This is a rush transcript from "Media Buzz," October 7, 2018. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
HOWARD KURTZ, HOST: On the Buzz Meter this Sunday, anger management. The press accuses the president of fueling rage to rile up his Republican base, but some liberal pundits are pushing (INAUDIBLE) strategy to fire up their side, and the media debate Republican charges that today's protesters are part of a mob.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIPS)
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: And you don't give power to an angry, left-wing mob, and that's what the Democrats have become.
CHRIS HAYES, MSNBC: What they are running on is that they are the last line of defense against you, the angry mob, otherwise known as the majority of the country that disagrees with Republicans.
TUCKER CARLSON, FOX NEWS: Wow! So the angry left-wing mobs you thought you had been watching on television turn out to be merely a hallucination. There are a fever dream concocted by those diabolical magicians over at Fox News!
KIRSTEN POWERS, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: So this idea that this was this crazy out of control mob that was frightening everybody I think is just a storyline that works really well for Republicans.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Before we've seen from the left a pure dysfunction, pure chaos, a party that's willing to do absolutely anything, even destroy an innocent man.
(END VIDEO CLIPS)
KURTZ: Is there a media double standard when it comes to the politics of anger? Nikki Haley stuns the Bellway press corps by abruptly resigning that leads to all kinds of chatter about why she is leaving the U.N. job and why now as the speculation gone overboard.
The apparent murder of a Saudi columnist sparks media criticism of President Trump for not acting more aggressively toward the kingdom, with some even blaming the president's rhetoric. How is that fair?
Melania Trump is a rare interview pressed about sexual assault and her marriage on ABC.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TOM LLAMAS, ABC NEWS: Do you think men in the news that have been accused of sexual assault or sexual harassment have been treated unfairly?
FIRST LADY MELANIA TRUMP: You need to have a really hard evidence that, you know, that if you're accused of something, show the evidence.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KURTZ: Plus, is Kanye West wild and crazy Oval Office visit causing some pundits to become unhinged? I'm Howard Kurtz and this is "Media Buzz."
The major newspapers have been filled with stories about President Trump using the brutal Brett Kavanaugh confirmation to make his conservative supporters angry, but their op-ed pages are preaching a rather different message. Take a look.
Charles Blow, New York Times: Liberals, this is war. David Leonhardt, New York Times: Get angry and get involved. His lead, if you are not angry yet, you should be. E.J. Dionne, Washington Post: We need to stay angry on Kavanaugh.
So, aren't there two sides on the use of anger and fear in the midterms? Joining us now to analyze the coverage: Mollie Hemingway, senior editor at The Federalist and a Fox News contributor; Gillian Turner, a Fox News correspondent and former White House national security official; and Richard Fowler, talk radio host and also a Fox News contributor.
Mollie, it's been a major media theme, president whipping up his base over Kavanaugh to get Republican voters turnout, while these liberal columnists are openly -- these are not dog whistles -- openly doing the same thing on the left.
MOLLIE HEMINGWAY, THE FEDERALIST: Right, and we may wish that people weren't motivated to vote by anger, but anger is a very -- is a very common way for people to decide who to vote for.
I think what we saw with the Kavanaugh coverage was a lot of coverage of these people screaming at senators trying to tear down the walls of the Supreme Court, you know, Antifa protesters in various coasts, and that was all shown as a way that the media thought was conveying that people were really upset about Kavanaugh.
What it actually showed people was -- what in their mind was a lot of scary mobs and that made them very concerned. They like to see rule of law order. They felt like rule of law had been overthrown in the Kavanaugh discussion anyway and so it really confirmed to them a lot of their fears.
So it is weird that the media showed all of these things when they thought it was sort of helping the anti-Kavanaugh case. And then when it turned out that people actually hated what they were saying, they said, oh, it's crazy to call these people mobs or it's crazy to say that you need to fight against that. Well, that doesn't make sense.
KURTZ: I'll come back to the question. Let me ask you first, Gillian. The politics of anger and fear in campaigns basically been around forever in the history of the country. But shouldn't the press report and/or call out both sides equally if it's happening on the left as well as the right?
GILLIAN TURNER, FOX NEWS: Yeah, of course they should. That's part of the responsibility. I would actually go one step further than Mollie on this and I would say that riling up people is actually the only way to get Americans to vote, particularly in midterms. And so for most of the part --
KURTZ: A lot of people stay home.
TURNER: Yeah. I mean, the turnout is horrendous, right? So this is the moment to, you know, get people angry. This is the moment -- I think this is the mainstream media most of which is left leaning doing their part to get out the vote in the midterms. It's almost like they've got their own electoral strategy going.
KURTZ: Richard, what do you think, for example, of E.J. Dionne, an old colleague of mine, wildly respected political columnist, saying this was a judicial coup, putting Kavanaugh on the high court and saying that we should pack the Supreme Court when the Democrats win, and Charles Blow saying it's a way and the other side is trying to preserve white male power?
