Bill Shine, a former Fox News executive who was close to Roger E. Ailes, the network’s ousted chairman, is expected to be offered the job of White House communications director, according to four people familiar with the decision.
Mr. Shine, who was forced out as co-president at Fox News last May for his handling of sexual harassment scandals at the network, has met with President Trump in recent weeks about taking the West Wing communications job, which has been vacant since Hope Hicks left the job in March.
.. Mr. Shine’s reluctance to walk into a chaotic West Wing.
.. As recently as a month ago, Mr. Shine didn’t want the job
.. The former television executive was reluctant to deal with all the scrutiny, part of which could focus on his own connection to the sexual harassment scandal at Fox News
.. widely seen as one of the top executives and protégé to Mr. Ailes.
.. A Long Island commuter and son of a New York City policeman, the unassuming Mr. Shine was viewed inside Fox News as embodying the network’s typical viewer, urging producers to run segments on bread-and-butter issues that would appeal to conservatives.
.. He was also known as a loyal taskman for Mr. Ailes
.. so devoted to his bosses that Rupert Murdoch .. once privately described Mr. Shine to other executives as a “fine company man.”
.. Mr. Shine was accused in several lawsuits of covering up Mr. Ailes’s behavior and dismissing concerns from women who complained about it.
.. Several former employees at Fox News reacted with alarm — but not surprise
.. few people internally were concerned about the accusations that Mr. Shine played a role in concealing Mr. Ailes’ behavior, in part because some staffers think Mr. Shine was just doing his job to protect the company.
.. enjoys powerful allies inside the president’s inner circle.
.. He is close with Kellyanne Conway, the White House counselor, who is said to have advocated for him
.. Mercedes Schlapp, a communications adviser to the White House, was seen initially as a favorite for the job, in part because of her good relationship with the chief of staff, John F. Kelly.
.. it would add to the ties between Mr. Trump and the Fox News network
.. Mr. Shine is also close to Sean Hannity, the Fox News host who has the president’s ear.
Is Trump the Second Coming of Reagan?
Fox News’s Bret Baier wants you to think he just might be.
.. Bret Baier, chief political anchor of Fox News, President Trump’s favorite network, insists he isn’t living in some alternate reality. He knows that our current President is louder, cruder, and ruder than Ronald Reagan, “a counterpuncher” from New York far different from his genial Republican predecessor.
.. Right before our conversation, Baier had appeared on the radio with Rush Limbaugh, the conservative talk-show host who reveres Reagan so much he refers to him as Ronaldus Magnus. Limbaugh waxed on to Baier about “the parallels” between two different men, and Baier agreed. “Exactly,” he said. “One thing you can say is, like Reagan, Trump has changed the paradigm. I mean, the jury’s still out on the end result, but the game changed in the way Washington worked.”
.. Since the start of Trump’s outsider campaign to remake the Republican Party in his own image, his partisans have branded him a Reagan for our times—a brasher and brusquer one, perhaps, but like Reagan in that they were both renegades who fought the party establishment and politically revitalized the G.O.P. with a new coalition of former Democrats like themselves. This is the “heads were exploding then, heads are exploding now” part of Baier’s argument.
.. An establishment figure no less than James Baker, Reagan’s first-term White House chief of staff, has said that Trump’s ascendance reminded him of Reagan’s; he made the remark during a lunch before Nancy Reagan’s funeral, in 2016, as Trump was in the midst of trouncing sixteen other Republicans to take the nomination of a party whose leaders had hardly welcomed him.
.. when they met in the spring of 2016, Baker handed Trump a two-page memo full of advice, which Trump promptly ignored.
- .. “Number one,” Adelman told me, “Reagan was a Republican. Number two:
- Reagan was a conservative and it’s clear Trump is not. Number three:
- Reagan was a very, very decent person…. And number four:
- basically, Reagan was very competent.”
