Good morning. We're all about to take a moment to reflect on the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Media coverage unites us on a day like today. "Never forget" is always the operative phrase for older Americans, but as the years pass, a new phrase will be more relevant for younger Americans who don't have personal memories of 9/11: "Always remember." |
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The morning after Kamala Harris and Donald Trump's first debate, it is far from clear if Trump will agree to a rematch.
Multiple TV networks are eager to host a presidential debate in October. The Harris campaign, exuding confidence after Harris baited Trump on stage Tuesday night, immediately said she would agree to a second debate with the ex-president. But Trump is not committing, and his overnight comments suggest he is not serious about a sequel.
Speaking with the hosts of "Fox & Friends" this morning, Trump insulted Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum, the two anchors that Fox has pitched as potential debate moderators in October. "I wouldn't want to have Bret and Martha," he said, before proposing Sean Hannity, Jesse Watters or Laura Ingraham instead. It is self-evident that Fox's prime time stars, who exist more in the realm of entertainment than news, are never going to moderate a general election debate. So if that's the starting point for negotiations, don't expect another debate.
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But Trump campaign senior adviser Jason Miller said on "CNN This Morning" that Trump "has already said that he is going to do three debates." He blamed Harris for dodging Trump's talk of a September 25 debate led by NBC.
The Harris campaign, however, wants the VP debate between Tim Walz and JD Vance to happen next. CBS is hosting that faceoff on October 1. That's why Harris spokesman Brian Fallon said last night, "That was fun. Let’s do it again in October."
NBC and other networks stand ready to host a Harris-Trump rematch in October. Now, the onus will be on Trump to agree.
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Trump targets ABC over fact-checks |
Right now, Trump is directing his keyboard warriors to punish ABC for fact-checking him during the debate. As Hadas Gold reports here, moderators David Muir and Linsey Davis "stepped in to debunk false claims made by Trump on at least three occasions."
"CNN was much more honorable" during the June debate, Trump told "Fox & Friends." He called ABC "the most dishonest news organization, and that's saying a lot." He repeatedly claimed the debate "was three on one" and suggested Disney's FCC licenses should be revoked due to the moderators' conduct. "They are a news organization – they have to be licensed to do it – they ought to take away their license for the way they did that," he said.
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CNN fact-checker/national treasure Daniel Dale appeared on the network last night and called Trump's debate performance "staggeringly dishonest." His preliminary count showed that Trump made at least 33 false claims. "By contrast," he said, "Harris made at least one false claim, though she added at least a few misleading claims and a few more that lack key context."
This is why debate moderators are in an impossible position whenever Trump is on the stage. The same is true for journalists more broadly whenever Trump is the story: You're damned if you fact-check and you're damned if you don't.
To be honest, I'm tired of the conversations around this issue. We go round and round, but there will never be a satisfactory resolution. Consider what The Atlantic's Tim Alberta tweeted overnight. "One way to look at it: ABC moderators fact-checked Trump 2-3 times and Harris zero times," he wrote. "Another way to look at it: ABC moderators fact-checked Trump 2-3 times instead of 500 times."
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Trump's hand-picked "polls" |
Several of you emailed me overnight asking about the "polls" that Trump is citing, proclaiming him to be the winner. Trump said in the spin room last night and again on Fox this morning that "every single poll" showed him winning. He literally had his campaign aides send these supposed polls to Fox hosts overnight. But they're not scientific polls – they are unscientific surveys of users on X showing irrelevant landslide victories for Trump. CNN's real flash poll of debate viewers showed that Harris outperformed Trump.
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Pundits praise Harris's preparedness |
Political commentators largely praised Harris for her preparedness and noted how she goaded Trump over and over again. Almost everything about Harris came in stark contrast to Joe Biden's performance during the CNN debate.
Check this out: During the final commercial break, before closing statements, Trump quickly walked off stage while Harris stayed put and wrote in her notepad "continuously for the entire first two minutes of the break," according to pool reporter Sara Cook. "She then reviewed what she wrote for the next minute, making a few tweaks, before putting the pen down and looking out around the room with her hands folded in front of her." She understood the assignment, so to speak.
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Swift's endorsement strategy |
Taylor Swift's post-debate surprise – endorsing Harris and Walz via an Instagram post with her cat – was also "an effective prebuttal to those who might say a celebrity shouldn’t speak up politically," Puck's Eriq Gardner pointed out on X.
Harris said an AI-generated lie claiming she endorsed Trump had brought her "to the conclusion that I need to be very transparent about my actual plans for this election as a voter. The simplest way to combat misinformation is with the truth."
More broadly, "she can say that it was Trump who dragged her into the campaign and made her endorsement a thing," Gardner wrote. Her post was "liked" more than 7.7 million times in the first 10 hours...
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>> Jake Tapper: Trump "cited Fox hosts as fact-checkers. He invoked Hungarian strongman Viktor Orban as a character witness. It was like a 4chan post come to life."
>> Abby Phillip: "He's aging and it shows. It's showing on the debate stage and it's showing on the campaign trail."
>> Fox's Brit Hume: Harris on stage was "a different person from the absolute dunderhead so many of us thought she was during her conduct as VP."
>> Keith Olbermann's tongue-in-cheek question for the GOP after the debate, alluding to the aftermath of June's CNN debate: "Who do they get to replace HIM?"
>> Harris was in control virtually from the start: "She had better moments and worse ones, but she was human where Trump was feral," The Atlantic's David Frum writes.
