'Media Buzz' on Biden's voting plan

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Press pushing Biden voting plan?

Bill still stuck after big speech

This is a rush transcript from "Media Buzz," July 18, 2021. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

HOWARD KURTZ, FOX NEWS HOST (on camera): Imagine this, a bunch of Republican lawmakers in say, New York leave the state to block Democrats from passing a liberal voting rights bill. Wouldn't the media depict them as desperate obstructionist? But when Texas Democrats fled the state to stop Republicans from passing a voting law they view as awful, the run-away lawmakers were practically hailed by the press.

Look at this Washington Post headline, inside the secret plan for the Texas Democratic exodus, a scramble to pack, and a politically perilous trip. They made it sound like a CIA mission. They were going to Washington to hold press conferences. The New York Times, the hastefully arranged departure added a cinematic element to the partisan wrangling in a state where the colorful political history, a cinematic element. Politico today one state rep had to postpone her wedding to join the fugitives. And they got a tremendous welcome on MSNBC and on CNN.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

(UNKNOWN): Please pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Act and pass the For the People Act.

DON LEMON, CNN ANCHOR: That was a generous way of saying that you're leading by example.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KURTZ: This is not about the merits of the Texas law. That's well worth debating. It's about the portrayal of the Lone Star State Democrats who are blocking a quorum by high tailing it out of Austin, in other words, foiling their own Democratic process while telling the world they're trying to save Democracy. It's so revealing how the press is hailing them as heroes. I'm Howard Kurtz. And this is MEDIA BUZZ.

Ahead, former Trump campaign a manager Corey Lewandowski on why accusations and denials involving the ex-President are making so much news.

As President Biden's vaccination program has stalled and with Covid cases rising, a war of words is breaking out about the White House misinformation, big tech, and the pressure from more Americans to get these shots.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

(UNKNOWN): Dr. Fauci, I don't know how many more times you can say to people, listen, it will save your life. I have this problem with some members of my own family.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KURTZ: At Fox News, several news anchors have made a PSA urging viewers to get vaccinated. But the New York Times painted Laura Ingraham and Tucker Carlson as anti-vaccine, which they denied, saying they are just raising legitimate questions. And Senate Democrat Dick Durbin ripped the prime time opinion hosts as, quote, anti-vax quacks.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LAURA INGRAHAM, THE INGRAHAM ANGLE HOST: None of this is about the vaccine. Ok. This is all about suppressing speech, ahead of next year's midterms. Durbin, like the rest of the anti-Democrats, desires total control over the information flow to you, the voters. No contrary views allowed, especially when those views are backed up by actual facts and data.

TUCKER CARLSON, TUCKER CARLSON TONIGHT HOST: Americans have a right to have basic questions answered before they submit to taking a medicine. That is their right. But Durbin and hacks like Fauci persist in pretending that anyone who has questions is somehow a right wing ideologue. And that's a lie. It's a provable lie.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KURTZ: And we will get to the President Biden's attack on Facebook in just a moment. Joining us now to analyze the coverage in Denver, Mollie Hemingway, senior editor at The Federalist, and Mara Liasson, NPR's national political correspondent. Both are Fox News contributors. Mollie, the tone of the media debate over getting more Americans to get vaccinated has gotten incredibly personal including the attacks on Fox.

MOLLIE HEMINGWAY, THE FEDERALIST SENIOR EDITOR: It has gotten personal. I think that it's also just been very negative when I think people could take a step back and look at how much good has been done. The vaccine program in the United States relative to other of countries has gone incredibly well. So many people have gotten vaccinated.

And the way if you want to have that continue is to have people answer questions honestly and the worst thing you can do is tell people that you can't have any legitimate questions or if you have any legitimate questions that you're a -- that you're a quack or a crank. It's -- it's not a healthy media debate in part I think because it's too negative. And people need to celebrate what has gone well even if President Biden missed his personal vaccination goals.

KURTZ: Well, Mara, among liberal commentators, there is this amazement, sometimes borderline outright disdain for the people who are hesitant or refuse to get vaccinated. The Atlantic calls them the proudly irrational. How does that help?

MARA LIASSON, NPR NATIONAL POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, you know, what we've heard from public health officials who studied the way to communicate about the vaccine is that people need to hear from medical experts and get their questions answered. In other words, the vaccine problem is not going to be solved by people calling Fauci a hack or people calling right wing talk show hosts some kind of, I don't know what they were calling them, but attacking them for raising questions about the vaccine.

