This is Finals Week here at Arizona State, and last night I was proctoring until 9:00 pm (MST), which is when Countdown usually comes out. I was tired out by running around the large room they assigned me to, so I was dog tired when I got home. I thought I’d wake up some time in the middle of the night and not be able to get back to sleep, so I could post a summary of the latest episode, but I didn’t. So tonight, you’re getting a two-fer.
Episode 192: Did Tucker Carlson And Kaitlan Collins End Their Careers?
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- (1:32) SPECIAL COMMENT: “A group of Trump guys surrounded an Antifa kid and started pounding the living shit out of him,” Tucker Carlson texted to his producer on January 6, 2021. “It was three against one, at least. Jumping a guy like that is dishonorable obviously. It’s not how white men fight.”
- THAT is the thing Fox found, at the last moment, just as its trial with Dominion was about to begin, that it could not afford to let out publicly; not, at least, while Tucker Carlson was still its employee. I raised the likelihood that there was something just like this, something even worse than everything that had already come out. Got that one right.
- That’s not only why Murdoch settled — It’s a major reason that Murdoch fired Carlson. It also suggests Fox is the source of the text (Exhibit 276 to be precise) because it serves a purpose for Murdoch now. It dirties up his EX-employee on his way out and makes him a huge risk for anybody else to hire.
- Unfortunately it also segues into CNN’s disastrous decision to double-down on its live Town Hall next week with Trump. Not only was its moderator, Kaitlan Collins, still working FOR Tucker Carlson at The Daily Caller seven years ago, but a cache of her articles there shows grotesque indifference to human suffering to say nothing of Islamophobia. Her “ICE BUCKET CHALLENGE HIPSTERS: THESE GUANTANAMO DETAINEES DID IT FIRST” not only says Khalid Sheik Mohammed “took the challenge a record 183 times” but mocks the “challenge” itself — which was to raise money for ALS Research and Treatment. She also mocked Syrian refugees in another article, and authored a pair of homophobic tweets in college.
- Yet it is Kaitlan Collins that CNN’s political director thinks can stand up to Trump lying in real time. She can “prod, ask questions, follow up, and try to get as revealing answers as possible.” It is this David Chalian quoted in a Vanity Fair piece explaining “we obviously can’t control what Trump says — that’s up to him” and how Trump’s sedition and crimes “does not make our approach any different” to him.
- CNN is standing on a precipice. If it does not cancel the Town Hall, fire Licht and Chalian, and fire or demote Collins, both its remaining journalistic credibility and any possible re-sale value it still has, will be erased. Because its last line of defense against Trump was getting a pay check as recently as seven years ago from Tucker “It’s not how white men fight” Carlson to mock ALS, torture, and refugees.
CHRIS LICHT EATS PASTE!!!!
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- (28:36) EVERY DOG HAS ITS DAY: Joe in New York, not only hit by a car, but needing two surgeries and a Rescue desperate to pay for them; and AMA Animal Rescue
- (30:30) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: I was reminded on a dog walk why one of the best pieces of advice I ever got came from a man I worked with for only five months: the late Boston star newscaster Chet Curtis. Hear the harrowing tale of the day he walked into “his” restaurant ready to be recognized only to find nobody there knew who the hell he was. I ain’t modest much, but when I am, it’s because of Chet.
Episode 193: Turmoil Over Trump “Town Hall” Inside CNN
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A-Block
- (0:00) SPECIAL COMMENT: CNN’s betrayal of journalism, democracy and America by giving Trump editorial control over part of its primetime next Wednesday has actually gotten worse. It is intended by Trump as a precursor to a “jump start” of his relationship with the new management of CNN, and it may be intended by CNN as a precursor to a pronounced lurch to the right in primetime — maybe even an 8 PM show featuring former Tucker Carlson employee Kaitlan Collins.
- Barely anybody noticed that the start time for the New Hampshire “Town Hall” next week suddenly shifted from 9 PM EDT to 8 PM EDT and if you think that’s trivial, think again. 8 PM is suddenly the Wild West of cable news. There are between a million and a million-and-a-half disaffected Tucker Carlson viewers looking for a new home and the signs are all there: CNN’s Chris Licht wants their new home to be CNN. The network’s prime time is in disarray (no CNN show is in the Top 25; the network just lost the “ad demo” ratings to MSNBC for the first time in four years) and there would be no hesitation to shift Anderson Cooper from 8 to some later hour.
- There’s more bad news. CNN Political Director David Chalian, living in terror of losing another job to Republican complaints, again underscores the network’s intent to treat Trump no differently than any other candidate — as if there were true in any universe. And while there are finally blowbacks from within CNN against Licht’s looming disaster, CNN Contributor and January 6 victim Michael Fanone says he wrote an Op-Ed for CNN’s website comparing giving Trump this time on CNN to giving a deranged person an AR-15 — and CNN won’t publish it.
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- (14:26) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: Another News/TV News story continues to unfold. Most people seem to have gotten over the visceral shock of seeing Carlson assert “It isn't how white men fight” and understood that it’s not the comment that got him fired but the prospect of Carlson being forced to read it aloud in court (and sending shock waves through the Fox Board and the cable carriers from which Murdoch is trying to get more money). But I’m still hearing two questions: Who leaked the text (and all those Carlson outtake videos) and Why? The Who is obvious: it’s Fox. The Why should be just as clear: to dirty Carlson up. And how do I know all this? Because it’s been done to me by my immediate-previous employer SIX TIMES in my career: in radio, in local TV, twice in cable sports, twice in cable news.
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- (26:23) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Since we’re on the subject of cable and TV News and Fox and dirtying things up: what I learned from going out on two dates with Laura Ingraham. The second of them was a quarter of a century ago, just about this time of year. I’ll let you know when I recover from it.
That’s all the damage for now. Good morning, good afternoon, good night, and good luck.