'MediaBuzz' on press treatment of Gen. Milley

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General Milley under fire

Pundits pillory, praise him over Woodward book

This is a rush transcript from "MediaBuzz," September 19, 2021. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

HOWARD KURTZ, FOX NEWS HOST (on camera): That big, scary-sounding, intimidating Washington protest yesterday, the one that supports the Capitol riot defendants that the press spent weeks building up, turned out to be a couple hundred people, outnumbered by reporters and law enforcement. That had to be the most overhyped, overplayed, overdramatized event in a very long time.

Donald Trump who supported the intent of the protest is very much in the news, thanks to Bob Woodward. The new book by Woodward and his "Washington Post" colleague Robert Costa has detonated a neutron bomb with much of the fallout aimed at General Mark Milley, who obviously cooperated with the book "Peril."

The clash between conservative and liberal media is this. Was the chairman of the Joint Chiefs acting courageously when, according to the book, he twice reassured China the U.S. would not attack because it was worried about Trump's mental state? And when Milley told senior defense officials to check with him on any presidential order to launch a nuclear strike? Or was Milley out of control and undermining the civilian chain of command? These are crucial questions for the press.

Woodward is sometimes accused of granting favorable treatment to those who give him access as a dilemma that all authors face since they have a better understanding of those who talked than of those who don't. And Trump, who is denouncing the book, wouldn't speak to Woodward and Costa. Once the hearings and investigations are underway, once the book is out and not just leaked, we'll see how it holds up to media scrutiny.

I'm Howard Kurtz and this is MEDIA BUZZ.

The press quickly divided into two warring camps, those on the left using the book to hail Mark Milley and those on the right practically calling him a traitor.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RACHEL MADDOW, MSNBC HOST: The thing that is so bracing and nerve-racking and important about this new book is what it reveals about how much worse it was than we knew, how much closer we came to real disaster than we have known before now.

JOHN HEILEMANN, MSNBC NATIONAL AFFAIRS ANALYST, "THE CIRCUS" EXECUTIVE PRODUCER AND CO-HOST, THE RECOUNT EXECUTIVE EDITOR: We all now learn every time one of these stories comes out how much closer to the brink we were than we understood and how much we owe people like General Milley and others, the few remaining adults in charge at that point.

LAURA INGRAHAM, FOX NEWS HOST: There was indeed an insurrection being planned around that time in Washington but it took place at the Pentagon and its chief architect was General Mark Milley. SEAN HANNITY, FOX NEWS HOST: If this is true, General Milley would be a traitor to this country. If true, he should be fired and tried for treason immediately.

JOE SCARBOROUGH, MSNBC HOST: Now, they're trashing General Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs. It's just insane! This is a party that is now attacking generals, the FBI, the CIA, the intel community, the very people who keep us safe. It's crazy.

TUCKER CARLSON, FOX NEWS HOST: Our country's top defense officials secretly colluded with our chief military rival to undercut the elected president of the United States. How would you describe that? Deep state is not strong enough. That's treason. It is a crime.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KURTZ (on camera): President Biden says he has great confidence in Milley and there is no doubt Donald Trump, who ripped the general as a dumb ass and a nut job, stands on the authors.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: I found Woodward and I found his cohorts to be extremely dishonorable people. This guy is one of the most overrated guys. He's a sleaze. But I did not ever think of attacking China.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KURTZ (on camera): Joining us now to analyze the coverage, Mollie Hemingway, senior editor at "The Federalist," and in Los Angles, Leslie Marshall, a radio talk show host. Both are Fox News contributors.

Mollie, Mark Milley has basically confirmed the book's account of his calls to China and his meeting on nuclear launch procedures, but he says this is no book deal, it is routine, and it is part of his job. Is it possible that the Woodward-Costa book overdramatized those events?

MOLLIE HEMINGWAY, FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR, SENIOR EDITOR AT THE FEDERALIST, SENIOR JOURNALISM FELLOW AT HILLSDALE COLLEGE: What is interesting about this Woodward claim is that nobody actually disputes that it happened. Even Mark Milley concedes that he called his counterpart in China without approval from the president and had a conversation about military action.

And so I think the range of opinion that you're seeing here are people who say already we know enough, you know, not just for this but for many other problems and failures that Mark Milley has had. He should be fired, he should be held accountable for violating the chain of command here. The moderate position seems to be, well, obviously, we need to know what happened on the phone calls, what was he doing.

But the larger perspective too, I think, is important, which is the claim is that it was okay to violate these norms and violate the Constitution, violate chain of command because Donald Trump was going to do a nuclear war with China. That's just preposterous.

