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Why I Did Not Cancel My Subscription to the Washington Post

By dianeravitch
October 26, 2024 //
61

Last night, I read the hundreds of letters to the editor of the Washington Post about Bezos’ decision not to endorse. By now, there are probably thousands. Almost all of them said: I have canceled my subscription.”

Good for them.

I am NOT canceling my subscription.

I enjoy reading Dana Milbank, Jennifer Rubin, Eugene Robinson, Alexander Petri, and other columnists.

I applaud them for dissenting from Bezos’ mandate.

They will vent their rage for the next 10 days. At Bezos and especially at Trump.

And of course there will continue to be hard-hitting investigations.

I want to read what they write.

Categories Accountability, Democracy, Elections, Ethics, Extremism, Freedom of Speech, Freedom of the Press, Freedom to Read, Media, Trump

Washington Post: 17 Opinion Writers Disagree with Bezos’ Fiat to Stop Endorsing For President

By dianeravitch
October 26, 2024 //
9

It’s clear that billionaire Jeff Bezos told the editorial board not to publish its editorial endorsing Kamala Harris. The editorial was already written, and Bezos stopped it. The order came down through Will Lewis, whom Bezos hired away from Rupert Murdoch’s rightwing publishing empire.

No one knows Bezos’s reason or reasons. He has said nothing. Lewis released a statement pretending that the censorship of the editorial board by the owner was an act of high principle. As editor Ruth Marcus wrote, had the decision been announced a year ago, it would have had at least the patina of principle. Coming as it did only days before the election, the decision seems craven and unethical.

This is what 17 of the Post’s opinion writers said in response.

The Washington Post’s decision not to make an endorsement in the presidential campaign is a terrible mistake. It represents an abandonment of the fundamental editorial convictions of the newspaper that we love. This is a moment for the institution to be making clear its commitment to democratic values, the rule of law and international alliances, and the threat that Donald Trump poses to them — the precise points The Post made in endorsing Trump’s opponents in 2016 and 2020. There is no contradiction between The Post’s important role as an independent newspaper and its practice of making political endorsements, both as a matter of guidance to readers and as a statement of core beliefs. That has never been more true than in the current campaign. An independent newspaper might someday choose to back away from making presidential endorsements. But this isn’t the right moment, when one candidate is advocating positions that directly threaten freedom of the press and the values of the Constitution.

Karen Attiah
Perry Bacon Jr.
Matt Bai
Max Boot

Kate Cohen
E.J. Dionne Jr.
Lee Hockstader
David Ignatius
Heather Long
Ruth Marcus
Dana Milbank
Alexandra Petri
Catherine Rampell
Eugene Robinson
Jennifer Rubin
Karen Tumulty
Erik Wemple

Categories Accountability, Censorship, Democracy, Disruption, Elections, Freedom of the Press, Media

Ruth Marcus of the Washington Post: “I Dissent”

By dianeravitch
October 26, 2024 //
16

Ruth Marcus has been a writer for The Washington Post for forty years. Yesterday, she wrote a principled dissent to the decision of Jeff Bezos, the billionaire who owns the newspaper, to stop the editorial board from publishing its endorsement of Kamala Harris. In addition, 16 opinion writers published a statement criticizing the decision.

She wrote:

I love The Washington Post, deep in my bones. Last month marked my 40th year of proud work for the institution, in the newsroom and in the Opinions section. I have never been more disappointed in the newspaper than I am today, with the tragically flawed decision not to make an endorsement in the presidential race.

At a moment when The Post should have been stepping forward to sound the clarion call about the multiple dangers that Donald Trump poses to the nation and the world, it has chosen instead to pull back. That is the wrong choice at the worst possible time.

I write — I dissent — from the perspective of someone who spent two decades as a member of The Post’s editorial board. (I stepped away last year.) From that experience, I can say: you win some and lose some. No one, perhaps not even the editorial page editor, agrees with every position the board takes. At bottom, the owner of the newspaper is entitled to have an editorial page that reflects the owner’s point of view.

In addition, let’s not overestimate the significance of presidential endorsements. As much as we might like to believe otherwise, they have limited persuasive value for the vanishingly small number of undecided voters. They are distinct from endorsements for local office, involving issues and personalities about which voters might have scant knowledge; in these circumstances, editorial boards can serve as useful, trusted proxies. A presidential endorsement serves a different purpose: to reflect the soul and underlying values of the institution.

