Washington Post

Two high-profile Republican members of Congress may have been targets of Russian social-media campaigns to discredit them as recently as this past week, an expert in Kremlin influence-peddling told the Senate Intelligence Committee on March 30. “This past week we observed social-media accounts discrediting US Speaker of the House Paul Ryan,” Clint Watts told the committee in a rare open hearing with cybersecurity, intelligence and Russian-history experts that leaders billed as a “primer” on Russian influence-peddling.

Watts, an expert in terrorism forecasting and Russian influence operations from the Foreign Policy Research Institute, also said that in his opinion, Sen Marco Rubio (R-FL) “anecdotally suffered” from Russian social-media campaigns against him during his presidential bid. Speaker Ryan’s office was not aware of the report about an effort against him, according to a spokeswoman. The revelations widen the scope of politicians who have become the subject of Russian smear campaigns carried out on social media, a central part of the Kremlin’s alleged strategy of spreading propaganda in the United States and undermining its democratic institutions.

Counselor to the president Kellyanne Conway likes to say that the Trump administration and the media share “joint custody” of the country, as if the president and the press are a divorced couple. That might be an apt comparison (Jon Stewart also has likened Trump and the media to ex-lovers), but the White House seems totally uninterested in an amicable split. Witness White House press secretary Sean Spicer's reprimand of American Urban Radio correspondent April Ryan on Tuesday (“please stop shaking your head"), which offended many reporters, and his characterization over the weekend of Politico's Tara Palmeri as “an idiot with no real sources,” which offended even Breitbart News.

. Spicer's characterization of Palmeri as an “idiot” is particularly telling because he wrote it in an email to Breitbart. He didn't just blurt it out, in other words; he typed it, had a chance to reconsider — before anyone else would have read the insult — yet decided to leave it in his message and hit “send” anyway. Credit the White House with being authentic in this department, but remember that President Trump has bragged about being able to fake cordiality. His go-to explanation, when asked about his history of hobnobbing with — and donating money to — Democratic politicians is that he was not always genuine. President Trump is not playing the same game with the media, and voters have noticed. In a Monmouth University poll, 81 percent of respondents said President Trump has a worse relationship with the press than previous presidents did. Here's the survey result that President Trump should worry about: 58 percent said his bad relationship with the media has hurt his image.

[Commentary] Previous research in this field suggests that attempts to counter political rumors often fail. Ironically, just repeating rumors that you’re trying to debunk may in fact reinforce those rumors. Those individuals who accept a rumor as true may in fact become more certain of their false beliefs the more it’s repeated, doubling down if there’s new sources of information that either supports or denies it. The lessons of my study are clear. Just as important as how a rumor is debunked is who does the debunking. Politicians who support good public policy by speaking against their partisan interests — in this case, Republicans speaking out against the death panel rumors — are considered credible sources by citizens from across the ideological spectrum. When fighting “fake news,” politicians and the media should present the right authority. In our politically polarized time, we may be able to harness the power of partisanship to stop the spread of misinformation.

[Adam J. Berinsky is a professor of political science at MIT and serves as the director of the MIT Political Experiments Research Lab (PERL). ]

[Commentary] President Donald Trump contended in his conversation with Time's Washington bureau chief, Michael Scherer, that although some of his assertions are not precisely true, they are substantially true. Ironically, the substantial-truth defense is borrowed from the news media — the “opposition party,” according to the White House — which sometimes uses it to win libel cases.

Trump's argument was similar to the one presented by the A&E cable channel in a 2011 libel case brought by a Colorado prisoner named Jerry Lee Bustos. On an episode of “Gangland,” A&E labeled Bustos a member of the Aryan Brotherhood gang. In fact, Bustos was not a member. In Trump's case, the question is: What's the difference between saying something bad happened in Sweden Feb. 17 when the truth is that something bad happened Feb. 20? Now, let's remember that Trump spoke Feb. 18 — before the riot. He didn't misstate the date of a past incident; he referred to an incident that hadn't occurred, then got lucky (if you can call it that) when an incident two days later fit his extremely vague description. Let's also remember that a defense that can save you in federal court might not — and perhaps should not — save you in the court of public opinion. People rightfully expect media companies to report precise truth, not merely substantial truth. It is reasonable to hold the president to the same standard.

