Category: NBC

NBC ‘News’ Hosts ‘Republican’ ‘Debate’

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Excuse me for overloading on the scare-quotes in the headline, but let’s not kid ourselves: None of the five “candidates” (there I go again) on the stage in Miami is likely to be the 2024 Republican nominee.

According to the Real Clear Politics average, Donald Trump has 58.3%, more than 40 points ahead of his nearest rival (Ron Destantis at 14.6%), followed by Nikki Haley (9.4%), Vivek Ramaswamy (4.4%) and Tim Scott (2.6%) and, while I suppose anything is possible, the likelihood of the GOP 2024 nominee being anyone else but Trump is rather remote. So having televised “debates” without the odds-on favorite for the nomination is, we may say, “a really stupid and futile gesture.”

Speaking for myself personally, I’d be happy if DeSantis got the nomination, and I’ve previously expressed my admiration for Vivek Ramaswamy, but GOP primary voters aren’t seeking out my advice on how they should vote, so I’ve made my peace with the idea that Donald Trump will be the 2024 nominee, even if he has to give his acceptance speech from a jail cell in New York. It is what it is, and there’s no point complaining about it, so why was this “debate” on NBC?

Isn’t it just to provide fodder for media coverage? Sound-bites and TV images they can use as the basis for “news” stories and commentary, all of which is generally hostile to the Republican Party?

Highlights from the third Republican Debate: Ramaswamy, Haley and DeSantis spar over Trump, abortion and the economy
— NBC News

Losers, scumbags and policy, too.
The third GOP debate got testy, quick.
— Politico

Nikki Haley to Vivek Ramaswamy
During GOP Debate: ‘You’re Just Scum’
— The Daily Beast

Fact Check: Nikki Haley Claims
Ukraine Is a ‘Democracy’
— Breitbart

Tim Scott finally reveals mystery girlfriend
at 3rd Republican debate
— NY Post

So there’s your “news” about the “debate,” so you can’t say I haven’t done my “job” in covering this made-for-TV event. But I think there’s no doubt that Ramaswamy had the best rant of the entire night:

All the Trump people hate Ramaswamy and all the DeSantis people hate Ramaswamy, too. I’d say the same for the others, but is there such a phenomenon as “Chris Christie people”? Who are they? Can you name even one? Is anyone stupid enough to think Republicans are going to nominate that bloated RINO? And what about Nikki Haley? What is her constituency, beyond the media and Pentagon contractors eager to get paid to supply weapons for endless neocon foreign-policy adventures?

Readers here are probably divided into two large groups: Those who think Trump should be the 2024 nominee, and those who favor Somebody Else. My point is that, (a) if you’re in the Somebody Else camp, it doesn’t matter which candidate you support, because (b) Trump’s going to win it no matter what. The sooner you accept that reality, the better your mental health will be. Worrying about it will only drive you crazy and, I don’t know about you, but I’m holding onto sanity by my fingernails, and can’t afford to risk the psychological trauma of thinking too much about it — or watching these phony “debates.”



 

‘Chuck Todd Is a Disgrace’

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During an interview Sunday on Meet the Press, NBC’s Chuck Todd interrupted Republican Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, accusing Johnson of promoting “Fox News conspiracy propaganda stuff.” What Johnson had been trying to explain, of course, was how the investigation of Ukraine-connected corruption is related to the origin of the “Russian collusion” hoax the Obama administration perpetrated against Trump.

 

Monday morning on Fox & Friends, Dan Bongino erupted:

“I’m telling you right now, he should have walked off that set. Chuck Todd is a disgrace to human kind. How this guy pretends still to be a journalist to this day is an embarrassment. Calling out this network, hey, guys, I usually don’t do props here. Here’s an article here, let me read you the headline here. ‘Ukrainian efforts to sabotage Trump backfire.’ That says ‘Politico.’ That doesn’t say Fox News. What’s the date on this? January of 2017. Chuck Todd needs to resign in absolute disgrace. He should issue a full-throated apology to Ron Johnson and no credible Republican should appear on that network again. And let’s just get one thing straight here. Chuck Todd, who works for NBC of all places, the network that hosts Roswell Rachel, who for two years hosted people swearing the collusion hoax was real — we’re the conspiracy theory network, the network that actually nailed this story from day one? We are the conspiracy theory network? And what about this new ‘Politico’ story in Ukraine? What about this story?”