A vibrant newspaper can survive and even flourish without making presidential endorsements; The Post itself declined to make endorsements for many years before it began doing so regularly in 1976, as publisher and chief executive officer William Lewis pointed out in his explanation for the decision to halt the practice.

If The Post had announced after this election that it would stop endorsing presidential candidates, I might have disagreed with that decision, but I would not consider it out of bounds. The practice of endorsements comes with some costs. The newsroom and the Opinions section maintain rigorous separation, but it is difficult to make that case to an official aggrieved by the failure to secure an endorsement.

This is not the time to make such a shift. It is the time to speak out, as loudly and convincingly as possible, to make the case that we made in 2016 and again in 2020: that Trump is dangerously unfit to hold the highest office in the land.

This was The Post on Oct. 13, 2016: “Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump is dreadful, that is true — uniquely unqualified as a presidential candidate. If we believed that Ms. Clinton were the lesser of two evils, we might well urge you to vote for her anyway — that is how strongly we feel about Mr. Trump,” the editorial board wrote in endorsing Hillary Clinton. Trump, it — we because I was a member of the board then — said, “has shown himself to be bigoted, ignorant, deceitful, narcissistic, vengeful, petty, misogynistic, fiscally reckless, intellectually lazy, contemptuous of democracy and enamored of America’s enemies. As president, he would pose a grave danger to the nation and the world.”

Every word of that proved sadly true.

This was The Post on Sept. 28, 2020: It — we — called Trump “the worst president of modern times,” in endorsing Joe Biden “Democracy is at risk, at home and around the world,” the editorial warned. “The nation desperately needs a president who will respect its public servants; stand up for the rule of law; acknowledge Congress’s constitutional role; and work for the public good, not his private benefit.”

What has changed since then? Trump’s behavior has only gotten worse — and we have learned only more disturbing things about him. Most significantly, he disputed the results of a fair election that he lost and sought to prevent the peaceful transfer of power. He encouraged an insurrection that threatened the life of his own vice president — leading to his second impeachment — and then defended the insurrectionists as “hostages.” He will not accept the reality of his 2020 loss or pledge to respect the results of next month’s voting, unless it concludes in his favor.

He has threatened to “terminate” the Constitution. He has demeaned his opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, as “mentally impaired.” He has vowed to fire the special counsel who brought two criminal cases against him and “go after” his political enemies. He wants to use the military to pursue domestic opponents — “radical left lunatics” like former House speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-California) or Rep. Adam Schiff (D-California) — and rout out “the enemy from within.”

I could keep going but you know all this, and you get my point: What self-respecting news organization could abandon its entrenched practice of making presidential endorsements in the face of all this?

Lewis, in his publisher’s note, called this move “consistent with the values The Post has always stood for and what we hope for in a leader: character and courage in service to the American ethic, veneration for the rule of law, and respect for human freedom in all its aspects.” It was, he added, “a statement in support of our readers’ ability to make up their own minds on this, the most consequential of American decisions — whom to vote for as the next president.”

But asserting that doesn’t make it so. Withholding judgment does not serve our readers — it disrespects them. And expressing our institutional bottom line on Trump would not undermine our independence any more than our choices did in 1976, 1980, 1984, 1992, 1996, 2000, 2004, 2008, 2012, 2016 or 2020. We were an independent newspaper then and, I hope, remain one today.

Many friends and readers have reached out today, saying they planned to cancel their subscriptions or had already done so. I understand, and share, your anger. I think the best answer, for you and for me, may be embodied in this column: You are reading it, on the same platform, in the same newspaper, that has so gravely disappointed you.

Categories Accountability, Censorship, Democracy, Elections, Ethics, Failure, Freedom of the Press, Harris, Kamala, Media, Trump

Orlando Sentinel Will No Longer Endorse Candidates for President, Governor, or U.S. Senate

By dianeravitch
October 25, 2024 //
26

On October 7, The Orlando Sentinel published the following editorial. Note that the newspaper is owned by Alden Global Capital, which has bought up many other newspapers and gutted their newsrooms.

The Orlando Sentinel and South Florida Sun Sentinel will no longer endorse candidates in races for governor, Senate or president, including this year’s races.

This is a company-wide decision and very limited in scope. It applies only to endorsements in these two races. All other endorsements remain entirely within each newspaper’s discretion, and we are working hard on our endorsements for U.S. House, the Legislature, city and county commissioners and mayors and school board races.

