Dan Gainor: Elizabeth Warren embraced by debate moderators

NBC and MSNBC embraced Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts in the first debate of Democratic presidential candidates Wednesday night, treating her like the star of the show. The debate led off with Warren, who had a huge popularity advantage from the start.
Warren – who Trump dubbed “Pocahontas” because of her phony claim of Native American heritage – was the only Democrat on stage who had mustered double digits in recent polling. Moderators let her dominate the early part of the debate, when most people were likely watching.
NBC anchor Savannah Guthrie started it off sounding more like Warren’s press secretary. “You have many plans – free college, free child care, government health care, cancelation of student debt, new taxes, new regulations, the breakup of major corporations,” Guthrie said, before teeing up an economy question. Guthrie even used Warren’s plan to break up tech companies as the foundation for a question for Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey.
The networks did it again halfway through. At 10 p.m. EDT, after some embarrassing tech issues that let Warren mull a question for several minutes, the debate went full-on pro-Democrat. NBC brought in bigtime liberal MSNBC anchor Rachel Maddow and “Meet the Press” host Chuck Todd. Once more they turned to Warren to set the agenda by asking her a gun control question;
“We are less than 50 miles from Parkland, Florida, where 17 people were killed in a school shooting last year and where there has been significant activism on gun violence ever since,” began Todd.

NBC anchor Savannah Guthrie started it off sounding more like Warren’s press secretary.

And, in case that wasn’t clear enough, the round-robin final comments also ended with Warren, as Maddow asked her for the “final, final statement.” That let NBC bookend the entire debate with Warren and Warren.
The Twitter account of Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii made the same point. With a signature as “-V (Tulsi's sister),” it slammed the network. “It's clear who MSNBC wants to be president: Elizabeth Warren. They're giving her more time than all the other candidates combined. They aren't giving any time to Tulsi at all.”
The time element evened out a bit. Warren ended up third, according to The New York Times. Reporter Nick Corasaniti? tweeted that, prior to the “45 second closing statements,” Booker came in first with former Texas Rep. Beto O'Rourke second. Warren came in a solid third for time.
CNN political commentator Van Jones was much like NBC. He started and ended the night in the Warren camp. Going in, he described Warren as “the massive star of the night.”
Jones was positive about all the candidates but continued to back the senator from Massachusetts. “Elizabeth Warren looked like a college professor with a bunch of graduate students around her half the time. She is able to go back and forth between policy and the human thing better than anybody,” he concluded.
While Warren certainly did well with the network assist, MSNBC host Chris Matthews made a good point afterward, crediting former Vice President Joe Biden – who debates Thursday night – with the victory.
“I think the winner tonight, though, was probably Joe Biden because, to quote Sherlock Holmes, the dog wasn't barking tonight,” Matthews said. “No one took on the Democratic frontrunner the whole two hours.”
Where Was Trump?
We all live in President Trump’s America – whether you like it or not. But Warren and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio never even mentioned Trump. Just as Biden was left unscathed, Trump didn’t muster a lot of attention either.
According to NBC News, Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota led the pack with nine mentions of the president. But the elephant in the room still dominated. MSNBC anchor Brian Williams even made a Harry Potter-Lord Voldemort allusion by referring to Trump as “he who will not be mentioned,” in a post-debate recap.
Perhaps it was Trump’s threat to tweet during the debate that had Dems running scared. Even though he never went on a tweet storm, he still tossed in a few comments. These included a damning comment 35 minutes in, calling the debate “BORING!” and criticizing the tech failures. He followed that by tweeting a humorous animation of Trump campaign signs all the way up to “Trump 2048.”
The official Trump response to the debate annoyed New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman?, who complained on Twitter: “Trump campaign issues six-paragraph statement in response to debate potus called boring. It’s so long I can’t screenshot it all.”
Former CBS anchor Dan Rather noted some candidates spoke a bit of Spanish and used it to attack Trump. “I think there are more candidates on stage who speak Spanish more fluently than our president speaks English,” he wrote.
Author and New America fellow Jill Filipovic summarized liberal frustrations with the president. “The fact that any one of these people may actually lose to Donald Trump is such an indictment of our country,” she tweeted.
Federalist Senior Editor Mollie Hemingway mocked when former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julian Castro went extreme on abortion, calling for “reproductive justice.”
“Julian Castro says he supports abortion for women who identify as men as well,” Hemingway commented. “Audience cheers. This bloody abortion fest is off the rails. Expect media reaction to be muted, however, since they are radical partisans on the issue.”
Most of the candidates wanted a breakout moment. Vanity Fair tweeted somewhat fairly that, “Of all the men and women seeking the White House, perhaps 5 or 6 have a fighting chance. Everyone else is effectively fighting for scraps.”
At least six of those on stage Wednesday night could walk down the streets of most American cities and go unrecognized. They are all trying desperately to use media exposure to change that.