You have to go to people where they are. Now, what I also think is interesting about this whole controversy, it's a big debate happening without Donald Trump. Donald Trump is proud of what he did to get the vaccines online fast. For a lot of his supporters, they don't want to take them. He's had the vaccine. He's talked in favor of it.

So I think this is kind of interesting. This is a big polarized debate. And it's missing an element that has been present in almost every polarized debate in the last five years.

KURTZ: Well, let's -

HEMIGWAY: If I can just point, I want to just really quickly. This is one example that you see, people make it out like it's the Republicans who don't want to take the vaccine. In fact, 61 percent of the people who are hesitant about the vaccines are not Republicans. And the more the media make it out as if it's something that's partisan, that is also going to contribute to the problems, more that they fail to remind people that it was President Biden and Vice President Harris, when they were running for office, who said they didn't have trust in the vaccine, that also makes people not trust what the media are saying.

So I think we need to be very careful and not have forgetfulness about what was happening during the campaign.

KURTZ: Mollie, let me pick this up with you then. Press Secretary Jen Psaki causing a major media stir by telling reporters that to better sell the vaccine program, quote, we're flagging problematic posts from Facebook that spread disinformation. Does that sound like collusion to you?

HEMINGWAY: Well, it's important to remember what the definition of fascism is. We had everybody talking about fascism for the last four years. And fascism is when corporations and governments merge together in their interests. And that's what we're hearing people talk about openly from the podium of the White House. This is very dangerous. This is not American. This is not how we handle debates, having the White House flag things they view as misinformation.

And they're not very good at detecting misinformation. I remember when Jen Psaki was saying that Hunter Biden's laptop was Russian disinformation. It's not. Disinformation is not things that make Jen Psaki or Joe Biden look bad. That's not how it's defined. And yet, that's how the White House is defining it. That's very dangerous. And it does more to hurt, again, vaccine acceptance and just trust with government and trust with corporations, the more they're meddling together, colluding together against the American people.

KURTZ: Mara, let me play for you and our audience what President Biden said on Friday when a reporter asked him about Facebook's role.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

(UKNOWN): What's your message to platforms like Facebook?

JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: They're killing people. Look, the only pandemic we have is among the unvaccinated. And they're killing people.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KURTZ: Much stronger language than the President usually uses. So, is the White House colluding with Facebook or declaring war on Facebook, Mara?

LIASSON: Well, that's unclear to me. I don't know exactly what Biden was referring to there. But I have sat in the briefing room through Republican administrations and Democratic administrations and beating up on the media, criticizing social media, or the giants of social media like Facebook is something that's done in both Democratic and Republican administrations.

This is a big public health problem. I think responsible people on both sides want to get as many Americans vaccinated as possible. And I don't know if any of this helps in that effort.

KURTZ: One thing to beat up on, the media, another thing to accuse a major media company of killing people. Jen Psaki was asked about this by my Fox News colleague Peter Doocy. And let's play that exchange.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PETER DOOCY, FOX NEWS WHITE HOUSE CORRESPODENT: For how long has the administration been spying on people's Facebook profiles, looking for vaccine information?

JEN PSAKI, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: That was quite a loaded and inaccurate question, which I refuse -

(CROSSTALK)

PSAKI: Well, Peter, first of all, as you know, we're in a regular touch with a range of media outlets.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KURTZ: Mollie, the White House position is that they're not looking at individual people's posts and that they don't have the power to remove anything online. And it's just the typical kind of pushback against the media to complain to Facebook about this stuff.

HEMINGWAY: I think the bigger problem is the relationship between tech companies and the Democratic Party. They were happy with the arrangement during Barack Obama's tenure when they -- when they complimented themselves on helping them win. They felt guilty for Trump's win. So they decided to insert themselves in the political process in a way that's very dangerous. They have algorithms that suppress information that they view as hostile to their political interests. They censor people. They ban people.

They -- in the Mark Zuckerberg's case, he actually spent $400 million meddling in the election and privately funding our election system. This is not about Republicans don't or Democrats don't like things. We have an alliance here between corporate interests and the Democratic Party that is directly oppositional to free speech, which is not just our law. It's supposed to be our culture, that you can talk about things and you can disagree with people. And if you think someone is saying something wrong, you tell them why you think it's wrong.

This suppression of information is something that is so dystopic that reminds a lot of people of what they learned about in the Soviet -- what was happening in the Soviet Union decades ago. And there needs to be major pushback. And unfortunately, because our media are by and large with a few exceptions are part of this arrangement, we're not getting the pushback we need. And this is terrifying to so many Americans to see this oppression of information.