RICHARD FOWLER, FOX NEWS: This media coverage is very reminiscent to the media coverage we saw around "mobs" in 2010, where you saw during the health care town halls, where you would see the media -- they go to these health care town halls and like, look at them, look at the conservatives, they are so angry, right, and sort of stoking this health care town hall and sometimes they were angry, sometimes they weren't.
But as soon as the cameras show up, people tend to get a little bit angrier. I think -- and what we saw from history there is that it ended up flipping the House in the opposite direction. So maybe Gillian is right and maybe the --
TURNER: Maybe.
FOWLER: -- maybe the media is playing a hand here. But either way, I think we can all agree that our country has become more and more tribalistic. Meanwhile back at home, I think the American people are looking for relatability, looking for Representation.
KURTZ: So that's why we're hearing words like coup and white male power and all that. Now, so, I happen to think that the protesters' screaming and disrupting of Kavanaugh committee hearings, even things like chasing Ted Cruz and other Republicans out of restaurants has hurt the liberal cause. I agree with you on that. But the media really, really don't like President Trump and his allies calling them a mob.
HEMINGWAY: Yeah, there was a lot of push back against calling this group, this unruly protest group a mob, but that's basically what the definition is. And I would point out that in --
KURTZ: I mean, even if it's five people or 10 people or 20 people?
HEMINGWAY: Well, a large crowd of people, especially one that is disorderly and intent on causing trouble or violence.
KURTZ: You looked it up.
HEMINGWAY: I think when you are trying to tear down the walls of the Supreme Court, tear down the doors, that would qualify as that. When you're redirecting traffic, taking over city of Portland at Antifa, that qualifies.
I would also point out that people do remember that in 2010, quite ruly large group of people were called mobs and it really frustrated them. You never saw Tea Party going to people's houses and places where they were eating and getting them kicked out of restaurants. This type of behavior does alarm people and reasonably so.
KURTZ: Now, look, everyone has the right to protest, but you rarely see liberal commentators or Democrats for that matter calling out after disruptive tactics or tactics that maybe go too far which kind of -- does that leave an opening for the president and his allies to say, mob, and you should be scared and all of that?
FOWLER: Here's the thing. I think the First Amendment in our country which is -- the First Amendment which is interesting that the pundits made it the first one is that it allows people to lead the protest. And sometimes protesting is ugly whether you like it or not. And in history, even in the ugliness of protests, that made our country so great as it move legislation forward.
What I disagree with Mollie is, in 2010, some of those protests are pretty ugly. I remember being at a town hall in Fairfax, Virginia where the Congressman James Moran have to be escorted out by Fairfax County police because they were afraid that he was going to be harmed.
So, in either case, what we realize is that our politics does get us angry. These issues get us angry. And we have to have real conversations.
KURTZ: This is what we are talking about, is there a media double standard?
HEMINGWAY: Absolutely. It seems every time a group of conservative get together, they are called like violent right-wing mobs, and you get. Then you get these defensive people on the right or on the left.
I would point also that in the last couple of years, we had a large scale assassination attempt against Republican members of Congress which many in the media act like it's was not a big deal. I think a lot of Americans are worried about that type of violence and inciting that type of violence.
KURTZ: Right. There was a CNN commentator who tried to conflate that attempt on Steve Scalise and the others at that baseball game with the protests. I think it is clearly in different category.
But the angry narrative, Gillian, got kicked up when President Trump only this past Monday, seems like three months ago, after Brett Kavanaugh was sworn in a ceremony at the White House, he apologized to his family and then he called the sexual assault allegations fabrications that were part of the Democratic hoax.
That is very different in the way the president had talked about it while Christine Blasey Ford was testify and while the Senate was still debating. I think that threw a lot of media flack as well.
TURNER: It did and it also directly contradicted the line that Republicans had crafted so carefully over the proceeding week which as far as I can tell seemed to be -- we believe the victim in this case, Christine Blasey Ford -- we believe she was sexually assaulted but we don't necessarily know that it was by Brett Kavanaugh. That was like the gold standard for Republicans going into the final days of this.
And that does -- the president going out in the other direction and then saying basically she lied, that did really undercut that message. I think the media was very quick to pick up on that. Any disagreement between President Trump and the rest of the Republicans on the Hill or wherever they are, it is something that instantly grabs everybody's attention.
I have to just say because I spent two days embedded with Kavanaugh protesters on both sides of this on the Hill and at the Supreme Court, a lot of those people felt undercut by that message. A lot of people, a lot of women who I spoke to on both sides, conservatives who supported Brett Kavanaugh and liberal women who, you know, were there to protest against him --
KURTZ: Right.
TURNER: -- really felt that that line at its core is something that set women back --
KURTZ: Fabrications and hoax.
HEMINGWAY: I think it is worth remembering that there was never any evidence supplied to support any of the allegations. The allegations included the claim that Brett Kavanaugh was the ringleader of a secret gang rape cartel when he was in high school. I think it is OK to call these types of things fabrications or hoax --
KURTZ: Right. That was the so called third accuser (INAUDIBLE). I didn't think that should have been publicized at all because there is less than zero evidence.