(Hat-tip: Misanthropic Humanitarian at AOSHQ.)

Chuck Todd is, and always has been, a partisan Democrat (just like ABC’s George Stephanopoulos). Todd began his political career working on the 1992 presidential primary campaign of Tom Harkin. No one has ever accused Chuck Todd of being an objective journalist, and his fellow partisan operatives in the media celebrated Todd’s interview with Johnson as a triumph of their (Democrat) cause. It’s disgusting.



 

NBC Shocked by New Scandal!

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How absurd:

Before being nominated by President Donald Trump to be attorney general, William Barr strongly endorsed a 2017 book accusing colleges and universities of unfairly punishing male students accused of rape.
Barr’s praise for “Campus Rape Frenzy: The Attack on Due Process at America’s Universities” by K.C. Johnson and Stuart Taylor, is posted on the book’s Amazon.com page. But during his confirmation hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee in January, Barr was not questioned about the blurb, which suggested men are often railroaded by a politically correct campus “mob.”
In the blurb, Barr praises the book for examining multiple cases where, as he described, “Male students are sacrificed to the mob, with academic leaders happily serving as the hangmen.”

You can click here to buy The Campus Rape Frenzy: The Attack on Due Process at America’s Universities, which I highly recommend.

So I guess I’ll never be Attorney General now?



 

Category: NBC

#FakeNews: NBC Withheld Evidence of Avenatti’s Kavanaugh Deception

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Thursday, we reported (“Grassley Refers Creepy Porn Lawyer and His Lying Client for FBI Investigation”) that Julie Swetnick and her lawyer, Michael Avenatti, are suspected of giving false statements to the Senate Judiciary Committee during the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation process.

Now, NBC News is admitting that another one of Avenatti’s clients, whose affidavit he provided as corroborating Swetnick’s tales of attending gang-rape parties with Kavanaugh, contradicted those claims:

When Sen. Chuck Grassley referred attorney Michael Avenatti and his client Julie Swetnick to the Justice Department for criminal investigation Thursday, he cited Swetnick’s interview with NBC News as evidence the two were trying to mislead the Senate Judiciary Committee.
In the NBC News interview that aired on Oct. 1, Swetnick back-tracked on or contradicted parts of her sworn statement where she alleged she witnessed then-Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh “cause girls to become inebriated and disoriented so they could then be ‘gang raped’ in a side room or bedroom by a ‘train’ of boys.”
NBC News also found other apparent inconsistencies in a second sworn statement from another woman whose statement Avenatti provided to the Senate Judiciary Committee in a bid to bolster Swetnick’s claims.
In the second statement, the unidentified woman said she witnessed Kavanaugh “spike” the punch at high school parties in order to sexually take advantage of girls. But less than 48 hours before Avenatti released her sworn statement on Twitter, the same woman told NBC News a different story. . . .
The statement also said that Kavanaugh was “overly aggressive and verbally abusive to girls. This conduct included inappropriate physical contact with girls of a sexual nature.”
But reached by phone independently from Avenatti on Oct. 3, the woman said she only “skimmed” the declaration. After reviewing the statement, she wrote in a text on Oct. 4 to NBC News: “It is incorrect that I saw Brett spike the punch. I didn’t see anyone spike the punch…I was very clear with Michael Avenatti from day one.” . . .
In a subsequent text on Oct. 5, she wrote, “I will definitely talk to you again and no longer Avenatti. I do not like that he twisted my words.”

This is enormously significant, as Ashe Schow of the Daily Wire points out: “NBC had all this but didn’t report it at the time, before Kavanaugh’s was confirmed. I wonder why.”

Kavanaugh was confirmed Oct. 6, and NBC News had known since Oct. 4 that the corroborating affidavit supplied by Avenatti was contradicted by the woman who signed it, yet they sat on this evidence — clearly indicating that Avenatti was engaged in deception — for three weeks. NBC thereby became complicit in this deception.

Claiming that a man nominated for the Supreme Court had once engaged in a criminal conspiracy to gang-rape teenage girls is not trivial and if, as now seems probable, Michael Avenatti deliberately created this false narrative, Avenatti has committed a very serious crime. Didn’t NBC News have an obligation to report the evidence it had obtained that indicated Avenatti was engaged in a criminal effort to deceive the Senate?

