President is obsessed with lashing out at the media. Lets take a look at all the companies and individuals the president berated this past week with terms like fake reporting, fake news, fake books, fake dossier. It seems like everything in critical in the media is fake to President Trump these days. Should we really be surprised, given that trump said this back in july . Dont believe the crap you see from these people, the fake news. What youre seeing and what youre reading is not whats happening. Dont believe your lyin eyes. These reports are because the news seems nowhere near favorable to him. A new poll shows 60 of americans disapproval of the job hes doing. Headlines about the National Inquirier has decades of dirt on him stored in a safe and he wanted to buy it back. And john mccains funeral, which he was reportedly not invited to as two former president s eulogized the fallen senator in a symbol of bipartisanship. Is trumps war on the media really just a war on the truth . Errol lewis and april ryan, the author of the new book under fire reporting from the front lines of the trump white house. Welcome, all. April, lets start with you. One of the targets of trumps attacks this week was his lester holt interview. It was a big interview in the wake of the comey firing. It caused a lot of problems when he said it was motivated by the russia investigation. Why is the president singling this out . One, lester holt is a solid journalist, hes a solid nightly news man. And hes got credibility. You have a president of the United States challenging someone with credibility when that president himself has a credibility issue. You have to remember this, john. Everything that the president says right now is under a microscope. This president , according to my republican sources, understands that republicans could lose the house. So he is trying to throw or deflect off of himself and throw it on the media. He is making people realize or feel that this Conspiracy Theory that the news is fake is something that really reverberates in his base. They have to go back and reexplain what he meant to say. He realizes that he could indeed lose the house. The republicans could lose the house. So you believe its basically politically inspired, a play to the base. Politically inspired. All right. Yes. Another target of the president s attacks this week was an attack on anonymous sources. Theres more than a little bit of irony in this, given that trump has been a fabricated source himself for decade, going back to posing as john barron in his real estate days, even up to the oval office. You run a newsroom. Is this a case of i learned it from you, dad . Its more than that. Theres actually like a handy cheat sheet to the trump administration. The more they complain about anonymous sources, the more they complain about fake news, the more likely they are to be a leaker themselves. When President Trump complains about anonymous sources, hes an anonymous source for people all the time. When Kellyanne Conway and those kind of folks complain about anonymous sources, well, lets just say that they all have a robust relationship with the media. Robust, a lot hanging on that. Let me bring in another one. We have a fascinating example of the president of the United States elevating the issue of off the record versus on the record. Big controversy in the last 36 hours, when toronto star reporter daniel dale used quotes that were off the record in a bloomberg interview about canada and trade and nafta. This raises interesting questions. What do you see, as head of a newsroom, the ethics of using off the record statements given to another source . Sure. Look, when you as a reporter go into an off the record agreement with someone, you are honor bound to stick to that agreement. However, if youre not party to that deal, you cant be bound by it in any way. While the bloomberg folks were very much bound to keep this off the record, daniel dale was in no way bound to stick to it. Errol, does that line up with your understanding here . Because dale also took great pains today to say his source was not the bloomberg reporters. Right. Very interesting, because you really want to not get too cute with that, right . Reporters know each other. You dont want to get into the habit of saying, i have an offtherecord agreement but my buddy listening in across the room was not part of the agreement and is going to take the information. You dont want to get into those kind of games. Daniel dale, you have to take them at their word, if they were sourced, maybe they were tipped off but if they can confirm it elsewhere, it stands as a solid piece of reporting. And certainly big news in canada, where they take the trade agreement very seriously, and Justin Trudeau has weighed in on it. Maggie haberman raises the possibility that trump himself put it out. April, does that ring true to you . Yes. This president is keenly aware of whats going on and this president has his hands in the mix at this white house. Anything that they do, hes very much aware of. And he orchestrates, particularly as he is close to White House Press secretary Sarah Huckabee sanders, from what were hearing. So this president definitely puts it out. Then they come back and say, oh, oh, i didnt like that. Its all about the optics. If plays well, theyll embrace it. If it doesnt, they get upset and very mad and theyll retaliate. Somehow things dont usually work that way. Noah, ami and the National Inqui inqui inquirer were in the news again with dirt that they kept on donald trump for decades and now we person that he wanted to buy it back. We saw some of this in the tape released with