The Peabody Award-winning On the Media podcast is your guide to examining how the media sausage is made. Host Brooke Gladstone examines threats to free speech and government transparency, cast a skeptical eye on media coverage of the week’s big stories and unravel hidden political narratives in everything we read, watch and hear.
https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm
A Tell-All Memoir and an NDA
This week the latest in the genre of tell-all memoirs from former white house staffers hit bookstores. “Team of Vipers; my 500 extraordinary days in the trump white house” is by Cliff Sims, who was either key player as Director of Message Strategy or as Trump tweeted this week, quote “nothing more than a gofer.”
The book, of course, is a landfill of trash and dirt on his former colleagues. And even as Sims toured the morning shows, the late shows and the everything-else shows to hawk his book, Trump Campaign COO Michael Glassner was threatening to sue him for violating the campaign's non disclosure agreement. Sims says he remembers signing some paperwork but doesn’t remember if there was an NDA in there and anyway, as other lawyers have since chimed in, there is established precedent that would make it very hard for the campaign to silence a former federal employee.
The subject of NDA’s comes up a lot for people in Trump’s orbit which is why the team at Trump Inc (produced here at our station, WNYC) did a whole episode on the topic. We present that episode for you as our podcast extra this week. Enjoy!