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Bret Baier and
Martha MaCallum
The Fox News anchors got their first crack at President Donald Trump in nearly two years (more than two years, in MacCallum's case). And they delivered with a broadcast that made some news, and scored big-time in the ratings.
The anchors spoke with the president at a town hall in Scranton, PA Thursday night. And at the forum held in the town best known as the setting for The Office, the Fox News veterans turned in performances that were much more Jim Halpert than Michael Scott.
The anchors, in one highlight, confronted the president about entitlement spending.
“When you ran for president — at one point, you said you would pay off the diet within 80 years," Baier told Trump. "Now about four years in, the debt is up $3.5 trillion that’s about 18 percent.”
MacCallum added, "[I]f you don’t cut something in entitlements, you will never really deal with the debt.”
"Oh, we'll be cutting." Trump said — in a comment that the White House was forced to walk back on Friday. The clip will surely appear in Democratic campaign ads this fall.
As for the ratings, according to Nielsen, the broadcast posted a massive total audience of 4.2 million viewers, plus 744,000 in the advertiser-coveted adults 25-54 demographic. The numbers far outpaced CNN and MSNBC combined in the timeslot. Not a bad night for the two anchors. 6.5.0 |
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 | MEDIA LOSER:
Brian
Willams
This was a doozy.
Thursday night on The 11th Hour, the MSNBC anchor — while speaking with New York Times editorial board member Mara Gay — read a tweet from journalist Mekita Rivas which made this claim: “[Mike] Bloomberg spent $500 million on ads. The U.S. population is 327 million. He could have given each American $1 million and still have money left over."
"Don’t tell us if you’re ahead of us on the math," said Williams, unwittingly.
Indeed, everyone was ahead of Williams — and, for that matter, his production team, which actually put the tweet with the wildly incorrect calculation on the screen. (500 million divided by 327 million is, of course, just 1.529. Not 1.529 million.)
“He could have given each American $1 million and have had lunch money left over. It’s an incredible way of putting it,” Williams said.
Incredible and patently wrong. The error was corrected 10 minutes later, and removed from subsequent editions of the broadcast. But that didn't stop Twitter from roasting the MSNBC anchor.
It's not the end of the world. It's a gaffe. And give Williams credit for his lighthearted correction. He affably owned the mistake. But his production team would do well to heed the warning they've gotten on this one, a low-stakes moment — because that graphic had absolutely no business making it on air. 6.5.0 |
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| 'Unforseen Problem' Friday morning at the White House, President Donald Trump signed an $8.3 billion coronavirus spending bill.
"It’s an unforeseen problem…Came out of nowhere," Trump said. "We’re taking care of it."
But CNN's John Berman is skeptical. After the White House canceled the president's trip to the CDC, claiming that Trump doesn't want to interfere with their work, the CNN anchor suggested that the White House's story didn't add up.
"Something doesn't seem quite right about that," he said.
Sure enough, Trump later said the trip was nixed because a CDC employee had contracted coronavirus.
Further, Dr. Anthony Fauci — the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases — admitted, on CNN Thursday night, the government got off to a "slow start" in fighting coronavirus.
And a quarantined nurse sounded off about the CDC in a viral rant.
"I'm appalled at the level of bureaucracy," the nurse said.
Cut Cut Cut
The president and his team spent the day in walk back mode, Friday, after he told Fox News on Thursday night that he plans to cut entitlements. First, he tweeted, "I will protect your Social Security and Medicare, just as I have for the past 3 years.”
Then, White House counselor Kellyanne Conway mixed it up with Fox anchor Ed Henry on America's Newsroom over the president's remark.
"[The president] said in his second term he would cut Social Security and Medicare and cut entitlement programs," Henry said. "Why did he say that?"
"He didn’t say that," Conway claimed. "You are misquoting him."
Fallout From Warren's Exit
Hours after dropping out of the presidential race, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) gave an exclusive interview to MSNBC's Rachel Maddow. The two devoted seven minutes of their chat to the subject of Bernie Sanders supporters. Warren blasted "some of the Bernie supporters online" for actions they took after the leadership of the Nevada Culinary Workers Union commissioned literature opposing the Sanders health care plan.
“They actually published the phone numbers and home addresses of the two women, the executive director and the communications director, women of color, immigrant women, and really put them in fear for their families,” Warren said, adding, “We are responsible for the people who claim to be our supporters, and do really threatening ugly dangerous things to other candidates.”
“And it’s a particular problem with Sanders supporters?” Maddow asked.
“It is, and I mean it just is. It’s just a factual question, and it is,” Warren said.
On Friday, The View discussed Warren's withdrawal through a similar prism.
"You can’t dismiss the misogyny and the sexism in the country,” said Joy Behar. “It’s there.”
Trump, unsurprisingly, had a different take.
"She's a very mean person, and people don't like her," Trump posited, reflecting on Warren's exit. He added, "They like a person like me that's not mean." 6.5.0 |
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| A CNN debate erupted on Thursday night when Bernie Sanders campaign co-chair Nina Turner and Democratic strategist Hilary Rosen got into a dispute over a famous 1963 letter from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Turner stated that in the letter penned from Birmingham city jail, Dr. King "warned us — us being the black community — about white moderates."
Rosen took the comment as a criticism of Joe Biden, and argued that it was unfair.
“Don’t use Martin Luther King against Joe Biden!” Rosen said to Turner. “You don’t have that standing. I’m sorry. You don’t!”
“Don’t tell me what kind of standing I have as a black woman in America!” Turner replied. “How dare you!”
“You have a lot of standing as a black woman in America,” Rosen replied. “You don’t have the standing to attack Joe Biden using Martin Luther King’s words.”
“I didn’t attack anybody. You’re taking it that way,” Turner responded. “Listen, don’t dip into what I have to say about the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.! How dare you, as a white woman, sit up here and try to tell me what I’m supposed to feel, and what I’m doing right now!”
Click here to watch. |
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