NBC News promoted Julie Swetnick’s claims against Kavanaugh in an “exclusive” interview five days before the Senate voted. How can they excuse the irresponsibility of giving credibility to Avenatti’s client in this way, and then not following up when they learned that Avenatti’s other client was unwilling to stand by her affidavit? If you want to know why Americans don’t trust the news media, this is it.



 

 

Former NBC News Anchor Tom Brokaw Accused of Sexual Harassment

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Linda Vester was a 28-year-old NBC News correspondent — the youngest at the network — when she said she was first targeted for sexual harassment by the man who was NBC’s prime-time anchor for decades:

In a series of interviews with Variety conducted over several months, Vester alleged that Brokaw physically tried to force her to kiss him on two separate occasions, groped her in a NBC conference room and showed up at her hotel room uninvited. Two friends who Vester told at the time corroborated her story with Variety, and she shared her journal entries from the time period. Brokaw, who has been married to Meredith Auld since 1962, has never before been publicly accused of sexual harassment.
In a statement from him supplied by a NBC News spokesman, Brokaw said of the allegations, “I met with Linda Vester on two occasions, both at her request, 23 years ago because she wanted advice with respect to her career at NBC. The meetings were brief, cordial and appropriate, and despite Linda’s allegations, I made no romantic overtures towards her at that time or any other.” . . .

You can read the whole thing. When the Sexual Harassment Apocalypse began in October 2017, I remarked:

A witch-hunt has no statute of limitations, nor any standard of due process and, as for evidence, who needs evidence? If a woman says her ex-boyfriend did awful things to her in 2007 or 1997, feminists will applaud her for her “courage” in “breaking the silence,” and nothing that the targeted scapegoat says in his own defense will save him.

In the case of Vester’s accusations against Brokaw, we are talking about alleged incidents that happened more than 20 years ago. Vester left NBC News in 1999. Tom Brokaw is now 78 years old and has been married to the same woman since 1962. While no one can condone the behavior that Vester alleges, what is accomplished by dragging Brokaw’s name through the mud now? After NBC’s Matt Lauer was destroyed by sexual harassment allegations, I remarked that “the reason this is happening is because Hillary lost and Trump won”:

The zero-tolerance no-mercy attitude toward male misconduct is a product of feminist rage over Trump’s victory; they cannot destroy him, so they’ll destroy any man within range. The only way to save yourself? Avoid feminists.

This is about revenge, and NBC’s effort to enact policies to prevent future harassment scandals are being met with skepticism because who can reason with an angry lynch-mob? Far be it from me to complain when liberal media types like Brokaw and Lauer are being hoisted by their own petards, but we cannot cast aside our concern for justice simply because a specific injustice may advance our political interests.

Here’s a question: Do you think maybe the #MeToo mob mentality had something to do with Kanye West’s outspoken support of Donald Trump? Do you think a celebrity hiphop mogul has nothing to fear from this vindictive feminist crusade? If respected public figures — including elderly white liberal journalists — can be destroyed over incidents that happened 20 years ago, do you think a young black man is safe?

Like I keep saying, people need to wake the hell up.



 

Category: NBC

‘Unwanted Sexual Advances’: Harassment Bonfire Torches NBC’s Mark Halperin

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The number of his alleged victims is at least seven now:

The morning after five women accused veteran journalist Mark Halperin of sexual harassment while he was in a powerful position at ABC News, two more women came forward with their own allegations.
Those initial five accusers recounted sexual misconduct ranging in nature “from propositioning employees for sex to kissing and grabbing one’s breasts against her will,” CNN reported. “Three of the women who spoke to CNN described Halperin as, without consent, pressing an erection against their bodies while he was clothed.”
Halperin denied some of the allegations listed in Wednesday evening’s story, but added, “I now understand from these accounts that my behavior was inappropriate and caused others pain.”
And then another set of accusers emerged the following day.
“#MeToo,” conservative author and reporter Emily Miller wrote Wednesday night on Twitter, directly responding to the CNN report. . . .
Without specifically describing her encounter with the pundit, Miller elaborated: “I did not report Halperin to ABC because I thought I was the only one, and I blamed myself, and I was embarrassed and I was scared of him.” . . .
Another journalist, who currently appears as a commentator across multiple networks, joined the chorus on Thursday, telling The Daily Beast that the accusations against Halperin rang familiar to her own experience. She said he made unwanted advances at her while they worked together at ABC News more than a decade ago. . . .
According to numerous sources at NBC, MSNBC, ABC, and Bloomberg—who previously spoke to The Daily Beast on the condition of anonymity in order to speak freely—the private allegations of Halperin’s sexual misconduct were an open secret, particularly in New York City and D.C. political media, for many years.

