This is a rush transcript from "Media Buzz," July 7, 2019. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
HOWARD KURTZ, HOST: On the Buzz Meter this Sunday, the media absolutely awash in stories about horrendous conditions at the border for migrant families and children and a fiercely partisan debate over whether the president or the Democrats are to blame.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CHRIS HAYES, MSNBC HOST: Every day we learn more about the conditions in Trump detention facilities and every day it is worse.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The cruelty that we see from this administration, the cruelty of their policy, the cruelty is not a by-product, the cruelty is actually the policy.
ANDERSON COOPER, CNN ANCHOR: To the kids in cages without soap, toothbrushes or any clear idea what is going to happen to them or if they are going to see their families again. It seems like the message from the president is basically, kids, suck it up, it's not that bad.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Countless times we've been saying there is a huge problem at the border, there's a huge issue at the border, the humanitarian aid, we need border patrol agents, we need more funding, we need a wall. So, what do Democrats say? Manufacture crisis.
TUCKER CARLSON, FOX NEWS HOST: Young pioneer Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez visited another one of America's overwhelmed migrant holding facilities. She left and immediately started lecturing as it's her habit, another condemnation of the people who are trying to keep our borders safe.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KURTZ: With the inspector general's report calling the detention facilities a ticking time bomb, is it time for the press to focus more on the problems than the politics? Is it even possible in our polarized culture?
Major fireworks over the presidential July 4th extravaganza here in Washington, which he built as a patriotic celebration and media detractors called an expensive exercise and narcissism. Has his speech quieted the critics?
Joe Biden finally apologizes and finally does a TV interview as some in the media predict doom and gloom for his campaign. This after new poll showed his lead shrinking and Kamala Harris surging. It is way too early for these political obituaries.
Plus, a brutal attack by Antifa on conservative writer Andy Ngo in Portland becomes a shocking symbol of left wing violence. With other conservatives being harassed, is the press starting to normalize or at least tolerate such animosity?
I'm Howard Kurtz and this is "Media Buzz."
The media were already giving constant and increasingly emotional coverage of the border crisis when they got new fighter, fighter from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez after she and other democratic lawmakers toured a detention center in Texas.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ (D-NY): There's abuse in these facilities. There's abuse. And these women were being told by CBP officers to drink out of the toilet. They were drinking water out of the toilet and that was them knowing a congressional visit was coming.
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: They're clean. They're good. They do a great job. They do a great job. They are crowded because the Democrats will not give us any relief from the loopholes.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KURTZ: Joining us now to analyze the coverage: Gayle Trotter, a Washington lawyer who hosts "Right in DC" podcast; Gillian Turner, a Fox News correspondent and former White House national security official; and Richard Fowler, radio talk show host and Fox News contributor.
KURTZ: Gayle, this story is permeated by politics, but when you have homeland security inspector general saying the Texas facilities are ticking time bomb, according to a senior manager, and some adults held in standing- room-only spaces, that seems to substantiate some of the media reports.
GAYLE TROTTER, HOST, RIGHT IN DC: The IG report certainly shows evidence that there is a crisis and immediate action is needed. You're seeing that in this administration with the Mexico-U.S. deal. You're seeing a lowering of releasing of illegal aliens into United States, so there's an effort to make sure that they're not putting more people into these detention centers in the U.S.
KURTZ: You think the coverage reflects that? TROTTER: No, it does not. The place that has the article on that is Breitbart News. I didn't see that in any other mainstream media coverage.
KURTZ: All right. The New York Times today has one of these blockbuster investigative pieces on the front page. It fills two full pages inside the paper in conjunction with El Paso Times, 11 reporters, dozens of interviews, lots of documents. Gillian, has this kind of reporting, not just this story, but all this reporting, broken through the political shouting (ph) and convinced the public that there is a genuine crisis?
GILLIAN TURNER, FOX NEWS CORRESPONDENT, FORMER WHITE HOUSE NATIONAL SECURITY OFFICIAL: I don't think so. I think the media on both sides of this are failing. I think that they are letting politicians lead them astray on issue. They are following every rabbit down every rabbit hole here in Washington, and that does a disservice to the problem.
So, what you have is customs and border patrol agents pushing back on the stories that the conditions are poor, saying the conditions are OK. President Trump jumps in and says they are actually very good. Journalists are forgetting that their role here is not to focus on those side-bar arguments.
The argument here for the media, what matters to the media is not to cover whether Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez thinks that somebody was drinking out of a toilet bowl or whether these are concentration-camp like situations, what matters is reporting on the problem. So I think I applaud that kind of investigative journalism from the Times. That is a serious piece. That helped. A lot of this other stuff is just noise.