>> What the right is reading: Breitbart accused Harris of side-stepping substantial policy discussions and pushing anti-Trump "hoaxes."
>> Lisa Lerer and Reid Epstein analyzed the VP's expressions: "An arched brow. A quiet sigh. A hand on her chin. A laugh. A pitiful glance. A dismissive shake of her head." With words and with body language, they write, Harris turned the debate "into a referendum on Donald Trump."
>> "In the end," The Bulwark's Sam Stein says, "Harris beat Trump at the business of television, which is a remarkable achievement, and probably one that Trump will rue. For him, television is gospel."
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"I've seen people on television..." |
I think the Trump era can be summed up by Trump's exchange with Muir over the racist lie about Haitian migrants stealing and eating pets in Springfield, Ohio. When Muir said there is no evidence for the claim, Trump said "I've seen people on television" talking about it. Muir responded, "I'm not taking this from television. I'm taking this from the city manager." Trump's years in office were defined – and in many ways damaged – by his addiction to television shows that misinformed him. And it remains true today.
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How many watched the debate? |
"The record for a presidential debate is 84 million viewers, for the first meeting in 2016" between Hillary Clinton and Trump, the NYT's Michael Grynbaum wrote. The TV landscape has changed dramatically since then, due to streaming competition, changing viewer habits, and all the rest. But the debate between Harris and Trump likely scored at least 50 million viewers. The first general election debate this year, back in June, averaged 51.3 million viewers, and that was at a relatively low-rated time of year, when "the electorate itself was in a kind of malaise," Grynbaum added. Now there is clear enthusiasm. We'll have the overnight ratings later today...
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Some voters are still mostly tuned out |
This can't be emphasized enough: "Despite the consequences and the historical plot twists, this election’s biggest news events are simply not penetrating the public consciousness nearly as much as we political addicts assume," Puck's Peter Hamby wrote Tuesday. "In a survey of battleground state voters released Monday, the Democratic polling firm Blueprint found that swaths of swing voters hadn’t seen or heard anything about many of the topics that have dominated campaign news coverage."
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TIME magazine's new cover |
TIME is out with its latest iconic cover this morning, featuring reporting by Brian Bennett, Eric Cortellessa, and Philip Elliott on how Trump is scrambling for a winning approach against Harris. The cover illustration of Trump in a sand trap is by Tim O’Brien. |
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The Video Music Awards start at 8pm ET on MTV. |
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Momentum for social media warning labels? |
CNN's Jason Seher writes: "It's hard to get 42 states to agree on much. But a bipartisan group of attorneys general on Tuesday demanded that Congress require Surgeon General warning labels on social media apps to help curtail addiction and a mental health crisis among young adults." Appending a warning to social media apps "requires Congressional approval," and Congress has so far ignored Surgeon General Vivek Murthy's "plea to introduce a bill requiring warning labels."
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Media biz briefs, part one |
>> "A group of well-known media leaders and philanthropists have teamed with the American Journalism Project (AJP) to raise $15 million for a new, Los Angeles-based local news initiative," Sara Fischer reports. (Axios)
>> Peter Kafka has relaunched his weekly media and technology podcast, now named "Channels," in partnership with Vox Media. (Axios)
>> The New York Times Tech Guild has authorized a strike to protest its stalled contract negotiations with the Gray Lady’s management. The union's maximum leverage point is the upcoming election. (Axios)
>> Law360 editorial staffers walked out on the job Tuesday, protesting frozen contract discussions with management. (TBN)
>> The Washington Post has hired Liza Pluto as its new director of communications. (Wash Post)
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More of this week's big new books |
Yesterday, I mentioned some of this week's new books, but I neglected to include two releases by old friends. D'oh. Former CNN anchor Don Lemon is out with "I Once Was Lost: My Search for God in America." And veteran NBC producer Dan Slepian is out with "The Sing Sing Files: One Journalist, Six Innocent Men, and a Twenty-Year Fight for Justice."
>> And speaking of new releases, Elizabeth Strout's novel "Tell Me Everything" is the newest Oprah's Book Club pick...
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Media biz briefs, part two |
>> The Disney-DirecTV beef is a microcosm for the existential threat facing pay-TV bundles, Lucas Manfredi writes. (The Wrap)
>> Lachlan Murdoch says Fox Corp will "use our balance sheet, increasingly, for M&A as we go forward." (THR)
>> Speaking at a Front Office Sports conference, ESPN's Burke Magnus said "I would be lying if I said we weren’t interested" in Charles Barkley. (The Athletic)
>> Paul Marshall, the British hedge fund manager and GB News investor, officially acquired The Spectator for $130.7 million. (FT)
>> With "great sadness," Andrew Neil resigned as Spectator chair. (The Independent)
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>> "The Perfect Couple" debuted as Netflix's most-watched TV show of the week in its opening weekend," tallying 20.3 million views in its first weekend, per Nielsen. (TheWrap)
>> Amazon Prime Video says 40 million viewers streamed at least some of the first three episodes of “The Rings of Power” season two in its first 11 days as third-party ratings show precipitous viewership declines. (THR)
>> Larry David is launching a 10-date tour with Live Nation, "A Conversation With Larry David," beginning Sept. 20. (THR)
>> Melvin Gregg, Chelsea Frei, and Ramona Young are boarding Peacock’s new “The Office” series. (Deadline)
>> Bad Bunny is joining the cast of “Happy Gilmore 2.” (Deadline)
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