(Via Memeorandum.)



 

PREVIOUSLY:

 

Good-Bye, @MegynKelly

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Did you make the smart move? That’s the question that occurs to most Fox News viewers who have watched your meteoric ascent, as they consider your switch to NBC. Surely the network that hired you would not have done so if they thought you were a conservative. NBC News is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Democrat Party. It is the network of Chris Matthews and Chuck Todd and Rachel Maddow. NBC is anti-Christian and pro-Islam, anti-family and pro-abortion, anti-cop and pro-“Black Lives Matter.” The partisan and ideological biases at NBC News are so blatantly obvious that it is impossible to imagine that you, Ms. Kelly, could be permitted to broadcast anything there that would deviate from the network’s Democrat/“progressive” agenda. But anyway . . .

 

“Bill hated her” — I laughed when I read that quote from an unnamed Fox News host in Gabriel Sherman’s article. Yes, and we hate Bill O’Reilly, a guy who’s been the “face” of Fox News for way too long. Why did Roger Ailes invest so heavily in making O’Reilly the tentpole of the network, the signature of the Fox News brand? It never made sense to me. Veteran news guys like Brit Hume and Brett Baier are the best thing on the network, and in terms of opinionated conservatism, Sean Hannity is more watchable. Yet year after year, O’Reilly has remained entrenched in his 8 p.m. time slot as the centerpiece of the Fox News identity, and I could seldom stand to watch more than a few minutes of The O’Reilly Factor.

“Personnel is policy,” as the Reaganites said, and the Ailes-era staffing decisions at Fox News seemed to reflect a commitment to a particular style of Republican political messaging, namely the old Al D’Amato Long Island GOP machine and its Art Finklestein-engineered attack strategy. Attracting a large viewership in the outer suburbs of New York City made sense, as a business strategy for Fox News, and the demographics of that audience meant that having an Irish Catholic guy from Long Island as the 8 p.m. anchor also made sense. But once the network had established its national influence, didn’t Fox News limit its audience by having this snide and smarmy egotist as its most famous face?

 

Well, The Kelly Files was a counter-balance to that problem, but the gigantic ego  of Bill O’Reilly — and the network’s investment in his ego — could not be effectively counter-balanced, and so, good-bye, Megyn:

For Kelly, the jump from a primetime perch at Fox to a multifaceted role at NBC carries a high degree of risk. She’ll be giving up the most loyal audience in cable news for new set of platforms that she’ll have to largely build herself. At NBC, Kelly will anchor an Oprah-like daytime show, launch a new Sunday night news magazine, and contribute to the network’s political coverage. The track record for talented anchors launching daytime programs hasn’t been good (see: Katie Couric, Meredith Vieira, Anderson Cooper), and no Fox News star has successfully crossed over to the mainstream before.

My hunch, Ms. Kelly, is that you will simply disappear. The partisan Democrats who run NBC News have no interest in your success. What they have done is to hire you away from Fox News in order to damage their rival, and to neutralize whatever personal influence you may have had in terms of undermining liberalism’s hegemonic control of the news media. You are now another highly-paid puppet whose strings are controlled by the executives at 30 Rock, and if you fail at NBC — if your daytime show is a ratings flop — those executives will have no problem paying out your contract while limiting your airtime to occasional appearances as a Meet the Press panelist.

 

Of course, I’ve been wrong before. A month before Election Day, I declared that the devastation of Trump’s accumulating scandals meant he couldn’t possibly win and, if I was wrong about that, maybe I’m also wrong about your career prospects at NBC News. How could you succeed?