The real problem with President Trump, according to the establishment, was that he was too resistant to military action. He was engaging in peace deals, he wants to pull out of Afghanistan, he wasn't engaging in what Pentagon wanted to do in terms of invading new countries or strikes.

And so that underlying argument that really he was going to do something unlike anything he had ever said or done before is what really should have much more scrutiny by the media.

KURTZ: Leslie, you have media liberals just praising General Milley to the skies and media conservatives saying he should resign, he should be fired, and he should be prosecuted. Isn't it a legitimate issue for the press that the general apparently broke the civilian chain of command with his back channel actions?

LESLIE MARSHALL, FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR, DEMOCRATIC STRATEGIST, RADIO TALK SHOW HOST: I don't think he did. I think the former chief, the former head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Michael Mullen, said he did nothing wrong, it is actually routine to call your counterparts in China and elsewhere.

KURTZ: Leslie, you don't think he did and that's fine. I'll let you explain. But is it a legitimate issue for the press since obviously Milley's actions were extremely unusual, to say the least?

MARSHALL: I don't think it's an issue for the press. I think the press needs to do their job and ask the right questions. And I think, quite frankly, we need to stop people in the press jumping to conclusions.

The last time I checked, in the United States of America, even if you are a general and a part of the Joint Chiefs, you are innocent until proven guilty. This man has not been found to be proven guilty, talking of things like treason, which by the way, you can be hung for in this country. That is just absolutely ridiculous.

I would say that whether this was Donald Trump as president or as we have right now Joe Biden, the jumping to conclusions and trying to ruin an individual's career and picking on some of the highest levels of the most wonderful military in the world concerns me. And it baffles me, especially when I see it used by both sides, by the way, for political gain.

KURTZ: Right.

MARSHALL: I don't think he is a hero and I don't think that he has committed treason. I think he was doing his job and I don't say because of my opinion.

KURTZ: All right.

MARSHALL: I say that because of the opinions of people that really know that job and how to perform.

KURTZ: Mollie, how can Donald Trump who gave Woodward 18 taped interviews for his last book, on the one hand say that the Woodward-Costa book is fiction, he used that word, on the other hand, suggests that Mark Milley should be prosecuted for treason, which means the book's account must be accurate and as you said is not really in dispute?

HEMINGWAY: Oh, I think that's the case here. We do know that Bob Woodward either makes up things or exaggerates previously reported things.

KURTZ: We don't know that for a fact. We don't know that for a fact. We don't know that for a fact.

HEMINGWAY: He has a long -- he has a long -- let's just say he has a long history going back decades of subjects of his books claiming that he invents things. Now --

KURTZ: That's not the case here.

HEMINGWAY: -- maybe you disagree with that.

KURTZ: Yeah.

HEMINGWAY: But in this case, you have Mark Milley himself admitting it. But I want to go back to what Leslie was just saying about like there was no problem here. Remember the media hysteria when General Mike Flynn called with the approval of the incoming commander in chief, his counterpart in Russia. His life was destroyed for that.

Here you have Mark Milley, who actually the acting secretary of Defense, says he wasn't authorized to make these calls and engage in this type of rhetoric, which undermined our country and which made it seemed like the military was in charge and that things were unstable, things that you don't want your Joint Chiefs of Staff doing.

You also have Mark Milley, who of course said -- who said of the strike that we heard about a couple weeks ago, I remember the morning of MEDIA BUZZ, we heard just before that was going on, that there had been a righteous strike --

KURTZ: Yeah.

HEMINGWAY: -- where supposedly ISIS-K terrorists were taken out, instead it was seven children and other people. He's got so many problems going on. Yet the media are so restrained in how they talk about it, wanting to give him the benefit of the doubt.

This is something that is extremely important. It has nothing to do with Trump. It has to do with do you have a republic, do you have a chain of command, do you have accountability. When people messed up, is anyone held responsible? These are the things the media should focus on more than Trump as a personality.

KURTZ: All right. Flynn, to be fair, was charged with lying to the FBI. The charge, of course, was later dropped. Leslie, what's clear from the book is that, this goes to Mollie's earlier point, what's clear from the book is that Donald Trump -- is that Milley believed that Donald Trump had suffered a mental decline after the election and agreed with Nancy Pelosi that Trump was crazy. That is according to a transcript of their phone call.

So that has been used to justify Milley's actions by all these left winners who think Trump is crazy.

MARSHALL: I'll leave that up to the medical professionals and so should politicians and broadcasters, whether it is Joe Biden and dementia or Donald Trump and this level of crazy or non-craziness.

When you look at what happened here, former Ambassador Bolton said there are numerous people on these calls. If there was anything treasonous, somebody definitely would have made a call long before this book was written, one.

Two, we should not get all our information from the book, any book that's written by anyone. What I want to see again is the facts and we are hearing testimony. The people that are on or have been with the Joint Chiefs say there is no problem with this.