KURTZ: The acting customs chief disputed some of the details in the Times on ABC this morning. Richard Fowler, what's your take on the reporting, and there was a pretty harsh media reaction when President Trump said that the migrant families in these facilities have it far better now than where they came from.
RICHARD FOWLER, FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR, RADIO TALK SHOW HOST: I agree with Gillian on the point that the media is doing a disservice. Here is how the media is doing that disservice. They are not covering the histrionics of how we got to this particular place. When President Trump took office, his administration was keen on tightening the screws, making it as deplorable as possible for folks when they cross the border so they would not cross the border as a deterrence.
TROTTER: Not true.
FOWLER: What ended up happening was more folks said we can cross the border now before it get sealed off after he builds his "wall." So here we sit today with an oversight report that indicates it titled the DHS to address the dangerous condition and the prolonged detention of children and adults in the Rio Grande Valley, a report coming out from Trump's own government. And then he sits on television saying they are doing great. Those things cannot be true when you have a report --
(CROSSTALK)
FOWLER: -- conditions.
TROTTER: You are wrong because part of media failure is a lack of appreciation of where we came to be in this position that we are in right now. It is multiple administrations over many years. It's not President Trump. President Trump --
FOWLER: President Trump --
(CROSSTALK)
TURNER: This is the emblematic, this argument, of what I was just saying. Blame it on President Obama, blame it on President Trump dodges the issue, which is we have this problem, everybody exists, the problem exists, it's real, we want to fix it. How do we fix it?
(CROSSTALK)
TURNER: This argument is irrelevant.
TROTTER: The media should not put the pressure on customs and border patrol because they don't pass the laws. The media should put the pressure on Congress because it's congressional malpractice why we are where we are.
FOWLER: The media doesn't pass the laws. The laws -- these particular laws created the situation. Families, mothers, children being ripped at the hands of their mothers is created by President Trump executive order.
TROTTER: No, you don't know that.
FOWLER: That is exactly the truth.
TROTTER: The Flores settlement --
(CROSSTALK)
KURTZ: -- talking over each other. I want to move on to AOC we played at the top. She has drawn enormous media attention which she is very skilled at doing for saying after this tour with other Democrats that -- at least one woman told her or some women told her they were forced to drink toilet water and customs disputed that. It made headlines everywhere.
TROTTER: Right. Well, it's yet another example of where the mainstream media accepts the dubious claims that are made by someone like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. I'm a lawyer and I think journalists have a reasonable expectation in their professional duties to depend on evidence. Critics of the media showed that the combination, toilet sink is a common thing that they use in facilities, and yet the mainstream media accepted this and ran with it without really relying on the evidence.
FOWLER: Department of Homeland Security indicates this. Fifty-one women in jail cell designed for 40 juveniles, 71 men in cells designed for 41 men.
TROTTER: It's a crisis.
FOWLER: That is dehumanizing --
TROTTER: It's a crisis.
FOWLER: That is dehumanizing.
TROTTER: And Trump said that in January.
FOWLER: -- being put forward by our government, period.
KURTZ: OK. Let me come back to this AOC question with you, Gillian. Some on the right react by attacking her personally. And she can go too far. She earlier talked about these being concentration camps. A lot of people found that very offensive. Then she talked about fascism.
CNN's Jake Tapper though pressed her on why she voted against the $4.5 billion bill on the House and then House Senate compromised. She said all the money should humanitarian aid and none of it should go to ICE.
TURNER: How much coverage goes to that versus the toilet water comment? There's no comparison. As you said, toilet water, drinking toilet water comment will dominate headlines for days and that's what takes the day unfortunate again to the detriment of the actual solving the problem.
KURTZ: In this morning's New York Times, Nancy Pelosi went after AOC and three other freshmen liberal congresswomen saying, well, they have a big Twitter world, but they don't have any following. There are four people. That is how many votes they got. Also, more in doubt, it thought this is fascinating, brought a bunch of chocolates to Pelosi for the interview. Maybe I should start doing that to loosen people up.
There is also as exposed by the non-profit news room Propublica, the secret face group, turns out exactly two of them, of current and former agents mocking some of the migrant deaths, going after AOC, some sexually explicit taunts. And CPB is taking this very seriously and saying it's investigating.
