New top story from Time: Fox News and Donald Trump Have a Dysfunctional Relationship, But It Works For Them

https://ift.tt/3biWlrJ

This article is part of the The DC Brief, TIME’s politics newsletter. Sign up here to get stories like this sent to your inbox every weekday.

All the signs of codependency were there. The irrational desire to make the other party happy. Manifestly low self-esteem. Abandonment issues. A compulsive desire to know what the other is doing.

Seldom has such an amateur armchair diagnosis been so easy as when ex-President Donald Trump and the Fox News switchboard reconnected on Wednesday for a conversation about the death of conservative media personality Rush Limbaugh. It was a two-way manipulation of the moment. Trump had a message to get out and Twitter is no longer available to him. Fox is a ratings machine and getting the still-popular Trump to talk about the passing of the combatively conservative host was going to be a cultural moment for its viewers.

So it became mutually beneficial to set aside years of bad blood between the network and the New Yorker-cum-Floridian. (“Blood,” it must be said, is a word that turned many a head after then-candidate Trump in 2015 said a Fox News anchor had “blood coming out of her wherever” when Megyn Kelly dared ask him tough questions about his sexist language during the 2016 field’s first debate and spent the next year and a half stalked by Trump’s tweets.)

Before he started running for President and then as a candidate, Trump was a regular fixture on Fox programs, especially its morning show. He’d call in from his Trump Tower perch nine blocks north of Fox HQ and haul off on the topic of the day. As much as his reality show, The Apprentice, the Fox open-invite kept Trump in the zeitgeist. After all, Trump didn’t have room to promote the baseless conspiracy theories about former President Barack Obama’s birthplace on his own show. Fox—and Limbaugh, whose radio show had the highest ratings in the country—gave Trump the outlet he needed to spread those lies.

As a candidate, Trump continued using Fox as a crutch, infuriating his primary rivals who were told they had to be in a studio if they wanted to appear on a show while Trump literally phoned it in. Trump didn’t need to get out to Iowa or up to New Hampshire every week; his voters were glued to Fox, top consultants to Trump’s rivals bemoaned. But there was nothing they could do to stop it; Trump had great ratings and his rivals did not.

As President, Trump tried to have it both ways with Fox, both using it as a bullhorn and punching bag, saying it had drifted too far from what he saw as its core identity as a safe space for center-right news consumers, aggrieved conservatives and QAnon-heeding conspiracy theorists. You can’t ignore the fact that Fox’s ratings are at their lowest point in 20 years, trailing CNN and MSNBC simultaneously for the first time ever. Trump was openly campaigning for Fox alternatives until Twitter told him his tweets were too toxic to exist at all. (I’d link to the pro-OANN and -Newsmax promotional material that the President sent, but they’re now deleted.)

Eventually, it became too much for the network. It’s embarrassing to be seen as a de facto defensive tackle for the Trump White House while getting taken down by your own captain. In the run-up to last year’s elections, when Trump seemed to indicate that he had landed a deal to do a weekly appearance by phone on the network’s morning show — something the network tried to quash. While the primetime, opinion-based hosts still count themselves members of the Make America Great Again legion, the daytime anchors try to keep in the realm of facts. Sean Hannity will forever carry buckets of Trump’s talking points, while the likes of Bill Hemmer and Harris Faulkner keep the partisan jousting at least rooted in defensible truths.

It was Hemmer and Faulkner, anchoring that stretch of coverage of Limbaugh’s death, who had to navigate the moment truly no producer could have prepared for. Limbaugh’s death at age 70 after a public battle with cancer was a seismic and sincere event on the conservative media landscape, but not surprising.

What was out of the ordinary was that Trump’s appearance on Fox was also his first interview since leaving Washington and skipping the Inauguration of his successor, Joe Biden. The first network to get the interview with the newly-relieved President is a big deal, and that is even with ex-Presidents who didn’t fire up a crowd to stop Congress from accepting his loss, watch as a mob stages an insurrection at the Capitol and then almost immediately face impeachment for inspiring an insurrection. This was one for the history books.

And yet the 24-minute conversation failed to adhere to the most basic expectations of journalism. Trump was not asked about his second impeachment trial, or the charge at the heart of it: that he had incited a deadly riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.

Any number of theories can explain it. Knowing the intense following Limbaugh has among his fans, it’s tough to see any questions about a violent insurrection inserted into what was essentially a televised memorial service. Dittoheads, as Limbaugh’s fans were known, would react none too kindly with their remotes and ad dollars.

Trump himself professed to have been friendly with Limbaugh, an early endorser of the 2016 bid, and awarded him with a Presidential Medal of Freedom last year. Anything that nudged Trump toward anger would not end well. Fox News — like any network — wants the first interview with Trump. A question inserted into a phone interview with Trump about Limbaugh mightn’t have been worth the risk.