Any public officials who are popping champagne at this announcement might want to re-cork their celebrations. Tribune Publishing’s two Florida papers, the Orlando Sentinel and Sun Sentinel, will continue our tradition of robust, well-researched editorials that hold Florida’s leaders responsible for their actions. When those decisions are not in the state’s best interests or driven by partisan ulterior motives, we will continue to say so.

This restriction is in line with corporate-level dictates in other media companies, some of which have eliminated endorsements entirely. It’s well within the long-standing tradition of American editorial pages, which leaves the final say on endorsements to each paper’s publisher.

Since Alden Global Capital took over Tribune Publishing in May 2021, its leaders have made it clear that they support robust, local editorial pages. This is the first time they have asserted their traditional role, but this discussion of which races to endorse in occurs at newspapers every day in the run-up to an election. Company leaders acted out of concern that contests for president, U.S. Senate and governor are becoming more national in character, and that our editorial advocacy is strongest locally.

Corporate leaders also worry that common ground is being lost to culture wars. We’ve all seen society become more polarized. Look at what’s happened since Florida’s 2018 gubernatorial election. Could we have imagined that we would be so deeply divided over how to handle the pandemic that we would see shrieking parents dragged out of school board meetings? Or that partisan voices on both sides of the divide would take turns decrying law enforcement and medical professionals as villains or heroes?

But we aren’t going to cede that common ground on the eve of a high profile, surprisingly competitive Senate race and a contest for governor widely seen as a prelude to the 2024 presidential election (with another likely player in his Palm Beach mansion).

Florida’s tradition of spirited journalistic debate is often shaped by editorials, but also informed by readers’ letters to the editor and columns by us, readers and public officials. They are the heartbeat of our opinion pages, and in the great Florida tradition, our readers are not shy about telling us when they think we’ve gotten it wrong.

We’ll continue our work of endorsing many candidates for local, regional and state office, judgeships, Congress, ballot questions and constitutional amendments. We’ll celebrate fact and expose fiction. And to quote Tom Petty, we won’t back down. Nor are we expected to.

Our corporate leadership has made that crystal clear. We know our readers will have plenty to say about this decision. You’ll find our letter guidelines at the bottom of this editorial.

At the end of the day, we suspect even our toughest critics will agree: We all love Florida at the top of our lungs, con mucho gusto. That hasn’t changed, and it won’t.

Categories Accountability, Discipline, Elections, Harris, Kamala, Media, Trump

Margaret Sullivan: Are the Media Fair? Should They Be?

By dianeravitch
October 25, 2024 //
35

Margaret Sullivan was the ombudsman for The New York Times. She now writes a blog called American Crisis.

She writes:

With less than two weeks until the most consequential presidential election of the modern era, this is my evaluation of how the media has done — along with an 11th hour plea. 

There are, after all, still a lot of undecided or at least uncommitted voters, hard as that may be to believe. And the media, while it won’t determine the outcome, can make a difference.

I’ll grant, up front, that the national news media — Big Journalism — has done some good work. The reporting on Project 2025, while not pervasive enough, has been excellent, and some of the best of that has been in the New York Times. Daniel Dale at CNN has done great, helpful fact-checking. ABC News did a good job with the single presidential debate. The Guardian has been publishing a fine series and a newsletter called The Stakes. (I contributed a piece about what would happen to press rights.) The New York Times just launched a link to its extensive coverage of what a Trump presidency would mean, tagged “What’s At Stake.”

Some columnists have made sense of the nightmare for us, like Will Bunch at the Philadelphia Inquirer, who consistently nails what’s happening, providing reporting and big-picture context; and Jill Lawrence at the Los Angeles Times, whose most recent column was terrifyingly headlined: “Get Ready for President Vance.” And I see improvement from the Washington Post, as Parker Molloy noted in a New Republic piece about Trump’s town-hall dance party titled “The Washington Post Covered that Bizarro Trump Rally the Right Way.” 

But fundamentally, the media coverage writ large has fallen far short of what was needed to get the true stakes across to an entire nation of voters. And that’s been true not just recently, but for more than nine years, since Trump declared his candidacy in 2015. Too often, the coverage of Trump has been an embarrassing failure — sanewashing his lunacy, falsely equating him to his traditional rivals, or treating him as some sort of amusing sideshow. 