FOWLER: As they should. I don't think that all border patrol officers are bad. I think 99.9 percent of them are doing the right job. But these officers, speak to a larger problem that we have. First, they laugh at you. Then it's easy for them to discriminate against you and do things that we are seeing happening on the southern border. KURTZ: You mentioned earlier, the whole thing about did some of this exist in Obama administration, some conservatives put photos of migrant detention camps under the Obama administration showing the overcrowding, showing the fencing and the kids. And at the time, it was 2014, there was no journalists in uproar.
TROTTER: That's right and --
KURTZ: I'm not saying the magnitude was the same because there are so many migrants, they are overwhelming these families.
TROTTER: And the more remarkable point is that plenty of mainstream media outlets used those photos from the Obama administration and tried to pin that to what is going on now. And so it plays into President Trump's repeated charge and fake news. When you have all of these allegations that are made including the Facebook group that is -- that they say in these reports are actual border patrol officers, they don't have proof of that.
They need to investigate this. They need to make sure that the people that they are saying are actually participating in this actually are because, you know, things on the internet are not obviously all of the time true.
KURTZ: Just to clarify. There have been news reports that senior customs officials knew about the Facebook group for years, at least --
TROTTER: There have been reports but there is no evidence that we see --
KURTZ: I haven't seen a denial. We have no idea that was a Facebook --
TURNER: On Friday evening, I spoke to customs and border patrol.
KURTZ: OK.
TURNER: They categorically denied the claims by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez that they had known about this Facebook groups prior to them becoming public on Friday when CNN handed over the photos of the second group to them. They categorically denied that. There's a double standard that should be objected to by all fair-minded Americans.
The press is politicizing this problem by posting -- members of the press posting photos of detention centers under President Obama and saying, look at these terrible conditions. It's making it again a political problem. It's not a political problem, it's an American problem. People are suffering in U.S. custody is an American problem, not a political problem.
KURTZ: One at a time. You still believe that it hasn't broken through a lot of people because the politics just absolutely surrounds this, that it is a humanitarian crisis regardless of who is to blame. And now in the meantime, President Trump, who delayed this couple of weeks ago, says he will soon begin waive of deportation of illegal immigrants in major cities.
Is it fair to say -- by the way, there were lots of deportations under President Obama and a lot on the left did not like that -- is it fair to say the media think this is a terrible idea?
FOWLER: I think the media think -- they thought it was a terrible idea. But they also thought it was a terrible deal under Barack Obama. Remember, when President Obama had mass deportations, he has the record number for deportation in modern history --
KURTZ: Yeah.
FOWLER: Every single event he had, he was protested by United We Dream advocates. Folks are saying this is not OK and the media covered that.
KURTZ: But the level of criticism from the media was I would say muted compared to what Donald Trump gets --
FOWLER: I think the presidential thing to do with the fact, number one, this president is clearly keen on tightening the screws when it comes to those crossing the border. Number two, he has also dismantled the program created by Barack Obama to provide foreign aids to these individuals who are coming from Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua. Now the situation is exacerbated which is why you're seeing family unit on the border.
KURTZ: It's a complicated subject. I'm glad it's getting so much coverage, but I do agree with all of you that it certainly has been politicized in the press often. It is helping.
When we come back, the partisan fireworks over the president's 4th of July celebration. Why did this get so explosive? And later, conservative writer Andy Ngo is badly beaten in Portland. Why this is a national media controversy?
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
KURTZ: In the runoff to the 4th of July, the president's critics and the media absolutely exploded over his plan to give a speech at the Lincoln Memorial and roll out military hardware for Independence Day.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JEREMY BASH, FORMER CIA CHIEF OF STAFF: This is actually dangers because it's fundamentally un-American. It politicizes a nonpartisan celebration of we, the people.
COOPER: Is the president of the U.S. trying to turn July 4th, traditionally an ultimate celebration of and by the people celebration, into a celebration of and by one person, Donald J. Trump.
GERALDO RIVERA, FOX NEWS CORRESPONDENT-AT-LARGE: People on the left hate our president so much that they are willing to just put a negative spin on anything. How many times have they seen a flyover in an athletic event? Everybody loves them except and until President Trump is the one proposing it.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KURTZ: And here is what the Trump extravaganza looked like.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: Together we are part of one of the greatest stories ever told, the story of America. It is the epic tale of a great nation whose people have risked everything for what they know is right and what they know is true.
