Media top headlines October 18
In media news today, NBC fact-checks Anthony Fauci's COVID superspreader comments, Jon Stewart says the media is making a 'mistake' casting Trump as a 'supervillain,' and CNN's Brian Stelter frets that Katie Couric's editing scandal further damages the media's reputation
NBC News political director Chuck Todd railed against President Biden and White House amid the Democrat infighting over the two trillion-dollar spending bills being debated on Capitol Hill.
On "Sunday Today," host Willie Geist listed President Biden's stalled agenda in Congress from the failure to pass a voting bill and police reform along with the bipartisan infrastructure bill and the giant social spending bill being pushed by progressive lawmakers, asking Todd "when does this get done?"
"President Biden has to get more involved," Todd responded. "The only one that's made any progress is the bipartisan infrastructure deal. Why did that make progress? Well, the White House ran the negotiations here."
The "Meet the Press" moderator recalled seeing a report about the White House "getting frustrated with Congress" and how "I'm sitting here going, ‘Well, you guys can do something about it!'"
"At the end of the day, the power of the presidency is you're the leader of the party and you're also a convening entity. Get Manchin, Sanders in a room!" Todd exclaimed, referring to the West Virginia and Vermont senators.
The MSNBC anchor then referred to the dustup between Sanders and Manchin after the progressive lawmaker penned an op-ed in a prominent West Virginia newspaper pressuring his more moderate colleague over his stance on cutting the price tag of the $3.5 trillion spending bill, telling Geist "we should be much further past this" notion that such a proposal being pushed by Sanders is no longer possible.
FILE PHOTO: Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) flanked by reporters while leaving the Capitol building as negotiations on the bipartisan infrastructure bill continue between U.S. Senators, Representatives and White House negotiators at the U.S. Capitol building on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., September 30, 2021. REUTERS/Elizabeth Frantz/File Photo
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"So the fact that we're still in this place where we're having this public back and forth about something that's not reality- at the end of the day, I think the burden's on the White House," Todd said. "They've got to take control of this. They've got to sort of get reality- the political eyes got bigger than their stomach in Congress and I think that it's up to the White House to pull them back and they haven't. They let Congress work its will and right now, its will is stalemate."
"Yeah," Geist agreed. "And all we're seeing is internal fighting between high-profile senators at this point."
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