Good morning! We'll occasionally send "bonus editions," beyond our Monday through Friday schedule, when news warrants. And as you'll see here, there's a lot of media news this weekend that shouldn't wait 'til Monday: |
From "Call Her Daddy" to "60 Minutes" |
Here's the television interview schedule for VP Kamala Harris in the coming days:
On Monday, Harris will appear on the "60 Minutes" prime time special that Donald Trump initially agreed to do, then rebuffed.
On Tuesday, Harris will be live on ABC's "The View;" will visit "The Howard Stern Show;" and will sit down with Stephen Colbert on CBS's "The Late Show."
On Thursday, Harris will participate in a Univision town hall.
Some of the talk shows are friendly territory, yes, in the same way that Donald Trump's newly taped interview with Laura Ingraham (airing Monday evening on Fox News) is a home field game. But the "60 Minutes" interview (taped Saturday) was thorough.
Besides, the more casual chats sometimes generate the most news. (Think of Harris telling Oprah Winfrey that "if somebody breaks in my house they're getting shot.") With that in mind, Harris's conversation with Alex Cooper is coming out on the "Call Her Daddy" podcast later today...
>> Thought bubble: Harris must be the first person in the world to be on "Call Her Daddy" one day and "60 Minutes" the next.
|
|
|
This morning, Tim Walz is on "Fox News Sunday" with Shannon Bream – his first Sunday show appearance since becoming Harris's running mate. (It feels strategic on the Harris campaign's part to have Walz, not Harris, appear on Fox.) On Monday he is taping ABC's "Jimmy Kimmel Live" – his first late-night hit – and later in the week he will do a series of Hispanic and local media interviews, according to the campaign... |
|
|
Trump's "triumphant return" |
What was the most newsworthy aspect of Trump's return to Butler, Pa. on Saturday? Some outlets emphasized that Trump timed his speech to the moment of the failed assassination attempt last July. Fox's home page headline highlighted his special guest: "Elon Musk electrifies MAGA as Trump makes triumphant return to Butler months after shooting."
The Washington Post, on the other hand, led with the dark rhetoric: "Trump suggested that his political opponents could have been responsible for the July assassination attempt against him" and Eric Trump "also used the word 'they' in speaking about the assassination attempt rather than referring to the lone shooter with a singular noun, suggesting there was a conspiracy behind the attack — something that the FBI has not found." CNN's story similarly noted "there is no evidence Trump’s political opponents are involved in any manner."
|
Many of the same campaign beat reporters who were in Butler on the day of the shooting were back for Saturday's rally. CBS journalists Olivia Rinaldi and Jacob Rosen shared their personal reflections afterward. "Witnessing the events of July 13 took away our feeling of safety while doing our jobs, and the effects of that continue to impact us," they wrote.
On Saturday, "there was a moment of shock at one point, when the speaker on stage paused as the crowd shouted 'medic' for a woman who fainted. We were frozen in fear hearing the same words that were shouted in the seconds after Trump's assassination attempt... But like July 13, we had to go to work. Like those in the crowd of tens of thousands that chose to return, there was a sense of unfinished business on this fairground."
|
|
|
The cognitive decline question |
Well, here's a fresh way into the questions about Trump's advancing age. The NYT conducted a "computer analysis" of Trump's rallies, interviews, statements and social media posts and found "signs of change since he first took the political stage in 2015."
"He has always been discursive and has often been untethered to truth, but with the passage of time his speeches have grown darker, harsher, longer, angrier, less focused, more profane and increasingly fixated on the past," Peter Baker and Dylan Freedman wrote. Here's the data.
>> Let's see if this story is well-received by the Times critics who believe the outlet hasn't held Trump to the same standard as Biden...
|
|
|
A few other political media notes |
>> This Washington Post story about Harris "running a much bigger campaign than Trump" ("she spends three times as much") says there are "plans in the works for a late October infomercial to air on swing-state broadcast networks."
