Philip Bump

Former President Donald Trump questioned who was paying for the phones of illegal aliens, suggesting that the federal government is handing out high-quality cellphones to migrants as part of its purported efforts to flood the country with immigrants. This is the latest iteration of the political right’s frustration with the idea that the government (and, particularly, an incumbent Democratic president) is spending money on frivolous giveaways (in their estimation) to poor people of color. The government does have a program in which people seeking asylum are given mobile devices.

The national map of broadband need published by the White House offers an extra layer of information beyond its detailed look at internet access in the United States.

By the end of the 2014 election, campaigns and political committees had directly spent about $8 million on Facebook advertising, less than half the amount they’d spent on Google. Through September of 2019, that figure neared $46 million, 50 percent more than what Google took in. And that’s only direct spending, excluding spending by political consultants on behalf of candidates or campaigns. In the 2016 campaign alone, Donald Trump’s team spent somewhere around $70 million on Facebook through a digital firm run by Brad Parscale, who is now Trump’s campaign manager. 

More than two-thirds of Republicans say they have little confidence in the media, a figure that has risen nearly 20 points since 2014. On the other end of the political spectrum, fewer Democrats express low confidence in the media than at any point in nearly 30 years. The result is a gap of 43 points between members of the two parties, a broad gulf on whether the news media is trustworthy. 

Speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference, Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel said of the 2020 election, “It’s going to be a choice. Are we going to want capitalism? Look at all the great achievements of our country: flight, cars, the Internet. Sorry, Al Gore. The Internet. None of that came from government. It came from innovation. It came from the greatness of America.”

On his way to campaign rallies in West Virginia and Indiana on Nov 2, President Donald Trump stopped to answer some questions from the media. Karen Travers of ABC News raised a question that’s gained heightened attention recently after a fervent President Trump supporter allegedly mailed bombs to Democratic officials and after a man echoing President Trump’s rhetoric on immigration allegedly killed 11 people at a synagogue in Pittsburgh. “Half of Americans say you’re encouraging politically motivated violence with the way you speak,” Travers said.

One component of the traditional relationship between the media and the president is that, when the president isn’t available to answer questions, his press secretary will do so.

A new poll from Quinnipiac University finds that most Americans disapprove of how the media cover President Donald Trump, a function of a majority of independents disapproving of that coverage. Among Republicans, though, nearly 9 in 10 disapprove of the media coverage. Most Americans also disapprove of how President Trump talks about the media.

In a speech to veterans, President Donald Trump said, “Just remember, what you’re seeing and what you’re reading is not what’s happening.” What President Trump is doing is asking listeners to join him in his carefully-crafted bubble, a space where information that conflicts with what President Trump asserts or with what President Trump believes is untrustworthy, intentionally false or simply doesn’t exist.

The closeness of the 2016 Presidential election — 78,000 votes in three states gave Donald Trump the victory — means that small things could have swung the result. So, too, could big things, like former FBI Director James Comey’s late-campaign revelation that the bureau had found new emails that might be relevant to the server investigation. They weren’t, but the announcement resuscitated the subject right as voters were about to head to the polls. However, the inspector general’s report reinforces an unimportant point about this response to the 2016 election.