WTF? Slate - "News. Traffic. Weather. Trump."

[NRaleighLiberal]

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2017/07/how_boris_epshteyn_and_sinclair_bring_trump_propaganda_to_local_news.html

How Sinclair Broadcast Group and Boris Epshteyn took administration propaganda from the Oval Office to the local news.

By Katy Waldman

The face of Boris Epshteyn, chief political analyst for the behemoth Sinclair Broadcast Group, is glowing like an oversized egg about to hatch the world’s most affable chicken. “Let’s take a look at the White House press briefing,” he suggests genially, the corners of his mouth lifting. “What it is, what it represents, and how it serves the American people.”


Thereupon Epshteyn accepts his own invitation and launches into a capsule summary of the ritual, which began “way back in 1929,” during the administration of Herbert Hoover. The briefing, he laments, has devolved “into a circus and a distraction,” “a theater in which the press, frankly, plays a leading role.” A clip shows mayhem: reporters braying Sean Spicer’s name and not letting him get a word in edgewise. “The American people absolutely deserve access to the White House,” Epshteyn remarks piously, “and they should continue to pose their questions.” However, with President Donald Trump phasing out televised briefings, such question-answering “can—and seemingly will—be done in a manner much more conducive to delivering actual information to the American public.”


Nowhere in the segment does Epshteyn explain how canceling on-camera press conferences will improve the flow of facts from the Oval Office to the populace. In the meantime, spouting off on TV seems to suit Epshteyn just fine. The former special assistant to President Trump hosts the 90-to-120-second program “Bottom Line With Boris,” which as of last week has been scheduled to run eight or nine times a week on Sinclair’s 173 local TV stations in 81 markets. As the Baltimore Sun points out, Epshteyn will dispense cheerful propaganda on the local news for roughly 13½ minutes each day—nearly a quarter-hour of Trump-friendly agitprop, disseminated to more than 2.2 million U.S. households by a right-leaning company worth close to $40 billion.

Until a few months ago, Epshteyn was on the White House payroll. In addition to his special assistant position—which, per Politico, entailed “oversee[ing] White House officials who appear on television to speak on behalf of the administration”—he also served as communications director for the Trump inaugural committee and senior adviser to the campaign. There, the surrogate for America’s bully-in-chief developed a reputation for bellicosity. As the Daily Beast recounted, he’d pleaded guilty to assault in 2014. The House Intelligence Committee also wants to question Epshteyn, who was born in the then–Soviet Union in 1982, about his ties to the Kremlin. In March, not long after the Jewish staffer had crafted the notorious Holocaust Remembrance Day statement that omitted any mention of Judaism, he left the Trump administration amid reports that everyone at every cable news network hated him. A month later, Sinclair scooped him up as a pundit. Now he’s Trumpism’s chummiest salesperson, an everyman touting a #MAGA fantasy.

snip - read more at the link and gag.

[greatauntoftriplets]

1. There's an error in there.

It should reference the "flow of lies from the Oval Office to the populace."