When It Comes to Covering Trump, The New York Times Has Abandoned Any Distinction Between Reporting and Opinion

Two recent New York Times stories raise the question of whether the paper any longer makes a distinction between news and opinion when it comes to covering Donald Trump. One piece, identified as a “political memo,” makes the case that the president is not nearly as smart as he thinks he is, while the other, presented as a content analysis of Trump’s comments during COVID-19 briefings, argues that he indulges in unprecedented self-praise, self-pity, and blame shifting.

Those portrayals will strike Trump’s critics, presumably including most Times readers, as essentially accurate. But they do not belong in the news section unless the Times has abandoned any pretense that its reporting, as distinct from its opinion section, aspires to even-handedness and political neutrality. While the reality has always been quite different, the paper’s bias in its news coverage has never been more blatant.

Under the headline “Trump’s Disinfectant Remark Raises a Question About the ‘Very Stable Genius,'” national political reporter Matt Flegenheimer mocks the president’s perceptions of his own intelligence and intellectual seriousness. “The president has often said he is exceptionally smart,” the subhead says. “His recent suggestion about injecting disinfectants was not.” Referring to last Thursday’s coronavirus briefing, during which Trump suggested that injections of disinfectants such as bleach and isopropyl alcohol might prove to be effective treatments for COVID-19, Flegenheimer observes: “Mr. Trump’s performance that evening…did not sound like the work of a doctor, a genius, or a person with a good you-know-what.”

Flegenheimer suggests that Trump’s disinfectant comments could hurt him even among die-hard supporters: “Mr. Trump’s typical name-calling can be recast to receptive audiences as mere ‘counterpunching.’ His impeachment was explained away as the dastardly opus of overreaching Democrats. It is more difficult to insist that the man floating disinfectant injection knows what he’s doing.” Although the piece quotes various observers (all critical of Trump) regarding the episode and its potential political ramifications, there is no mistaking the author’s opinion of the president’s intelligence.

In a story headlined “260,000 Words, Full of Self-Praise, From Trump on the Virus,” Washington correspondents Jeremy Peters and Maggie Haberman, together with national political reporter Elaina Plott, summarize their transcript analysis this way: “The self-regard, the credit-taking, the audacious rewriting of recent history to cast himself as the hero of the pandemic rather than the president who was slow to respond: Such have been the defining features of Mr. Trump’s use of the bully pulpit during the coronavirus outbreak….The transcripts show striking patterns and repetitions in the messages he has conveyed, revealing a display of presidential hubris and self-pity unlike anything historians say they have seen before.”

Peters, Plott, and Haberman are ostensibly presenting data, counting “roughly 600” instances of “self-congratulation,” “more than 260” examples of giving credit to others, “more than 110” examples of blaming others, and “about 160” expressions of empathy. They also quote sources (again, all critics of Trump) who offer their own views. But the authors are unmistakably communicating their low regard for the president in a way that might make the piece an interesting addition to the opinion section but is hardly consistent with straight reporting or even news “analysis.”

Trump has always viewed outlets like the Times as overtly hostile to him, and stories like these only confirm that impression. The articles dress up opinion as reporting, drawing conclusions that may be perfectly defensible but rely on value judgments and character assessments that readers would ordinarily expect from commentators rather than reporters. While the president’s attacks on the news media are frequently unhinged and overbroad, “reporting” like this validates his thesis that much of the press corps is out to get him.

There is a difference between reporting facts that make Trump uncomfortable, or reporting the opinions of Trump critics, and calling him stupid, uninformed, vain, petty, irresponsible, and self-obsessed. By crossing that line, the Times is erasing the distinction between reporting and advocacy.

Maybe that’s for the best. There is nothing wrong with advocacy or opinion journalism (I do it all the time!), as long as it is intellectually honest and explicitly identified as such. The subtler forms of bias that were apparent in news coverage by the Times long before Trump was elected—manifested in decisions about which facts to include or omit, which sources to quote, and which angles to emphasize—are more insidious and therefore more misleading.

Readers may be better served by a newspaper that is open about its prejudices and does not pretend that it aspires to anything like objectivity, which was always an impossible standard to meet, or even balance. But if that is the route the Times chooses, it must abandon the notion that what it does is fundamentally different from what Fox News does, and its “reporters” can hardly object when Trump publicly describes them as political opponents.

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Undercover Cops Arrest 2 Women for Operating Home Beauty Businesses In Violation of Coronavirus Lockdown Order

Undercover cops arrested two women in Laredo, Texas, for violating the city’s COVID-19 shutdown order. The women, Ana Isabel Castro-Garcia and Brenda Stephanie Mata, had been operating prohibited cosmetology businesses from their home.