Let us just look at what happened. On January 6, many of us and a lot of people may not -- our politicians on the right admit this right now. People were biting nails and not sure what was going to happen. Certainly, countries throughout the world were biting their nails and worried about what was going to happen.

He did the right thing in my opinion based on his position because he is basically saying everything is cool, everything is cool, don't worry, everything is cool. That's my takeaway.

KURTZ (on camera): I want to come back -- we are short on time. I want to come back to the media coverage. Even the military types who go on TV are divided over this, including Alexander Vindman, who was a main witness against former President Trump in the first impeachment, doesn't particularly like Donald Trump, obviously. Let's roll some tape on that.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ALEXANDER VINDMAN, FORMER NSC STAFFER: Even if he did this for the right reasons, he did the wrong thing and now he is toxic.

JACK KEANE, FOX NEWS SENIOR STRATEGIC ANALYST: I don't see anything that is undermining the civilian control of the military.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KURTZ (on camera): Keane went on to say he thought the book's account, Mollie, may have been sensationalized. Does the coverage come down to the people in the media who think Donald Trump was unstable will cheer anybody who tried to block him or undermine him or go behind his back?

HEMINGWAY: That's clearly what's in play. People say it's okay to violate norms and it is okay to violate the Constitution so long as it's against Donald Trump.

And it's not just this story, it's also, as you just referenced, learning that the high level Clinton attorney was just indicted for lying about his role in the Russian collusion hoax operation that did so much damage to the country, that had so much global impact.

People thought it was okay to lie about Trump colluding with Russia to steal the 2016 election because they were so -- they claim they were so legitimately concerned about him. In fighting things that they claim to fight, they did the things that they were doing.

It was all projection and you see that whether it's this phone call, the Russian collusion hoax, the impeachment or thousand other things that the resistance has engaged in recent years.

KURTZ: Yeah. I do have to mention that for all the negative adjectives that Donald Trump is throwing at General Milley, he's the one who appointed him to be the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. This is similar to John Bolton and others who he has had a falling out.

Leslie, even the book doesn't say that Trump was considering hostilities with China. Of course, the former president has denied that. Don't journalists have to provide the crucial context that he is the first president since Jimmy Carter who didn't get us involved in another war or launch a sustained military action?

MARSHALL: I think the media has a responsibility to report that, but we all know, one, if it believes, it leads, and two, that's not going to have as many clicks or as many sales of papers or as many listeners on radio or viewers on television. It's not the sexier headline. That sadly is part of what the journalism and broadcasting business have become.

KURTZ: All right. I can't argue with that.

MARSHALL: When we look at the --

KURTZ: I've got to wrap it up.

MARSHALL: I'm sorry.

KURTZ: I'm sorry. I got to get a break here. Ahead is a conversation with Chris Wallace. When we come back: A new battle over COVID vaccines and misinformation, this one involving hip hop star Nicki Minaj.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KURTZ (on camera): There's a serious media debate raging over vaccine mandates and booster shots. But it took a bizarre turn when hip hop star Nicki Minaj warned her Twitter followers about the lifesaving shot based on nothing more than this. My cousin in Trinidad won't get the vaccine because his friend got it and became impotent. His testicles became swollen.

And when MSNBC host Joy Reid criticized Minaj -- that's sort of ridiculous hearsay, does she even know this friend -- the singer played the race card. This is what happens when you're so thirsty to down another Black woman by the request of the white man, also calling her "uncle tomiana." Joy Reid doubled down on the air.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOY REID, MSNBC NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: And people like Nicki Minaj, I have to say this, you have 22 million followers on Twitter. For you to use your platform to encourage our community to not protect themselves and save their lives, my god, sister, you could do better than that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KURTZ (on camera): Mollie, why on earth would Nicki Minaj talk about her cousin's friends and his testicle as if that proved anything about COVID, who knows if this guy got some disease, and then defend that again and again?

HEMINGWAY: Well, I think -- first of all, the story is so ludicrous. It is hard not to laugh about the actual story that began the whole thing. But I think it really does speak to a really important thing, which is the reaction to when she did tell the story, was this attempt to just shut her down, to mock her, to deride her?

I think that has a lot to do with vaccine hesitancy. We have seen both the media and public health officials lose a lot of trust in recent years and they've lost that trust through their own bad decisions. They lie, they politicize thing, they're hypocritical, and they contradict themselves. And then when someone questions it or has an alternative viewpoint, they get mocked and deride it. That is doing nothing to convince people about the efficacy of vaccines.

