| Masks, Motang, Mistakes
Trump had a rally in Freeland, Michigan Thursday night, featuring thousands of supporters excited to see the president speak in person, more of his recent rhetoric warning that his Democratic opponent Joe Biden wanted to "destroy the suburbs," and promises that his re-election was all that could protect America from being taken over by Antifa.
Besides his campaign staff kicking out Kathy Gray for accurately reporting on the mostly-maskless crowd, there were a few moments where Trump might have benefitted from kicking out all the cameras -- like when he referred to the election as occurring on "September 3rd" or a later "Motang" gaffe, or his misrepresentation of a Jake Tapper interview with Biden.
It wasn't just Gray who covered the lack of masks at the rally -- CNN's Jim Acosta interviewed several rally attendees and got some jaw-dropping responses from them.
Fox Fan Trump may have ramped up his criticism for the Fox News Channel, but that didn't stop him from apparently binging eight hours of the cable news network's programming, perhaps interested in the channel's defense of his comments from the Woodward book. "Interesting" The bombshell Woodward book -- and supporting audio recordings from his interviews with the president -- dominated headlines this week. Even Trump himself acknowledged he thought it would be "interesting" to speak with Woodward, when he was asked why in the world he sat down for a mind-boggling eighteen interviews with the man who broke the Watergate scandal. It's literally on tape
Various Trump surrogates and sympathetic media voices have continued to try to defend his comments to Woodward, without much success.
One such flop was Trump campaign spokesperson Tim Murtaugh’s false claim that the president was saying the same things in public about the coronavirus as he was telling Woodward in private. "That's not true," Fox News' Bret Baier retorted.
Late night host Seth Meyers had a field day with this, calling Trump's defenders "Stepford pundits." Credit where credit's due CNN's Jake Tapper had a one-on-one interview with Biden, and one topic they addressed at length was trade, with Tapper getting Biden to acknowledge that the USMCA deal Trump signed was a "better deal" than NAFTA, enacted during the Obama administration. Nineteen Years Today marks the nineteenth anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terror attacks that took the lives of nearly three thousand people, and Trump and Biden took a break from a bitterly divisive campaign to honor the lives lost and the many heroes from that day.
Ceremonies are being held in Lower Manhattan, the Pentagon, and the field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania where United Flight 93 crashed. Both Biden and Vice President Mike Pence attended the events in Manhattan Friday morning, and Biden will travel to Shanksville later in the day.
Trump delivered a speech in Shanksville to "pay tribute to their sacrifice" and "mourn deeply for the nearly 3,000 precious and beautiful souls who were taken from us."
Earlier in the day, Biden told reporters that his campaign had paused all its advertising for the day and he would not be speaking about any other topics. “I’m not going to be making any news today. I’m not going to talk about anything other than 9/11," he said. While he was in New York, Biden comforted a 90-year-old woman who was there to mourn her son who died that day. *** From all of us at Mediaite, we remember both the pain of that day and the strength our nation showed in response to that tragic loss. Despite the challenges that America is facing right now and will face in the future, we remain profoundly grateful that we live in the freest country on earth, where we can earn a living as we chose, writing this often-irreverent-and-hopefully-informative newsletter, determine our own destinies, love and worship and voice our opinions as we see fit, and have faith that the heart and will of the American people remains one of the strongest forces in the world.
May God bless America, and all of you. 6.5.0 | 
