Pence gets shot. NYT retracts. Trump does dance. Rachel Maddow! Also espionage.

THE DAILY NEWSLETTER - FRIDAY, DECEMBER 18, 2020

Media Winners & Losers

MEDIA WINNER:
Mike Pence

With public confidence in the coronavirus vaccine shown to be at levels below where it is needed to achieve community protection, Vice President Mike Pence received the injection on camera in an effort to demonstrate its safety.

The vice president was — along with his wife Karen Pence, and Surgeon General Jerome Adams — given the vaccine Friday morning by doctors from Walter Reed Medical Center. The three received their shots in a matter of seconds.

“I didn’t feel a thing,” Pence said afterward.

With President Donald Trump not yet taking the vaccine despite public calls for him to do so, Pence became the highest-profile American thus far to receive the injection.

“Karen and I were more than happy to step forward before this week was out to take this safe and effective coronavirus vaccine that we have secured and produced for the American people,” Pence said. “It’s truly an inspiring day. As the people of this country witnessed this past week, under Operation Warp Speed, the first coronavirus vaccine is literally being administered in states across the country to millions of Americans. Make no mistake about it; it’s a medical miracle.”

The vice president saluted medical officials, including Dr. Anthony Fauci — who was on hand to witness the injections on Friday — as well as other members of the coronavirus task force.

Putting a face on this isn't just important in the abstract. It is particularly important for the right, which has, in keeping with the President's attitude, been less than enthusiastic about combatting the pandemic to date.

MEDIA LOSERS:
New York Times

The New York Times has issued a stunning r etraction of its high-profile hit podcast Caliphate after a review found that it “did not meet the standards for Times journalism.”

The podcast consisted of a 12-part audio documentary that addressed the radicalization of Shehroze Chaudhry, a Canadian who went to Syria and joined the Islamic State.

While Chaudhry told Canadian news outlets he played no role in ISIS killings, he told the Times that he had conducted executions himself before managing to escape. The review found that the Times failed to screen Chaudhry’s accounts, relying too heavily on his narrative, which was often exaggerated or even false.

Canadian authorities accused him of lying about his time in Syria and he is facing criminal charges in a federal court in Ontario for pushing a terrorist hoax — which ultimately launched the Times investigation.

“When The New York Times does deep, big, ambitious journalism in any format, we put it to a tremendous amount of scrutiny at the upper levels of the newsroom,” Dean Baquet, the executive editor of the Times, said in a podcast interview scheduled to be posted Friday.

“We did not do that in this case,” he continued. “And I think that I or somebody else should have provided that same kind of scrutiny because it was a big, ambitious piece of journalism. And I did not provide that kind of scrutiny, nor did my top deputies with deep experience in examining investigative reporting.”

The editor's note, published Friday, goes into detail but has a lot of work to do in addressing the widespread criticism.

The Interview, Episode #013 - Rachel Maddow

‘Don’t Book Liars’: Rachel Maddow Speaks Exclusively On Making of Her Show, The Competition, What’s Next in Post-Trump Era - The Interview

The A-Block

Target of opportunity.

As outlined above in today's Media Loser column, the New York Times has just taken an ugly one on the chin, and President Donald Trump seems none too displeased at the chance for a shot at he paper of record.

On Friday morning, the president did a victory dance of sorts after The New York Times was forced into a blockbuster retraction of its high-profile Caliphate podcast. Trump did not miss the opportunity to kick the Times while it is down.

Just In

President-elect Joe Biden has announced the additional members of his White House communications and press staff, and 11 out of 14 are women.

SCOTUS

In what CNN and NBC have referred to as a “partial” win for Trump, the Supreme Court on Friday dismissed a challenge to the administration’s plan to exclude from the census individuals who are in the country illegally.

Show must go on?

President Trump is allegedly weighing his post-presidential endeavors, which according to a freshly minted report out from The Daily Beast on Thursday, includes considering restarting his reality TV show, The Apprentice.

Ridiculous.

Gov. Brian Kemp (GA-R) shut down the conspiracy theories surrounding the death of his daughter’s boyfriend and called for an end to misinformation regarding the 2020 election.

The governor added that his family has been incessantly harassed, even after the death of his daughter’s longtime boyfriend, Harrison Deal, who was killed in a traffic accident this month.

“There is so much misinformation out there,” he said. “Quite honestly, it has gotten ridiculous.”

Maddow Has Most-Watched Show, CNN Wins Big

MSNBC’S Rachel Maddow had the most-watched show in cable news Wednesday, while CNN prime time hosts Anderson Cooper, Chris Cuomo, and Don Lemon boosted the network to big wins in the key demographic of viewers age 25-54.

Fox News had the most viewers overall in prime time, thanks to strong audience turnout for opinion hosts Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity. But The Rachel Maddow Show pulled the biggest total audience of the day, with 3.59 million...

Push the Button

The vacant shell of one of President Donald Trump’s failed Atlantic City casinos has been an eyesore for the city’s skyline for several years, but that’s coming to an end soon. The city is going to implode the former Trump Plaza in January — and they’re auctioning off the right to push the big button to make it go BOOM.

"THE LARGEST ESPIONAGE ATTACK IN HISTORY"

Bush Cyber Czar Richard Clarke Sounds Alarm on Suspected Russian Attack

Richard Clarke worked under three administrations and served as special advisor to President George W. Bush. Appearing on The Lead with Jake Tapper Thursday, he offered terrifying insight into reports of a massive cyber-attack carried out on the U.S. government.

“This is the largest espionage attack in history,” Clarke flatly opened to host Jake Tapper. “This is as though the Russians got a passkey, a skeleton key for about half the locks in the country. Think about it that way. It’s 18,000 companies and government institutions scattered around the U.S. And the world. This is an espionage attack.”

It is not confirmed that Russians are behind the attack, but reports say the U.S. government suspects Russia is responsible.

READ MORE...

Must See Clip

‘It’s Been a Tough Year’

It has indeed been a tough year, as Fox News senior meteorologist Janice Dean poignantly observed on Friday morning.

Dean broke down in tears in a remarkably moving moment at the end of Fox & Friends, following a montage of the show’s highlights from 2020.

At the close of the montage, the co-hosts of the show each added their thoughts. When Steve Doocy turned to Dean, she took a moment and then simply, through tears, said “It’s been a tough year.”

It was touching and sad, but warm too, and a moment worth sharing in.

Links We Like

‘It Must Have Been Stolen’
- Dan McLaughlin, National Review
Take the deal, Congress. Then immediately start working on the next one.
- Catherine Rampell, The Washington Post
Covid in U.S is an American failure, not solely a Trump or Republican one.
- German Lopez, Vox
The 'Deplorables' Are Set to Prevail in 2022 and 2024
- Glenn Reynolds, via New York Post, via RCP

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