The Laredo lockdown mandates that “non-essential” businesses, including cosmetology services, must close. Police say the women were reported anonymously through the department’s app.

“Both of the violators independently solicited customers via social media,” the department told the Laredo Morning Times. “On both cases, an undercover officer working on the COVID-19 task force enforcement detail made contact with each solicitor to set up an appointment for a cosmetic, beauty service that is prohibited under the emergency ordinance.” Police posing as customers then arrested both women in their homes.

Both women were charged with a Class B misdemeanor, which comes with a maximum potential penalty of 180 days in jail and a $1,000 fine. The two women were released on $500 personal recognizance bonds.

Their arrests are yet more evidence of law enforcement’s self-defeating trend of arresting people for violating stay-at-home orders and social distancing protocols. (The Atlanta Constitution Journal has published a long list of examples here.) Arrests, by their very nature, require police and suspects to come into physical contact with each other. The people being arrested are then put in jails that have become breeding grounds for the novel coronavirus.

The longer local and state lockdown orders remain in place, the more authoritarian the enforcement seems to get.

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Undercover Cops Arrest 2 Women for Operating Home Beauty Businesses In Violation of Coronavirus Lockdown Order

Undercover cops arrested two women in Laredo, Texas, for violating the city’s COVID-19 shutdown order. The women, Ana Isabel Castro-Garcia and Brenda Stephanie Mata, had been operating prohibited cosmetology businesses from their home.

The Laredo lockdown mandates that “non-essential” businesses, including cosmetology services, must close. Police say the women were reported anonymously through the department’s app.

“Both of the violators independently solicited customers via social media,” the department told the Laredo Morning Times. “On both cases, an undercover officer working on the COVID-19 task force enforcement detail made contact with each solicitor to set up an appointment for a cosmetic, beauty service that is prohibited under the emergency ordinance.” Police posing as customers then arrested both women in their homes.

Both women were charged with a Class B misdemeanor, which comes with a maximum potential penalty of 180 days in jail and a $1,000 fine. The two women were released on $500 personal recognizance bonds.

Their arrests are yet more evidence of law enforcement’s self-defeating trend of arresting people for violating stay-at-home orders and social distancing protocols. (The Atlanta Constitution Journal has published a long list of examples here.) Arrests, by their very nature, require police and suspects to come into physical contact with each other. The people being arrested are then put in jails that have become breeding grounds for the novel coronavirus.

The longer local and state lockdown orders remain in place, the more authoritarian the enforcement seems to get.

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200,000 Retail Investors Hoping To Buy The F**king Dip In USO End Up Just Getting F**ked

200,000 Retail Investors Hoping To Buy The F**king Dip In USO End Up Just Getting F**ked

For the second week in a row, the largest US oil ETF, the USO roiled oil markets after it unexpectedly starting selling its holdings of the most active West Texas Intermediate futures contract, triggering a massive swing in the price relationship between the June and July contracts, which – as we reported earlier – sent both the June WTI contract tumbling…

… which pushed WTI spreads even deeper into contango, as the discount between June WTI and the contract for December deepened sharply after the filing, reaching as low as $15.17 a barrel…

… while the price of USO to all time lows.

The changes, which were detailed in a Monday morning regulatory filing, represented the latest in a series that Bloomberg said “have wreaked havoc on crude prices.” The fund said it’s moving its money to contracts spread between July 2020 and June 2021 due to new limits imposed upon it by regulators and its broker. Specifically, USCF which manages the USO ETF, said it would now target the following allocation:

  • 30% of its portfolio in the July contract,
  • 15% of its portfolio in the August contract,
  • 15% of its portfolio in the September contract,
  • 15% of its portfolio in the October contract,
  • 15% of its portfolio in the December contract,
  • 10% of its portfolio in the June 2021 contract.

… and revealed that it would roll into the positions described above over a three-day period with approximately 33.3% of the investment changes taking place each day on each of April 27, 2020, April 28, 2020, and April 29, 2020, which explains why the June WTI contract is tumbling this morning as speculators frontran the USO selling.

The ETF has changed its investment policy five times in the last two weeks, as shown in the following chart which depicted the ETF’s holdings as of Friday’s close:

Source: Bloomberg’s Laura Cooper

It also warned investors its valuation may deviate significantly from the underlying oil price, in effect acknowledging that it’s momentarily less focused on the price of WTI crude.

