VETTING FAILURE OF THE DAY: Stanley Woodward, Associate Attorney General of the United States @ASGWoodward The Trump administration made a serious mistake putting Stanley Woodward in charge of the Justice Department’s antitrust division. Today, the major television networks, including outlets that have been a part of the White House press pool, refused to provide pooled coverage of President Trump after he barred @CNN, MS NOW @MSNOWNews, and Politico @politico from the White House. The result is that the American people are now being denied ordinary, independent video of the President’s events in Washington DC and around the UN meetings in New York City where UNGA is currently taking place. This coordinated withdrawal of news coverage is exactly the kind of concerted action a serious antitrust division at the DOJ would examine: whether competing news organizations agreed among themselves to withhold a product the public expects to see. A real antitrust division that wasn’t run by incompetent people would have had a lawsuit prepared and filed today. Editorial discretion in newsrooms is protected. A joint decision by the pool members to stop covering designated presidential events after a member was removed is a different matter all together. A lawsuit should have been filed today, but it wasn’t, because Stanley Woodward, a lifelong Democrat, runs the Antitrust Division at the DOJ. This is what happens when you allow people to appoint their friends with no antitrust background and you put them in charge of the division and treat the job as a reward instead of a specialized enforcement post. Woodward has spent months signaling a hands-off approach to mergers and overruling DOJ staff who wanted to challenge deals. He has not shown he will treat a high-profile coordination problem involving the press with scrutiny. It probably hasn’t even crossed his mind… because he is not a proactive person, and he’s also not ideologically aligned with the administration. Every day that passes without a public statement from the Antitrust Division on this press pool boycott of President Trump confirms Stanley Woodward is the wrong person for the job. Vetting matters. Some people inside the White House seem to think their friendship with Stanley Woodward is a substitute for knowing the antitrust statutes and being willing to use them to fight back against the Fake News Media. The President @POTUS rightfully banned outlets he calls “fake news” from the White House. The networks answered by collectively going dark on presidential pool coverage. The Department of Justice’s response so far has been silence. If someone who is actually competent was in that position, the media would be shaking and groveling back under threat of an anti-trust lawsuit. Everyday, President Trump is let down by many of the incompetent people who unfortunately work in his administration due to a lack of vetting and a lack of merit when it comes to hiring personnel. It was a problem during his first administration, and now, this is an even bigger problem during his second administration because the same vetting problems have not been addressed and that’s just a fact, despite who gets upset about me pointing out these facts. Sadly, we are going to pay the price for this come November. President Trump deserves better. Cc:@AGToddBlanche