Michael Cohen and donald trump, what happens if david pecker is hit by a bus, how do we ensure those secrets stay safe. They looked to do a big buyback campaign. It was never executed on that grand level, but they did try to buy back some smaller stories, and now people are in trouble for it. And the people at the National Inquirer were relying on the fact that the president was in office. The president s attack on fake books is kind of a new one. Bob woodwards book fear is being released on september 11th. The other side of the legendary duo, Carl Bernstein reported that Michael Cohen was prepared to testify that trump knew about the Infamous Trump tower meeting with the russians despite the president s strenuous denials. The story was called into controversy when cohens lawyer lanny davis backtracked on the claims and outed himself as one of the sources of the story. Why did he backtrack . It could be to save his client from a perjury trap. Yet we know from statements made by Donny Deutsch on msnbc that cohen seems to have been talking openly on these lines. Here is what he had to say the day after cnns reporting on morning joe. What came out yesterday to me was not a surprise based on conversations that michael and i had. Did he reference this meeting in particular . Yes, he did. Errol, this is a big story. How do you see it . Yes. The most important part of all this is the underlying idea that somebody who is in a position to know, namely Michael Cohen, told his lawyer, lanny davis, and lanny davis sort of repeated this to the press, that the guy was talking openly about the president knowing in advance about this very important meeting. It has tremendous political implications, tremendous legal implications for a lot of people, not just the president. Its really, really important. So for lanny davis to then backtrack later and say, you know what, im not 100 sure, maybe he didnt hear what he thought he heard, maybe he realized the legal interests of his client were different from what he was portraying it as. And maybe he was just deciding he wanted to get out of the story, in part because his client was sort of being pushed into a corner that may be at odds with what he has told the juch justice department. This kind of stuff happens all the time, theres a certain amount of ambiguity. The president says its face, it strengthens his case that the press is unreliable, and telling his people, look, if you think its complicated, that means its false, which is the great danger. A fascinating and important point. I want to turn to the very real effects of trumps antimedia rhetoric. I want you to take a listen to this voicemail send to New York Times reporter ken vogel. You are the enemy of the people. And although the pen might be mightier than the sword, the pen is not mightier than the ak47. And unfortunately thats not the only one. This past week, a california man was arrested and charged for making at least 14 threatening phone calls to the boston globe, allegedly saying things like were going to shoot you fers in the head, and youre the enemy of the people and were going to kill every fing one of you, and, i will continue to threaten, harass, and annoy the boston globe. Up to 20 firearms and ammunition were removed from his home, two months after a crazed gunman killed five reporters and editors at the capitol gazette in maryland. When questioned about a free press, this is how chain responded. Reporter do you have a problem with the free press in america . There is no free press in america. April, i want to come to you on this one. Its the subject of part of your book. The escalating threats against journalists. And people dont understand how real the threats can be and whether its getting worse in your estimation. Its getting worse, john. There is collateral damage. It affects not only the reporter but the people around the reporter. You know, im going to say this, and im just going to put it as simply as i can. I blame the president for this. Sarah Huckabee Sanders had a chance to pull back, saying were not the enemy of the people. She didnt. She just talked about things personally that affected her and the president to include the fact that a comedian said some things about her. We didnt do that, the comedian did that. The president has had a chance. The New York Times leaders or bosses came and talked to the president about this. So many people talked to him, even his own daughter has said that the press is not the enemy. This president has to stop it. Hes keenly aware of whats going on and whats happening. The Death Threats have got to stop. We are a part of the constitution. Free and fair, independent press. The First Amendment. Not the second, not the third. The first. And a lot of people want to listen to this president who they say is a patriot but hes not standing by the oath of office to follow the constitution, the First Amendment. Not only that, some of these people making threats must have been asleep during government class or civics class, because we are a part of this country, the pillars of this country. And the problem is, if you dont like the reports, call the bosses. If you dont like the reports, make a noise on twitter. Do what you have to do. But to try to kill someone for writing a story that you dont like because there is fact in the story, theres a problem. And yes, i do write about it, and i write about the attacks on me and trying to disparage me and attack my credibility because they were fearful of some of the things that i knew that they were doing. And when i report, i speak the truth. And i have republican sources who are in the inner circle, who give up the