The economist Dean Baker, posting on X the other day, expressed it perfectly: “It says everything you need to know about the U.S. media that Trump’s clown show at the McDonald’s gets more attention than his former defense secretary and chair of the Joint Chief of Staff warning that Trump is a dangerous fascist with no respect for democracy.”

Exactly. And that is true of the mainstream, supposedly independent media! Now add in Fox News, the beating heart of the right-wing propaganda monster. 

Donald Trump talks to reporters after handing out food at a McDonald’s in a campaign stunt in Pennsylvania on Oct. 20 / Getty Images

New research from Media Matters notes that “Fox News gave nearly 500 times more coverage to McDonald’s stunt than Trump’s threats to Social Security.” (That’s two hours and four minutes for the stunt; 15 seconds for a report from a nonpartisan group showing that Trump’s policies would make the Social Security Trust Fund insolvent years before expected; Kamala Harris’s policy would not change the expected trajectory.) Bret Baier’s showily combative interview with Kamala Harris was one more example.

There are some — including prominent commentators — who are in dreamland, handing out helpings of false equivalency like Milky Way bars on Halloween. Here was the top piece in the New York Times opinion newsletter from Tuesday: “Keep calm and look at the polling averages.” The point of this piece from Republican pollster Kristen Soltis Andersen was that you can reduce your stress by realizing that polls shift and change all the time. “The ups and downs that can come from seeing your preferred candidate pingpong back and forth, from day to day, became less stressful when placed into context.” 

Believe me, it’s not the shifting polls that are stressing me out; it’s the knowledge that if Trump is elected, American democracy may well be over. Her take reminded me of the infamous column from Kathleen Parker of the Washington Post on Nov. 4, 2016: “Calm down. We’ll be fine no matter who wins.”

Readers, we weren’t.

And we won’t be, if Trump wins. Those are the stakes.

So over the next two weeks — though it’s arguably too late — every media outlet should be trying to correct its long-term errors. It should be trying to get across to those mysterious individuals known as undecided voters that this really matters, and why. That Trump is a danger, declining by the day, and that the prospect of a radical, but much younger, President Vance is very real.

I’ll be keeping track here, and I deeply appreciate your joining me. Please let me know — in the comments or on social media — what you’re seeing in the media that strikes you as admirable or objectionable.

Getting it right in the last two weeks is probably too little, too late. But, in a very tight election, any improvement just might be enough to matter

Categories Democracy, Elections, Extremism, Harris, Kamala, Media, Trump

Los Angeles Times: Owner Orders No Endorsement in Presidential Race; Editor Resigns in Protest

By dianeravitch
October 24, 2024 //
43

The Los Angeles Times has steadfastly criticized Trump as a “dangerous” and “dishonest” man. It is a liberal newspaper in a liberal state. Its editorial board intended to endorse native Californian Kamala Harris, as it did when she ran for Senate.

But on October 11, the owner of the newspaper, Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, ordered the editorial board not to issue any endorsement. The Trump campaign reacted with glee, casting the non-endorsement as a rejection of Harris by the editorial board.

The editor of the editorial board, Mariel Garza, resigned in protest. Veteran journalist Sewell Chan wrote the back story in The Columbia Journalism Review, where he is now editor after a long career that included The Los Angeles Times.

This is Garza’s resignation letter, addressed to Terry Tang, the editor of the paper.

Terry,

Ever since Dr. Soon-Shiong vetoed the editorial board’s plan to endorse Kamala Harris for president, I have been struggling with my feelings about the implications of our silence. 

I told myself that presidential endorsements don’t really matter; that California was not ever going to vote for Trump; that no one would even notice; that we had written so many “Trump is unfit” editorials that it was as if we had endorsed her.

But the reality hit me like cold water Tuesday when the news rippled out about the decision not to endorse without so much as a comment from the LAT management, and Donald Trump turned it into an anti-Harris rip.

Of course it matters that the largest newspaper in the state—and one of the largest in the nation still—declined to endorse in a race this important. And it matters that we won’t even be straight with people about it. 

It makes us look craven and hypocritical, maybe even a bit sexist and racist. How could we spend eight years railing against Trump and the danger his leadership poses to the country and then fail to endorse the perfectly decent Democrat challenger—who we previously endorsed for the US Senate?

The non-endorsement undermines the integrity of the editorial board and every single endorsement we make, down to school board races. People will justifiably wonder if each endorsement was a decision made by a group of journalists after extensive research and discussion, or through decree by the owner.