And so what I found was interesting was that they attacked her and then she goes back and she kind of fought back with them in defense of just being able to talk about these things without being told you can't talk about stories you hear. I think that's a really dangerous and un-American thing. It is good for people to be able to talk openly so that more information can be shared about the goodness of these vaccines.

KURTZ: Leslie, Nicki Minaj has the right to say anything she wants. I mean this whole I know a friend who has a friend is hard for me to understand. But Joy Reid, who I really agree with, was right. And then Nicki Minaj throws these racial taunts at her. What do you make of that?

MARSHALL: I didn't think this was racial at all. I thought what Joy Reid said was right on, quite frankly, with the African-American community. We saw larger numbers of the African-American community affected both physically and financially from COVID-19. We see a problem within the African-American community, disparity when we look at numbers in that Latino minority groups as far as people not being vaccinated.

Yes. You know what? This country -- Mollie, I agree with you. It's a crazy, ridiculous story. We rarely agree on stuff. I agree on that. I wouldn't say this is un-American. It's so American. This is what's become so American, is that anybody out there would believe a rapper whose cousin in Trinidad's boyfriend's claim, we have no physician in Trinidad saying, I examined X and this resulted in what. We are not hearing any of that.

KURTZ: Yeah.

MARSHALL: This is all based on a tweet. And having that many followers, she is being in my personal and professional opinion, irresponsible not just to her community but to people out there who are afraid of getting the vaccine.

KURTZ: By the way, Nicki Minaj also claimed that she has been suspended by Twitter. Not true. She had been invited by the Biden White House. Not true.

Let's move on to what happened on Friday when FDA advisory panel voted 16 to 2 against recommending COVID booster shots except for the most high risk patients, after President Biden last month gave a big speech saying that all Americans would begin to be eligible starting tomorrow for booster shots. Mollie, are the media portraying this as a setback for the president or just bureaucratic squabble?

HEMINGWAY: Of course not, because it's their friend, Joe Biden. You know, they ran his campaign saying that he would be competent and that he had to be elected because Trump was incompetent. You have this complete debacle with the booster shots. Sixteen to two votes against what Joe Biden had said.

You have so many areas of problems, whether it is immigration or the economy or trying to get out of a bad news cycle by drone striking 10 innocent people in Afghanistan. This is complete and utter incompetence. And the tone of the coverage is not accurate relative to what we're actually experiencing.

KURTZ: Leslie, "The New York Times" described the FDA move or the advisory panel's move as a blow to the strategy by the president. But President Biden vowed that unlike the former guy, he would follow the science and then clearly got ahead of the scientists on this one.

MARSHALL: I don't think he got ahead of the scientists. One of the things that make our nation great is the agencies like the FDA. I know some people are going to freak out and are probably tweeting me right now. But the FDA does a great job.

What happens -- any of us that worked in politicians or with politicians know you get a phone call, a heads up, look, you know, we're probably going to have everybody have the boosters. Further research now shows we're going to dial back on that, we're going to have it for 65-year-olds and healthcare professionals, people who have severe illness. It doesn't mean we won't get the boosters. They're just concerned about the timing right now and they want more time.

So I don't think there was disconnect at all. It's just like we see with masks and everything, this is a fluid situation. This virus keeps mutating, delta (INAUDIBLE). And usually when a virus mutates, according to scientists and doctors, it becomes weaker. We saw that wasn't the case with delta.

KURTZ: All right. Let me jump in. By the way, if Donald Trump was president and had this kind of disagreement with the FDA, it would be a huge story.

Mollie, I've got about half a minute. You mentioned problems at the border, Afghanistan, and now COVID. NNC's Chuck Todd this morning said that President Biden has a credibility crisis on his hands. It's so striking because we hear very little of that from most of the mainstream media. Quick thought?

HEMINGWAY: Well, it is nice that he admits the obvious, that there's a credibility crisis. But there is just no comparison to what we endured for all four years of the Trump administration, where things that weren't a problem or that were completely made up like the Russia collusion hoax were dominating every day of the news.

And here you have legitimate crises like the American drone striking these people and then saying that no one is going to be held accountable for it and claiming to stand by the intelligence, the border surge with tens and thousands of people streaming, and the media say we will give a light criticism and then it's all well and good. That is not media coverage. That is propaganda. We need to move away from it.

LEMON: Leslie, you have to respond next time. Mollie Hemingway, Leslie Marshall, thanks so much for coming by this Sunday.

Up next, riveting testimony from sexually abused Olympic athletes on the FBI shocking failure. Will the media stay with this story?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KURTZ (on camera): There was media outrage, bipartisan outrage and an FBI apology as the cable news networks carried a Senate hearing where Simone Biles and three other Olympic gymnasts described their horrifying sexual abuse by team doctor Larry Nasser and asked why the FBI dragged its feet for a year while this monster violated dozens and dozens of other young girls.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SIMONE BILES, OLYMPIC GYMNAST: I blame Larry Nasser and I also blame an entire system that enabled and perpetrated his abuse. I sit before you today to raise my voice so that no little girl must endure what I, the athletes at this table, and the countless others who needlessly suffered under Nasser's guise of medical treatment.