HEMINGWAY: But in fact there was never any evidence to support any of the claims. There was never any corroborating evidence.
KURTZ: So you don't have a problem with -- despite the media criticism with the president saying that Christine Blasey Ford participated in a hoax?
HEMINGWAY: Well, I don't know if he was saying that was about Christine Blasey Ford.
KURTZ: He wasn't specifically saying but there are implications.
HEMINGWAY: I think that there should have been a lot more media coverage of just how exactly these allegations came out, how they never had any support, how the Democratic Party played around with them, how they were read into the record including that gang rape allegation which Dianne Feinstein began hearings with.
This is something weird and I think that it would be better to have more coverage of how weird it was, what was going on, and how these allegations were whipped up rather than parsing his language.
FOWLER: I think the media got this one right. Any time the president sort of separate himself from this party, I think it is important that the media covers it and analyze it. Here is why. The president is the head of the Republican Pary. He leads this party --
KURTZ: Yeah.
FOWLER: -- especially 24 days after this midterm. When he separates himself from what's happening on Capitol Hill, that is newsworthy because how can members of Congress who are on the ballot running --
KURTZ: So you think the media criticism of words like hoax and fabrication was justified?
FOWLER: Absolutely because on Capitol Hill, they are saying something completely different as Gillian just said, and so you have the supporters, you have members of Congress in the ballot saying she is credible, she is credible but we don't necessarily think that was Brett Kavanaugh, and the president saying, oh, she made it all up. That means the party and him are on the line.
KURTZ: Let me move on to something that drew a lot of media criticism and that was with Hurricane Michael devastating Florida that night president held a rally here. Some of the pundits taking shots at photos.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIPS)
JOE SCARBOROUGH, MSNBC: Here, we have the president holding a full- on pep rally while Americans are suffering and dying in Northwest Florida.
JOHN AVLON, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Look, just from a pure level of optics, he chose to take a warm base bath while the people of Florida were getting slammed in the face with 150-hour winds.
(LAUGHTER)
(END VIDEO CLIPS)
KURTZ: The optics weren't great, but did it deserve this level of media condemnation?
HEMINGWAY: I don't know. I think it's interesting when a president doesn't stay at home when a major issue is happening. President Obama got a lot of criticism for doing a fundraiser when the Benghazi terror attack was happening. I'd be kind of curious to see if everybody switch sides on whether this was an example of --
KURTZ: This had been Obama holding a rally during a major hurricane, conservatives at Fox and elsewhere would have gone.
FOWLER: Absolutely. I think it's very important to remember -- I mean, this was millions of people without power in multiple states. I think that the job of the commander in chief to -- I would like to see him at a command center. I would like to see him with FEMA trying to work with the governors. Instead, he was at a rally talking to his supporters.
KURTZ: In fairness, he did begin his remarks to rally by talking about the hurricane in Florida, but it sure became a big issue. When we come back, the president who built a political career attacking the president, now talking to reporters a lot, virtually every day. And later, his wife in a major network interview and fielding some sensitive questions about their marriage.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
KURTZ: It's no accident as the midterm campaign ramps up, President Trump has shifted strategy, talking to journalists at length just about every day ranging from photo ops and Oval Office sessions to a sit down with New York magazine to appearances on Fox News and "60 Minutes."
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE (voice over): What's your response to Hillary Clinton saying last night's swearing in, that Judge Kavanaugh was more a political event than it was a national event?
TRUMP: I guess that's why she lost. She doesn't get it. She never did.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You are on air, Mr. President, so let's get to it.
TRUMP: I like that, good. Would you unlike being on air with your beautiful --
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Oh, thank you, I appreciate that.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (voice over): Have you considered Jared Kushner, your son-in-law?
TRUMP: He's very talented, but no, I haven't.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You know, the rumor is the day after the midterms, you're going to fire him, you're going to fire the attorney general.
TRUMP: Well, I actually get along well with Rod.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We keep hearing that the White House is in chaos.
TRUMP: It's so false. It's fake news.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
KURTZ: Mollie, taking so many questions, there are a lot of media criticisms that the president doesn't have enough formal press conferences.
HEMINGWAY: Well, it is funny he didn't do a lot of these interviews with major media for a very long time and now he is doing them, and I think it's very interesting about what it says about how he's feel about his presidency.
Partly this is about getting out to vote in November, but I think it is also speaking to what he understands as a very -- a period of strength for him. The economy is coming along. The Russia hoax I think most people -- or the Russia situation, most people think of it as a hoax or something that isn't actually real --
(CROSSTALK)
KURTZ: -- right now because of the campaign season, the Mueller probe.
HEMINGWAY: Right. And also this blue tsunami that everyone was expecting, major Democratic gain in the Senate and the House is a much more complicated story. I think most people think that Republicans will keep the Senate and now it is getting more even about what is going to happen in the House as well. So, he feels strong and he is going out on air to say it.
