Cnn

Wednesday

The Spectator

Dems begin to dogpile on Biden’s reelection campaign

Support for President Joe Biden continuing his reelection campaign is polarizing his own party. The Hill reported yesterday that discontent was growing among Democrats, and the publication offered live updates all day from the Democratic National Committee headquarters, where Dem leadership gathered to discuss Biden’s future as their nominee. House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries and Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer have both expressed their continued support for Biden. They were joined yesterday by Representatives Ami Bera, Jim Clyburn, Lou Correa, Veronica Escobar, Adriano Espaillat, Steny Hoyer, Stephen Lynch, Jerry Nadler, Jan Schakowsky and Debbie Wasserman Schultz.

Friday

The Spectator

What’s next after Biden’s debate horror show

Donald Trump must have that Friday feeling. It’s the morning after the night before, when his Democratic opponent disintegrated live on camera before an audience of millions. The purpose of President Biden agreeing to a first presidential debate so early in the cycle was to head off concerns about his frailty and mental acuity. His energetic State of the Union address in March exceeded admittedly low expectations — but Thursday’s bumbling and feeble performance had the exact opposite effect.The entire op-ed page of the New York Times is begging the president to stand down. “I watched the Biden-Trump debate alone in a Lisbon hotel room, and it made me weep,” writes Thomas L. Friedman.

media
Ben Domenech

Biden 2024 was the media’s ludicrous idea. They own it

In the aftermath of the worst debate performance by an incumbent president in American history, the media is already scrambling for a storyline about what went wrong with their chosen candidate. Their frame of argument goes like this: we love Joe Biden, he’s the best, his presidency is an enormous success, but really, someone at the White House should have told us that he was this ludicrously old. How were we to know? Shame on them. This narrative is a blatant lie. The truth is that if the media conglomerates had been honest with the voters a year ago, they would not be in this predicament today, nor would the country be saddled with an mentally addled, barely ambulatory octogenarian as the candidate of the major party media members overwhelmingly support.

Thursday

Cockburn

What drugs could help you debate better? Doctors weigh in

Tonight America’s oldest president takes on his loose cannon predecessor in the first presidential debate in Atlanta. Presidents Biden and Trump have faced waves of speculation regarding their respective mental conditions — and whether or not each is fit to hold office. Given their ages and stages, Biden and Trump have been accused of suffering from cognitive decline, dementia or Alzheimer’s. And this evening, both candidates’ mental states will be on full display for millions of Americans to closely watch and scrutinize. Will the two even make it through the ninety-minute debate without shouting at each other and endless rambling? The odds are low.

drugs biden trump doctors

Wednesday

The Spectator

Trump versus the moderators

It’s almost here... the first presidential debate between President Joe Biden and former president Donald Trump will take place tomorrow night on CNN. It is quite early in the election cycle, which is by design to account for the fact that many voters now cast their ballots via mail or in an early voting period. Perhaps the biggest surprise is that Biden agreed to debate this early, which could signal his campaign’s uneasiness with polls showing the president trailing in most swing states, losing by double digits on the issues that matter most to voters and hemorrhaging support among various key voting blocs, despite what they may say in public (When First Lady Jill Biden was asked about polls showing Biden losing battleground states, she sharply replied, “No, he’s not!

Tuesday

Ben Domenech

Has CNN learned anything about debate moderating since 2012?

It's been twelve years since the infamous moment when CNN's Candy Crowley interjected herself into the presidential debate between Mitt Romney and Barack Obama, providing a live "fact check" which was, in reality, her factually inaccurate opinion.  The moment was embarrassing enough that debate commission co-chair Frank Fahrenkopf would later describe their selection of Crowley as a moderator as a "mistake"; she was widely criticized for both inserting herself too much into the debate and letting it get out of hand.

jake tapper dana bash cnn debate

Tuesday

Stephen L. Miller

Nicholas Kristof tries to figure out who destroyed the West Coast

Like alcoholics, whenever a journalist has a moment, however brief, of political clarity to consider that perhaps they are the “baddies,” it should be commended. Such is the case with columnist and former candidate for governor of Oregon, Nicholas Kristof. Earlier this week, Kristof penned a piece in the New York Times titled, “What Have We Liberals Done to the West Coast?” and strained to defend his own political philosophy.