.. Kristol told me the Republican whom President Trump most resembles is not Ronald Reagan, but Richard Nixon. “I would say Trump is more like Nixon, though it’s unfair to Nixon in that Nixon was a more serious person,” Kristol said. “He’s more Nixon than Reagan, but of course a much degraded version of Nixon.”
.. In Republican circles, Reagan’s brand remains as golden as the lettering on Trump Tower. The endless Fox News segments with pictures of Reagan and Trump flashing on screen together certainly give the impression of a well-timed and not particularly subtle image-burnishing campaign.
.. A report in New York magazine that was released before we met claimed that Sean Hannity, the Fox prime-time star, talks to the President on the phone as frequently as several times a day, often at night before they go to bed.
Sean Hannity Is Named as Client of Michael Cohen, Trump’s Lawyer
In a legal filing before the hearing on Monday, Mr. Cohen said that, since 2017, he had worked as a lawyer for 10 clients, seven of whom he served by providing “strategic advice and business consulting.” The other three comprised Mr. Trump, the Republican fund-raiser Elliott Broidy and a third person who went unnamed.
.. Before the name was revealed, Mr. Ryan argued that the mystery client was a “prominent person” who wanted to keep his identity a secret because he would be “embarrassed” to be identified as having sought Mr. Cohen’s counsel.
.. On Fox News, the anchor Shepard Smith reported that his colleague had been named as a client of Mr. Cohen’s, saying that it was time for him to address “the elephant in the room.”
.. Just before 4 p.m., he posted a message on Twitter: “Michael Cohen has never represented me in any matter. I never retained him, received an invoice, or paid legal fees. I have occasionally had brief discussions with him about legal questions about which I wanted his input and perspective.”
In a follow-up tweet, Mr. Hannity added, “I assumed those conversations were confidential, but to be absolutely clear they never involved any matter between me and a third-party.”
The reference to a third party seemed to be an allusion to one of Mr. Cohen’s specialties: drawing up confidential settlements.
.. Hannity seemed to suggest that he had not disclosed his link to Mr. Cohen to his network, saying, “My discussions with Michael Cohen never rose to any level that I needed to tell anyone that I was asking him questions.”
.. On April 9 — the night of the F.B.I. raids on Mr. Cohen — Mr. Hannity, in high dudgeon, opened his show by telling viewers to “keep in mind that Cohen was never part of the Trump administration or the Trump campaign.”
“This is now officially an all-hands-on-deck effort to totally malign and, if possible, impeach the president of the United States,” the host added.
.. There is on-air evidence that Mr. Hannity and Mr. Cohen go way back. In January 2017, shortly before the inaugural, Mr. Cohen was a guest on Mr. Hannity’s radio show. The host described him as Mr. Trump’s lawyer and then added, “Also, full disclosure: a personal friend of mine, long before this election ever started.”
.. The chummy conversation took place shortly after the so-called Steele dossier suggested that Mr. Cohen had visited Prague, a claim that Mr. Cohen has denied.
.. Mr. Hannity discussed Mr. Cohen’s alibi — that he had taken his 17-year-old-son to Los Angeles to meet with a baseball coach.
.. Before the chat was done, Mr. Cohen thanked Mr. Hannity, saying: “Sean, I got to be honest, in all fairness, you have been a beacon for Mr. Trump, for the campaign. It’s very rare that people thank you, because everybody is so busy, especially now with the transition. But on behalf of, obviously, Mr. Trump, the campaign, myself — you actually deserve a thank you.”
.. Many years before Mr. Trump was a candidate, Mr. Hannity was there for him. In 2011, when Mr. Trump was making the media rounds to promote an unfounded conspiracy theory — the so-called birther theory — that President Obama had not been born in the United States, Mr. Hannity gave him a forum on his radio and television shows.
.. Years later, his enthusiasm had not cooled. “I’m not hiding the fact that I want Donald Trump to be the next president of the United States,” Mr. Hannity told Jim Rutenberg of The New York Times during the summer of 2016. After all, the Fox News host added, “I never claimed to be a journalist.”