KURTZ: Well, White House insiders tell me that this is not some strategy cooked up by advisers and it's all him, the president wants to be out there, he thinks he is his best spokesman and certainly the midterms are a factor, and he obviously enjoys for all his criticism fencing with reporters.
You know, maybe -- there is so much Trump in our lives. We lose sight of the fact that this is very unusual for president, many questions in so many forums. Does it contrast, Gillian, with his more belligerent approach of failing New York Times, dishonest media, fake news and all that?
TURNER: It definitely contrast when he is taking interviews with outlets like CBS, ABC, you know, these are not his favorite news networks. These are part of the folks that he feels are sort of conspiring against him. So that is notable. But I will say as a reporter, it's wonderful when he does this.
I spent Friday reporting live from the White House. It has this wonderful trickle-down effect. When the president gets chatty and talkative and opens up to reporters, everybody else does too at the White House.
So you get senior down to junior officials more willing to kind of grab your ear and tell you, you know, juicy news nugget. You get Larry Kudlow willing to gaggle impromptu for 20 minutes on the North Lawn of the White House.
I think these are things that kind of come from the top. I don't know -- I don't think the president is giving people direction to open up and talk to the media more but they are sort of following his example.
KURTZ: Well, and he is making news on multiple subjects each day. Now, there has been a lot of media chatter about Fox News carrying most of the president's evening rallies at least in full because the ratings are down below what Fox get from its regular prime time hosts. Do you think that is significant?
FOWLER: I think, you know, these rallies have helped him because they have been televised. I think the American people are tired of it. And I think these interviews help him. I think the president is a master brander and marketer. He understands the story the media is not covering.
The fact that while yes, the House and the Senate are a little more complicated, when it comes to governors' mansions, Republicans could take major losses this November and the president gets that. And these interviews could help sharp his base and make sure he protects these governors' mansions.
KURTZ: Right. The rallies are almost every night. I mean, there is a lot of repetition. This is a business. There has been some grumbling about Sarah Sanders is holding fewer briefings. What she has told me and others is, would you rather hear from or the leader of the free world?
HEMINGWAY: I wish there were just many more press conferences with the president because I find those to be utterly delightful to watch. I think the issue of these campaign rallies really is a tricky one.
There is news value whenever the president speaks. There is much less news value when it is a campaign event and particularly with normal politicians. It is a little tricky with Trump because you never know what he was going to say.
KURTZ: Right.
HEMINGWAY: He might --
KURTZ: He's entertaining and he's unpredictable.
HEMINGWAY: And also I think people don't want to see Fox following the lead of their competitors. They want to see a difference in how they cover things. And so I think there are some frustrations from people who do -- you know, if they can't get on Fox, where are they going to get it if they are interested in this?
KURTZ: Right. The rallies are being covered, but they are not being covered wall to wall.
HEMINGWAY: Right.
KURTZ: And if he makes news, obviously, everybody covers it. Richard Fowler, Mollie Hemingway, great to see you this Sunday. Gillian, we will see you a little later.
Ahead, Jedediah Bila on how too much attack is kind of ruining our lives. Up next, the press is blindsided by the Nikki Haley resignation and responds with an avalanche of speculation.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
KURTZ: Reporters here in Washington expect everything to leak, absolutely everything, especially when top officials are leaving the Trump administration, so it was rather amusing to watch the scramble and words seeped out that Nikki Haley was quitting as U.N. ambassador and the feverish speculation, why, why now and why we didn't know about it.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIPS)
KATE BOLDUAN, CNN: This breaking news coming as a shock to many from New York to Washington and beyond. Shock waves through foreign policy establishments.
CRAIG MELVIN, MSNBC: Four weeks before the midterms, the ambassador to the United Nations suddenly resigning.
JOHN ROBERTS, FOX NEWS: It was only this morning that Nikki Haley informed her staff of it. We were all going, oh, what is going on here? What is this all about?
JOHN KING, CNN: The timing is odd. Big two-year departures are traditionally announced just after the midterm elections, not four weeks before.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: There was talk even at one point about perhaps Ivanka Trump taking that whole if Nikki Haley ever left.
(END VIDEO CLIPS)
KURTZ: Right. Oh, I know there was one other journalist who was asked to weigh in on Fox.
I got to tell you, my Spidey sense tells me there is more to the story.
I guess I outed myself as a lifelong Spider-Man fan. When I was a kid, I had a letter published in earlier issue. Look, while President Trump says he knew in advance, despite all the chatter, there were legitimate journalists that questions about the timing even after the president and his ambassador were all smiles in the Oval Office.
Why (INAUDIBLE) announce this taking most White House and State Department officials by surprise the morning after the Kavanaugh swearing in and a month before the midterms? But Haley is staying until the end of the year, anyway. But the instant speculation about Haley's political future has various conspiracy theories. Well, let's just say there was a lot of air time to fill.