MSNBC's Donny Deutsch, Lawrence O'Donnell have tense talk after debate

MSNBC hosts Donny Deutsch and Lawrence O'Donnell

MSNBC hosts Donny Deutsch and Lawrence O'Donnell had a fiery exchange Wednesday night over whether any of the 2020 Democratic candidates onstage during the evening's primary debate can beat President Trump.
Deutsch urged the panel not to "shoot the messenger," but he said he did not believe Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., can defeat Trump in a general election.
"If we're honest with ourselves and we look hard at ourselves, I think a lot of people agree with me," Deutsch told the panel after MSNBC aired the debate in Miami. "I also think when you can label somebody a socialist, 57 percent of this country thinks that word is un-American. I'm not saying it's fair. When he [Trump] can blanket Elizabeth Warren as a socialist and he's onstage with her, the Democrats lose."
When asked by MSNBC's Nicolle Wallace "who could beat Trump," Deutsch responded by saying the "Joe Biden we want" can, but "no one" on the debate stage could.
The comment did not sit well with O'Donnell.
"Let's just identify this for what it is: pure guesswork a year-and-a-half away," O'Donnell said. "And so it has, and Donny I say this respectfully, zero value."
"Don't tell me it has zero value," Deutsch shot back. "It's understanding human behavior. And I guarantee you 90 percent of our audience agrees with me."
"It's a wild guess, there's no science in it, there's nothing in it," O'Donnell continued. "You can put any name you want in the wild guess you just made and it doesn't make it true."
"I'm understanding Donald Trump -- the way he's connecting with this country and the strength he exudes," Deutsch doubled down. "We need to exude a stronger strength. It's not a policy discussion."

Trump blasts NBC for 'horrible technical breakdown' during debate: they 'should be ashamed of themselves!'

President Trump went after NBC News for a rather embarrassing transition into its second hour of the first Democratic primary debate, where they faced technical difficulties that forced them to cut to a commercial break.
After moderating the first half of the debate, "NBC Nightly News" anchor Lester Holt, "Today" co-host Savannah Guthrie, and Telumundo anchor Jose Diaz-Balart handed the telecast over to "Meet The Press" moderator Chuck Todd and MSNBC host Rachel Maddow. But things derailed quickly after the candidates struggled to hear Todd's first question.
"I think we had a little mic issue in the back," Todd said as he looked towards the control room at the back of the venue, latter adding "We have the audience [audio] on."
As Todd attempted to continue with his question on gun control, microphone issues continue to be easily detected. Many of the candidates smiled awkwardly while others like Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn, began laughing.
"What is happening?" Maddow asked.
"We are hearing our colleagues' audio," Todd exclaimed. "If the control room can turn off the mics... if the control room can turn off the mics of our previous moderators..."
"You know, we prepared for everything," Maddow sheepishly said. "We did not prepare for this."
"We're going to take a quick break, we're gonna get this technical situation fixed," Todd promised viewers.
The technical difficulties sparked quite a reaction on social media, including from President Trump.
"@NBCNews and @MSNBC should be ashamed of themselves for having such a horrible technical breakdown in the middle of the debate," Trump tweeted. "Truly unprofessional and only worthy of a FAKE NEWS Organization, which they are!"
2020 presidential candidate Andrew Yang also had fun at the expense of the liberal news outlet.
"Oh no- technical difficulties. It's the Russians," Yang quipped.
The first set of Democratic debates were being broadcasted on NBC News, MSNBC, and Telemundo. Thursday's debate will feature ten more candidates including former Vice President Joe Biden, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-VT, South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg, and Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif.