KURTZ: Facebook of course continues to ban Donald Trump. Let me look at some of the other coverage with you, Mara. An administration official told Fox about Facebook, they've been withholding information on what the rules are and what they put in flies prevent dangerous misinformation. A Facebook official told NBC that the White House is looking for scapegoats for their missing vaccine goals. So the behind-the-scenes sniping through the media is getting pretty intense as well.

LIASSON: Look, I think Facebook you know is a great target for both sides, conservatives attack Facebook, liberals attack Facebook. If you go on Facebook, I think the top 10 trending news stories, generally 90 percent are conservative. So I think Facebook is an equal opportunity offender.

I mean, everybody loves to hate the media. And you know what, they probably right now we're having a giant debate about how best to regulate these companies -- they're private companies. Should they be regulated like public utilities --

KURTZ: Right.

LIASSON: Should they be left to do whatever they want? And this is going to be an on-going debate. And I think the vaccine part of it is one example.

KURTZ: Mollie, jump in.

HEMINGWAY: The idea that they can ban literally the top person in the Republican Party and you don't have everybody crying out what an outrage this is, while he was by the way the leader of the Free World, while he was the president, they did this.

It doesn't mean anything that the top 10 posts are from the right, if they've so constraint the debate, and if so limited people that they don't let top Republicans express their opinion there. This needs be fought. Everyone needs to agree. Regardless if they personally don't like the Republican Party, they need to agree that this type of dystopic control of information is a huge threat to the Republic and cannot continue.

KURTZ: I'm personally surprised that the mainstream media are not at this point, six months after Donald Trump left office, speaking out about the suppression of his voice, but of course, I think they're very happy about it except they miss the tweets for news making purposes.

And just briefly, the reason that the stakes are so high here is that we're now at 31,000 new cases -- Covid cases a day as of yesterday. That's a fraction of the peak of the pandemic, but an increase of 135 percent just over the last two weeks as this Delta variant of the virus continues to spread. Let me gate break here.

Ahead, Corey Lewandowski joins us on all the news being made by Donald Trump and about Donald Trump. When we come back, President Biden's voting rights speech fuelling an increasingly intense media debate.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KURTZ: President Biden sparked a fierce media debate with a passionate speech in favor of the Democrats' sweeping voting rights bill which has been stuck in the senate. But even some liberal pundits complained that he didn't really move the ball.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BIDEN: The big lie is just that, a big lie. America, if you lose, you accept the results, you follow the Constitution, you try again. You don't call facts fake.

(UKNOWN): It was the passion. It soaked through the screen. I mean, you could feel that. But we're at a point now where we need more than speech.

BILL BENNETT, BILL BENNETT SHOW HOST: This is invincible ignorance, to suggest that this is Jim Crow or as he said earlier, Jim Crow on steroids, reveals that he and his staff, whoever writes this stuff for him, have no idea what they're talking about.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KURTZ: Mollie, the media generally praised President Biden's speech on voting rights, praised it to the sky. And it seems like this has become the overriding issue for the press with the most amped-up rhetoric.

HEMINGWAY: Well, the press have become lobbyists for this particular piece of legislation. Joe Biden did say something correct in the speech, which is that losers need to accept results. And that's something people did not experience from 2016 to 2020 when the media and Democrats put forth a lie that Donald Trump had colluded with Russia to steal the election. That false and dangerous lie caused so many problems.

But then, when 2020 happened and Republicans did not entirely trust the results, they were told they can't have anything that they can say about that. That's not a good way to handle these types of debates. But also, this idea -- that the way that we vote needs to be less secure is something that is highly contentious and yet the media portray it as if it's something that -- of course, you want to get rid of voter ID, of course you want to get rid safeguards against fraud. That's not true. That's not where the American people are.

The vast majority of people think it should be easy to vote, tough to cheat. And that's not reflected in this debate where the media have become the most prominent lobbyists for watering down election integrity.

KURTZ: Mara, I'd like to get you to respond to Mollie's characterization that the press being lobbyists for these bills. But at the same time, even some of Joe Biden's liberal boosters, we saw one example there, saying he didn't change much, because the senate math is against him. And he didn't mention modifying the filibuster. So they're frustrated that he's not able to do more.

LIASSON: That's right. That's right. They're really frustrated. I guess they think he can somehow convince Joe Manchin to change his mind on the filibuster, which is hard to imagine since Joe Manchin is from West Virginia and he understands the politics there. And he knows you know how to maintain his brand as the lone Democrat at that level in the state.