“While it is USO’s expectation that at some point in the future it will be able to return to primarily investing in the Benchmark Futures Contract or other similar futures contracts of the same tenor based on light, sweet crude oil, there can be no guarantee of when, if ever, that will occur,” it said in the filing, adding that USO investors “should expect that there will be continued deviations between the performance of USO’s investments and the Benchmark Oil Futures Contract, and that USO may not be able to track the Benchmark Oil Futures Contract or meet its investment objective.”

The fund listed factors including “a change in regulator accountability levels and position limits” as part of its reasons for the shift. As a result it will now struggle to meet its own investment objectives, it warned.

As Bloomberg notes, the long-only oil fund has in recent weeks become a magnet for retail investors looking to Buy The Fucking Dip and time the bottom to the historic price rout that’s pushed oil futures in New York into negative territory for the first time in history. The knock-on effects have impacted retail investors everywhere. While USO was not holding the May contract when it plunged below zero, traders pointed to retail money as having caused large gyrations in the market.

And while the USO has quickly become a rich target for speculators that are able to take advantage of the moves by trading ahead of it, thanks to its detailed regulatory disclosures, such as today’s crash, retail investors continue getting slaughtered and according to the latest Robin Hood data, there was now a record number of holders above 204,000…

… even though the USO is by definition a product designed to fleece retail, offering a detailed calendar and the exact contracts that’s selling and buying, allowing more sophisticated investors to place financial bets ahead.

Our advice: only when retail has “dumped it“, and hedge funds have to look elsewhere for sheep to fleece, will it be safe to expect a modest oil rebound.


Tyler Durden

Mon, 04/27/2020 – 12:41

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Boeing CEO Warns Aviation Rebound Will Take Years 

Boeing CEO Warns Aviation Rebound Will Take Years 

Days after President Trump floated the idea that the US government could purchase five years of airline tickets in bulk as part of a stimulus package for crippled airline carriers, Boeing CEO’s Dave Calhoun has warned that air travel growth might not return to pre-corona levels for years. 

Calhoun made the comments on Monday morning at an annual shareholder meeting. He said it would take 2-3 years for air travel growth to return to pre-corona levels, adding that long term growth trends could take even longer to recover. 

“Based on what we know now, we expect it will take two to three years for travel to return to 2019 levels and an additional few years beyond that for the industry’s long-term trend growth to return,” he said. 

Calhoun said the new reality in a post-corona world is a depressing one for airlines: “…they are making difficult decisions that result in grounding fleets, deferring airplane orders, postponing acceptance of completed orders, and slowing down or stopping payments.”

This is more bad news for Boeing, who has drawn down on revolvers as it struggles to survive, requesting a government bailout as it’s faced with a wave of cancellation orders for its planes. 

Calhoun said Boeing would need to borrow more money in the next six months. He said it could be years until the company begins paying a dividend again, nevertheless, restarting its stock buyback program. 

His gloomy outlook echoed our report from April 20, which confirmed the airline industry has crashed as the virus pandemic drove travel demand down to the lowest in decades. 

We noted that United Airlines and other carriers have warned it could take several years for recovery as well. As a result of depressed passenger traffic, airlines are expected to slash tens of thousands of workers, cancel new plane orders, and trim costs across the board later this year. 

“Without a quick improvement in demand, we could see the airlines look to shed 800 to 1,000 aircraft, which could result in a reduction of 95,000 to 105,000 airline jobs,” Cowen analyst Helane Becker wrote in an April 13 client note.

United’s chief executive and president, Oscar Munoz and Scott Kirby said in an April 15 memo to employees that the industry has a “challenging economic outlook” and the overall workforce at the company will be smaller in the future than today.

Airlines cheered when Congress last month allocated $50 billion in bailouts to the sector that included $25 billion in grants and loans to keep 750,000 workers employed through September 30.

Cowen & Co. has predicted ticket sales won’t recover to pre-corona levels until 2025, which explains why President Trump wants to purchase bulk tickets for the next five years.

As for Boeing, well, they might be screwed for quite some time as a recovery in the airline industry is years away. This would be a perfect time for Boeing to restructure the company and change its name, along with the name of the 737 Max.


Tyler Durden

Mon, 04/27/2020 – 12:06

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Federalist Society Executive Branch Review Week

You can see the details and links here; topics include the unitary executive, judicial review, nondelegation, nationwide injunctions, “federalism, COVID-19, and the administrative state,” and more. You can call in to the teleforums at is 888-752-3232, and you can watch the videos at the links. It’s free, and no registration is required unless you want to ask questions.