.. As Election Day drew near, other conservatives turned their backs on Mr. Trump after the posting of the so-called “Access Hollywood” tape, during which the candidate rudely boasted of “grabbing” women by the genitals. That’s when Mr. Hannity sealed his bond with Mr. Trump by committing even more fully to him. Although conceding that Mr. Trump’s “words” were wrong, he quickly changed the subject to Bill Clinton, adding that the former president’s “actions” with women were “far worse.”
.. Mr. Hannity did face an unexpected challenge from one of his guests, the lawyer Alan Dershowitz, who unexpectedly told the host that it would have been “much, much better” to disclose that he was a Cohen client.
Sean Hannity had a lot to say about Michael Cohen lately. But he left a few things out.
FergusonFoont
Hannity’s on-air description of his rather casual relationship with Cohen is called sharply into question by the fact of his resistance to having his identity revealed.I noticed that Hannity also described his relationship in negative terms — he DIDN’T pay a retainer fee directly and he DIDN’T receive an invoice.
So what is this that Hannity is trying to hide? Perhaps, just perhaps, it is because he engaged Cohen’s services for the same reason Donald Trump and Elliott Broidy did — to facilitate the payment of hush money to cover up some sort of impropriety. It seems to be Cohen’s specialty, and it would not have involved any retainer fees or invoices.
I do not know what this impropriety might have been, but my best guess right now is a homosexual love affair.
Liam-Still
.. So Cohen had only two other clients, Trump and a RNC fundraiser, each of whom Cohen paid hush money to women for.
Hannity claims he just sought free legal advise from Cohen because he is a great lawyer.What did he base that on, his complete lack of clients that he could have give testimonials for him, on TV ads, and bus stop seats?!The reason why Cohen never billed Hannity was because Hannity agreed to pay by providing free endorsement and suppport of Trump on his TV show. Sean you are Foxed!
.. So, I expect that Hannity is going to get an attorney very soon. I somehow doubt that will be Cohen.Good luck finding one who isn’t either client-tied to this situation already or who doesn’t want any part of it.sunnyman10
Sean Hannity is a multi-millionaire…he can afford any attorney in the world. Why in the world would he be involved with a low life like Michael Cohen? I don’t get it. And another thing….it’s astonishing how these people keep implicating each other and putting themselves at legal risk. Trump says “ask Michael Cohen”, putting Cohen in legal crosshairs; Cohen’s attorneys shout out Sean Hannity’s name as a Cohen client…then Hannity denies so now Cohen looks like he lied to a judge. Bottom line, when a porn-star has the best attorney in the room by a mile – you should know it’s time to find new legal help.Glasman10
.. One simplyhas to wonder why Cohen has only three (count em!) three clients and one swears he’s not a client. So, why does Cohen have files on someone who’s not a client?
This so much does not pass a smell test…Do keep in mind that this isn’t Mueller, It’s the prosecutor that Trump appointed when he fired Preet Bharara, who at this point appears to have been fired for a reason. It’s that Deep State hard at work again.
OSUSteve
Why isn’t anyone focused on why is the President’s lawyer, who is essentially a one-client lawyer, providing free legal representation to the President’s biggest media supporter and apologist. Question: Did Candidate and/or President Trump directly or indirectly instruct or approve of his full-time lawyer providing free legal services to a major member of the media as a quid pro quo for round-the-clock positive media support from Hannity, the biggest name at FOX News? At the least, it seems to me that conflict rules might have required Cohen to obtain a conflict waiver from both Trump and Hannity in case there were ever litigation or another type of conflict–not hard to imagine. If Trump knew and he used Hannity to as part of his unofficial White House communication office to tamp down the Stormy/Cohen saga, it would seem to be a big story. Maybe I’ve reading far too much news since the last election.