Hope Hicks, the Donald Trump loyalist who resigned last spring as White House communications director, has found a new job. It's with Fox. Murdoch family has hired her as the chief communications officer for the company that will emerge after Disney buys the entertainment assets of 21st Century Fox in the 71-billion deal.
While there was some predictable criticism about the ties between the president and his favorite network, Hope Hicks will be working on the corporate side based in L.A., not directly for Fox News.
Coming up, some pundits attacking Kanye West for his X-rated rant in the Oval Office, but is the real problem that he likes this president? Plus, a network report that presses Melania on sexual harassment allegations against her husband.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
KURTZ: Kanye West's rambling and profanity-laced visit to the Oval Office was pretty strange. But perhaps not as strange as the overheated media reaction.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIPS)
KANYE WEST, RAPPER: There was something about when I put this hat on, it made me feel like Superman. You made a Superman, that's my favorite superhero.
Trump is on his hero's journey right now. And he might not have expected to a crazy (inaudible) like Kanye West run and support.
TARA SETMAYER, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: He's all of a sudden now the model spokesperson. He's the Token Negro of the Trump administration. This is ridiculous.
DON LEMON, CNN: And now, all of a sudden, he's the person who represents the African-American community? He doesn't. This was an embarrassment. Kanye's mother is rolling over in her grave.
(END VIDEO CLIPS)
KURTZ: Joining us from New York, Jedediah Bila, a former co-host of "The View" and author of the book, "Do Not Disturb: How I Ghosted My Cellphone to Take Back My Life"; and Jessica Tarlov, senior editor at Bustle and a Fox News contributor.
Jedediah, I didn't like Kanye dropping the mother word in the Oval Office, and the ranting was kind of disjointed at times. But the media is really whacking this guy. MSNBC Stephanie Ruhle calling his visit, an assault on the White House. What do you make of that?
JEDEDIAH BILA, FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR: Yeah, nothing like a good media meltdown, it's unbelievable, honestly. I mean, the way that they reacted. This is a guy -- if he had done the same exact thing in the Oval Office when President Obama had been sitting there, they would have been talking how he was bringing front and center some great issues like stop and frisk, Kelly was talking about prison reform.
It's really been fascinating to watch, whether you like Kanye or not, this man has -- there has been a character assassination against this guy. I mean, they have called him everything from a traitor to an idiot to someone who is deeply, deeply disturbed who needs help. They've instantialized him. And you don't have to agree with everything he says, but you do have to defend his right to say it.
And he, just like every other celebrity, who has walked into that White House from a former administration has a right to -- if he has a platform to make his voice heard. And there is no reason why he should be described as all those horrible things.
KURTZ: Right.
BILA: And no one who walked into the White House who was a celebrity during the Obama years was a policy one, I can tell you that.
KURTZ: All right. Let me get Jessica in. So I think some of the harshest comments have from African-American commentators who may have viewed Kanye betraying the cause.
JESSICA TARLOV, BUSTLE SENIOR EDITOR: Right.
KURTZ: I mean, CNN contributor Tara Setmayer called him a "token negro," Don Lemon dragged his late mother into it. I thought that went too far.
TARLOV: I certainly think dragging his late mother into it is going too far. As for what the African-American community feels about this, as a white person, I certainly can't comment on that, but I do understand and sympathize their frustration when Kanye West used this important platform to advocate for things like abolishing the 13th Amendment when he has shown total lack of understanding about the Jim Crow South, for instance, that something John Legend has spoken out about. Fellow rapper T.I. has come out and said that he's embarrassed to know him because of what he's doing in terms of setting back the black community by going in there and sort of playing nice as it were with a president who they feel does not advocate with the African-Americans in this country or do anything to benefit them.
To Jedediah's point about if he had gone into the White House with President Obama, President Obama famously called him a jack expletive. So I don't think that really would have been going on there. And I think there is also a great deal of hypocrisy to all of this because conservatives never get celebrities that support them, but they rail on liberals when a celebrity gets involved.
We all remember shut up and dribble, for instance, the mocking of Jay-Z and Beyonce. So I don't think it is really fair for them to be coming after the coverage of...
KURTZ: Well, let me...
TARLOV: Yeah.
KURTZ: Let me get you both on this, Jedediah first. So it's true that you know there are some on the right who criticized Jay-Z and Ludacris, and other rappers who visited Barack Obama in the White House. But some liberals think it is an outrage when Kanye likes Trump because when Kanye West said George Bush doesn't care about black people after Hurricane Katrina, he was lauded in the media. Jedediah first.
BILA: To be clear, what conservatives criticize often times is the -- is the collective of Hollywood. So it's predictable. You know, Hollywood and the Democratic Party are often going hand in hand, they support each other, they back each other up. It's not a personal attack criticism generally of this person, mentally unstable.
I can tell you I sat on panels with a bunch of liberal celebrities who feel it is their job. You look at what Alyssa Milano was doing, for example...