But in terms of the media being lobbyists, I think that's a sweeping generalization. A lot of the stories point out correctly that one of the reasons that Democrats can't stop these laws from being passed in these states is because they lost the last election. They didn't pick up state legislative seats, they don't have the votes in congress to pass the John Lewis Act or HR1.

And that's why they're in the situation where all they've got is the bully pulpit. And Joe Biden can give the speeches. He can try to create a backlash and get enthusiasm among Democrats to come out and vote. But they don't have the votes to stop this. And I think a lot of the quote media has pointed that out.

KURTZ: Mollie, there have been some harsh counter attacks as you know on President Biden's speech from conservative commentators, saying you know he's talking about Jim Crow and the Civil War, is painting this as some kind of existential national emergency when it is as you say a complicated debate about ID, voting rights, how much polling places should be open, mail-in ballots and all that?

HEMINGWAY: The rhetoric is unconscionable. There really was a time in American history when the Democratic Party in the south suppressed the black vote. That is true. That was horrible. That is not what's happening right now. We just had an election with 150 million plus people voting. It's not a time of suppression. It's a time where people are concerned about integrity of the ballot.

We have greatly expanded mail-in balloting without sufficient measures to protect the integrity of the system, without making sure that the people who are voting or the people who say they're voting, without enabling people to have confidence. If people don't have confidence in their elections, they don't have a Republic going forward.

And the media are absolutely pushing not just for this bill, but also to get rid of the filibuster. They're out and out harassing Senator Sinema and Senator Manchin in a way that this is not -- this is not neutral. This is the media operating as unregistered lobbyists for very particular partisan interests and that is horrible.

KURTZ: Yeah, we talked on this program a few weeks ago about the spades of media attacks on Joe Manchin for taking the position he is, both on the filibuster itself and some of the trillions of dollars that the Biden administration wants to spend.

Mara, did the media assume automatically that the For The People Act, the big sweeping voting rights bill stands for truth, justice and the American way because it does include Democratic wish list items like encouraging public financing, cracking down on gerrymandering and establishing ethics rules for the Supreme Court.

LIASSON: No, I don't think the -- first of all, the media isn't one thing, one monolithic thing. This is a bill that's been pointed out in the media with a Democratic wish list that was written long before the 2020 elections.

KURTZ: That's my point.

LIASSON: It was kind of a messaging bill. But you know the interesting thing to me is will Democrats tear it down to something that maybe Joe Manchin could support? We don't know. It will never get 10 Republican votes, that's for sure. But will Joe Manchin ever support it where he'll agree to a carve-out of the filibuster. That also seems unlikely.

But I don't think that when you say the media portrayed the bill as being a great thing, I think the media has -- if you read closely, they also point out that it's a message bill. HR4, the John Lewis Act, is something a little different. That would reinstate the Voting Rights Act.

KURTZ: Right.

LIASSON: That congress let expire and never acted on.

KURTZ: Mollie, 10 seconds for a response.

HEMINGWAY: The media are maybe are not exclusively monolithic, but sufficiently so that you can characterize their behavior as partisan. We're not seeing people talk about election integrity in the way that we need to, despite the fact that it's the major issue in the country. And they're not allowing debate on this.

KURTZ: OK. And the big problem in America is not expanding voting without having anti-fraud measures, but precisely the opposite. We need to make sure we can all trust our elections, winners and losers alike.

KURTZ: At the moment, this bill is going nowhere. Mara Liasson, Mollie Hemingway, thanks very much for joining us this Sunday.

Up next, a flood of anti-Trump information raising new allegations against the former President, why the media can't seem to let it go.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KURTZ: The flood of books about Donald Trump is reaching high tide, the former President is denying an account in I Alone Can Fix It, Washington Post reporters Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker that says General Mark Milley was worried that Trump would attempt a coup. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs also reported to have compared Trump's election fraud allegations to Hitler's rise in Nazi, Germany. Trump called it so ridiculous in a statement saying, if I was going to do a coup, one of the last people I would want to do it with is General Mark Milley.

Joining us now from Dallas, Steve Krakauer, author of the Fourth Watch newsletter on the media. And, Steve, these are good reporters. What do you make of the avalanche of books and the accusations by Mark Milley who comes off as a hero in this book and had to have been a confirming source for the book?

STEVE KRAKAUER, EDITOR & HOST, FOURTH WATCH: That's exactly right. I think that the range of books that we're seeing right now really on one end of the spectrum is Michael Wolff who has essentially admitted to creating works of fiction, to those that are as you mentioned by a little bit better reporters and so there's obviously some truth to it. This anecdote from Mark Milley -- General Milley is a perfect example. Because it's almost unfact-checkable. You know, this is about what Mark Milley thought, or what he felt, or what he was thinking might happen.