  1. Be pro-life — The pro-abortion bias is arguably the most toxic aspect of the media’s liberal agenda. Obviously, NBC News isn’t going to let you use their airtime to promote the pro-life perspective in any blatant way, but there will be times when your decisions could have a subtle yet important influence. “Therefore choose life.”
  2. Be anti-Hollywood — My old friend Andrew Breitbart and I used to argue about which was more wicked, Hollywood or D.C. Having spent so long dealing with the two-faced backstabbing scoundrels in Washington, I was certain that D.C. was the most evil place on the planet, but Andrew was unconvinced. “No, trust me, Hollywood is worse,” he’d say, before regaling me with tales about the selfish coke-addicted perverts who run the entertainment industry. If you, Ms. Kelly, were to use your NBC daytime show to expose some of the shocking decadence of Hollywood, this would be a tremendous public service and, I suspect, would make you unique among major network news personalities.
  3. Be patriotic — What was the secret of Trump’s victory, really? First, “build a wall,” and second, “Make America great again.” This simple old-fashioned patriotism proved so popular that 63 million American voters were willing to overlook every negative aspect of Trump’s personality and politics. Maybe your NBC audience would find it refreshing to encounter a daytime show where the U.S. military and our nation’s law-enforcement officers are recognized for their heroic service to our country. Flag-waving Mom-and-apple-pie patriotism is a “brand” whose value has been unappreciated by the liberal media establishment, and you might enjoy surprising success at NBC if you make this a core theme of your new show.

Network TV stars don’t ask for my advice, and I offer it unsolicited only because it seems to me there is too much an echo-chamber mentality in the major media. People inside the news industry can never be objective about the industry and its problems. Unable to step outside the echo chamber, and unwilling to listen to anyone who isn’t part of the industry — what do they know, those stupid people who merely watch TV? — the media’s hive-mind generates a sort of impenetrable force-field that prevents insiders from seeing their industry’s problems objectively.

Maybe you, Ms. Kelly, can be an exception to that rule.

 

(Via Memeorandum.)



 

 

Boomerang: NBC Suspends ‘Today’ Host Billy Bush Because …

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. . . uh, why? Honestly, I’m mystified by this unexpected and, to me, inexplicable reaction to the Trump 2005 “hot mic” video leak:

Billy Bush has been suspended from the “Today” show “pending further review of the matter.”
It is unclear if he will ever return to the broadcast.
“He will never be on the show again,” an on-air source said Sunday night, reflecting what staffers are saying behind the scenes.
A second source at the network confirmed Monday that his return is unlikely.
“Today” co-host Savannah Guthrie briefly told viewers about Bush’s suspension on Monday morning.
The sudden change came amid a chorus of calls for disciplinary action against Bush over his vulgar 2005 conversation with Donald Trump that was caught on tape and revealed on Friday. . . .
[T]he executive in charge of “Today,” Noah Oppenheim, said in an internal memo that the executives had decided to go even further and suspend Bush.
“I know we’ve all been deeply troubled by the revelations of the past 48 hours,” Oppenheim wrote.
“Let me be clear — there is simply no excuse for Billy’s language and behavior on that tape,” he wrote. “NBC has decided to suspend Billy, pending further review of this matter.”

 

OK, do me a favor and go read the full transcript of that 2005 video and tell me what “language and behavior” Bush is being disciplined for. Frankly, I don’t see it. Bush is there with Trump, and Trump’s saying what he’s saying, and Bush says . . . what? Please, explain to me how he said something so reprehensible that there’s “no excuse” for it.

What is the cause of this “chorus of calls for disciplinary action”? What Trump said was without doubt offensive — as I said, it effectively guarantees his defeat in the election — but I’m not seeing what Billy Bush said that was so bad. In context, you’ve got the celebrity Alpha billionaire (Trump’s Apprentice at the time was anchoring NBC’s 9 p.m. Thursday slot, with about 14 million viewers) and it’s Trump being Trump. He’s talking about women, and Billy Bush, an ex-radio talk-show host, in 2005 was 33 and had recently promoted to co-host of Access Hollywood.

What exactly was this young B-list TV personality supposed to say in response to Trump’s comments? What he did say was, “Sheesh, your girl’s hot as sh–” and “Yes! The Donald has scored. Whoa, my man!” and “Uh, yeah, those legs, all I can see is the legs. . . . Oh, that’s good legs.”

OK, maybe you wouldn’t want to be caught on tape saying those things, but is what Billy Bush said a “no excuse” situation? And again, who is it that’s making this “chorus of calls for disciplinary action”?

Guys can’t even say “good legs” anymore, not even just guys talking to each other? Is this the new 21st-century standard? Are we now e a nation of third-grade tattletales? “Teacher! Teacher! Billy said a naughty word!” We need a “chorus of calls” for some people to get a life.