ALY RAISMAN, OLYMPIC GYMNAST: The agent just kept diminishing my abuse and telling me that, you know, he didn't really feel like it was that big of a deal and maybe I should drop the case.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KURTZ (on camera): Incredible. Joining us now from New York, Kat Timpf from "The Gutfeld Show" and Fox Nation. Kat, it was painful to watch and impossible not to watch. I'm glad the media played it up. My concern is it's already feeling like a one or two-day story, everybody shakes their heads, and moves on.

KAT TIMPF, FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR: Right. That's a shame not just for the women in this story but for, you know, women and victims of -- men or women of things like this because, look, the overriding narrative is that these women were so brave to get up there and tell their stories. That's true. They really were very brave to do this. I cried a little bit.

But really a very important take-away is this isn't the first time they had to do that. You listened to McKayla Maroney said, hey, I already told this story to the FBI, only to be told it wasn't enough. They didn't do anything. She did this in order to protect other little girls from going through what she went through and it wasn't enough.

I think whenever this sort of thing is in the news, a lot of times, people say, hey, why didn't they say something sooner or why don't women speak up about this right away? Well, this is exactly why, because sometimes they do and it's not enough.

KURTZ: You know the level of the FBI's failure is breathtaking. Agents who didn't care, didn't investigate, didn't write a report, and lied to the bureau. Washington Post sports columnist Sally Jenkins says there should be a special prosecutor to probe this law enforcement coverup. One agent conveniently fired just days before the hearing.

The media dropped the ball on this story because we've known about the outlines for a long time but not so much about the horrible and blatant FBI shortcomings.

TIMPF: Absolutely. Just because we already know about Larry Nasser, he's already in prison for the rest of his life, that doesn't mean that the way this happened was okay, because he is the one who did this but because of what the FBI failed to do, there are dozens more little girls who are victims that didn't have to be.

That has to matter not just for those little girls but for people everywhere, because if this could possibly happen, this is wrong. This has to change.

KURTZ: And, you know, Larry Nasser preyed upon another 70 or possibly as much as another 120 young girls after the FBI was told by a couple of these brave women, originally back in 2015. The media are very good at short-term outrage. Perhaps we are getting what Simone Biles said, the pain of the abuse by the team doctor never goes away. I'm just wondering why there isn't more of a focus right now on what happened at the FBI because it's just a colossal failure.

TIMPF: It is. And Simone Biles is absolutely right. Everybody who is outside of it gets to say, wow, this is disgusting and move on with your lives. If you're one of these people who has gone through this, it's something that affects you for the rest of your life. There will be certain things that trigger you for the rest of your life. It changes your life.

There was a piece in The Guardian too saying what happened with the FBI did here was surprise -- horrible but it wasn't shocking. We talk all the time about how, you know, stuff like this, sex crimes like this, they're often, you know, under-prosecuted but they're also under-investigated as well.

KURTZ (on camera): Yes.

TIMPF: Which is a what a lot of these women went through when --

KURTZ: Right.

TIMPF: it's absolutely unacceptable.

KURTZ: Yes. Much more coverage with Simone Biles temporarily pulling out of the Olympic competition for mental health reasons than what has happened to all these young women.

TIMPF: Yes.

KURTZ: Kat Timpf, very good to see you. Thanks very much for your insights. Next on MEDIA BUZZ, we'll talk about Afghanistan, COVID, the Woodward and a more with Chris Wallace.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KURTZ (on camera): A week after the New York Times reported civilian casualties from one of the last U.S. missile attacks in Afghanistan, the Biden administration made this acknowledgement late Friday.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BRET BAIER, FOX NEWS ANCHOR: Senior Pentagon officials admit a drone strike, the White House celebrated at first as a major victory against ISIS, actually did kill almost a dozen civilians.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KURTZ (on camera): Joining us now, Chris Wallace, the host of Fox News Sunday and author of the new book, "Countdown Bin Laden: The Untold story of the 247 Day Hunt to Bring the Mastermind of 9/11 to Justice." Chris, welcome.

CHRIS WALLACE, FOX NEWS ANCHOR: Good to be here.

KURTZ: I understand the fog of war but the New York Times reported base on video evidence a week ago that not only that 10 civilians have been killed, but seven of them were children. For the Pentagon to wait that long to do this about face, how much does that had hurt the administration's credibility?