I mean, first of all, if you want to know where the source comes from, I don't think a lot of people can know exactly what's going in General Milley's head expect General Milley. So you have that. It's also as you mentioned, it makes him -- it centers him as the hero of the story. And it reminds a little of the Anonymous Saga. Oh, you know, I was involved in the Trump administration but I'm one of the good guys. It's honestly -- yeah.

KURTZ: Well, sometimes -- sometimes, it involves what Milley said to others. There can be other sources, Trump saying Milley choked like a dog in another instance. And that some of the stars he produced are actually made of garbage.

That brings me to the next question which is how is it that Donald Trump has generated more news this week between the books and his pushback against the books than the guy who is currently living in the White House?

KRAKAUER: Well, it's because the media as we know, a large portion of the media, I don't want to say all the media, there's a Trump addiction in the media. Yes, he's out of office. Six months ago that these events are taking place if not years ago. What are they going to do, cover the news, Afghanistan, the border? No, you talk about Donald Trump. And honestly, this is where the drift of the media that we've seen, these books and a lot of where we see in the media coverage today reminds me of In Touch Weekly or Star Magazine. There's some truth but they're gossip rags for the political elite.

You sell the media for the hashtag resistance Twitter. Yeah, corners of truth, but then stuck with bunch of things that kind of feel true and feel nice, and what's the appetite of those on Twitter who like to share these sorts of things. It's not about you know getting the news out there and certainly not about necessarily a valid journalistic representation of the way things were. It's just nice, fun things to share, nice anecdotes to spread on Twitter.

KURTZ: Well, gossipy stuff can sometimes be news worthy. And obviously, people who worked for Donald Trump say I told them, I warned them, all of that we see in John Bolton book and other books.

Let me turn The Guardian which published this week, assessed to be Kremlin documents, that Vladimir Putin ordered spy agencies in 2016 to help the quote, the mentally unstable Donald Trump get elected, apparent confirmation from Moscow. With those caveats, I'm pretty skeptical.

KRAKAUER: I'm very skeptical. I think that when you talk about playing the hits, I mean, this is just the hits of the last four or five years. And every instance, going back to the Mueller report and even pre-elections, they've been trying to draw this connection between Russia and Donald Trump for five years. And they've done it so thinly and unconvincingly, they've moved on.

Now, we're just talking about January 6. Russia is essentially off the front page except apparently for The Guardian. Now, I have no doubt this will be another in a very long line of attempts to make this connection doing so without any real convincing to the general public --

KURTZ (on camera): All right.

KRAKAUER: -- and we move on to the next thing which I'm sure will be more Russia collusion.

KURTZ: And needless to say, there aren't many leaks from Vladimir Putin's Russia. So, that causes to me to be skeptical as well. Steve Krakauer, great to see you as always.

KRAKAUER: Yes.

KURTZ: Thanks so much. Next on MEDIA BUZZ, Corey Lewandowski on Donald Trump's increasingly aggressive media strategy and some of the allegations we've been talking about swirling around him.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KURTZ (on camera): Donald Trump actually got a rousing reception at the CPAC conference for attacking the mainstream media over what he insists was a rigged election.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: Every time the media references the election hoax, they say the fraud is unproven and while there is no evidence -- no evidence, no evidence. There's so much evidence but the radical left cheat in elections and the fake news media cheats in polling.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KURTZ: I spoke earlier from Des Moines with Corey Lewandowski, chairman of the Make America Great Again Action PAC and of course Donald Trump's former campaign manager. Corey Lewandowski, welcome.

COREY LEWANDOWSKI, FORMER TRUMP CAMPAIGN MANAGER: Thanks, Howie.

KURTZ: You were with Donald Trump at CPAC. He continues to promote, despite media pushback and I get several e-mails a day from him to this effect, his unproven conventions that the election was stolen. How does that help the Republican Party move forward?

LEWANDOWSKI: Howie, if we don't have integrity in the election cycle, we will never have a republic. Look, we've seen just this week the secretary of state of Georgia has now said and confirmed that thousands of ballots have been uncovered that he didn't know about.

Howie, this republic, this constitutional republic was founded on one man, one vote. We have to be able to vote properly. And we have to make sure we count those votes properly. And we have to make sure that only legal citizens are voting. It is paramount to the very republic that we sit in every day and what the president has said and what he has asked for is an honest and fair assessment of what took place in November and I don't know why that's a Republican or Democrat. That should be an American ideal.