information. I dont go through a file cabinet. Im given the information. Why . Because theyre whistleblowers and this administration doesnt like it. April, noah, thank you very much. Err errol, stick around. Coming up, President Trump attacks google for bias. Yeah, i think google is really taking advantage of a lot of people. And i think thats a very serious thing and its a very serious charge. This comes right before theyre set to be in the hot seat before congress. Thats if their ceo shows up. Flintstones meet the flintstones. Theyre the modern stone age family. From the town of bedrock. Meet george jetson. His boy elroy. With instant acceleration, electric cars are more fun to drive and more affordable than ever. Electric cars are here. Plug into the present. Now that we have your attention. Capri sun has four updated drinks. Now with only the good stuff. Do you know how to use those . Nope. Get those kids some capri sun nope. A lot of paints say they ordinarcan do the job,hiever. But just one can behr through it all. 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Congress had invited executives from Major Tech Companies to appear this wednesday to discuss their role in protecting the integrity of the midterm elections. Facebook is sending ceo sheryl sandberg. Twitter is sending ceo jack dorsey. Google doesnt want to send any of its top executives. So senators are threatening to display an empty chair instead. This all comes on the heels of a week when President Trump lashed out at tech giants, accusing them of bias against conservatives. You look at google, facebook, twitter, and other social media giants, and ive made it clear that we as a country cannot tolerate political censorship, blacklisting, and rigged search results. Now, all these companies dn that the Companies Deny that their platforms are biased. Let me start with you, President Trump tweeting early in the morning about biased search results, and it might appear he doesnt know how search works, many folks dont. But on the other hand, does he have a point that these platforms are so powerful, and they really are a black box . It goes to show, john, how much power these services have over our lives, people almost see them as utilities. Theyre really private companies that are free to do what they wish. There is a point, google does keep its algorithm secretive. Its not quite clear how it works. They describe it in broader terms. When theyre referencing people who claim that conservative news sites are somehow pushed down in the search results, they talk about how they push up search results that are highly cited, that have been around for a long time. These tend to be more wellknown news organizations like cnn or nbc, wall street journal or New York Times or Something Like that. If you define those outlets as leftleaning or liberal, thats how you come to the conclusion theres some sort of anticonservative bias. But there is a conversation about how these companies are such a big impact on our lives and at what point does the government get involved . You can look at the history of telephone companies, railroad companies. You can see sort of a future possibly for some of these Tech Companies. Trustbusting. I pulled that chapter out of our history books. Oliver, i want to bring this to you now. The president keeps warning social media giants he will take action over what he sees as their biased behavior. This administration has no details, though, about what the consequences could be. Lets take a listen. We have literally thousands and thousands of complaints coming in. And you just cant do that. Google and twitter and facebook, theyre really treading on very, very troubled territory. And they have to be careful. Its not fair to large portions of the population. The president said this morning hes unhappy, separate topic, with google and search results, and he said there could be consequences coming googles way. Does the president believe or does the administration feel there needs to be some form of regulation for google . What exactly was the president referring to . Were taking a look at it. There was perhaps a hint there that larry kudlow was humoring the president. What could the federal government do along these lines . Theres been a lot of talk this week about regulating tech platforms. Its unclear what they could do. Theres a wide variety of tools at their disposal. I talked to steve bannon earlier this week, he was suggesting he wanted the government to seize google and facebook and twitter and put it in a public trust, where the people would opt in of whether or not to allow these governments to use their data. Seize the private data . Right. For republicans now to be advocating seizing data or regulating private companies is certainly not something i think anyone really anticipated, but this administration obviously and this white house and the times we live in are really quite crazy. I said earlier this week, its like were living in the upside down, i think we can agree on that. Thats really through the looking glass. But i want to bring this to another google story that deserves a little more attention. There are questions about a Google Search app project for china, which is known internally ast dragonfly. Google left china eight years ago, citing, you know, totalitarian instincts on the part of the government. Now the times reports 1,400 people have signed a letter protesting the development of dragonfly. Does this violate their motto, dont be evil . What does it mean for the prospect of press freedom around the world . This is the intrinsic tension in a lot of these companies. Theyre there to make a profit, they want