Once again, Shepard Smith is doing cleanup on aisle Fox. Moments after President Donald Trump suggested that Fox News commentator Andrew Napolitano had validated the unfounded claim that President Barack Obama had recruited British agents to bug Trump Tower during the campaign, Smith stepped in to say otherwise. “Fox News cannot confirm Judge Napolitano’s commentary,” said Smith, the network’s chief news anchor. “Fox News knows of no evidence of any kind that the now-president of the United States was surveilled at any time, in any way.” And perhaps to drive home the point, Smith added, “Full stop.” It was a rare bit of record-correcting for Fox, which enabled Napolitano to pass off his wiretapping thesis for several days before British officials complained that it was rubbish. (As a result of Napolitano’s faulty reporting, Fox pulled him from the air for an indefinite period this week.) And it was perhaps no coincidence that the correcting came from Smith, whose off-message comments about Trump have made him an apostate to the conservative Fox News orthodoxy.

Vanita Gupta, the Obama administration official who headed the Justice Department’s civil rights division, will become the first woman to run the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, an umbrella organization founded 67 years ago that represents 200 national groups.

Gupta, 42, an Indian American lawyer, is also be the first child of immigrants to head the organization, which has been run for nearly 20 years by civil rights leader Wade Henderson. Gupta will take the reins of the Leadership Conference on June 1.

Rep Dave Trott (R-MI) had just wrapped up a boisterous town hall meeting in Novi, northwest of Detroit, and he was headed backstage — where a member of his team brainstormed an angle for the news media. After Rep Trott defended the Trump administration’s budget increase for defense funding, paid for by cuts to discretionary spending, he was booed in a politically potent way. “We’re going to take that part where they’re booing funding the military, and I’m gonna get somebody to write a story, and we’re going to promote the s— out of that,” Republican strategist Stu Sandler could be heard saying on a video recorded by local TV station WDIV and uploaded by the district’s local branch of the Indivisible project. “It’s un-American crap.”

Sandler confirmed that he was the voice on the tape, telling The Post that he was genuinely put off by the crowd’s reaction. “I was shocked and appalled at the majority of the audience that booed Congressman Trott when he stated ‘I support more funding for our military,’ Sandler explained in an email. “Our troops deserve better equipment and more pay.” On “Fox and Friends,” a morning show that President Trump watches regularly, co-host Ainsley Earhardt framed the moment exactly the way Sandler wanted it. In a short segment, Rep Trott portrayed himself as a defender of pay raises for the military, standing up to “Bernie Sanders socialists” and other malcontents.

FBI Director James B. Comey acknowledged that his agency is conducting an investigation into possible coordination between the Kremlin and the Trump campaign in a counterintelligence probe that could reach all the way to the White House and may last for months. At the same time, Comey repeatedly refused to answer whether specific individuals close to the president had fallen under suspicion of any criminal wrongdoing, “so we don’t wind up smearing people” who may not be charged with a crime.

The extraordinary disclosure came near the beginning of a sprawling, 5.5 hour public hearing by the House Intelligence Committee, the panel’s first into the Russian government’s efforts to interfere in the 2016 election. The FBI traditionally does not disclose the existence of an investigation, “but in unusual circumstances, where it is in the public interest,” Comey said, “it may be appropriate to do so.” Comey also said he was authorized by the Justice Department to confirm the existence of the wide-ranging probe into Russian interference in the electoral process.

[Commentary] Now that President Trump has unveiled his budget and put public broadcasters on notice that he plans to zero-out the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, alarm bells have gone off. But this defense ignores today’s dramatically changed media environment. Public media now rarely offers anything that Americans can’t get from for-profit media or that can’t be supported privately.

For-profit media produce programming that is racially and ideologically diverse. Audiences once considered underserved — whether that means children of color, political conservatives, devotees of independent film or science geeks — can find what they’re looking for on commercial radio and TV. After this budget cycle, if public broadcasters continue to receive federal support, they must start appealing to more than just blue-state America. They should revisit and expand the meaning of diversity to include more ideological and geographic perspectives, and be required to report regularly to Congress as to viewership and listenership in states and major metro areas across the country.

[Howard Husock is vice president of research and publications at the Manhattan Institute and a City Journal contributing editor. He serves on the board of directors of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.]

Some of the 19 agencies President Donald Trump's budget would kill:

Corporation for Public Broadcasting This is the agency that helps fund public broadcasters nationwide, including NPR and PBS.
National Endowment for the Arts: This is the agency that delivers grants to fund and promote various fine arts across the country. Having recently turned 50, it was launched by President Lyndon B. Johnson as a way of helping foster the arts as part of the Great Society. Its budget is $148 million.
National Endowment for the Humanities: Similar to the NEA — and with the same $148 million budget and launch date — the NEH deals with grants for education programs related to culture.
Institute of Museum and Library Services: Launched 20 years ago under President Bill Clinton, this agency is the main federal funder of local libraries and museums across the United States. It had a budget of $230 million in 2016. House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-WI) has targeted it for elimination before, arguing museums and libraries should be funded by the private sector.