KURTZ: Yeah.
BILA: To be political activist at that -- at that time. They don't take nearly as much heat. The bottom-line is Kanye does not fit in ideologically with the rest of Hollywood and with most of the media right now. And they have to take him out because here's a guy who does have a platform, who is in there talking about issues with President Trump, and who actually may make an impact in a way that most of the media and most of Hollywood doesn't like.
KURTZ: All right.
BILA: So now, they have to ruin his character, at least try to. And that's what is happening, it's really scary.
KURTZ: Jessica, brief comment.
TARLOV: I agree largely with what Jedediah is saying here. And I do think that Kanye West, just as his wife said, using President Trump as a way to get criminal justice reform is a wonderful thing, that we should all be lauding. And he said a lot more things.
KURTZ: All right.
TARLOV: And he said a lot of other things that were certainly -- you just want to end this.
(CROSSTALK)
KURTZ: All right. Let me get to Melania Trump, who did a rare sit-down with ABC News. One of the questions was whether Donald Trump's alleged infidelities put a strain on her marriage. Let's watch.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MELANIA TRUMP: I know people like to speculate -- the media like to speculate about our marriage and certainly to gossip. But I understand the gossips sell newspapers, magazines, getting advertisers. And unfortunately, we live in this kind of world today.
LLAMAS: Have you been hurt though?
TRUMP: Media is speculating. Yeah, it's not always pleasant of course.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KURTZ: Jessica, was it fair for ABC to ask about that and how do you think the First Lady handled those questions?
TARLOV: I think it was fair to ask about it, and I think that she handled it quite well, if we think about the number of times that Hillary Clinton has been asked about Bill Clinton's infidelity and alleged accusations of sexual assault. I don't even know if we can count that high. She had to sit in a debate and face an audience with Juanita Broaddrick and Paula Jones sitting there, right in front of her face.
So I think it's totally fair game, especially since there was an accusation that President Trump used campaign funds to pay off a woman that he allegedly had an affair with. But I think that she handled it well. And she had 54 percent popularity. By far, the most popular Trump out there.
KURTZ: Jedediah, when Melania Trump says the press is reporting gossip, she has a point. But there was the Stormy Daniels' lawsuit and President or Donald Trump reimbursing Michael Cohen to the payment of Stormy Daniels...
BILA: Right.
KURTZ: And payments talked about on tape. So it's not all just made-up gossip.
BILA: Yeah, I mean, I think there was desperation there to try to get her to say something anti-Trump, against her husband. I think those were all fair questions, those things did happen. But questions like do you love your husband, I mean, I was sitting and saying, thinking really? I mean, I think they really wanted -- not on just that issue, but on several policy issues.
I saw that they would kind of parallel, Trump's policy on something, whether it was immigration or what not, and some activism or some opinion that Melania has expressed to try to really get her to say what my husband is doing was wrong. Obviously, they want that sound bite. That would be great for them. I thought she did a great job. I thought she was measured. And they did not give them a sound bite that they wanted. That was pretty clear to me.
KURTZ: Yeah. For somebody who does a lot of interviews, I wish she would...
TARLOV: She gave a few sound bites, though.
(CROSSTALK)
TARLOV: We can compare notes about bullying people after the show and the jacket thing.
KURTZ: Well, the jacket I wanted to close by saying she wore that jacket. I don't care. No message there, but she said the message was, she doesn't care with the left-wing media says.
TARLOV: She is a Trump.
KURTZ: Jessica Tarlov, great to see you. Jedediah, stick around for the next segment.
And next on Media Buzz, Jedediah on being savaged on Twitter and how social media maybe just ruining our lives.
And later, one media outlet attacking a top White House official for his behavior when he was eight years old. I'm serious.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
KURTZ: Virtually, everyone in the media has said they've grown accustomed to Twitter hate. But look at some of those aimed at Jedediah Bila. ABC, please boot this lame-assed chick from the View panel, and you are a pitiful racist, no-good B word. I cleaned that one up. Please, Jedediah is nothing shy of a Fox News bickering bubblehead. And we're back with the author of Do Not Disturb: How I Ghosted My Cellphone To Take Back My Life. I took those from your book. You say you have a thick skin, Jedediah.
BILA: I do.
KURTZ: But has Twitter become something of a sewer?
BILA: Yeah, I mean, I say I have a thick skin, but I also -- I'm human. And that was what I wanted to bring to people's attention. It's really easy to say oh, you should just ignore those crazy people. You know, they don't know you. They're just trolls. And that's true.
But when it accumulates over time, it does get to you. And I pointed that out because I am not inclined to be affected by things like that. You know, I grew up in New York City. And I'm a tough girl, a Brooklyn girl. But I thought about kids when those things happen to me. And I thought about regular kids in school. I'm a former dean, I'm a former teacher.
KURTZ: Right.