>> NBC's Allan Smith takes stock of Trump's varied money-making efforts: "Trump pitches watches, crypto and his wife's book in the campaign's final weeks."
>> Gizmodo's Matt Novak says "Truth Social users are losing ridiculous sums of money to scams," and has the FTC complaints to back it up.
>> It was all the way back on Friday, but hey, how about that Biden press conference? "Reporters let out an audible gasp as the president strode into the briefing room unannounced, underscoring just how infrequent these unscripted moments are for Biden," Politico's Lauren Egan wrote.
|
|
|
THE FLOOD AFTER THE FLOOD |
The overwhelming amount of online disinformation about the federal response to Helene's devastation deserves more attention. The reality-based media has to keep grappling with the "unreality" that has taken hold among so many people, especially self-identified MAGA supporters.
The politically-motivated lies about Helene (like Trump claiming last night that North Carolina has seen "no helicopters, no rescue") are causing real-world harm. Kerry Giles, the public information officer for hard-hit Rutherford County, NC, told me that debunking the B.S. "did consume resources that could have been more effectively utilized in the recovery efforts."
Giles and her colleagues had to issue a statement on Friday to make clear: No, the government is not taking over Chimney Rock, NC; No, there is not a discussion about seizing property; No, there are not dead "bodies everywhere" as a result of the storm. Other local officials have also spoken out about the problem.
>> A strong new fact-check by CNN's Daniel Dale: "Six days of Trump lies about the Hurricane Helene response."
>> The White House issued a memo about the disinformation problem Saturday evening, stating that "scam artists, bad-faith actors, and others who want to sow chaos because they think it helps their political interests are promoting disinformation about the recovery effort."
>> Juliette Kayyem, writing for The Atlantic, says "aftermath of Hurricane Helene has shown that, even as technology has theoretically improved our capacity to connect with other people, our visibility into what’s happening on the ground may be deteriorating..."
|
An ominous sign for November |
After talking about the post-Helene lies on "The Source" with Kaitlan Collins Friday night, I wanted to write a column about it, because this week's B.S. is an ominous sign for the coming election. As Tim Alberta wrote on X, "if you think the lies and distortions and know-nothing takes about FEMA are bad, just wait until this time next month." November's vote-counting is sure to trigger further attacks on the truth.
>> NC columnist Billy Ball wrote on Friday, "We have a lot of crises in the U.S., but few are as significant as the information crisis. People are lying to us to make us hate each other, to get our money, to boost some cause or another."
|
|
|
NFL action at 9:30 a.m. ET! |
"The Jets and Vikings are set to kick off at 9:30 a.m. ET on Sunday morning," USA Today's Joe Rivera writes. The matchup in London "should bring NFL fans almost up to the 1 p.m. slate of games, and make for a roughly 14-hour day of NFL action."
>> ESPN's Adam Schefter: "London will host the first of three straight Sundays of games today, and more international games are on the way. NFL is exploring games in Spain, Ireland and France, and some believe the Steelers are a prime candidate to be featured in the NFL’s first regular-season game to be played in Dublin, Ireland."
|
Coming up in prime time... |
The Cowboys and the Steelers are on "Sunday Night Football..."
The American Music Awards are on CBS starting at 8 p.m. ET...
HBO's "The Franchise" premieres at 10 p.m. ET...
|
|
|
>> The WSJ's lead headline this morning: "Google's Grip on Search Slips as TikTok and AI Startup Mount Challenge."
>> On Friday's "The Lead," Jake Tapper used his own deepfake to show how powerful AI is. The "deepfake Jake" said "the fact that I seem so real suggests that real mischief and serious damage could be done with this technology were it to be so utilized in the U.S. as it has been for bad purposes abroad."
>> Speaking of... Meta has "debuted a new artificial intelligence tool that can generate or edit videos based on a simple text prompt," Bloomberg's Kurt Wagner reports.
|
|
|
|
® © 2024 Cable News Network. A Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All Rights Reserved.
1050 Techwood Drive NW, Atlanta, GA 30318 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