Hemmer and Faulkner made a half-hearted attempt to get Trump to discuss what advice Limbaugh had given him during the race and after his loss. “Mr. President, we probably have a hundred questions for you, but so many of them are not appropriate for this venue, so we’ll keep it on this topic for now and we appreciate your time today,” Hemmer said.

But neither journalist interrupted Trump when he claimed he had actually won the election and his loss was the result of problems with “voter tabulation.”

“Rush thought we won — and so do I, by the way. I think we won substantially,” Trump said. “I don’t think that could have happened to a Democrat. You would have had riots going all over the place if that happened to a Democrat.”

And neither stepped in to correct Trump that there were skirmishes at state capitols across the country and an actual riot on Capitol Hill, egged on by his pleas to “fight like hell” to “stop the steal.”

Those questions will have to wait for a sequel.

Make sense of what matters in Washington. Sign up for the daily D.C. Brief newsletter.

Comments

DU's academic, executive council members ask VC to scrap online open book exams https://ift.tt/2YubRfc

The academic and executive council members of the Delhi University on Thursday wrote to the vice-chancellor asking him to scrap the online open-book exams. Their letter to DU Vice-Chancellor Yogesh Tyagi comes in the wake of Union HRD Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal 'Nishank' asking the University Grants Commission (UGC) to revisit the guidelines issued earlier for intermediate and terminal semester examination, and the academic calendar. from IndiaTV: Google News Feed https://ift.tt/2YByOxg

New top story from Time: China Calls U.S. Policy ‘Misguided’ in High-Level Talks

https://ift.tt/3iPgwS0 TIANJIN, China — China came out swinging at high-level face-to-face talks with the United States on Monday, blaming the U.S. for a “stalemate” in bilateral relations and calling on America to change “its highly misguided mindset and dangerous policy.” Vice Foreign Minister Xie Feng accused the administration of President Joe Biden of trying to contain and suppress China’s development, according to an official summary of his remarks in talks with visiting U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman. The fundamental reason why relations between the two face serious difficulties is because some Americans portray China as an “imagined enemy,” the Foreign Ministry quoted Xie as saying. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] Sherman, America’s No. 2 diplomat, is the highest-ranking U.S. official to visit China since Biden took office six months ago. She was having separate meetings with Xie, who is in charge of U.S.-China relations, and Foreign Minister Wang Y...

New top story from Time: DOJ Reportedly Investigating Whether New York Gov. Cuomo Manipulated Data on COVID-19 Nursing Home Deaths

https://ift.tt/3u8AJab (ALBANY, N.Y.) — New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo faced mounting challenges to his leadership on the coronavirus pandemic Wednesday as state lawmakers threatened to strip him of the power to issue emergency orders and federal investigators scrutinized his administration’s handling of nursing home data. The U.S. Justice Department has been examining the governor’s coronavirus task force and trying to determine whether the state intentionally manipulated data regarding deaths in nursing homes, two people familiar with the matter told The Associated Press. The people, who weren’t authorized to discuss the investigation and spoke on condition of anonymity, said the Cuomo administration had not been cooperative with prosecutors, especially in the early stages of the probe, and for months had not produced documents and other data the Justice Department had requested. The inquiry began months ago in the Justice Department’s civil division, and parts of it have ...

New top story from Time: To Vaccinate U.S. Veterans, Health Care Workers Must Cross Mountains, Plains and Tundra

https://ift.tt/3uavmaw A Learjet 31 took off before daybreak from Helena Regional Airport in Montana in late January, carrying six Veterans Affairs medical providers and 250 doses of historic cargo cradled in a plug-in cooler designed to minimize breakage. Even in a state where 80-mph speed limits are normal, ground transportation across long distances is risky for the Moderna mRNA-1273 vaccine, which must be used within 12 hours of thawing. The group’s destination was Havre, Mont., 30 miles from the Canadian border. About 500 military veterans live in and around this small town of roughly 9,800, and millions more reside in similarly rural, hard-to-reach areas across the United States. About 2.7 million veterans who use the VA health system are classified as “rural” or “highly rural” patients, residing in communities or on land with fewer services and less access to health care than those in densely populated towns and cities. An additional 2 million veterans live in remote ...

Coronavirus Vaccine in China Shows Promising Results on People, Immune Cells Developed in 2 Weeks “This is promising data, but it’s early data,” said Dr. Daniel Barouch, director of vaccine research at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, who was not involved in the work. “Overall, I would say this is good news.” “This is promising data, but it’s early data,” said Dr. Daniel Barouch, director of vaccine research at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, who was not involved in the work. “Overall, I would say this is good news.”