BILA: Going on social media, and facing that kind of cyber bullying, and facing that kind of personal attacks, and how they would process that information. I started to realize that the social media and how it has ballooned without us really thinking about the consequences can be very dangerous. And parents really need to have to have these conversations with their kids...
KURTZ: Right.
BILA: Who are using Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, in particular.
KURTZ: Now, you did get some -- many nice comments...
BILA: I did.
KURTZ: When you left The View. And by the way, was it hard for you -- you have stories about yourself in the book, to be the only conservative/libertarian voice doing battle with Whoopi and Joy on the rest on The View?
BILA: I actually enjoyed that. And I did get a ton of people who when I left the show thanked me for bringing a different opinion at the table, and who were really excited about the fact that I made them think about things in a way that I hadn't thought about them before. And many of them are still fans now on Fox News. And I really appreciate that.
I like being outnumbered. That's a position I'm used to. I worked in liberal academia for a long time. I live in liberal New York City. And most of my friends are liberal. So I feel like it's good. It challenges me. And, you know, I love those ladies at the table. We can argue politically, but when the cameras would go off, we would head backstage and just chill.
And that's the part that people don't know, right, is that you're all friends. And you get off the set...
KURTZ: Right.
BILA: OK, what are you having for dinner tonight?
KURTZ: Don't ruin the image. Now, you say in the book, everyone's life seems better on Instagram. You call it perception deception. But you weren't immune. I'm quoting here from your writing, at one point, I was doing a lot squats in the gym and actually take photos that highlighted my butt.
BILA: Yeah.
KURTZ: So you were caught up in this Instagram beautiful life thing as well.
BILA: Absolutely. And now, I say the grass isn't greener. It just has a filter on it. That's something I had to learn. And I tell a lot of these embarrassing stories about the mistakes I made. This is not a preachy book. This is not an I-know-better-than-you. This is I-made-myself-look-like-an- idiot a lot on social media because I thought I had to keep up with whoever was in this profession, or what everyone else is doing. Or if I'm not answering everyone or constantly present on social media, I'm going to be irrelevant.
I took that advice from a high-level people in the industry. And at some point realized, you know what, I'm not going to get rid of my social media. It is valuable in the industry. But I'm going to scale it back. I'm going to change the way I use it. I'm not going to comment on Facebook. I'm going to post and leave.
I'm follow a lot less people on Instagram. And they're going to be people that I know and love, and who I see is a reflection of their real life.
KURTZ: What a concept.
BILA: We are going to change like that.
KURTZ: You can tell embarrassing stories in about a moment. You talk about a boyfriend who is constantly on his Blackberry years ago. And one day, you looked at his phone, you discovered he was a big time drug dealer. He had a lot of other women and you dumped him. But my question is, is that because of the phone or was he just the case of a bad boyfriend?
BILA: He was a bad boyfriend. And I say in the book that you know I don't blame the phone. In other words, bad people are going to do bad things, regardless of the technology. But I saw how easy it was to have a separate life in your phone and what could happen in the wrong hands. And want to kind of alert people to that.
So the phone was no longer just there to make phone calls. And that technology sometimes can get away from us. And you know how it is, right. Sometimes you are interacting with someone face to face and you realize there is accountability to what you say and what you do. When you get into that phone space, sometimes you say things that you would never say in person. In a way, you would never say in person.
KURTZ: This is all very fascinating, but I have to check my Twitter.
BILA: Oh, great.
KURTZ: We got to go. Jedediah Bila, thanks so much.
BILA: Thank you.
KURTZ: I hope you will come back.
After the break, the troubling mystery of a Saudi columnist who may have been murdered, and with some of the media actually blaming the Trump administration. That's next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
KURTZ: The apparent murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, a Washington Post opinion contributor, is a tragedy that sent shock waves through the world, journals and community. The Post reports that when Khashoggi entered the Saudi consulate in Turkey, a 15-member squad from Saudi Arabia, which had arrived on two private planes was lying in wait for him. And that the plan which might have been was to kidnap Khashoggi and bring him home was approved by the Crown pince -- Prince, excuse me, Mohammad Bin Salman. The government denies this. But Turkish officials have said that they have video and audio evidence that he was killed inside the consulate in Istanbul.
We're back with Gillian Turner. Now, CNN contributor Marc Lamont Hill of the Huffington Post, the Trump administration is complicit in Khashoggi's death. Others have said it in less inflammatory terms. But this is an autocratic government, perhaps in an apparent assassination, not people inflamed by Donald Trump's rhetoric.
TURNER: No, but I will -- this is a horrific event. If he has in fact been murdered, no matter who is responsible for it ultimately. What I will say though is that criticizing the American president for being too cozy with Saudi Arabia early on during an administration is practically a national pastime for Americans. I mean, President Obama...
KURTZ: Not just or this president, yes.
TURNER: That's what I'm saying. President Obama suffered the same criticism and then moved in sort of a 180 direction where he was barely on speaking terms with Saudi Arabia by the end of his tenure. President W. Bush was you know subjected to this criticism during the entirety of his administration. This is not anything new.