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This is power grab we haven’t seen since 9/11

Thousands of years ago in 458 BC, Lucius Quintius Cincinnatus was hard at work behind his plow on the family farm when a group of Roman Senators showed up with urgent news.

A foreign enemy called the Acqui had vanquished one of Rome’s armies and was rapidly approaching the city. The Republic was in deep trouble.

Cincinnatus was a former consul and renowned military leader, so in their panic, the Roman Senate unanimously appointed him as an emergency dictator.

All of Rome’s individual freedoms were immediately suspended. Checks and balances were eliminated. Cincinnatus would have supreme power to do whatever he saw fit during Rome’s time of crisis.

According to ancient Roman historians, Cincinnatus told his wife, “Go and fetch my toga,” and he immediately went to work.

Cincinnatus was legendary: he mobilized a new army, repelled the foreign invaders, and saved the city from certain destruction, all within just 15 days.

But even more importantly, Cincinnatus relinquished all of his power immediately after the victory, and returned to his plow. It was a display of virtue and selflessness that Romans celebrated for centuries.

Most dictators, of course, are not so principled.

The ancient Greeks (despite having invented democracy) routinely appointed dictators during times of national emergency.

Very few relinquished power willingly, and several– like Dionysius of Syracuse, Nabis of Sparta, Peisistratus, etc.– ruled for decades.

They always found a way to extend the emergency and hang on to power. And eventually, the people simply became accustomed to their new reality.

This is still true of human nature today.

When I was a kid in the 1980s, my father used to go on business trips from time to time, and my mother would usually take my sister and I to the airport to pick him up.

Many of you are old enough to remember this– back then, visitors used to be able to go directly to the gate, i.e. we would go through security and sit at the gate waiting for my dad as he walked off the plane.

Obviously you can’t do that anymore.

After a series of terrorist incidents in the late 1990s, followed by 9/11 a few years later, the government  put its boot to the throat of airport security.

Today we stand in line for a dose of radiation while being barked at and occasionally fondled by federal employees.

If you think about 9/11 in particular, its remarkable how much power the government grabbed, and how many freedoms they took away. Two decades later, it’s clear those freedoms are never coming back.

I’m not just talking about visitors being able to go directly to the gate at the airport. That’s a tiny example.

The wider impact of 9/11 can be seen everywhere.

The government now maintains broad authority to spy on it citizens, with the NSA brazenly intercepting phone calls, emails, and communication metadata through an extraordinary surveillance dragnet.

Financial institutions submit ‘suspicious activity reports’ to the federal government to inform on their own customers, even for the most mundane transactions like withdrawing a few thousand dollars of cash.

US law now permits the indefinite detention, i.e. incarceration without charge or trial, even on US citizens. This law was originally authorized in 2001, then re-authorized again in 2013.

Plus, US federal spending absolutely ballooned post-9/11. After a few years of finally achieving a fiscal balance in the 1990s, deficit spending soared in 2001… and has remained high for the past two decades.

Even during economic boom years from 2016-2019, the government still managed to overspend by $1 trillion per year. The emergency spending authorization never went away.

Frankly most of these impacts will never go away. We’ve become accustomed to the way things are– the spending, the lack of privacy, etc.

The last thing we should ever expect is for government to voluntarily give up power. And that’s what’s so concerning right now.

Yes, there’s a virus on the loose. A lot of people are going to die, and that’s terrible. It’s also terrible how many people die of cancer, heart disease, natural disasters, and automobile accidents.

But as I’ve written numerous times over the past several weeks, the world is not coming to an end. This too shall pass, and from a public health perspective, things will one day go back to normal.

Meanwhile they’re completely ravaging the economy. Millions of people have already lost their jobs, countless businesses will close forever, and trillions of dollars of prosperity has been lost.

The economic toll is incalculable. But that too shall pass. It may take years… but even the Great Depression eventually gave way to economic growth.

What I’m most concerned about at this point is NOT the virus, nor even the economic devastation.

I’m far more concerned at how governments have seized this opportunity to vastly expand their power.

They have us all cowering in our homes, stripped of the most basic freedoms to do just about anything.

People are being thrown off their own private property because they’re not an ‘official resident’ of the town. Others have been arrested for attending a funeral. Others threatened with jail for their social media posts.

Content everywhere is being heavily censored, with major tech companies like Google and Facebook telling us what we can/cannot say.

Governments around the world are tracking their citizens’ every movement, and now there’s talk of national health databases and special passports.

And they’re spending trillions of dollars without any thought of the consequences.

It’s a power grab we haven’t seen since 9/11. The circumstances are certainly similar: people are terrified, so the government is doing whatever it wants.