KURTZ: All right. Well, I'll just note that Bill Barr's Justice Department found no evidence of widespread fraud but I understand your point. Also, at CPAC, the former president talked about the New York prosecutors who obtained an indictment on tax charges against his company's CFO Allen Weisselberg. What he said was this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: They're in search of a crime. To them, it did not matter whether any laws had been broken. The crime was opposing the radical left Democrat Party. This is lawless and tyrannical behavior.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KURTZ (on camera): Now the media have stopped talking about this minor league indictment but why would you describe it, why would he describe it as tyrannical behavior?

LEWANDOWSKI: Howie, what we have seen in New York is the political persecution of an individual because of their association with Donald Trump. You're telling me that after four years of looking into the tax records, the best they can do is come up with this notion that the CFO of the organization might have had a company car that he didn't pay taxes on? This is a complete joke.

How many corporate governance members, how many CEOs, how many CFOs, how many CTOs, how many vice presidents get company cars or other things of value that they're not paying taxes on. Look, even Jeffrey Toobin who was notoriously was banned from CNN for six months for egregious violations had to come out and say that this was an outrageous indictment against Allen Weisselberg.

If this is the best that the taxpayer money of the people of New York can be used for, then we should be you ashamed of ourselves. The attorney general of New York --

KURTZ: All right.

LEWANDOWSKI: -- ran on a platform, on a platform of going after Donald Trump and now they've gone after a 73-year-old man who had a free company car. Give me a break.

KURTZ: Well, it certainly wasn't -- it didn't match the media hype. Now I want to ask about the spate of anti-Trump books, which reporting such things as Trump once said Hitler did some good things. Trump once said the person who leaked it, he'd been taken to the White House bunker during violent protest should be executed. General Mark Milley feared a coup.

Why do you think these books are getting so much attention and doesn't your former boss fuel it when he says things like the chairman of the joint chiefs should perhaps be court-martialed?

LEWANDOWSKI: Howie, the problem is any time you write a book which is negative or pejorative or disparaging to Donald Trump, the media hypes it up. The books that are positive about Donald Trump nobody wants to talk about those.

But look, these same reporters are the one who said that tear gas was used in Lafayette Square to clear the park, we know that wasn't not true. These are the same reporters who said the Russian dossier was factual, not true. The same reporters who said the capitol police officer was beaten to death with a fire extinguisher, that's why he died. Not true.

I don't know what is true in some of these books. But if Mark Milley and some of the things that he said specifically about potentially Nazis attacking the capitol, if that's what Mark Milley said he is not fit to command our armed services.

KURTZ: All right. You're obviously supporting the former president on this. But one of these books, there's an incident involving you, it's a book by Mike Bender of the Wall Street Journal saying that when you joined Mike Pence's PAC, I remember reporting of that at the time, Trump was furious at his vice president -- threw a crumpled up article at him that Mike Pence angrily said it was worked out in advance in terms of hiring you, and threw the article back at him. Is that true?

LEWANDOWSKI: Howie, look, you and I both know that that never happened. You know, I am one of the very few people in this world who's been part of the Trump Organization, part of the Trump political movement since January of 2015 and I still run and oversee the president's super PAC, Make America Great Again Action.

The president would never be upset that I was helping Vice President Pence in his political world. I don't think that conversation ever happened. And I certainly don't think the president took a newspaper, threw it at Mike Pence who then supposedly took it and threw it back at the president.

I don't think that ever transpired. I've talked to the president. He put a statement out dissuading the story. But look, people want to sell books because there's a lot of money in selling books. Howie, I know this, I've written a couple New York Times best sellers.

KURTZ: Yes, you have.

LEWANDOWSKI: There's real money in books.

KURTZ: Well, I don't know whether that particular incident is true or not. But that's what's in the book. Now I agree with the former president that the media never really gave him full credit for creating and carrying out Operation Warp Speed. Having said that, why doesn't he sort of help complete this achievement by pushing more forcefully for many unvaccinated Americans, many of whom support him, to go out and get the shots?

LEWANDOWSKI: Look, the president has taken the shot himself. He leads by example. I don't know what more he can do. It's not exactly like, the Biden administration is asking the president to come out and sit down at the White House. And even if he did, I don't know if President Trump would do that.

KURTZ: He can do it on his own. He doesn't need to wait for Joe Biden's invitation.

LEWANDOWSKI: But Howie, he's led by example. He got the shots. He's been inoculated. He's told people to do it. Look, all you can do is go and have a conversation with people. If people don't want to get a shot, this is still America and they can do that.