KURTZ: And so, when President Trump tells 60 Minutes that will be airing tonight, that there will be severe punishment if Khashoggi was in fact killed, is he toughening his stance after several days, perhaps in response to media pressure?
TURNER: The problem with the CBS interview and we have seen clips of it, is that it appears he hedges, right. He seems to say they may very be responsible for this. But they insist to me so far and they insisted they're not.
And it runs a little bit too close to the narrative he spun about President Putin. Well, look, I spoke to President Putin and he promised me that he didn't interfere in our elections. When you're the American president, you're not supposed to take autocrats for their word.
KURTZ: Well, I take your point about previous U.S. administrations being overly cozy with Saudi Arabia, despite their horrible records on human rights for example. But you have that more than $100 million in arms sales, and so, it seems like this is not unique to this president that the financial benefits and not to mention, some geopolitical benefits of being tight with Saudi Arabia, many presidents have chosen kind of looked the other way when it comes to the way Saudis treat women. But still, an incident like this where somebody may well be dead seems to me to cross a new threshold.
TURNER: It does and it doesn't. I mean, people have died at hands of murderous regimes for years.
KURTZ: But it doesn't get as much publicity because it is not somebody from the media world.
TURNER: Perhaps. And perhaps, the Saudis, if they are indeed complicit or guilty here perhaps, they misjudged that. Perhaps they thought that they could do this and like many other journalists, it would never make -- it would never see the light of day. They misjudged.
KURTZ: You know, the Times had a front page story after this blew up, saying that Jared Kushner had championed Mohammad Bin Salman, known as MBS. So this is a personal reckoning from Jared. But many mainstream foreign policy writers also embraced him as a reformer. New York Times magazine piece from just a few months ago, the Prince That Will Remake The World.
TURNER: You can't sit something like this on the head of Jared Kushner. The reality is that Saudi Arabia is a complicated country. The U.S. relationship with Saudi Arabia is vastly complicated. And to be honest, the media is not so good writ large at accepting the idea that there is a gray area, that two things can be true at once, two conflicting things.
It is not an easy tightrope to watch for any administration, how to deal with a regime that promises to make reforms and starts taking steps in that direction, you know, but still has some dirty bath water to deal with.
KURTZ: There is a lot of context here. I'm particularly happy to have her from the news, and she has worked on there, security issues on two administrations. Gillian Turner, great to see you. I know you have some reporting to do.
TURNER: Right.
KURTZ: Run off.
Still to come, a criminal indictment at Newsweek and a media indictment of White House official Stephen Miller for we did in the third grade.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
KURTZ: You might recall Newsweek's top editors and reports were fired and others quit while they were bravely digging into allegations involving their parent company. Now, Manhattan DA Cyrus Vance, Jr., has charged parent company, IBT media and Christian Media and their bosses with creating a fake output to defraud lenders into providing millions of dollars supposedly for computer services that were allegedly used to keep the magazine afloat.
Now, IBT's cofounder denied the charges, and said this is a political retaliation by Vance. Sadly, it turns out the ousted Newsweek journalists were on to something big.
Heads up, the following about a senior White House official is not an onion headline. Stephen Miller's third grade teacher, he was a loaner and ate glue. That was in the Hollywood Reporter, the teacher said Miller was a strange dude who would pour glue on his arm.
Wait a minute, hold on. He was eight years old. Why was this published? Does journalistic scrutiny now extend to everything we ever did in elementary school? The L.A. school district has now put teacher Nikki Fiske on paid leave.
Finally, Axios reporter Jonathan Swan was on MSNBC's "Hardball" with liberal host, Chris Matthews, who going off on Mitch McConnell's strong arm tactics on judicial nominees, and didn't like it when Swan offered some nonpartisan balance.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JONATHAN SWAN, AXIOS: Of course, he's going to ram through someone in the last year of Trump's presidency. He would come up with a new justification.
(CROSSTALK)
SWAN: By the way, he would do exactly the same thing.
CHRIS MATTHEWS, MSNBC: OK. Don't go with this double thing, even-handed trap.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KURTZ: Well, I happen to like his even-handed nonsense. But then, my job isn't to promote the Democrats every single night.
That's it for his edition of "Media Buzz." I'm Howard Kurtz. Hey, check out my new Podcast, "Media Buzz Meter." We kick around today's five most important or fascinating stories. And you can subscribe at Apple iTunes, Google Play, FoxNewsPodcast.com. Some of the people you see on this show, sometimes they show up as guests.
We hope you will also check out our Facebook page. Give us a like. I post my daily columns there everyday, original video. We talk back and forth with you. And let's continue the conversation on Twitter. We're talking with Jedediah Bila about how Twitter can be -- let's just say a very negative place. But I enjoy the constructive feedback. And the rest of you know who you are.
I'm Howard Kurtz, love to hear from you. We're out of time. We'll be back here next Sunday, just like every Sunday 11 Eastern. See you then with the latest buzz.
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