Crazy Democrat Cartoons

Democratic debates could be dull: A crowd in search of a breakthrough

'MediaBuzz' host Howard Kurtz weighs in on the likelihood that the first round of presidential debates between the Democrat candidates could end up being a dull. Due to the time constraints imposed by having 10 contenders on a stage, there won’t be much real debate, as many of them will still be introducing themselves to a public that knows little or nothing about them.

Some Democrats and liberal activists are worried that the first round of presidential debates, which kicks off tonight, could turn into a circular firing squad.
The worry is that with crowded stages and so many candidates desperate for a breakthrough moment, the events will devolve into a series of personal attacks designed to go viral.
I think it's equally likely that the debates become a snoozefest. The time constraints imposed by having 10 contenders on a stage won't allow for much real debate, and many of them will still be introducing themselves to a public that knows little or nothing about them.
And with MSNBC moderators, including Rachel Maddow, asking the questions, the focus is likely to be on policy and not an effort to get the Democrats to pummel each other.
One easy prediction: The media will play an outsize role in declaring the winners and losers.
That’s less true in a one-on-one debate, but with 20 candidates fielding questions over four hours, the action will seem like a blur, and many Americans will either have missed the sessions or caught only part of them.
Beyond the prognostications, the clips that television chooses to endlessly replay (and which get traction online) will shape perceptions of the outcome long after the politicians get off the Miami stage.
And even early debates matter. Four years ago, Tim Pawlenty had charged Mitt Romney with being the original author of the health care plan he derisively termed "Obamneycare." But during a debate, the Minnesota governor whiffed, fumbling questions about it with a mealy-mouthed explanation that he was just quoting Obama. The press concluded Pawlenty couldn't deliver a punch, and he soon dropped out of the race.
The media verdict this week will be heavily influenced by the pundits' own predilections. And if you want to know how the press is treating the top Democratic contenders heading into the televised showdowns, check out the latest coverage.
Joe Biden continues to face a sizable gap between the media's low opinion of his candidacy and the way he's being received in his (limited) appearances on the trail.
Politico acknowledges this, mainly by leaning on a poll that shows him with 38 percent support:
"Joe Biden's all-too-friendly touching of women in the MeToo era was supposed to be toxic to his presidential campaign. Critics thought his flip flop on subsidized abortions would show how deeply out of touch he was with the modern Democratic Party.
"The latest controversy buffeting his campaign — his statements about his working relationships with Dixiecrat segregationists when they served in the U.S. Senate together more than 40 years ago — has chewed through news cycles for the past week.
"Yet none of it seems to have damaged his standing in the race."
The reason: in a Politico/Morning Consult survey, after hearing what Biden said about having worked with segregationist senators, "41 percent of likely primary voters said it would make no difference to them and 29 percent said they would be more likely to vote for him. Just 18 percent said they would be less likely to vote for him." The split was similar among black voters.
I love the passive voice of this paragraph:
"Much of the conventional wisdom has so far been wrong about Biden — that his best day in polls would be his first as a candidate, that he wouldn't be able to raise enough money to compete, that he was too moderate, too old or too white for the modern Democratic Party."
And who propagated that CW? The media, in story after story after story.
Yet Biden still holds a 2-to-1 lead over his closest rival, as he did two months ago.
Liberal Times columnist Michelle Goldberg, who opposes Biden's nomination for ideological reasons, says voters on the trail don't ask about the segregationist flap and other media-centric controversies. But she essentially says he's lost his fastball:
"Seeing Biden on the stump often feels like watching an actor who can't quite remember his lines. Even if you don't support him, it's hard not to feel anxious on his behalf ... His performance was unnerving."
Now contrast that with the warm embrace of Elizabeth Warren, who has already been the subject of a glowing profile in The New York Times Magazine (and the New Yorker), and now gets another Times piece about growing up in Oklahoma and being in the debate club:
"She was competitive and had extraordinary focus and self-discipline, spending hours after school each day practicing ... It has been over 50 years since that time and Liz Herring has become Elizabeth Warren, one of the 24 women and men vying for the Democratic Party's nomination for the presidency.
"Her ferocious command of details on a debate stage once earned her a college scholarship. Now she is deploying that skill in town halls across the country and on Wednesday in the Democratic National Committee's first debate for the 2020 election."
As for Bernie, he's depicted as being in trouble, as in this Washington Post strategy piece:
"The Bernie Sanders campaign, facing a new challenge in the rise of Elizabeth Warren, has settled for now on a careful if sometimes awkward strategy."
The debates may shift the media handicapping, but unless there are fireworks, probably not all that much.