Seven years ago, the editorial board wrote this in its series about Donald Trump “Our Dishonest President”: “Men and women of conscience can no longer withhold judgment. Trump’s erratic nature and his impulsive, demagogic style endanger us all.” 

I still believe that’s true. 

In these dangerous times, staying silent isn’t just indifference, it is complicity. I’m standing up by stepping down from the editorial board. Please accept this as my formal resignation, effective immediately.

Mariel

Categories Accountability, Character, Elections, Ethics, Harris, Kamala, Media, Trump

Borowitz: When Did the New York Times Fall in Love with Trump?

By dianeravitch
October 21, 2024 //
41

Andy Borowitz used to be the humorist for The New Yorker. A joke a day. Then he created his own blog. The following is no joke. I didn’t post it all because I’m not a subscriber. Here is an opener:

When Did the New York Times Fall in Love with Trump?

Photo by David Smooke on Unsplash

Just hours after the first presidential debate of 2024, the New York Times editorial board, citing Joe Biden’s cognitive decline, urged him to quit the race. They issued no such directive to Donald Trump, whose only moments of coherence during the 90-minute contest came in the form of lies.

The Times’s love affair with Trump is reprehensible—but it’s not new. In fact, it goes back decades. 

How did this sick romance begin? And how will it end?

The first evidence of the Times’s infatuation with Trump appeared on November 1, 1976: a profile so gushing that he could have written it himself, except for its use of complete sentences.

“He is tall, lean and blond, with dazzling white teeth, and he looks ever so much like Robert Redford,” wrote Judy Klemesrud, who needed either new eyewear or a stint in rehab.

Klemesrud’s journalistic atrocity yields too many howlers to mention, but here’s an especially gobsmacking one: “Mr. Trump, who says he is publicity shy, allowed a reporter to accompany him on what he described as a typical work day.” (What rare access, Judy!)

Amazed that he is to receive an award from a Jewish group, the publicity-shy Trump notes, “I’m not even Jewish, I’m Swedish.” (He’s neither.) The article also states that he was “a student at the Wharton School of Finance at the University of Pennsylvania, from which he graduated first in his class in 1968.” A 1984 Times story belatedly corrected this whopper: “Although the school refused comment, the commencement program from 1968 does not list him as graduating with honors of any kind.”

That’s right—it took the Times eight years to (partially) correct an article as riddled with falsehoods as Melania’s book. The “paper of record” had already established its lax approach to holding Trump accountable.

Was the Times going easy on Donald because it had discovered what the New York tabloids had already figured out—that Trump stories sold papers?

The Times would surely deny that its pampering of Trump—then and now—has been driven by a thirst for profits. Money, however, clearly motivated one of the darkest chapters in the Times’s codependent relationship with him

I like to criticize the Times because I think its owner and editors pay attention. If too many influencers complain that the Times’ coverage doesn’t tell the whole truth about Trump, that they fail to report his latest outrage (was it his story about Arnold Palmer’s penis or his fake appearance as a worker in a McDonald’s, where the “customers” were carefully selected Trump partisans?)

Categories Elections, Media, Trump

“60 Minutes” Rejects Trump’s Claim of Pro-Kamala Bias

By dianeravitch
October 21, 2024 //
28

The CBS News program “60 Minutes” has interviewed every major-party candidate in Presidential elections since 1968. Not this year. Trump rejected the invitation. After Kamala’s interview appeared, Trump said repeatedly that her interview had been edited to show her more favorably. He complained to the FCC and demanded that CBS lose its license.

Trump loves to play the victim and the martyr, which helps him connect to his base. Playing the victim enables his base to forget that he is a billionaire, who lives in splendor, and a draft-dodger who belittles the military.

CBS doesn’t usually respond to complaints, but they did this time. They also invited him to appear at a time of his choosing. Trump prefers friendly interviewers.

The Los Angeles Times reported:

In a rare rebuke, the CBS news magazine “60 Minutes” denied charges by former President Trump that the program doctored an answer in Vice President Kamala Harris’ recent interview to make her look better to viewers.

CBS ran an excerpt of the Democratic presidential candidate’s interview on “Face the Nation” the day before it ran in a special edition of “60 Minutes” that aired Oct. 7. The answer to a query about the Biden’s administration’s handling of the Israel-Gaza war was different from the one that aired on the program.