Monday

Ben Domenech

CNN’s moderators must ask Biden the tough Hunter question

The upcoming June 27 presidential debate between Donald Trump and Joe Biden will be the first of its kind — a former president debating a current president, with a massive list of subjects to animate the discourse. But there is one topic in particular that moderators Jake Tapper and Dana Bash must bring up if this debate is to have any respectability from the voters: they must confront Joe Biden about his lies in the 2020 debates. These lies have been acknowledged publicly by Tapper at least, and by Bash to a lesser degree.

joe biden hunter biden

Thursday

Ben Domenech

Things fall apart for Team Biden

Welcome to Thunderdome. Democrats had a plan for 2024, a plan that they executed very well at the beginning. They would unleash a barrage of legal challenges on Donald Trump, designed to render him unacceptable to all but the hardcore Republican base whose support would still vault him to the nomination of a GOP contest where his only competition was really Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley. That plan succeeded perfectly, perhaps even faster than they wanted, given that the candidates never really had time to tear each other down. Step one: a major success. Step two: use these assorted legal challenges to weigh down the Trump campaign with legal costs and distractions that pull him all over the country with hearings and pleadings and requirements to show up before various courts.

Wednesday

Stephen L. Miller

Trump deserves to be grilled at the debates

The Biden campaign, and by proxy, the Biden White House, released an unusual ransom list of debate conditions that the media and Trump campaign must meet for there to be any presidential debates this year. The list of demands include dissolving the Commission on Presidential Debates, a move that the media just one president ago stated would erode trust in the American media. Other demands include no live studio audience and cutting microphones for other participants. The Biden campaign also demanded the debates only be on four networks: CNN, ABC, Telemundo or CBS.

Tuesday

Cockburn

Place your bets: what drugs is Biden on?

Who has a better chance of passing a drug test, Joe Biden or Hunter? At this point, Cockburn thinks it's probably a coin toss. What he’d rather know is what the president is doped up on in his more energetic moments. Thanks to an online betting platform, voters can now gamble on which drug they think Biden is using.   “BetOnline.ag, which infamously set odds on who the White House cocaine belonged to, has created a wagering market for which drug Biden will test positive for,” Josh Barton, a BetOnline rep, told Cockburn. So far, the odds favor amphetamine followed by methamphetamine. Bettors think Biden is poppin' more Adderall than a college student during finals week.

drugs joe biden

Friday

Ben Domenech

Harrison Butker exposes the media’s blindness

The mass freakout over Kansas City Chiefs placekicker Harrison Butker’s commencement speech to Benedictine College is a revelatory incident. For one, it’s another sign of the impatient obliviousness of our media landscape. The speech is a mere twenty minutes long, but it’s readily apparent that most commentators on the remarks didn’t bother to watch it. CNN’s Jonah Goldberg put the speech in the context of a reactionary attitude among men toward women in the workplace, which is just absolutely ludicrous if you watch the speech — most of which is an indictment of the current Catholic priesthood — in a segment where the CNN commentators ordered Butker to “stick to kicking.

harrison butker

Wednesday

Cockburn

Joe Biden is raring to debate

What began on Wednesday morning as a cringy campaign video has resulted in an official debate between Joe Biden and Donald Trump. Both candidates have agreed to appear in a June 27 debate hosted by CNN and a second on September 10 hosted by ABC. The announcements came after Biden said on Wednesday that he will not participate in debates hosted by the Commission on Presidential Debates and instead proposed face-offs with Trump in June and September moderated by news organizations. Hours later, Biden accepted an offer from CNN to host the first debate. “Donald Trump lost two debates to me in 2020. Since then, he hasn’t shown up for a debate. Now he’s acting like he wants to debate me again,” Biden bragged in a video posted to X.