WALLACE: I don't know that the timing is going to matter a lot but the fact is going to matter dramatically. You know, Joe Biden is justifying the pullout from Afghanistan, has talked about well, we don't have to have boots on the ground, we have this over the horizon capability, which basically means we can fight the war on terror from hundreds of thousands of miles away.

Well, this was the last strike by the U.S. military before we pulled up stakes entirely in Afghanistan and it was a tragic, tragic error. I mean, not only did it not hit ISIS-K, it hit 10 people, seven children, and the target, rather than being a terrorist, in fact was an aide worker.

KURTZ: Yes. Just incredible. You told Stephen Colbert that there were certain Republicans you didn't want to put on Fox News Sunday because you don't want to hear their claims, of the unproven claims of a stolen election. Is that a difficult call?

WALLACE: No. You know, I think it's kind of got misinterpreted. What I said was I'm very concerned about the people who continue to spread what I consider the big lie, that the election was stolen, but there are certain people in the Republican Party who were obviously of such news importance that I would have them on, --

KURTZ: Yes.

WALLACE: -- for instance, I had on House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy. But I told Colbert in that searing interview that, you know, if I have them on, I'm certainly going to ask them about that and grill them on why they continue to say or if they don't continue, why they did say that Joe Biden didn't win the election fair and square.

But frankly, there's some other shows that have just had a ban on anybody who they feel has -- is an election denier. I think that's moral posturing. And if, you know, if their news value is important enough, I'm not going to say well, I'm going to decide not our viewers can't hear from them.

KURTZ: Right. Because they can't hear from them on any other subject.

WALLACE: Exactly.

KURTZ: Right. But in the same vein how do you deal with people who are anti-vaccination. I'm not talking here about the Biden mandate, which is certainly a legitimate subject for debate about presidential power --

WALLACE: Right.

KURTZ: -- people who just say the vaccine doesn't work, isn't safe, people shouldn't take it, would you put somebody like that on your program?

WALLACE: Not, I mean, if that's one of many things they say and I want to talk to them about other things. Would I have someone on the show to deny vaccinations? Absolutely not. And I've been really strong on this since COVID first came out.

This is about the science. I have not seen any credible information that would indicate that the vaccines are not a tremendous good, I'm not saying that there can't be some public health or side effects or whatever but -- so to put somebody on who conceivably is going to stop people from getting a vaccine that can save their lives, no, why would I put them on television.

KURTZ: Yes, that is the question, you give them a platform. Facebook and other of outlets had to deal with that. The Bob Woodward book this one with Bob Costa obviously started a big fire storm here in Washington with General Mark Milley on the hot seat as you know you talked about it this morning.

And Milley says well, the calls to China and the nuclear strikes discussions very routine, nothing to it. At the same time, you've had Woodward on your show every the years. Do you think there could be a case that perhaps what Milley did was a bit over-dramatized in the book?

WALLACE: Yes. There -- I mean, you know, I have mixed feelings. People who have bet against Bob Woodward have gone broke in this town. Right? I mean, almost everything that he has said, really, almost everything, really, has turned out to be 100 percent true. And the people that denied it had ended up with egg on their face. There is no he question that Milley did it. I mean, nobody is denying that. The question --

(CROSSTALK)

KURTZ: He's essentially confirmed it.

WALLACE: Right. The question is, was it over the line. You know, I was looking at the part of the book, he says secret phone calls. Well, if secret means secret from us, well of course they were secret from us.

KURTZ: Yes, we know that.

WALLACE: But secret the implication is secret from the people inside the Pentagon and that just doesn't seem to be true. The first call he made in October to the Chinese, October of 2020, was in conjunction supposedly with the defense secretary, Mark Esper. The second call he apparently had 15 people in the room including translators. So, secret in the sense that he was off the reservation, I don't see that yet.

KURTZ: In that sense that he was going rogue.

WALLACE: Right.

KURTZ: Obviously he's getting a lot of criticism. You know, it's become a beltway ritual over decades now for senior officials and former officials to talk to Woodward on background and he gets to channel their inner most thoughts.

I mean, you and I have both written books where we construct scenes based on interviews that we do. But when they do it that way, do they have a form of protection in that they're not on the record but their version of history gets out and is widely accepted?

WALLACE: Yes. And actually, with Milley, I have a bigger issue. And it isn't one in the Woodward book. It's the fact that I have and, you know, some would say I should get a life, I've read a lot of these post-Trump books. And Milley is in every one of them, and you know, talking about how he disapproved and felt he had had been drawn into the photo op at Saint John's Church and how he felt about Trump in the final days.