In speeches and appearances on his favorite conservative media outlets, Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, insists CBS was deceiving the public by editing the answer for the program as a way to put Harris in a more favorable light.

“This is false,” the program said in a statement posted Sunday on X. “’60 Minutes’ gave an excerpt of our interview to ‘Face the Nation’ that used a longer section of her answer than that on ’60 Minutes.’ Same question. Same answer but a different portion of the response.”

The portion used on “60 Minutes” was “more succinct, which allows time for other subjects in a wide ranging 21 minute long segment.”
Harris’ entire answer appears in a transcript on the CBS News website.

Categories Elections, Harris, Kamala, Media, Trump

Eugene Robinson: Bret Baier Showed FOX Viewers How Smart and Strong Kamala Is

By dianeravitch
October 18, 2024 //
28

Eugene Robinson, a regular columnist for The Washington Post, says that Bret Baier intended to make Kamala Harris look bad when he interviewed her on FOX News, but he actually allowed her to demonstrate that she’s articulate, fearless, and strong.

He writes:

One of the people Vice President Kamala Harris might want to thank in her victory speech, if she wins the election, is Fox News anchor Bret Baier. His combative interview Wednesday gave Harris the chance to display qualities — and present facts — that Donald Trump desperately wants to keep hidden from the network’s millions of viewers.

Don’t take it from me; take it from Baier himself. He said afterward that he thought Harris came to the interview seeking “a viral moment” and added: “I think she may have gotten that.”

Baier was surely referring to the exchange about Trump’s repeated threat to deploy the U.S. military against domestic critics he calls “the enemy within” — using the language of totalitarian despots. Baier presented a too-brief clip from a town hall event, aired on Fox earlier Wednesday, in which Trump denied saying any such thing. This was gaslighting: A slightly longer clip would have shown Trump railing against “the enemy from within” and naming two leading Democrats, Reps. Nancy Pelosi and Adam Schiff, as being part of that “sick” group.

Baier obviously knew that — and Harris called him on it.

“Bret, I’m sorry, and with all due respect, that clip was not what he has been saying about the ‘enemy within,’ that he has repeated. … That’s not what you just showed,” Harris said forcefully. “Here’s the bottom line: He has repeated it many times, and you and I both know that. And you and I both know that he has talked about turning the American military on the American people. He has talked about going after people who are engaged in peaceful protest. He has talked about locking people up because they disagree with him.”

Only after having her say — and mentioning that retired Gen. Mark A. Milley, who was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under Trump, believes he is a threat to U.S. democracy and national security — did she let Baier move on to another topic.

Practically since the day Harris became the Democratic nominee, Fox News hosts and guests have blasted her for not doing more unscripted interviews. Wednesday’s half-hour encounter was a reminder that we should all be careful what we wish for.

From start to finish, Baier was more of an inquisitor than an interviewer; there was none of the deference that fellow Fox anchor Harris Faulkner had given Trump when she moderated his town hall. Baier repeatedly interrupted the vice president, trying to talk over her and posing questions seemingly cut and pasted from the list of Republican talking points.

Intentionally or not, all of this was a gift to Harris. She stood her ground, refuting the Trump campaign’s claim that she is weak and easily pushed around. She spoke fluently and cogently, putting to rest GOP claims that all she offers is word salad. She brushed off the most tendentious questions, engaged with the substantive ones, and insisted on finishing her answers whether or not Baier liked it.

When he laid an obvious trap, asking whether she thought the millions of voters who support Trump are “stupid,” she sidestepped it with ease. “Oh, God, I would never say that about the American people,” she said — before reminding Baier of some of the vicious things Trump does say about Americans who oppose him.

Harris got to present facts that Fox tries to keep its audience from learning. Viewers heard that Harris had just come from a rally attended by 100 prominent Republicans who are crossing party lines to endorse her candidacy. They heard about the host of Trump administration officials who oppose giving their former boss another term in office. They heard Harris say she does not favor “decriminalizing” undocumented border crossings, despite what some Fox hosts regularly claim.

Fox viewers heard, perhaps for the first time, that Harris has offered concrete plans to boost the economy and support middle-class families. And they learned about all the economists who say Trump’s policies, compared with hers, will make inflation much worse and add trillions of dollars to the national debt.

In a contest that polls show as margin-of-error close, will Harris’s foray into hostile territory make any difference? Who knows. It is hard for me to imagine anything Harris might say or do that would weaken the bond between Trump and the core MAGA faithful. They are accustomed to believing what their Dear Leader says over the “lies” told by their own eyes and ears.

