THE DAILY NEWSLETTER - THURSDAY, JUNE 17, 2021 

Media Winners & Losers

MEDIA WINNER:
Kaitlan Collins

White House reporters rallied around fellow correspondent Kaitlan Collins after President Joe Biden snapped at her during his Geneva press conference on Wednesday.

While exiting the press conference on his summit with Vladimir Putin, Biden took issue with the CNN correspondent's question about his "confidence" that the Russian leader will change his behavior. President Biden reacted first by asking what Collins does "all the time" and then later by suggesting she might be "in the wrong business" as he stormed off

While Biden later said he owed an apology to the last questioner for being a “wise guy,” Collins’ fellow reporters did not take the comment lightly — New York Magazine’s Oliva Nuzzi suggesting that the president might in the “wrong business” if he can’t answer questions “without losing [his] temper.

The support from these journalists and colleagues was great to see.

Still, Mediaite's Caleb Howe has questions about support from certain other colleagues.

Stephen Colbert got in a great riff on Collins' behalf, while at The View the whole thing sparked a fight.

But Collins was professional throughout, not only by retaining her composure and standing by her question, but by remaining utterly gracious when the president expressed his regret.

MEDIA LOSER:
Doc Rivers

The Philadelphia 76ers thought they emptied any epic collapse from their system by blowing an 18-point lead in their Game 4 playoff loss to the Atlanta Hawks Monday night. But then Game 5 rolled around, and the Sixers offered a detailed tutorial on how to blow a playoff lead.

The Sixers were up by 26 points with just over 15 minutes left in the game. A seemingly insurmountable deficit for the Hawks to overcome. No one would have even blamed Hawks head coach Nate McMillan for waving the white flag and pulling their starters to get ready for Game 6 Friday night.

Instead, the Hawks went on an extraordinary 51-23 run and closed the game by outscoring the Sixers 15-2, led by 39 points from Trae Young. After trailing 83-58 late in the third quarter, the Hawks won their pivotal Game 5 matchup 109-106. Philly’s 26-point blown lead marked the third largest NBA playoff collapse in the last 25 years.

Sixers head coach Doc Rivers ripped his team after their Game 4 loss, stating it’s hard to win when “the other team outworks you the whole f**king game.” And when his team responded with an even worse defeat, social media started finger-pointing at Rivers. After winning an NBA Championship with a loaded Boston Celtics roster in 2008, Rivers has repeatedly overseen bad playoff losses in the last 13 years.

You don't always have to actually lose to be on the losing end of a media moment. But it doesn't hurt.

Chuck Todd on the Future of Meet the Press and Handling Election Deniers: ‘If You Don’t Accept the Premise, It’s Going to be a Painful Interview’ 

The A-Block

Biden-Putin Summit Underscored for Trump ‘He’s Not President Anymore’

New York Times’ Maggie Haberman said that watching Joe Biden meet Vladimir Putin made Donald Trump finally realize he is no longer President of the United States.

On Thursday, Haberman spoke to CNN’s John Berman about the differences between the Biden-Putin summit in Geneva and Trump’s 2018 meeting with the Russian leader in Helsinki.

“This is the event that I would say underscored for people around Trump, and the former president himself, the fact that he’s not president anymore,” she said. “This was the kind of event on the world stage, getting enormous attention, that he really enjoyed, that he saw as one of the trappings of the office that he thought spoke to a sense of power and strength.”

Haberman reported that people close to Trump witnessed Biden’s combative exchange with CNN’s Kaitlan Collins, and they grumbled that it would’ve been a “a huge complaint” against the former president who waged war with the media on a regular basis. She mostly stuck to her point though that the summit was a moment of realization that “‘oh, someone else is president and not Donald Trump.'”

“Trumpian FOMO,” Berman summed up.

Meanwhilie, ABC’s Rachel Scott had tough questions for Putin at the end of summit presser... and was then "swarmed" by Russian reporters asking her about Putin.


In Other News...

Paul Gosar’s Sister Says She ‘Absolutely’ Believes He’s Partly Responsible for Capitol Riot

Watch: Jenna Bush Hager Skydives Live on TODAY in Honor of Her Grandfather George H.W. Bush

Kinzinger Derides Tucker Carlson's Conspiracy That FBI Planned Capitol Riot: Carrying on Trump's Legacy of 'Blatant Outright Lies'

RATINGS: MSNBC More Than DOUBLES Total CNN Viewership in Prime Time Ratings Tuesday

Must See Clip

‘Is It Just Me?’ 

The cohosts of Today on Australia’s 9News had a hard(on) time keeping it together during a segment last week on Jeff Bezos going to space. Bezos, who will step down as CEO of Amazon next month, will be launched into space along with his brother Mark and four others on a rocket owned by Bezos’s aerospace company, Blue Origin.

But something about the design of the spacecraft seemed a bit off as far as hosts Karl Stefanovic and Ally Langdon were concerned. As Richard Strauss’s dramatic “Also sprach Zarathustra” played, the hosts couldn’t contain themselves upon eyeing the rocket that will propel Bezos and company into space for an 11-minute flight that will ascend 60 miles above Earth.

“I don’t know what they call that,” said Stefanovic.

But they knew. And hilarity ensued.

Links We Like

Conservative Judges Keep Doing This Thing They Say They Hate
- Mark Joseph Stern, Slate
TikTok Mom Slams Trolls Trashing Her Dentures And Makeovers
- Charna Flam, New York Post
There Goes Robert E. Lee: His Eclipse in American Life.
- Christopher Caldwell, Claremont Review of Books
Hidden Black Scientists Proved the Polio Vaccine Worked
- Ainissa Ramirez, Scientific American
A Brief Thread Of Very Bad Takes From Last Fall
Matthew Berry, Twitter
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