Eric Trump says Chicago restaurant employee spit on him: report

Eric Trump said in an interview that he was spat on by a worker at a Chicago restaurant on Tuesday night in an incident he called a “disgusting act.”
Trump told Breitbart, “For a party that preaches tolerance, this once again demonstrates they have very little civility. When somebody is sick enough to resort to spitting on someone, it just emphasizes a sickness and desperation and the fact that we’re winning.”
Reports of the alleged assault first surfaced when Mary Ann Ahern, a political reporter for NBC 5 Chicago, reported rumors on her Twitter account. She said reports indicated that the incident occurred at the Aviary cocktail bar in the city. She said the offender was in Secret Service custody.
Trump reportedly told Breitbart that it was a “purely disgusting act by somebody who clearly has emotional problems.”
The Chicago Police Department confirmed that they were at the scene “assisting” the U.S. Secret Service. They did not confirm that Trump was the target. The Secret Service, representatives for Trump and the cocktail bar did not immediately respond to emails from Fox News.
Last year at the height of the Brett Kavanaugh hearing, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas and his wife were confronted in a restaurant and were forced to make an early exit. Kirstjen Nielsen, the former Homeland Security secretary, was similarly harassed at a restaurant around that time.
Fox News' Edmund DeMarche contributed to this report

Jay Sekulow: Obama administration’s anti-Trump actions revealed in newly disclosed documents

Jay Sekulow

Stunning new information just released by the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ) shows that the Obama administration stepped up efforts – just days before President Trump took office – to undermine Trump and his administration.
The ACLJ, where I serve as chief counsel, has obtained records that show the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, under Director James Clapper, eagerly pushed to get new procedures as part of an anti-Trump effort. The procedures increased access to raw signals intelligence before the conclusion of the Obama administration, just days before President Trump was inaugurated.
By greatly expanding access to classified information by unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats, the Obama administration paved the way for a shadow government to leak classified information – endangering our national security and severely jeopardizing the integrity and reputation of our critical national security apparatus – in an attempt to undermine President Trump.
No president-elect or president should be targeted in this manner – and those responsible must be held accountable.
As I told Sean Hannity on his Fox News Channel program, the documents were obtained as a result of one of our Freedom of Information Act lawsuits – this one against the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the National Security Agency.
The documents confirmed what we suspected: the Office of the Director of National Intelligence rushed to get the new “procedures signed by the Attorney General before the conclusion of this administration,” referring to the Obama administration.

We have been working to unearth the facts of this Obama administration anti-Trump effort through our Freedom of Information Act lawsuits for more than two years.