And it's -- I can't tell whether it's him talking directly to the authors or him talking to somebody who clearly had authority to talk to the authors. You kind of wonder for a chairman of the joint chiefs who is supposed to be apolitical, he just seems to be awfully public and awfully political in the things he's saying and I think that's something that in that hearing, in the Senate next week, the 28th, is going to come up and I don't think he's going to look so good.

KURTZ: Yes. He's not some former official, he's the top military officer in the United States. Look, Donald Trump has denounced Milley as an idiot, he's called Bob Woodward a sleaze. And by the way, Trump still take shots at you over the first presidential debate that you moderated last year saying you didn't have control.

WALLACE: Well, you know, what I would say is for a landlord, I'm very grateful that I'm allowed to occupy so much space in Donald Trump's brain rent-free. You know, I'm not talking about him but, yes, he still wants to talk about the September 29th, 2020 debate. You know --

KURTZ: To the extend it got out of control.

WALLACE: Yes.

KURTZ: Where does the fault lie on that?

WALLACE: Well, we sent some poor unfortunate Fox intern who looked and Trump interrupted Biden, important, me, not, it doesn't matter, 145 times in 90 minutes. I think that's a world record. I think Guinness should write him up for that.

KURTZ: All right. Well, he's -- that war is among those still being fought. Let me get a break here. More with Chris Wallace in just a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KURTZ (on camera): And we're back with my colleague, Chris Wallace, author of the new book, "Countdown Bin Laden." You write about the emotion and the exaltation really when our military finally got Usama bin Laden. The nation was unified, how long would it last. Well, as it turned out it didn't last very long. Why did everything, including the media coverage, become so polarizing after that moment of national celebration?

WALLACE: Because that's who we are and, yes, it lasted for a while and one of the scenes at the end of the book is after the president announces to the nation, Leon Panetta, the CIA director, leaves to get in his car to get home and he hears the crowd chanting, USA, USA, CIA, CIA, and he remembers all of the attacks on the CIA over the years, domestically, and said that was the proudest moment of his career.

But, you know, we move on. We seem incapable, I don't know, we seem incapable, Howie, of focusing on what unites us and we seem to just want to pick the scab of the things that divide us. I think it's one of the saddest things in our politics, in our media.

KURTZ: And how much does the press contribute to that?

WALLACE: My -- that's --

KURTZ: Because those are the kind of things that excite the base --

WALLACE: Yes.

KURTZ: -- and get you ratings and clicks.

WALLACE: Yes. Right. I mean, I think there's a tribal element to our country today, and it's beyond just politics. It's politics, culture, where you live, your view of faith whether you eat at a Cracker Barrell or Starbucks, it's all kind of stuff. But obviously, there are clicks and money to be made in playing to one of those tribes.

So, it's not all of us. I think we're following, not leading. But we certainly add to it.

KURTZ: Well, I would say we're contributing. You have these detailed scenes with Panetta first finding out about the intel that Usama and plausibly might be hiding out in his home in Pakistan. You have him briefing Obama. Was it easier to get people to talk about this 10 years after the event?

WALLACE: No question about it. I mean, first of all, it's not as classified. And think that they've taken -- I talked to almost everybody, Hillary Clinton, Bob Gates, Panetta, William McRaven, two of the SEALS, I think they were justifiably proud. It was a great moment, it was a great intel operation, I think a great political process, and a terrific military operation.

So, they're justifiably proud of it. And also, you know, as you know, what you do is you start with people lower down who are more likely to talk to you.

KURTZ: Yes.

WALLACE: And then once you persuade them one that you're serious about it and really want to tell the true story, and you know more, then when you go to the -- you build up, it's almost like an organized crime investigation, you start with the small fry and you try to get to the central figures.

KURTZ: I don't know you look like a mobster, but it's a try and --

(CROSSTALK)

WALLACE: No, I'm the prosecutor.

KURTZ: OK.

WALLACE: I'm the G man.

KURTZ: Right. You -- the book is a page-turner, as was your last book --

WALLACE: Thank you.

KURTZ: -- on the atomic bomb. But is it hard when so much is written about this and everybody already knows how the story ends?

WALLACE: Well, yes, but, you know, I tried to write it as a thriller. My feeling -- this is going to sound really presumptuous -- because I think history is written wrong. I think we spend too many histories. We know what happened, now let's talk about why or how it happened. No.

In the moment that it was happening they didn't know what was going to happen so when Panetta gets the lead about Bin Laden might be in this compound, he doesn't know if it's true or not. When Obama makes the decision to launch the raid, he says it's no more than 50/50.

KURTZ: Right.

WALLACE: And then when you've got the SEALS on the helicopter, they think it's a one-way suicide mission and they're going to end up dead. They may get Bin Laden but they are not coming home. So, if you can transmit that, it seems to me that, you know, the biggest compliment somebody paid, I know how the story ends but I was on the edge of my seat the last 100 pages.