But there are moderate Republicans and right-leaning independents who recognize Trump’s faults but have been told by Fox News that Harris is insubstantial, inarticulate and unqualified. If they watched the interview, they saw a woman whose policies they might not love but who has command of the issues, handles pressure with ease and is nobody’s pushover. Those voters saw a viable alternative to four more years of Trump and his insanity.

Some might think Baier was properly adversarial, others might think he was obnoxiously rude. Either way, the Harris campaign ought to send him flowers.

Categories Elections, Harris, Kamala, Media, Trump

Heather Cox Richardson: Harris Won the Debate with FOX News

By dianeravitch
October 17, 2024 //
20

In my household, there was a vigorous debate about whether Kamala Harris should sit for an interview with Bret Baier of FOX News. Was it wise to enter the Lion’s den? I thought it was a great idea; Mary did not. From what I have read, it was a debate, not an interview, as Baier turned his questions into MAGA talking points.

Heather Cox Richardson watched the debate and believes that Kamala was dominant, even though Baier repeatedly interrupted her, spoke over her, and didn’t let her finish her answers to his questions.

She wrote:

Two Fox News Channel interviews bracketed today: one this morning with Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump in front of an audience of hand-picked Republican women in Georgia, the other by Democratic presidential candidate Vice President Kamala Harris with host Bret Baier. Together, the two were a performance of dominance. 

FNC billed Trump’s so-called town hall as a chance for female voters, a demographic that is swinging heavily to Harris, to ask Trump about issues they care about. But Hadas Gold and Liam Reilly of CNN reported that FNC had packed the audience with Trump supporters. The first question came from the president of the Fulton County Republican Women, though she was not identified as such. FNC then edited the broadcast to cut out remarks in which the attendees expressed support for Trump. 

It seems unlikely that Trump attracted any new voters by speaking to an audience of loyalists audibly cheering him on.

After Trump refused to debate her again, Harris voluntarily moved into his right-wing territory, agreeing to an interview with FNC host Bret Baier. In that interview, Baier reframed right-wing talking points as questions, essentially giving Trump a second shot at a debate. Baier kept talking over the vice president’s attempts to answer—even putting out a hand to interrupt her—in a stark contrast to FNC’s deference to Trump. Harris asked him to let her reply, and then answered his questions, sometimes testily, usually turning them into opportunities to contrast her own candidacy and record with Trump’s. 

Control of the interview changed abruptly when Harris called out Trump for referring to the “enemy within” and talking about using the American military against those he considers enemies. Baier used that opportunity to show a clip of Trump saying he wasn’t threatening anyone, but the clip was edited to remove his threats against “sick,” “evil,” “dangerous” “Marxists and communists and fascists” including Representative Adam Schiff (D-CA) and “the Pelosis”—presumably former House speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and her husband, who was attacked by a man with a hammer in 2022 by a man who wanted to force Nancy Pelosi to renounce the investigation into the 2016 Trump campaign’s ties to Russia. 

Harris had had enough propaganda.

“Bret, I’m sorry, and with all due respect, that clip was not what he has been saying about the enemy within that he has repeated when he’s speaking about the American people. That’s not what you just showed…. You and I both know that he’s talked about turning the American military on the American people. He has talked about going after people who are engaged in peaceful protest. He has talked about locking people up because they disagree with him. This is a democracy. And in a democracy, the president of the United States in the United States of America should be… able to handle criticism without saying he’d lock people up for doing it. And this is what is at stake, which is why you have someone like the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff saying what Mark Milley has said about Donald Trump being a threat to the United States of America.” 

Simply by going on the right-wing network, Harris was demonstrating dominance. Then, by answering as thoroughly as she did, she undercut the right-wing narrative that she is stupid and inarticulate. By calling out the FNC for deliberately misleading its viewers, she took command. Baier, rather than Harris, was the one doing the post-interview spinning.

Writer Peter Wehner, who worked for presidents Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and George W. Bush, wrote: “Bret Baier has rarely looked as bad (or tendentious) as he did in his interview with Kamala Harris. On the flip side, this was one of her best interviews. She dominated Bret. All in all it was quite a bad day for MAGA world’s most important media outlet.”

In between the two FNC events were two others that also told a story, this one about how the Republican Party’s descent into MAGA is creating a new political coalition to defend American principles.