KURTZ: I've got just a few seconds. President Biden said Friday that Facebook is killing people by allowing vaccine misinformation to spread on its platform. Do you agree with that?

LEWANDOWSKI: Absolutely not. Look, we have to rein in Facebook and all these social media giants who are deciding what is and is not proper content. But that is absolute hyperbole. The truth is, people know what the value of the vaccine is and they should be encouraged to do it. But if you choose not to get a vaccine,

Howie, you do so with the decision of you and your doctor and your healthcare professionals. That's how we have to leave it. And this notion that Joe Biden is going to send people door-to-door to check on your vaccine status is absolutely outrageous and antithetical to be an American.

KURTZ: Well, I agree that it's an individual decision. I also wish more Americans would get these lifesaving shots. Corey Lewandowski, thank you for joining us.

LEWANDOWSKI: Thank you.

KURTZ: After the break, the media now openly admits Joe Biden is boring. Does that affect his presidency?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KURTZ (on camera): The New York Times, this is not exactly breaking news, says Joe Biden is usually a very boring speaker with, quote, "mumbles, stumbles, pauses and real-time corrections as he struggles through the dense material on the teleprompter."

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: For you, anybody under the age of 13, this has got to be boring, boring, boring for you. Right?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KURTZ (on camera): Joining us now, Edward-Isaac Dovere, Atlantic reporter and author of the new book "Battle for the Soul: Inside the Democrats' Campaigns to Defeat Donald Trump."

So, the Times is kind of acknowledging the obvious here, most of the time Joe Biden is not a stirring or inspiring speaker, he trips over his words a lot. Does it matter, is it news?

EDWARD-ISAAC DOVERE, AUTHOR, BATTLE FOR THE SOUL: Well, the White House would point you to the polls, that the numbers that came out today, for example, on CBS, that say, that people say that he's doing a good job. That's their focus. It is definitely true that Joe Biden is not as exciting of a soap opera story as Donald Trump was, the Trump White House.

But what they are trying to do, what they are trying to focus on is things that will actually have an impact in government. Government and policy, again, not always the most exciting stuff if that's what you're looking for. As someone said to me that after the Trump White House people spend four years in political journalism on meth, now everybody is getting used to drinking wine again.

KURTZ: Or going through withdrawal.

DOVERE Yes.

KURTZ: I mean, I would say it matters only in that if you're a good speaker, sometimes it's easier to move public opinion. But this is part of larger complaints especially in Washington this summer that the city has gotten really dull in the Biden era, the endless hill negotiations over infrastructure. Does anyone other than a bunch of Trump addicted journalists care that the news cycle has slowed way down?

DOVERE: I think many people are relieved by it in a certain way. Look, in my book I trace the four years story of the Democrats and the spirit, trying to figure out what they are. It's not as outrageous a story as you see featured in a lot of these books that have come out in the last week about the Trump White House.

It's not -- it's a different kind of thing, it's the party figuring out what it believes about healthcare and racial politics and all these things that are really important that are the things that make a difference in people's lives but are not nearly as salacious. That's definitely true.

KURTZ: Yes. Government and policy making really important to people's lives but hard to build dramatic cable news segments or online posts about. Let me ask you about the Washington Post obtaining an e-mail from last November from one of the -- from the Republican Party's top lawyer, calling the efforts to challenge the election by Trump lawyers Rudy Giuliani and Jenna Ellis a joke.

Jenna Ellis has now quit the GOP. She wants Ronna McDaniel, the chairman of the party ousted over this leak. Does this bolster the media's case that there's great division within the GOP or is this just in-fighting involving handful of insiders?

DOVERE: Sort of both, right. I'm not sure that that many people know who Jenna Ellis is and or are focused on whether she's registered in the Republican party or not. But what this does show is that there is a large portion of Republican leadership that know that they have been publicly parroting lies about the election and the supposed doubts that are there that really aren't true but they're saying it for their political advantage either to their personal political advantage to help them out or to help out the Republican Party and that's not good for the republic.

KURTZ: Yes. I think it's a challenge for journalists to cover. Obviously, there is a split between pro and anti-Trump factions but at the same time we have a tendency to overdramatize these things to come back to our earlier point.

Big news the other day, Stephen Breyer, the Supreme Court Justice telling CNN's Joan Biskupic that he hasn't made a decision on retirement. And there was this explosion among liberal pundits, your colleague at the Atlantic, Adam Serwer tweeted this reflects a pathological disregard for other human beings at this point with consequences made clear by Ruth Bader Ginsburg's death. Isn't it strange for some media liberals to be rooting for the 82- year-old justice to retire?

