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Tucker Carlson We have frequently named Fox News' Tucker Carlson the Media Loser of the Day for being all too-willing to fan the conspiratorial flames of baseless election fraud claims, but we want to play fair, so we must give him credit when he shows up with a bucket of ice water to douse that fire (again, a fire he helped start, but still).
On his show Thursday evening, Carlson laid out in great detail the incredible allegations about massive, nationwide election fraud put forward by President Donald Trump's campaign lawyer Sidney Powell — and then patiently explained how she was unable to provide any evidence to back up her claims, despite numerous, polite requests from his show.
As Carlson explained to his viewers, he had taken Powell's accusations "seriously" and "respected her work," but "simply wanted to see the details." They had invited her on the show, he continued, and would have "given her the whole hour," plenty of time to show her evidence and lay out her case.
“But she never sent us any evidence despite a lot of requests, polite requests, not a page," said Carlson. "When we kept pressing she got angry and told us to stop contacting her." No one they contacted in the Trump campaign was able to provide any evidence either.
Carlson's been in the enviable position of being the only Fox News prime time show to beat what has otherwise been a recent ratings sweep for CNN in the key 25-54 demo, but he may not get to stay on top of that hill if a chunk of his viewers turn on him.
Powell herself has already lashed out, calling Carlson "insulting, demanding, and rude" on Maria Bartiromo's Fox Business show Friday morning, and we've noticed some howling from Trump supporters on social media, so the risk Carlson took of possibly alienating his strongly pro-Trump audience is more than theoretical.
We try our best to call balls and strikes here in the Mediaite Green Room. We've slammed Carlson when he's promoted propagandistic nonsense, and we are happy to sing his praises when he does the right thing, especially considering how he's essentially swimming upstream to do so. |
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| | MEDIA LOSER:
Geraldo Rivera We've almost gotten numb to the president and his supporters habitually spouting multiple flavors of outlandish nonsense across the cable news networks on a daily, if not hourly, basis, but every now and then we find a really special pile of crap.
Trump's longtime friend Geraldo Rivera has been a steadfastly sycophantic presence for the president on Fox News, and on Thursday he proffered an idea to boost his buddy's flagging spirits: name the vaccine after him, as a treat.
No, that's not a bit of satire from The Onion; those are real actual words that Rivera said on live television.
Telling the Fox & Friends panel that he wished we could "honor him in that way," Rivera said he had this idea to name the vaccine "The Trump" because "with the world so divided and everybody telling him he has to give up and time to leave and time to transition and all the rest of it...[i]t would be a nice gesture to him, and years from now it would become kind of a generic name."
Are you [bleeping] kidding?!
To recap: nearly 12 million Americans have caught Covid-19, and over a quarter of a million have died from it. Cases are surging to record levels across the country and hospital ICUs are reaching capacity.
Trump spent most of the year disdaining masks and mocking those who wore them, and then wrapped up his campaign with a superspreader tour of crowded, mostly maskless rallies across the country. He's publicly attacked the experts on his own coronavirus task force. He has refused to concede the race to President-elect Joe Biden and allow the transition to smoothly proceed, an unforgivably dangerous delay for not only pandemic response planning, but national security concerns as well.
But we should name the vaccine after him to protect his precious ego? We should reward him for this undemocratic temper tantrum?
Your humble newsletter correspondent hails from the South, and as we say down here: Bless your heart, Geraldo. This is never going to happen, and it's ludicrous and offensive that you even suggested it. |
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| | Trumper tantrums Election Day was Nov. 3, and the major media outlets called the race on Nov. 7. Biden's electoral college lead is almost a perfect mirror image of Trump's from 2016, but his margin in key states larger, and yet Trump refuses to concede the race.
Thursday witnessed an absolute farce of a news conference featuring what the campaign touted as their "legal strike force," but mostly made headlines for the wild and baseless conspiracy theories and Rudy Giuliani's apparently melting noggin.
A White House Coronavirus Task Force briefing later that day didn't fare much better. While Dr. Anthony Fauci made some reasonable comments encouraging Americans to "double down" on mask-wearing, what most people will remember is how Vice President Mike Pence walked out of the room without taking any questions from reporters.
The madness continued Friday, when Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany refused to answer questions from CNN's Kaitlan Collins, sneering that she didn't "take questions from activists," and offered a rambling filibuster to why Trump won't concede. She was also asked about Tucker Carlson's criticism, and surprise surprise, refused to answer that too.
Trump himself made his first appearance in front of reporters in days, claiming falsely that he "won."
Lone voices of reason
There are a few select voices on the right showing a willingness to declare the election fraud emperor has no evidentiary clothes.
Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) slammed Trump for attempting to pressure Michigan officials "to subvert the will of the people and overturn the election,” adding that it was "difficult to imagine a worse, more undemocratic action by a sitting American President.”
Fox News contributor Guy Benson pointed out that if Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama had attempted to meddle in Michigan like Trump is doing "conservatives would rightly have been in the streets screaming their heads off."
Groundhog Day From the not-at-all-breaking-news department: Biden won Georgia. Again. The state finished their hand recount and Biden maintained his narrow lead in the Peach State. Trump is still complaining on Twitter, of course.
Uh-oh, Ivanka
New York City and state prosecutors are reportedly investigating for fraud millions of dollars of tax write-offs Trump made to his daughter, Ivanka Trump.
Buzzfeed buying
Buzzfeed is buying Huffington Post from Verizon Media, a merger of two of the largest digital media companies, according to a report by the Wall Street Journal.
Tinfoil hatter Trump trade advisor Peter Navarro went full tinfoil hat in an interview with Sinclair Broadcasting's Eric Bolling. After insisting that Trump would serve a second term, Navarro accused the Chinese of deliberately sending "hundreds of thousands of Chinese nationals" around the world to "seed that virus." Watch his bizarre rants here.
The best people The Trump legal team attached a long list of data to one of their pleadings claiming that the numbers of votes showed some kind of fraud, but pulled numbers from the entirely wrong state. Seems they mixed up Michigan (postal abbreviation MI) and Minnesota (MN).
A very real moment from Maddow
MSNBC's Rachel Maddow made an emotional return from quarantine Thursday evening, revealing to her viewers that the "close contact" who had tested positive for Covid-19 was none other than her longtime partner, photographer Susan Mikula. Maddow shared how terrifying it had been watching Mikula struggle with the virus, worrying that she might die.
"This thing is scary as hell," Maddow said, imploring her audience to take the virus seriously so they didn't lose any of their loved ones.
Mediaite sends our thoughts and prayers to Mikula for a full recovery, and to all Americans dealing with Covid-19. 6.5.0 |
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| "Protect our votes!" 2020 has been a year for the history books, in far too many bizarre and horrible ways, and the president's refusal to cooperate with the Biden transition -- the first time this has ever happened since America's founding -- is certain to be a key part of that story.
Michigan is the scene for a very bonkers chapter, as Biden was declared the winner by over 150K votes, but Republican members of the board of canvassers in the state's most populous county refused to certify the votes, then relented, then tried to rescind that certification, and now Trump has summoned the Republican leaders of the state legislature to the White House, presumably to lobby them to overturn the will of the voters and seat Trump electors instead of ones for Biden.
Michigan State Senate Majority Leader Mike Shirkey and Speaker of the House Lee Chatfield traveled to D.C. on Friday for this meeting, and predictably met a hostile reception at Reagan International Airport.
This is profoundly undemocratic, and all Americans need to keep a careful eye on what is happening. |
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