Trump held a town hall with undecided Latino voters moderated by Mexican journalist Enrique Acevedo for Univision. Members of the audience asked excellent questions: how would he bring down household costs, who would take the jobs left behind by undocumented workers if Trump deported them and how much would that drive up food costs, why Trump took so long to stop the January 6 rioters, if he had caused deaths during the pandemic by misleading Americans, and if he agrees with his wife, Melania, about protecting abortion rights. 

But Trump did not answer the questions, instead regurgitating his usual talking points. He promised to produce more oil and gas, called undocumented immigrants criminals, repeated the lie about Haitian migrants eating pets, and, after notably referring to the January 6 rioters as “we” and law enforcement officers as “the others,” called January 6 “a day of love.” The audience did not appear convinced.

Meanwhile, Vice President Harris joined more than 100 Republicans in Pennsylvania, near the spot where George Washington and more than 2,000 Continental soldiers crossed the Delaware River on Christmas night 1776 to surprise a garrison of British soldiers at Trenton, New Jersey, where they won a strategic victory. 

Harris noted that those gathered were also near Philadelphia, where in 1787 delegates from across the country gathered to write and sign the U.S. Constitution. 

“That work was not easy. The founders often disagreed. Often quite passionately. But in the end, the Constitution of the United States laid out the foundations of our democracy, including the rule of law, that there would be checks and balances, that we would have free and fair elections and a peaceful transfer of power. And these principles and traditions have sustained our nation for over two centuries, sustained because generations of Americans, from all backgrounds, from all beliefs, have cherished them, upheld them, and defended them. 

“And now, the baton is in our hands,” she said. [A]t stake in this race are the democratic ideals that our founders and generations of Americans before us have fought for. At stake in this election is the Constitution of the United States…its very self.” 

Harris welcomed the Republicans in the crowd, saying that everyone there shared a core belief: “That we must put country before party.” The crowd chanted, “USA, USA, USA.” 

Harris noted that many of the Republicans on stage had taken the same oath to the Constitution that she had. “We here know the Constitution is not a relic from our past, but determines whether we are a country where the people can speak freely, and even criticize the president, without fear of being thrown in jail, or targeted by the military. Where the people can worship as they choose without the government interfering. Where you can vote without fear that your vote will be thrown away. All this and more depends on whether or not our leaders honor their oath to the Constitution.”

Trump, she pointed out, tried to overturn the will of the people expressed in a free and fair election, has vowed to use the military to go after any American who doesn’t support him, and has called for the “termination” of the Constitution. “It is clear,” she said, “Donald Trump is increasingly unstable and unhinged, and he is seeking unchecked power.” Trump, she said, “must never again stand behind the seal of the President of the United States.”

“And to those who are watching,” she said, “if you share that view, no matter your party, no matter who you voted for last time: There is a place for you in this campaign. The coalition we have built has room for everyone who is ready to turn the page on the chaos and instability of Donald Trump.”

“I pledge to you to be a President for all Americans. And I take that pledge seriously.”

She reiterated her promise to appoint a Republican to her cabinet and to establish a Council on Bipartisan Solutions to strengthen the middle class, secure the border, defend our freedoms, and maintain the nation’s leadership in the world. She noted that the country needs a healthy two-party system, and described how the Senate Intelligence Committee left partisanship at the door. It “was “country over party in action,” when she sat on the committee, she said, “[s]o I know it can be done.”

“[O]ur campaign is not a fight against something,” she said. “It is a fight for something. It is a fight for the fundamental principles upon which we were founded, It is a fight for a new generation of leadership that is optimistic about what we can achieve together—Republicans, Democrats, and independents who want to move past the politics of division and blame and get things done on behalf of the American people.

“[W]e are all here together this beautiful afternoon because we love our country…and we know the deep privilege and pride that comes with being an American and the duty that comes along with it…. Imperfect though we may be, America is still that ‘shining city upon a hill’ that inspires people around the world. And I do believe it is one of the highest forms of patriotism to fight for the ideals of our country.”

“So, to people from across Pennsylvania, and across our nation, let us together stand up for the rule of law, for our democratic ideals, and for the Constitution of the United States. And in twenty days, we have the power to chart a New Way Forward, one that is worthy of this magnificent country that we are all blessed to call home.” 

Categories Democracy, Elections, Harris, Kamala, Media, Trump
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