DOVERE: This was a topic that was very much on the minds of a lot of liberals, going into the end of the Supreme Court session sort of expectation that Breyer would retire, an assumption that he would from many.

Obviously, he's chosen not to do that at least for now. He hired clerks for the next term. He says he's not going anywhere. That may change. But what it does is it sets up a situation where, look, it's a 50/50 Senate that's full of a lot of older people. Someone hopefully it won't happen, but somebody could have a health problem. That could change the balance of the Senate, if somebody were to die.

And we go into the midterms next year with this potential issue in that way. It is always wrong to think the Supreme Court is separate from politics.

KURTZ: Well, that's true. I get why, you know, some people want him to retire so Joe Biden can appoint a younger liberal, just beating up on Breyer continues to amaze me. Edward-Isaac Dovere, great to see you this Sunday.

DOVERE: Great to see you.

KURTZ: Still come -- still to come, ESPN's Stephen Smith apologizes, Newsmax disavows the host's comments not much coverage for Hunter Biden's art auction. And why is Britney Spears doing cart wheels? The Buzz Beater is next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KURTZ (on camera): Time now to race the clock on this week's Buzz Beater. Go. Britney Spears is doing cartwheels literally on her Instagram feed, it's her way of celebrating in her battle to free herself from a suffocating conservatorship run by her dad. Quote, "you have no idea what it means to me to be supported by such awesome fans, God bless you all." And the hash tag free Britney.

A judge allowed her to hire her own lawyer rather than be stuck with the court-appointed attorney. Britney has shrewdly used social media to change public opinion. And she is now lobbying some f-bombs at family members, quote, "how dare the people you love the most say anything at all." Did they even put a hand out to even lift me up at that time?"

EESPN's Stephen A. Smith caused an uproar when he went after a Japanese born baseball star Shohei Ohtani, saying he can't be the face of Major League Baseball because he doesn't speak English in interviews. Seriously, the backlash prompted Smith to tell the California Angels pitcher he is sorry.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

STEPHEN SMITH, COMMENTATOR, ESPN: Let me be the first to stand up and say that I want to express my sincere apologies to the Asian community and Asian-American community. I am a black man. I religiously go off about minorities being marginalized in this nation.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KURTZ (on camera): I'm glad Smith apologized after striking out. On what planet do you denigrate an athlete because he doesn't speech your language.

There hasn't been much media coverage of Hunter Biden's strange plan to sell his art for as much as half a million dollars a painting. Hunter not previously known as a great artist and not much on the White House plan to keep the buyer's name secret as if that resolve any conflict of interest. But former government ethics chief Walter Shaub told CNN this approach is disingenuous.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

WALTER SHAUB, FORMER DIRECTOR, UNITED STATES OFFICE OF GOVERNMENT ETHICS: There's no way to look at this and believe for a second that Hunter Biden is not trying to profit off of his father's public service by selling art at these extraordinary prices when he hasn't even juried into a community art fair before.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KURTZ (on camera): Hey, if Donald Trump Junior had made big bucks by selling his art, wouldn't the media have painted him as that as a really colorful scandal?

Newsmax host Rob Schmitt went way over line in questioning the push to get more Americans vaccinated against COVID-19.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ROB SCHMITT, ANCHOR, NEWSMAX: Now I feel like a vaccination in a weird way is just generally kind of going against nature. Like I mean, if there is some disease out there, maybe there's just an ebb and flow to life where something is supposed to wipe out a certain amount of people.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KURTZ: What? Like a thinning of the herd? The network says it backs the Biden vaccine programs and that hosts or guests who may not be supporter of these efforts, do not reflect the position of Newsmax. I hope not.

And Sacha Baron Cohen has won a major lawsuit along with CBS filed by former Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore. The comedian had done a skit pretending to have technology that could spot Moore as a sex offender. That a reference to the allegations that he had long ago inappropriate relationships with young women. A judge said it's obvious that was clearly a joke.

I didn't make it that time. But that is it for this edition of MEDIA BUZZ. I'm Howard Kurtz. We hope you'll also like our Facebook page. We post my daily columns there. And you can come at me on Twitter at Howard Kurtz. Check out my podcast Media Buzz Meter. You can subscribe at Apple iTunes, Google podcast or on your Amazon device.

We've got the whole show in last week, we spent half of it narrating Richard Branson's space landing. We are back here Sunday. We'll see you then with the latest buzz.

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