Why I Can't Take My Eyes Off of Rachel Maddow
Gi este na pakyo' taihinasso.
Hu sen agradesi i minalate'-ña.
Mana'annok este gi primet na attikulu.
Ti ha tatitiyi i hemplon i otro na media.
Kada kumuentos si Trump.
Ya ha na'annok ta'lo i tinaimamahlao-ña.
Yan mabababa i ilu-ña.
I otro media, ma tatiyias i take'-ña.
Kulang puyitos gi lancho.
Ma kekekånno' todu i papet etgue-ña Twitter.
Lao si Rachel ti ha cho'cho'gue ayu.
Mas tahdong i chine'gue-ña.
Ha cho'cho'gue' i diposti i che'cho'-ña i journalist.
Ha kekena'famta i minaghaet.
Yan ha na'annok i manmana'attok ni' i manakhilo'.
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Rachel Maddow on How She Doubled Viewership Under Trump: 'I Stopped Covering the Twitter Feed'
by Brian Flood
March 3, 2017
The Wrap
MSNBC’s “The Rachel Maddow Show” has been on a roll, posting her best ratings month ever in February and nearly doubling her viewership. Her secret is simple. Maddow said she covers President Donald Trump’s White House in a very old-fashioned Hollywood way.
“We developed sort of an informal, internal mantra… which is that we basically cover them as if they are a silent movie,” Maddow told TheWrap. “I stopped covering the Twitter feed and we started covering only what they do rather than what they say.”
It’s working. In February, Maddow racked up MSNBC’s largest total viewer audience ever in the 9 p.m. ET timeslot and the best performance among the key news demo of adults age 25-54 since November 2012.
After the February victory, Maddow has now beaten CNN’s regularly scheduled programing for 45 straight months. While regularly holding Trump’s feet to the fire, she has gained 99 percent in total viewers compared to February 2016. And while cable news has been consistently up in the last year, CNN gained 70 percent and Fox News increased 31 percent over the same time period.
“It is an unusual thing that the White House and its chief spokespeople have been called out saying stuff that’s not true over and over and over again,” she said. “It’s the petty stuff but it’s also important stuff that they’ve not told the truth about.”
When a Trump surrogate lies, it has consequences for the MSNBC host. “We no longer go to that person for factual information,” Maddow explained. That realization helped Maddow come up with her recent formula that has resulted in ratings success.
“I really feel like it was helpful to me, in terms of trying to come up with what to talk about every day, and serving up information for our audience that is substantive and not manipulated by people at the White House,” Maddow said. “It was helpful for us to just stop paying attention to what they were saying.”
MSNBC colleague Mika Brzezinski recently said she doesn’t want Trump’s senior adviser Kellyanne Conway to appear on her show, citing her as “not credible anymore.”
Maddow said Conway is “a nice person” to whom she enjoys talking. She added she admires Conway’s willingness to engage in “extended difficult conversations.” However, Maddow said talking to Conway is “essentially just talking to a pro-Trump political operative” as opposed to a White House official representing the government’s views.
Despite being one of the most-watched people in media, Maddow typically attracts fewer viewers than Fox News in the 9 p.m. ET timeslot. You can make a strong case that the two don’t exactly have the same target audience, but Maddow respects what the other side is doing.
“It is my sense, and this even goes back to my days in talk radio, part of the way that conservative media has branded itself to its audience is by telling it’s audience, ‘You can’t trust anybody else,'” Maddow said. “We all sort of thought that was clever branding when Rush Limbaugh started doing that in talk radio back in the old days. It has been taken to a high art at Fox.”
Maddow explained that people seeking right-leaning opinion content are “not the majority of the country but a huge, consolidated chunk of the universe of people who are watching cable TV at any one time.”
Maddow’s bet is that under President Trump a consolidated chunk of the universe will tune in to her, too.
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Rachel Maddow Frames Trump-Russia-FBI Story with Watergate Cover-Up
by Andy Towle
February 24, 2017
TowleRoad
Rachel Maddow began her piece on last night’s damning report from CNN that the Trump administration sought help from the FBI to squash reports that Trump officials had communications with Russia during the 2016 campaign by framing it against the Nixon administration’s attempts to stop the criminal investigation by the Justice Department over what had happened.
Obstruction of justice was the first article of impeachment brought against Nixon.
After Watergate, rules were put in place to limit contact between the White House and the Justice Department. At that time only four officials from the White House were allowed to have contact with the DOJ about a criminal investigation.
Years later, the Bush administration dropped the wall between the executive branch and the Justice Department, raising the number of officials who could have contact with the DOJ on criminal cases from 4 to 895 (!). And because of the problems that caused for the Bush administration, in 2007, Michael Mukasey reinstated the four-person rule.
Flash forward to the Trump administration, and it appears that they are not following that rule.
As we reported last night, the Trump administration contacted the FBI asking it to publicly dispute reports about communications between Trump’s associates and Russia during the 2016 campaign.
Maddow wonders whether this activity is nefarious, or just dumb:
“This could be death of the republic. This could also just be stupidity.
Right? Benefit of the doubt? You really don’t know that this is a
problem? Is it possible that the White House including the White House
Chief of Staff doesn’t know you can’t tell the FBI what to do about
their ongoing investigation into the White House?”
