.” There was also a story about Cruz’s rumored affairs. Cruz attacked that story – of which there was never any evidence – as a plant from the Trump campaign. But Howard said that Enquirer cover on Cruz grew out of a tip from operatives close to Marco Rubio.
Terry Sullivan, Rubio’s former campaign manager, said the notion that Rubio’s camp had circulated the Cruz rumors was “utterly bizarre and 100 percent absurd and not true.”
An FBI raid executed April 8 on Cohen’s office and residences sought all of the lawyer’s records of communications with AMI, Pecker and Howard regarding two women who claimed to have had affairs with Trump while he was married, according to three people familiar with the investigation. The search warrant served on Cohen also sought all communications he had with Trump or the Trump campaign about any “negative publicity” that might arise during the presidential race, according to a person familiar with investigators’ work. The warrant sought all his communication about an embarrassing “Access Hollywood” tape that surfaced in October 2016, weeks before the election.
In late 2015, AMI paid $30,000 to a onetime Trump Tower doorman who was offering an embarrassing story about then-candidate Trump. The tabloid said in a statement it never published the claim because of questions about its credibility.
In August 2016, former Playboy model Karen McDougal received a $150,000 payment from AMI for her story alleging a 10-month affair with Trump a decade ago but did not publish the piece – a practice sometimes called “catch and kill.”
McDougal agreed to write fitness columns, pose for AMI covers, and not talk about the relationship with Trump. She recently sued to be released from the agreement, and she and the company have since settled.
Trump-related stories were shared primarily with Cohen, two people familiar with the practice said. After Trump took office, the relationship with Cohen continued, they added, while the Enquirer also started working with new intermediaries.
Richard Hasen, a professor specializing in election law at the University of California at Irvine’s law school, said that coordinating a message with a political candidate only becomes problematic for a media company if the candidate exerts a level of “control” over the outlet.
If a media corporation submits to a candidate’s instructions, “that could amount to a violation of federal election laws,” he said.
Though Cohen was the primary conduit between Trump and National Enquirer reporters, Trump on occasion asked Hope Hicks, his former communications adviser, to call Pecker to suggest a story, said one of the people familiar with AMI practices. Sometimes Trump would call Pecker himself.
“When it comes to Pecker, there didn’t need to be anybody in between,” this person said. “Donald would call David on his cellphone anytime.”
Hicks did not respond to requests seeking comment.
“David’s relationship with Trump was pretty much on a business level,” said Kevin Hyson, chief marketing officer at AMI. Hyson remembered working on a Trump-branded magazine when Pecker was still the CEO of Hachette Filipacchi’s U.S. division. Pecker rented out facilities at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort for a couple of board meetings, and Trump introduced Pecker at Pace University when Pecker received an honorary doctorate.
One of the benefits of the Trump relationship for Pecker might simply be access to power. “He likes to say, ‘I just got off the phone with the president,’ ” according to a current associate of Pecker’s.
Not all coverage of Trump is positive in Pecker’s titles. Us Weekly, another AMI publication, has recently run some sympathetic stories about Melania Trump that are implicitly critical of her husband. In one story in late March, in the midst of new publicity around Stormy Daniels, the adult-film actress who alleges that she had a sexual relationship with Trump, the magazine cited a “family insider” saying that Melania “is very, very unhappy with her life. If she could, she would get away from Donald and just be with her son.”
The Enquirer’s circulation has plummeted from its nearly 900,000 copies a week 10 years ago to fewer than 300,000 for the six months ending Dec. 31, according to the Alliance for Audited Media. But AMI officials say that the power of the tabloid is not in copies sold but in its cover images displayed in supermarket checkout lines all over the country.
Trump’s relationship with the Enquirer predates Pecker, but the connection deepened after Pecker took over in 1999. In “The Untold Story: My 20 Years Running the National Enquirer,” Iain Calder, the editor of the Enquirer under a previous owner, wrote of Trump: “The man loves publicity – but only if he controls it. He doesn’t care if reporters write that he is a tough SOB who fires people, but he gets angry if a story implies he is soft-hearted. He’d often call New York reporters, sometimes giving them news tips, sometimes haranguing them about something he didn’t like.
“Of course, we couldn’t let him control the Enquirer’s work, but sometimes we let him influence an angle or delete something that really infuriated him.” Calder, who would not comment beyond what he has written, quotes in his book one of the editors who managed the Enquirer’s relationship with Trump, Larry Haley, saying, “Donald loved having a pipeline into the biggest weekly in America. He loved thinking he could manipulate us, and he knew that, because of our relationship, we would never run a major story without calling him first.”
Carol D. Leonnig, Julie Tate and Matt Zapotosky contributed to this story. | |
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| Happy Fathers Day: on 12:24 - Jun 22 with 2129 views | Ace_Jack |
| Happy Fathers Day: on 10:32 - Jun 22 by Batterseajack |
For that matter, have any of the #MAGA lot come close to criticizing this child separation policy? I've seen a lot of effort go into pretending that this was an Obama policy, and only dems could overturn it, both of which turned out not to be true. |
Even if it was an Obama policy, which it wasn't, it's still wrong.
Don't separate kids from their parents and lock them in cages. It's not f**king hard. | | | |
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