Stephen L. Miller
Federal employees being completely lost in the dark policy-wise without being informed by whatever Politico is publishing is the tell of all tells here.
Sam Stein
Dear god. Hard to believe we're on day two of this. Let's unpack. Politico offers policy-focused newsletters (Politico-Pro) for a price. People who work in those fields are smart to pay for it because it provides exclusive, important information that helps them do their job. If we want our government officials to be more knowledgable we should encourage that they absorb more material. That comes with a price. but they also pay for lots of things to round out their world view/knowledge base. Politico also offers a wide range of reporting for free. That tends to be on politics, not policy. No one pays for that currently. Politico also runs a few non-pay subscription newsletters that advertisers can run ads on (playbook, etc). The US government is not buying influence with Politico by subscribing to its Pro newsletters. If it wanted to send the publication money it would probably be able to do it more effectively and at a bigger scale by spending huge amounts on ads. But even then there is a clear, unambiguous line of demarcation between editorial and business. I imagine if you hate the publication and think it's biased none of this will convince you. your mind is made up. But having worked there, I find all this to be ridiculous. The people who write the Pro newsletters are excellent. They're experts in their field. They do the grunt work that keeps the publication humming. And their stories don't carry a scintilla of bias. For them to be oddly targeted is nuts. --30--