The documents also reveal that Robert Litt, who worked in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, told the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense’s Director of Intelligence Strategy, Policy, & Integration: “Really want to get this done ... and so does the Boss.” Presumably “the Boss” is a reference to Director Clapper. 
And documents the ACLJ received that were produced by the National Security Agency show that NSA officials discussed that they “could have a signature from the AG as early as this week, certainly prior to the 20th of Jan.” In other words, certainly before President Trump’s inauguration.
Consider what we now know about the nature and degree of Deep State opposition to President Trump.
There have been public revelations about the infamous disgrace known as the Steele dossier, a report by a former British spy funded by the Hillary Clinton campaign that made false and baseless allegations against presidential candidate Trump.
There were also documented abuses of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that led to an FBI investigation – codenamed Crossfire Hurricane – of possible ties between the Trump presidential campaign and Russia. Special Counsel Robert Mueller later concluded after an exhaustive investigation lasting nearly two years that the Trump campaign did not conspire with Russia to advance Trump’s election chances.
We are also now aware of Director of National Intelligence Clapper’s open hostility to President Trump and intentional leaking by senior law enforcement and intelligence officials who were also hostile to Trump.
All of these facts point to a coordinated effort across agencies during the Obama administration to oppose the incoming Trump administration.
As part of the ACLJ’s Government Accountability Project and Freedom of Information Act practice, we uncovered key information about the embedded “resistance” operating within our government.
In this particular instance, it concerned us when we heard that, according to The New York Times, “in its final days, the Obama administration has expanded the power of the National Security Agency to share globally intercepted personal communications with the government’s 16 other intelligence agencies before applying privacy protections.”
On December 15, 2016 – after President Trump’s election – Director of National Intelligence Clapper executed a document titled “Procedures for the Availability or Dissemination of Raw Signals Intelligence Information by the National Security Agency Under Section 2.3 of Executive Order 12333.”
On January 3, 2017 – just days before President Trump’s inauguration – then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch executed the document, indicating her approval.
According to The New York Times, “the new rules significantly relax longstanding limits on what the N.S.A. may do with the information gathered by its most powerful surveillance operations.”
The New York Times had first reported in 2014 that deliberations by Obama administration officials on developing the new procedures were occurring. But apparently, the new procedures were not completed by the director of national intelligence and approved by the attorney general until just weeks before the end of President Obama’s term.
We have been working to unearth the facts of this Obama administration anti-Trump effort through our Freedom of Information Act lawsuits for more than two years. We will continue to pursue new information about this strategy to embolden the Deep State.

Chad Pergram: Media coverage of Mueller testimony will be 'off the Richter scale'

Media coverage of former Special Counsel Robert Mueller's upcoming testimony on Capitol Hill will "dwarf" that of past congressional hearings linked to the Russia investigation, Fox News' Capitol Hill senior producer Chad Pergram predicted Tuesday.
"We've had some explosive hearings on Capitol Hill before," Pergram said on "Hannity." "You think of James Comey testifying, Jeff Sessions in the Senate a couple of years ago. You think about Michael Cohen in February. This will dwarf that. The pure magnitude of this will be off the Richter scale."
Pergram also broke down the events that led to Mueller's scheduled July 17 appearances before both the House judiciary and intelligence committees.
"I'm told Bob Mueller would only appear if he was subpoenaed, and will stick to the 'four corners' of his report. That is what he said in a statement several weeks ago when they released the report. Of course, you can imagine Democrats wanting to get at him and see if there was distance between him and William Barr, the attorney general," Pergram said, describing the subpoenas as "friendly."
Pergram also predicted the probable line of questioning from House Republicans.
"They want to know the genesis of the Steele dossier, the [Lisa] Page and [Peter] Strzok text messages, one source said to me tonight, a Republican source. How many informants were on the campaign, and what were they looking at?" Pergram said.
Pergram also noted that if Mueller doesn't adequately answer Republicans' questions, they may say he is "not very credible."
He also revealed the reasoning behind Nadler and Schiff arranging the testimony.
"They said "Americans have demanded to hear directly from the special counsel so they can understand what he and his team examined," and that is why they want him to appear. That's very key," Pergram said.