Chris Wallace

How the legacy media became powerless

It was nearly 2 a.m. on the East Coast in the middle of election night when CNN’s Jake Tapper stood across from professional virtual-map operator John King and asked a simple question: “Are there any places where Kamala Harris overperformed from where Biden did?” Tapping away from a view of Bucks County, Pennsylvania, King zoomed out to a view of the entire United States and hit a key to show a comparison to the 2020 election. The map instantly turned a solid dark gray, without a single county highlighted. “Holy smokes,” Tapper gasped. “Literally nothing? Literally not one county?” “Literally nothing,” was King’s somber reply. The video, shared widely and instantly on X, has been viewed more than 13 million times.

media

What Chris Wallace does next

Chris Wallace stunned the world of news media this weekend by announcing his resignation from Fox News and its staple show, Fox News Sunday. What he did next shocked some further and didn’t surprise others at all: he joined CNN+, a new streaming service coming next year from Jeff Zucker’s dramatic infotainment network. The move is hardly a bombshell given Wallace’s recent run-ins with the MAGA faithful, both on and off the network. It comes on the heels of a contentious election where Wallace lost control in the first presidential debate. Some see Wallace’s departure as an indictment of the direction in which Fox News is heading editorially.

chris wallace

Retire the Commission on Presidential Debates

Two-hundred-and-thirty-three. That is the combined age of the three co-chairs of the Commission on Presidential Debates, an organization which has become embroiled in several eyebrow-raising incidents in the past three elections. (Candy Crowley anyone?)The debates haven’t revealed much this election season. Trump is being Trump and Biden is allowed to skate by without answering questions. In fact, the most consequential revelation has been how ill-equipped the Commission for Presidential Debates is for the moment, and for the future. The Commission finds itself as the focal point of the debates, thanks to their choices of moderators and their on-the-fly rule changes.

commission

Trump was his own worst enemy in the first debate

The first presidential debate in Cleveland was a disaster, to put it bluntly. After 90 minutes of crosstalk, petty jabs, and 'c'mon man’s it's hard to believe many undecided voters will come out of the night with a clear candidate in mind. Most will be begging for presidential politics to stop rather than racing to the polls. In fact, judging from social media, many undecided voters are already saying this debate convinced them not to vote at all. President Trump's performance was perhaps his worst in a major debate so far because he squandered numerous opportunities to let Biden hang himself with his own words.

debate
biden drugs

Is Joe Biden on drugs?

Is Joe Biden on drugs? We should hope so. Look at the state of him when he’s in what Donald Trump calls his ‘low-energy’ mode.Biden’s slurred speech, his Lebowski-like losing of the thread and his near-drooling drawl of ‘C’mon, man’ like an addict begging for a fixall suggest that he has found a leftover Mandrax prescription from the Seventies in the back of his bathroom cabinet. This Biden would be happier reclining semi-comatose in his Corvette with Blue Oyster Cult on the 8-track.Could it be possible that this Biden’s transformation from cataleptic basement dweller into the other Biden, the one who remembers his lines, is chemically enhanced?

In praise of Kayleigh McEnany

Is Kayleigh McEnany the best Press Secretary in history? I think she may be. True, it’s early days. She was elevated to the position only in April and presided over her first briefing just a few weeks ago on May 1. But so far her tenure has been glorious. Despite having attended both Georgetown and Harvard, where she took a law degree, she remains quick-witted, forthright and occupies a cant-free zone that suffuses the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room with a spirit of patriotic candor that is as welcome as it is rare in the self-involved purlieus of the so-called mainstream media. She is also, I think it important to observe, distinctly dishy, another advantage.

kayleigh mcenany