Anderson Lands a Scoop, NPR Deletes a Bad Tweet | Winners & Losers in Today’s Green Room

The Sarasota Herald-Tribune’s Chris Anderson landed an impressive scoop on the Trumps this week.

Anderson was the first to report that former President Donald Trump, Donald Trump Jr., and several other allies were all removed from the board of Trump Media and Technology Group (TMTG), mere weeks before the company was served with federal subpoenas.

TMTG owns Truth Social, the social media platform Trump launched after he was permanently banned from Twitter for tweets he made in the aftermath of the Jan. 6, 2021 on the U.S. Capitol.

According to Anderson’s report, the grand jury also subpoenaed “certain current and former TMTG personnel.”

Anderson further noted that Trump’s removal from the board not only preceded the federal subpoenas, but also occurred after he registered the company in Sarasota on April 18.

“A visit to the office by the Herald-Tribune on June 27 revealed Trump’s company name was not on the registry in the main lobby, nor was there any reference to the name at the office suite itself,” Anderson wrote.

The report garnered significant attention from the media and politics world, as it shined a light on an investigation into a proposed merger between TMTG and a blank-check company called Digital World Acquisitions Corp.

Anderson’s bombshell reporting also proves the value of local on the ground reporters, especially as the public has lost confidence in TV news and as larger media groups are being acquired by hedge funds or overly beholden to online clickbait trends.

NPR is having a bad day on Twitter thanks to its own now-deleted post on the assassination of former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

“Former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, a divisive arch-conservative and one of his nation’s most powerful and influential figures, has died after being shot during a campaign speech Friday in western Japan, hospital officials said,” NPR tweeted on Friday.

Twitter users promptly blasted NPR for smearing Abe, one of the United States’ top allies and Japan’s longest-serving Prime Minister, when announcing his death.

“Former journalism outlet NPR, a divisive arch-douchefactory and some of the nation’s most ill-spent tax monies, has tweeted about an assassination,” Mediaite’s Caleb Howe wrote alongside a screenshot of the NPR tweet.

While NPR deleted the tweet, their second attempt wasn’t much better.

“Shinzo Abe, the former Japanese prime minister and ultranationalist, was killed at a campaign rally on Friday. Police tackled and arrested the suspected gunman at the scene of an attack that shocked many in Japan,” tweeted NPR.

Once again, the outlet came under fire for their post, as pundits decried NPR’s simple change from “divisive arch-conservative” to “ultranationalist.”

“This is like peeing on a bed after you just changed the sheets because you voided your bowels in it,” cracked podcaster and columnist Derek Hunter.

“How are you so bad at not being a douche?”