Jake Tapper

Wednesday

The Spectator

Biden and Trump say ‘YES’ to debates

After months of speculation — will they, won’t they? — President Joe Biden and former president Donald Trump have officially agreed to a set of two presidential debates. In a rather surprising move, Biden released a statement indicating he would not participate in the fall debates sanctioned by the Commission on Presidential Debates (a wholly partisan sham organization, by the way, as my colleague Ben Domenech points out here). Instead, Biden laid out his own set of conditions to his opponent: there will be no audience, no RFK Jr., only CNN, ABC, CBS or Telemundo may host, and microphones must be muted when a candidate’s time expires.

Friday

Cockburn

The rise of the sex-positive pro-porn politico

Rising from the ashes of anti-porn laws racked up by hardline Republicans in Texas, Virginia and Oklahoma comes a team-switcher who flipped from flying his freak flag to wiping his history of porn likes on Twitter. Dan Osborn, who is married with children per his website, is the Democrat-turned-Independent running for a US Senate seat in Nebraska this November. He’s leaning heavily on his time helming a local union, but it’s his extracurricular activities that raised Cockburn’s eyebrows — mostly the slew of hardcore gay and straight porn he’s liked on Twitter. The faint-hearted should skip to the next item now...

Monday

Ben Domenech

Trump at UFC and Kristen Bell’s dinner party: two viral moments from two Americas

Viral moments from either side of the American divide come so frequently these days that they are forgotten just as fast — but a few stick in our memory as signposts on the wandering, treacherous road we find ourselves on as people who have to share a country. The first is from Kristen Bell’s Instagram, featuring a star-studded cast at dinner at Jimmy Kimmel’s $8 million Idaho fly fishing lodge, featuring Jennifer Aniston, Jimmy Fallon, Courteney Cox, John Mulaney, Olivia Munn, Adam Scott, Jason Bateman, Shiri Appelby, Snow Patrol’s Johnny McDaid, Bell’s husband Dax Shepard and, of course, Jake Tapper. https://twitter.com/coledelbyck/status/1677334337245642753 “Excited to join your new cult,” the CNN anchor commented on Instagram.

trump ufc

Wednesday

Stephen L. Miller

Chris gets Licht: Jeff Zucker’s inmates still run the CNN asylum

It appears that Chris Licht is a victim of the Deep State of the Union at CNN. Licht is out at CNN, lasting just over a year, during which time he was unable to drain the swamp Jeff Zucker had left for him. Licht faced down several internal mutinies, reportedly some being led by former Media Matters imi-tater Brian Stelter, whom Licht released last August.After a much-hyped profile by Tim Alberta in the Atlantic, several other hit pieces followed at progressive outlets. They all smelled blood in the water and were proven right. Licht’s stated focus was to rein in CNN’s WrestleMania-style coverage of the Trump years.

chris licht

Monday

Ben Domenech

Giorgia Meloni should inspire American conservatives

Giorgia Meloni and her Brothers of Italy party were swept into power in elections this weekend, a development that the media complex in America greeted with all the subtlety of a bird smacking into a sliding door. The New York Times managed to call her a “fascist” 28 times in a single article. Meloni stands to become Italy’s first female prime minister — but I suppose it’s only good for women to break glass ceilings if they’re the correct kind of women.

Monday

Cockburn

Saluting the heroes of CNN

They also serve who only stand before the camera and talk nonsense. As the Resistance pick through the rubble of the Trump regime, CNN anchors are counting the cost, and not only in dollars, tens of thousands of which they pocketed for jabbering histrionically around the clock.‘As Election Night 2020 bled into Election Week, the talking heads on CNN became something like members of our families,’ writes Kate Storey at Esquire. Every family has its grandiose narcissists, its liars and sex pests, though not all have a 9/11 truther like Van Jones who can cry on cue.‘I was getting a new coffee every half hour,’ says Jake Tapper, heroically risking simultaneously losing control over both his mouth and his colon.

cnn

Sunday

Matt McDonald

Coughing crotchety codgers at a dull DC coronavirus debate

Two gentlemen considered at 'high risk' of contracting COVID-19 met tonight in the Washington DC studio of CNN, to pitch themselves to an on-edge nation as the best alternative to Donald Trump. The Sunday night face-off between Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders was initially supposed to be in Phoenix, Arizona, as the state votes on Tuesday. But that was in The Before Time. Even the CNN panel was socially distanced before the debate, with panelists spaced six feet apart across two studios, as opposed to the usual eight people crammed behind the desk like a pack of hot dogs. This memo clearly didn't get sent down the hall to where the debate was being held, as Jake Tapper, Dana Bash and Univision's Ilia Calderón sat unhealthily close together.