THE DAILY NEWSLETTER - MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, 2022

Media Winners & Losers

MEDIA WINNER:
Chuck Todd

Following President Joe Biden’s primetime speech in which he claimed Democracy is “under assault,” MSNBC's Chuck Todd put Vice President Kamala Harris on the spot about Democrats helping out those who Biden accused of assaulting it.

In an interview on Meet the Press Sunday, Todd grilled the vice president about the controversial practice of Democrats across the country propping up extreme Republicans in their primary races by purchasing ads promoting them.

Harris began by defending Biden’s remarks — which some have criticized for being too divisive.

“There are those who right now are vividly not defending our Democracy,” Harris said. “And I think we want that our commander in chief, the President of the United States will speak up and raise the alarm about what this means to our strength, and our future — much less our integrity.”

Todd then asked the obvious follow-up: If the threat posed to Democracy by such candidates is truly so grave, then why are Democrats elevating them?

“And the president went out of his way to say there are good Republicans here. Should you leave the good Republicans alone in a primary? Is the Democratic Party making a mistake here?” he asked.

Harris completely dodged the question, prompting Todd to re-frame in a manner that allowed her to weigh in without commentating on anyone else’s campaign.

“Would you have done this?” Todd asked.

“I’m not going to tell people how to run their campaigns, Chuck,” Harris replied, adding that it's best to let the candidates and their teams make decisions.

Todd tried a third time to get Harris to answer the question, but Harris ducked again.

Points to Todd for pressing Harris on the controversial practice.

MEDIA LOSER:
Ari Fleischer

Ari Fleischer announced this year that he would be retiring his tweeted commemorations of September 11th just a few months after he was hired as a consultant by the Saudi-backed LIV Golf tour.

For years, Fleischer has recognized the anniversary of the attacks on Twitter by sharing his minute-by-minute recollection of the day. As the White House Press Secretary for President George W. Bush, Fleischer had a front-row seat to history on that tragic day.

He has regularly shared his memories on the anniversary of the attacks since signing up for Twitter in 2009.

The tweets would go viral and get a lot of media coverage. As a sampling, NBC News covered it in 2014 the Washington Post in 2015, Business Insider in 2016, and Huffington Post in 2017.

This year, however, Fleischer shared that he would not be live-tweeting the anniversary and did not intend to do so ever again.

He instead posted a thread saying that he skipped tweeting last year because he was at the 20th-anniversary events at Ground Zero and would be on a plane this year. He also added that it was “exhausting to relive the day,” and it “wears me down to go through it, even though I am not the one who has suffered the most.”

Twitter users were skeptical of Fleischer’s explanation, with the majority of replies pointing out his new gig as a communications consultant for LIV Golf, which has drawn criticism for its ties to a regime blamed for the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi — not to mention the fact that the majority of the 9/11 hijackers were Saudi nationals.

"Cannot get over Ari Fleischer getting a PR job with the Saudis and then announcing that actually his 9/11 play-by-play tweets have run their course," tweeted The Hill's Zack Budryk.

Everyone has a price, we guess.

The A-Block

'I’m just not going to leave'

Former President Donald Trump told aides he planned to simply stay in the White House after he lost the 2020 election, according to a new excerpt from Maggie Haberman’s upcoming book.

CNN obtained a preview of the book, titled Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America, which delves into Trump’s refusal to accept his election defeat and his numerous efforts to overturn the results.

“I’m just not going to leave,” Trump told one aide, according to Haberman. The New York Times reporter wrote that Trump told another staffer, “We’re never leaving. How can you leave when you won an election?”

The book later claims that while embarrassed, Trump accepted the election results at one point, telling junior press aides, “I thought we had it."

His mood abruptly changed, according to the book, as he then informed aides he had no intention of leaving the White House because the election was stolen. 

Haberman’s book — to be released in early October — has drawn media intrigue ever since previews described Trump’s reported tendency to rip up White House documents and flush them down the toilet


In Other News...

DOOMSDAY POLL: Half of Republicans Believe ‘A Total Breakdown of Law and Order’ and Civil War is Imminent

Texas DPS Chief Confronted by CNN After Commenting ‘No One Is Losing Their Jobs’ Over Uvalde Response

FLASHBACK: On Sept. 12, 2001, Alex Jones Blamed the Terrorist Attacks on Israel, Claimed We Would Get ‘Nuked’ And It Would Be Their Fault

Ex-CNN Host Brian Stelter is Going to Harvard to Talk ‘Threats to Democracy’

Random People Are Sending Hilarious Letters to Judge Cannon Offering Their Services as Special Master to Review Mar-a-Lago Documents

CNN’s John Avlon Acknowledges Widespread Media Failure on BYU Racist Heckling Allegations: ‘There Was a Rush to Judgment’

RATINGSBreaking News Boosts CNN, But Fox News Still Wins

Must See Clip

Royal smackdown

MSNBC host Ali Velshi tore into NBC News British Historian Dr. Andrew Roberts while discussing Queen Elizabeth II's death and succession in context with the UK’s history of brutal colonialism.

One facet of the death of British monarch Queen Elizabeth II has been a war of words over how much attention should be paid to the brutal history that her crown represents.

That war exploded all over MSNBC screens Saturday morning when Roberts tried to, in Velshi’s estimation, “whitewash” that history, which Velshi referenced in his show open.

Velshi just went to town on Roberts, who made a decent point about slavery, and less effective point about “even evil monsters” like Vladimir Putin writing to praise the monarchy.

Watch here.

Links We Like

- Isaac Chotiner, New Yorker
What the right found on Hunter Biden's laptop after six-months
- Andrew Rice and Olivia Nuzzi, New York Magazine - Corbin Bolies, The Daily Beast -  David Enrich, Vanity Fair
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