“This is promising data, but it’s early data,” said Dr. Daniel Barouch, director of vaccine research at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, who was not involved in the work. “Overall, I would say this is good news.” from Top World News- News18.com https://ift.tt/2LRebpt https://ift.tt/3aYjmyk “This is promising data, but it’s early data,” said Dr. Daniel Barouch, director of vaccine research at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, who was not involved in the work. “Overall, I would say this is good news.”

New top story from Time: The Green Knight Is an Extravagant Unicorn Tapestry of a Movie

https://ift.tt/2UHqxst In a guttural growl, as if possessed by a demon, a medieval queen reads aloud a threatening letter that has just been delivered by a gargantuan bark-covered warrior on an equally imposing steed. She faints as she reaches the letter’s final line; the paper drops to the floor and bursts into flames. Cinema! There’s nothing more ridiculous, or more awesome. There is no lettre flambée, specifically, in the late 14th century poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. But it’s part of the embroidery writer-director David Lowery uses to fill out his extravagant unicorn tapestry of a movie, The Green Knight, a detail that makes this ambitious adaptation feel both lived-in and magickal, with all the self-aware grandiosity that superfluous ancient k implies. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] Dev Patel stars as the aimless yet mildly arrogant young knight-to-be Gawain, who, as the movie opens, still lives with his mother (Sarita Choudhury) and isn’t quite sure h...

US proposes giving H1-B to those with top salary offers, scrapping lottery https://ift.tt/35N2MjY

The administration of US President Donald Trump has announced plans to scrap the lottery for awarding H1-B professional visas and replacing it with a system that ranks applicants by the salaries they are offered. Making the announcement on Wednesday, just six days before the November 3 presidential election, Acting DHS Deputy Secretary Ken Cuccinelli said: "With this proposed rule, the Trump administration is continuing to deliver on its promise to protect the American worker while strengthening the economy."

New top story from Time: Millions of Tenants Behind on Rent, Small Landlords Struggling, Eviction Moratoriums Expiring Soon: Inside the Next Housing Crisis

https://ift.tt/2NAbOvm In late November, Rian de Laat reached the end of her rope. Over the past year, her mom had received a cancer diagnosis, her dad had undergone major surgery, and de Laat, 44, had been laid off from her job at a biotech startup. But her chief concern was the fact that she was now responsible for the mortgage not only on her own home–a quaint one-story bungalow just south of Seattle’s Ballard neighborhood–but also on an investment property, an unassuming two-bedroom condo eight miles north in Shoreline. Her tenant, Ollie Aldama, had lost his job at the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic in mid-March, began struggling to make his utility payments and ultimately stopped paying his monthly rent of $1,800. By Thanksgiving, he owed de Laat more than $20,000. State and national eviction moratoriums prevented de Laat from kicking Aldama out amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet her own financial situation wasn’t flush enough to float him indefinitely. After mont...

New top story from Time: How Joe Biden Became the Stay-Out-of-It President

https://ift.tt/2RCHQJx President Joe Biden wanted to feel for himself the jolting torque delivered by the Ford F-150 Lightning electric motor. On May 18, as Biden’s staff back in Washington frantically worked behind the scenes to push Israel and Hamas to nail down a ceasefire, the self-described “car guy” had kept his scheduled trip to Dearborn, Michigan to see Ford’s electric truck plant and highlight the green technologies and manufacturing jobs that are part of his economic recovery effort. Just as Biden was about to jam the accelerator, a reporter on the test track interrupted him. “Mr. President, can I ask you a quick question on Israel before you drive away since it’s so important?” Biden shut it down . “No, you can’t. Not unless you step in front of the car as I step on it. I’m only teasing,” he said, shooting a smile at the gaggle of press from under his aviator glasses. “Ok here we go, ready?” Biden hit the pedal and sped away. That moment in Michigan was emblema...

Biking by the Numbers: San Francisco’s 2019 Biking Statistics

Biking by the Numbers: San Francisco’s 2019 Biking Statistics By Maia Moran Bicycling moves people around San Francisco using less space per person than when people go by driving. The SFMTA encourages bicycling and makes yearly ridership and trend data public. While Bike-to-Work day has moved to September this year due to the ongoing pandemic, we are excited to share San Francisco’s 2019 citywide bicycling data that we usually release in May. The SFMTA uses a variety of bicycle infrastructure and data metrics as indicators of a healthy and growing bicycle network. In 2019, the Agency prioritized the development of a robust data management system, improving high-quality bikeway infrastructure to make bicycling less stressful and more appealing, and expanding access to bikeshare services across the city. As in past years, 2019 data is pulled from the SFMTA’s automated bike counters, annual manual count data, operator-provided bikeshare data, and the US Census. Here are some key findi...

My precise view

Search This Blog