joe biden debate

Thursday

Cockburn

Elon Musk cans Don Lemon

Just when Cockburn feared Don Lemon might be able to salvage the remnants of his career, the former CNN host's shot of success slipped away. Lemon, who had cut a deal with X to host The Don Lemon Show, announced on Wednesday that Elon Musk had ended their partnership. The news came just hours after the two had sat down for an interview for the upcoming show.  “Elon Musk is mad at me,” Lemon said in a video while sipping his Starbucks latte. “Apparently, free speech absolutism doesn't apply when it comes to questions about him from people like me.” On Wednesday night, Lemon came crawling back to CNN to spill tea with Erin Burnett and share some tense moments from the interview. https://twitter.

don lemon

Friday

The Spectator

Trump and Biden’s border battle

President Joe Biden and former president Donald Trump made dueling visits to the southern border this Thursday, as the issue of immigration becomes the political priority of millions of Americans. The latest Gallup survey (February 1-20) reveals that immigration ranks as the most important problem ahead of the 2024 presidential election. For context, 28 percent of Americans see the issue as the most crucial one, which is more than the following issues combined: federal deficit (3 percent), crime and violence (3 percent), foreign policy/foreign aid/focus overseas (3 percent), poverty/hunger/homelessness (6 percent) and inflation (11 percent).

biden trump border
extremism reporters
Cockburn

Clash of the ‘extremism reporters’

The biggest drama coming out of CPAC last week comes courtesy of a woman who wasn’t even admitted. Amanda Moore is a freelance reporter best known for going “undercover” with the MAGA movement. She found herself denied entry to the event, as one of the “propagandists” singled out by ACU chairman Matt Schlapp, along with reporters from HuffPost and Mother Jones. Instead Moore sat in the lobby of the hotel where the conference was hosted, writing about the experience for the Nation. Ben Goggin is the deputy tech editor at NBC News, whose specialties include extremism. Goggin wrote a piece about the “Nazis” who went to CPAC and “mingled openly.

Tuesday

Stephen L. Miller

CNN rearranges the deck chairs… again

After CNN ousted Chris Licht, who attempted, at least, to moderate CNN’s biased news coverage, the floundering network has found itself in limbo, unsure of how much more it wanted to lean into a professional, “definitely not biased” news infotainment network. Now, new boss Mark Thompson has signaled a clear direction for the network in this election year: All Donald Trump, All the Time, with changes once again to its morning and midday line-up. All CNN is really doing, though, is shuffling deck chairs around the network as ratings continue to languish behind networks like the History and Hallmark channels.

cnn

Wednesday

Matthew Foldi

CNN’s Oliver Darcy attacks NBC for doing what CNN is striving to do

CNN’s media reporter Oliver Darcy took a blowtorch to one of his network’s rival outlets for daring to host a Republican presidential debate and “collaborating” with so-called extremist partners, like a YouTube competitor and a massive radio company that used to host his former boss, Glenn Beck. “NBC News has made its decision,” Darcy fumed in a blog post about the network’s partnership with Rumble and Salem Media... which CNN has previously partnered with for multiple Republican primary debates. “Now it’s up to other news organizations to do so as well.” Awkwardly for Darcy, as of the time he published his article, his own network was working to secure the exact same kind of partnership with the Republican National Committee.

CNN

Thursday

Stephen L. Miller

Who in the media will be Trump’s debate co-conspirator?

Donald Trump is executing an identical debate strategy that he deployed in 2016, right down to the same complaints and threats of boycotts against Fox News and their debate moderators.   Trump is currently threatening to boycott the first GOP primary debate on Wednesday August 23, citing his lead in the polls and what he projects to be unfair treatment by moderators Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum. Not only is Trump threatening to skip the debate, according to three sources speaking to CNN, Trump is looking to counter the debate by offering his services to other networks — or even Tucker Carlson, who is reportedly considering the offer.

Tuesday

Stephen L. Miller

Media begins shoring up Biden’s network flank

Members of presidential administrations taking roles with news networks isn’t a particularly new phenomenon. Former Bush administration press secretary Dana Perino has fostered a successful career on Fox News. Former Clinton advisor and White House communications direction George Stephanopoulos took on a prominent role as the face of ABC News. When it comes to the Biden presidency, however, several lines have been blurred between official presidential messaging coming from the briefing room and networks who are hiring former Biden officials for prominent roles as he gears up for a re-election campaign. Networks are staffing up their ranks of former Biden communications officials at a furious pace.