(APPLAUSE)
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KURTZ: That's one of many flyovers. Gillian Turner, the Trumpification of July 4th just rubbed some people in the wrong way. Here is what I thought. Fox and CNN carried it live. MSNBC not only didn't carry it, it made a Lawrence O'Donnell re-run in which he was talking about -- he was ripping Trump on what he might say on July 4th. Now that we've all heard the speech, was there a media overreaction? TURNER: Yes, and I think this was definitely an instance where the anticipation and anxiety surrounding the event in advance was a lot worse than what the event turned out to be. I think the bite, the bar from the media was much bigger than bite from the White House.
It turned out to be quite a nice celebration. There wasn't a military parade. I think that's what people were all kind of up and arms about prior to the event itself.
KURTZ: Yeah. And I think any president could have given that speech. It wasn't a partisan speech like some critics predicted. I love this, Gayle Trotter. Washington Post homepage on the opinion section, one column by Marc Thiessen, "Trump made his critics look small during his salute to America."
Columnist Eugene Robinson, "Trump tried to make Independence Day all about him. He ended up looking small." It is kind of microcosm (ph) of partisanship.
TROTTER: Right. There is hysteria about it ahead of time. There was overreaction as Gillian was saying. And now, we are seeing there is downplay by the mainstream media because the speech and the event was so successful. I had chills listening to it. You heard about Clarence Henderson, who at 18 years of age organized one of the first sit-ins at a lunch counter in South Carolina.
So we had great people from history like Eisenhower, Frederick Douglass and then we had people who just at 18 years of age decided that they were going to declare their own personal independence. And the media is silent now that it's over and their overreactions were not borne out. We are not hearing the celebration of it by the mainstream media and that's a shame because it was a great history lesson. KURTZ: Did get a lot of coverage for the first day or so. By the way, there were tanks at the inaugurations of FDR, Eisenhower, JFK. What may pundits pounce on, Richard Fowler, is that special VIP tickets were given to Trump donors and allies, and the RNC sort of undercutting at least in advance the nonpartisan theme. FOWLER: Right. Listen, I think the president could have had the speech. I mean, the tanks are not my speed but the president's speed. God bless him. But I do have a problem with how the tickets were distributed. Usually when have an event that is a national celebration, the only event at Harkins, what we say there, it was during inauguration.
During that particular time, all members of Congress, all 535 of them, are issued tickets. Here, none of them were and they all went to the RNC for the purposes of ginning up political support. So the reason why there were no Democrats who get goose bumps is because they weren't invited.
(LAUGHTER)
TROTTER: I wasn't invited either.
KURTZ: OK. Anyone could go. You could sit in the VIP section. The White House says this was standard practice with the tickets and DNC did the same thing during Democratic administrations.
Meanwhile, the district of Colombia here is pretty ticked off because all the added security and logistical clause and also there were reports that the National Park Service diverted two and a half million dollars for this event that was to be spent on improving national parks across the country. TURNER: The local news coverage has been pretty uniformly negative --
KURTZ: Yeah.
TURNER: -- here in the district. I can tell you that for maybe viewers at home who don't want local news. People are pretty up in arms about the cost that is going to be incurred to the city here. Who is footing the bill, you know.
KURTZ: Yeah. Some of that may be reimbursed by the feds. Also, President Trump, not that popular within the district of Colombia, and that doesn't come as a shock.
Richard Fowler, Gillian Turner, Gayle Trotter, thanks so much.
Ahead, the pundits are seizing on new polls that say that Joe Biden's campaign is practically imploding. Is it a way early for that? But up next, an exclusive first peek on new book on what really happened with the Brett Kavanaugh nomination.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
KURTZ: We got the first look on television at a new book called "Justice on Trial: The Kavanaugh Confirmation and the Future of the Supreme Court." It's by my colleague Fox News contributor Mollie Hemingway and Carrie Severino of the Judicial Crisis Network who was lobbied for Kavanaugh's nomination.
The authors who interviewed President Trump and several high court justices report that when Christine Blasey Ford alleged that Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her at a high school party and there was widespread speculation he might have to withdraw, Trump wanted his team to fight back both on the Hill and in the media.
They had some derogatory information on Christine Ford, the book says, but the Trump team understood that any criticism of her would be treated as a smear and victim shaming. The authors are tough on the coverage including accusing the media of intensely personal dislike of Kavanaugh.
The book says that Julie Swetnick, represented by now indicted lawyer Michael Avenatti, was making obviously ridiculous allegations about being gang raped at 10 parties and sexually assaulted by Kavanaugh and a friend. He story fell apart in an NBC interview.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JULIE SWETNICK, KAVANAUGH ACCUSER: He would push his body against theirs. He would grope them.