Again, the public health problems will eventually be fixed. Even the economy will some day recover.

But there’s going to be a huge impact on our freedom from this astonishing growth of unchecked government power. And a lot of those changes will be with us permanently.

Source

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$6 Trillion Contraction Could Be “Too Optimistic”, Economists Warn Eyeing Second COVID-19 Wave

$6 Trillion Contraction Could Be “Too Optimistic”, Economists Warn Eyeing Second COVID-19 Wave

Bloomberg Economics estimates that the global economy will contract 4% in 2020 due to coronavirus lockdowns. However, these estimates are overly “optimistic,” assuming a V-shaped economic recovery would be seen in the back half of the year. 

The narrative of a V-shaped recovery before the November election has been recently drummed up by the Trump administration. Wall Street has bid stocks up in the last 24 sessions with high hopes that stimulus will stabilize asset prices, and lockdowns will be lifted across many states that would enable the economy to soar. MSCI All World has seen a near 25% gain in price on these hopes.

While optimism of stimulus, virus curve flattening, vaccines, and lifting lockdown restrictions in many regions across the world have aided in the idea that a second-half recovery is a sure bet, many are ignoring the unfolding economic depression and several other scenarios that could derail the economic rebound. 

Bloomberg’s Tom Orlik and Jamie Rush offer this reality check: 

“The economy has entered a downturn of unprecedented speed and severity, with most advanced economies facing their weakest performance since the Great Depression,” they said in a report, adding that, “relative to expectations at the start of the year, the cost of lost output is more than $6 trillion.” 

Their global $6 trillion estimates are based on “optimistic assumptions about both the outbreak and the recovery.” In this scenario, the US GDP will plunge 6.4%, Euro Area GDP -8.1%, and Japan -4%, while China’s rate of economic growth will be the slowest on record

The economists said, “downside risks are significant” and derailment of the second-half recovery is indeed possible:  

They warned about the risks of a second coronavirus wave that would prevent a global economic rebound.

They said a deeper contraction of 5.6% would then be possible, and if stimulus proved ineffective, a worst-case scenario of a 7.2% decline would be seen. 

“But unlike the Asian crisis in 1997 and the global recession in 2009, the current shock isn’t caused by fundamental economic and financial imbalances. This means that countries that have mobilized enough stimulus to compensate for the lost income could stage a swift recovery,” the economists wrote.

“Governments should err on the side of doing too much stimulus. In the end, the cost of doing too little would be higher.”

As central bank stimulus is flooding financial markets, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development warned in early April that their leading indicators detected a turning point in the global economy, suggesting a crash has been underway in all major economies.

China managed to flatten the pandemic curve in late February. Months later, Beijing is closing movie theaters and imposing travel restrictions on certain regions as the dreaded second wave could be materializing. If so, this would mean, since China created at least half of the world’s credit in the last decade, that the economic rebound forecasted for the second half of 2020 is pure fiction.


Tyler Durden

Mon, 04/27/2020 – 11:50

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Blockbuster Demand For 2Y Trasury Auction Sends Yield To 8 Year Low

Blockbuster Demand For 2Y Trasury Auction Sends Yield To 8 Year Low

Just hours after the BOJ joined the global “nuclear” central bank response, when it announced the launch of unlimited QE, demand for today’s 2Y Treasury auction was not coincidentally off the charts, with the yield tumbling further to just 0.229% down from 0.390% last month, stopping through the When Issued by 1.3bps – the biggest since May 2016 – and the lowest since July 2012.

The blistering demand also manifested itself in a surge in the Bid to Cover, which soared to 3.102 from 2.362, the highest since Jan 2018 and far above the 2.51 six auction average.

The internals were quite impressive as well, with the Direct takedown doubling from 8.55% last month to 17.80%, in line with the recent average of 17.2%, and with Indirects taking down a whopping 55.81%, higher than last month’s 55.20%, and above the 49.9% six auction average, it left Dealers holdings just 26.3% of the auction, the lowest since last November.

And with a truncated issuance schedule ahead of this week’s FOMC announcement, we will get the 5Y auction in just over two hours (and the 7Y tomorrow). It will be interesting to see if we get the same blistering demand there as we just witnessed in the 2Y paper.

Overall, tremendous demand for 2Y paper which is getting precariously close to yields where the Bill complex is trading, and suggesting that sooner or later, the Fed will have to launch some form of Yield Curve Control as Zoltan Pozsar predicted to prevent Bill yields from rising above coupons.


Tyler Durden

Mon, 04/27/2020 – 11:49

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