And she brings another detail into the picture, the high number of Trump officials who have been dismissed because they couldn’t pass FBI background checks, including, most recently, the Chief Digital Officer.
“Why did this White House hire such an
unusually large number of people who can’t pass FBI background checks?
Is that nefarious? Is that stupid? Is this an indication of something
really, really wrong and worrying, or is it an indication of
incompetence and stupidity?”
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Rachel Maddow: Why hasn't Jill Stein said anything about the Trump-Russia scandal?
by Travis Gettys
Raw Story
Feb. 22, 2017
MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow called out Jill Stein for her silence on the widening Russia scandal engulfing the Trump administration.
Maddow appeared last week on Viceland’s “Desus and Mero” program, where she brought up a photo showing Stein, the Green Party candidate for president, sitting with Vladimir Putin and Michael Flynn, reported DeadState.
Flynn resigned earlier this month as national security adviser for misleading the vice president about his communications with the Russian ambassador, and other Trump advisers are under investigation for their ties to Russia.
The photo was taken in 2015, when Stein and Flynn were invited to Moscow for the 10th anniversary banquet for RT — Russia’s state-owned news network aimed at English-speaking countries.
Maddow cast suspicion on Stein’s silence over alleged Russian attempts to interfere with the election to benefit Donald Trump, who she claimed during her own campaign would govern no differently than Hillary Clinton.
“So everybody’s like, ‘Wow, how come this like super, super aggressive opposition that we saw from these third-party candidates — how come they haven’t said anything since this scandal has broken?’” Maddow said.
“I don’t know, Jill — I can’t pronounce it in Russian,” Maddow said, with apparent sarcasm. “Hope you’re really psyched about your Wisconsin vote totals.”
It’s not clear who paid for Stein’s trip to Russia in December 2015, although a former British spy claims in the infamous “golden showers” memo that the Kremlin did so indirectly.
Stein and her campaign have refused to comment on the matter.
Journalist Casey Michel, writing for The Daily Beast, said RT and the Kremlin-backed Sputnik network target both the American far-left and far-right with pro-Putin propaganda, and he argued Stein’s criticism from the left may have helped cost Clinton the election.
“Putin has cultivated dupes, fellow travelers, and purblind fools among plenty of American progressives who, whether by accident or design, have facilitated the rise of the most extremist and reactionary president this country has ever elected,” Michel wrote.
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Rachel Maddow Exclusive Debunks "Extreme Vetting" Propaganda of the Muslim Ban
Media Matters Staff
Media Matters for America
March 2, 2017
From the March 2 edition of MSNBC's The Rachel Maddow Show:
RACHEL MADDOW (HOST): Now tonight, we have got this, this is another leaked report. I'm not going to tell you how we got it, but the Department of Homeland Security has tonight confirmed to us that this is authentic, that this is real. You can see at the top of it here, I think we've got it on screen, yeah -- it's labelled "Unclassified, for official use only," it's dated yesterday, March 1, 2017.
This is a report that's from the Homeland Security Office of Intelligence and Analysis. Again, that's the U.S. intelligence agency that's based inside Homeland Security, and interestingly, it says it was prepared by that intelligence office, but look at that small print there.
"Prepared by the Office of Intelligence Analysis" that's the Homeland Security Agency, but it was coordinated with Customs and Border Protection, State Department, Immigration and Customs Enforcement -- I.C.E., National Counterterrorism Center, and the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. So, all of those people coordinated in creating this report.
And now, here's the title: "Most Foreign-Born U.S.-Based Violent Extremists Radicalized After Entering Homeland."
Oh, and what's the key finding here? What's the key judgment here? This is it, quote: "We assess that most foreign-born, U.S.-based violent extremists likely radicalized several years after their entry into the United States."
And why is that important? Say it again? "We assess that most foreign-born U.S.-based violent extremists likely radicalized several years after their entry into the United States," comma, "limiting the ability of screening and vetting officials to prevent their entry because of national security concerns."
Oh, right, so much for extreme vetting, right? The whole justification, the whole explanation from this administration for the Muslim ban was to stop people coming into this country, at least for a while, right? At least for a while, it's a temporary travel ban so we can get the extreme vetting, so Trump could set up his extreme vetting plan, right? When he announced it in the first place, that's the "Until we can figure out what is going on" part of how he announced it.
[...]
MADDOW: I look at this, and you know what I think? I think the Muslim ban is dead.***********************
Rachel Maddow tells Desus and Mero About How She Uses Sci-Fi to Contextualize Trump
by Sarah Bellman
February 17, 2017
The MSNBC host visited the VICELAND show to talk about our new president, Chris Hayes, and Obama's vacation.
With political scandals and unprecedented events circulating the news daily, it can be extremely taxing for journalists to report on the Trump administration. Of course, Rachel Maddow knows this all too well.When she visited VICELAND's talk show Desus & Mero, the MSNBC host told Kid Mero and Desus Nice about how she now finds unique ways to dissect our political climate—citing events from our past, other countries' histories, and even science fiction.
Additionally, Maddow gave the hosts her hot take on Jill Stein, Hillary Clinton, vacationing Obama, and her ride-or-die colleague Chris Hayes. Check out her full interview below.
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