KURTZ: My favorite details you had a top navy SEAL in the operation having promised his mom he wouldn't get involved in any more risky efforts like this.

WALLACE: That's right.

KURTZ: Yes.

WALLACE: And then he said I'm sorry I made that promise to my mom, he's the one who killed Bin Laden.

KURTZ: Right. And of course, you know this, we stayed in Afghanistan another 10 years. And that led to the debacle of recent weeks and people are still, you know, that's a story that shouldn't go away and I know that you consider recovery quite regularly.

Chris Wallace, thanks very much for stopping by this Sunday.

WALLACE: Thank you so much. I appreciate it.

KURTZ: Still to come, Jimmy Kimmel. Stephanie Grisham's tell-all book. Facebook secret VIP list exposed. Piers Morgan and a lot more. The Buzz Beater is next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KURTZ (on camera): Time to try the beat the clock on the Buzz Beater. Go. ABC's Jimmy Kimmel is ripping the Washington Post for allegedly twisting his comments about patients who take Ivermectin which isn't approved for COVID-19, telling Howard Stern.

(BEGIN VOICE CLIP)

JIMMY KIMMEL, COMEDIAN: It's disappointing when what are supposed to be real newspapers like the Washington Post completely misrepresents what you said.

(END VOICE CLIP)

KURTZ: Well, let's go to the videotape. Here's what Kimmel said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KIMMEL: That story doesn't seem too tough to me, vaccinated person having a heart attack, yes, come right in, we'll take of you. Unvaccinated guy who gobbled horse goo, rest in peace, wheezy.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KURTZ (on camera): OK. But the Post went much further than that, saying the talk show host suggested, quote, "hospitals shouldn't treat unvaccinated patients who prefer to take Ivermectin, as in not treat them at all. So, Kimmel has a right to be ticked off.

Former White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham is coming out with a tell-all book, that, according to Politico, paints her ex-boss Melania Trump as the doomed French queen, dismissive, defeated, detached. Grisham says her breaking point was the charge of a rigged election.

The former first lady's office dismisses the book "I'll Take Your Questions Now" as an attempt to redeem herself after a poor performance as press secretary, failed personal relationships and unprofessional behavior in the White House.

Now a source close to the book's publication tells me the personal attack shows that team Trump is afraid of the book and engaging in character assassination. The source says Grisham spares no one in this book including herself.

Wall Street Journal expose shows that Facebook doesn't enforce its rules for about six million celebrities, politicians and journalists. Internal documents calling this not publicly defensible and a breach of trust. Talk about a double standard. Another document admits that on Facebook's Instagram we make body image issues worse for one in three teen girls. Mark Zuckerberg's company says the paper cherry picked the findings for lopsided reporting of.

Piers Morgan needed a next act after famously walking out on a British morning show over his criticism of Meghan Markle. Now he's signing with Fox where among things, he'll do a global show for a new Rupert Murdoch network in the U.K. that will also here on Fox Nation and in Australia. Plus write a write a column for the New York Post and the London Sun.

Meantime, Fox has bought the gossip outfit TMZ what news report say is less than $50 million.

You know by now Gavin Newsom beat the California recall in a blowout and Larry Elder who told me he might file suit conceded. A national press assault helped the governor make the radio talk show host the issue and Elder may have contributed when he backed off from saying Joe Biden legitimately won the White House.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LARRY ELDER, RADIO TALK SHOW HOST: I don't believe the election was won fairly and squarely. There are all sorts of reason why the 2020 election, in my opinion, was full of shenanigans. And my fear is they're going to try that in this election right here.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KURTZ (on camera): Talking about a rigged election in a two to one Democratic state, probably not the best strategy.

All right. Let me sneak in one more here and overtime. Does Newsmax allow any criticism of Donald Trump. Host Grant Stinchfield cut off army veteran Joe Saboe who is trying to get people out of Afghanistan when he said in mild terms that multiple administrations were at fault and the Trump administration's efforts were fairly weak.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GRANT STINCHFIELD, HOST, NEWSMAX: Cut him off now. You're not going to blame this on President Trump on my show. Don't come on this program and take the talking points of the left and blame President Trump.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KURTZ (on camera): So much for giving even a few seconds to another point of view.

That's it for this edition of MEDIA BUZZ. I'm Howard Kurtz. We hope you like our Facebook page. We post my daily columns there. I'm sure you'll come at me on Twitter pro and con. Check out my podcast, Media Buzz Meter. On that podcast you can subscribe at Apple iTunes, Google podcast or your Amazon device. Hope you have a chance to listen to that. I appreciate you watching. We're back here next Sunday, 11 Eastern with the latest buzz.

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