KATE SNOW, NBC NEWS NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): There are some differences between Swetnick's sworn statement last week and what she told us. In that statement, Swetnick said she became aware of efforts by Kavanaugh and his friend Mark Judge to spike punch at parties. In our interview, she said she saw them near the punch but did not specifically say she saw either man spike it.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
KURTZ: Avenatti gave NBC the name of a secret-supporting witness, but when she totally undercuts Swetnick's account, blaming Avenatti for twisting her words, the network sat on that story for a while.
Hemingway and Severino also castigate the New Yorker for publishing allegations from Yale classmate Deborah Ramirez who claimed that Kavanaugh had exposed himself despite a lack of corroboration and the acknowledgment that Ramirez had significant gaps in her memories and it took her six days to name Kavanaugh.
One of the most interesting figures in the book is Kavanaugh's wife, Ashley.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ASHLEY KAVANAUGH, WIFE OF BRETT KAVANAUGH: I know Brett. I've known him for 17 years. This is not at all character. It's really hard to believe. He's decent. He's kind. He's good.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KURTZ: The book says Ashley Kavanaugh who studied bible verses to draw strength through the ordeal had actually prayed that her husband wouldn't be nominated.
Ahead, will left-wing Antifa be held accountable for brutally beating a conservative writer? But first, Joe Biden finally defends himself in a CNN interview and admits he wasn't prepared for Kamala Harris's debate attack.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
KURTZ: The media went absolutely bonkers after the Democratic debate, which Kamala Harris hammered Joe Biden over busing four decades ago. A week later, he finally did a major interview with CNN's Chris Cuomo.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. KAMALA HARRIS (D), CALIFORNIA: Busing did not work. You have an overwhelming response from the African-American community in my state. My state is the eighth largest black population in the country, as a percent of the population. They didn't support it.
CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: Were you prepared for them to come after you.
HARRIS: I was prepared for them to come after me, but I wasn't prepared for the person coming at me the way she came at me. She knew Bo, she knows me.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KURTZ: Joining us now from Charlottesville is Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia Center for Politics. And, Larry, why did Joe Biden endure a week of being pummeled by the press, which clearly hurt him in the polls before finally talking to CNN? He is a big megaphone, but he almost never uses it. Why doesn't he do more TV news?
LARRY SABATO, UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA CENTER FOR POLITICS DIRECTOR: Because he's stubborn and he's rusty. And those are the two adjectives I would apply to him, based on what I have seen so far in this campaign. It's often true with very senior politicians, Howie. They've been through so many campaigns, they've won so many, they think they have achieved great heights. And as a result, they don't expect this garden variety criticism. I'd love the part where he said, I thought there could be criticism, but not from her. She knows me, she knows my son. No, that has nothing to do with it. They're both running for the primaries.
KURTZ: Running against each other, yes. Now, in a speech...
SABATO: Exactly.
KURTZ: Biden belatedly apologized for giving the impression he was praising the segregationists senators he worked with decades ago. What he said was I'm sorry for any of the pain or misconception I caused anybody. He said that misstep in his word shouldn't define his civil right records. Could he have stopped the media bleeding by doing this apology a week or more ago?
SABATO: Oh, absolutely. He should have done it at the debate. I mean, most senior politicians have better instincts than that. Clearly, he wanted to denounce the segregationists. That's what he should have done. He did not. He got his backup. And he made a greenhorn mistake, which is you don't separate your strong argument from your weak argument. So, did he learn from it? It took him two weeks to do what was manifestly obvious on the night of the debate.
KURTZ: Yeah, campaigns move so much faster now than what I think Biden is used to. But look, Kamala Harris being pressed by reporters said that she - - today, she supports school busing when chosen by local communities, but not federally mandated, which is kind of hard to distinguish from the position that she was attacking Biden for holding back in the 1970s. She has really struggled to make that distinction. It has gotten some coverage. Why isn't that a bigger story?
SABATO: Well, it should be a bigger story because she's come around to essentially his point of view in the 70s. And I think the reason, Howie, is because a lot of younger people that is everybody below 60, you know, the real youngsters, they didn't go through this. They don't understand that it wasn't just Whites strongly opposing busing. A majority of African- Americans consistently opposed busing, too. This was one of the least popular innovations in civil rights ever.
KURTZ: Absolutely. And you went through or lived through busing battle in Virginia in the 1970s. It was tearing the country apart. And a lot of people felt like, you know, the elite politicians who have sent to kids to private schools were imposing solutions on their kids, sitting on a bus for an hour and a half, maybe go to schools where they weren't welcome. Has coverage in 2019 been simplistic in suggestion, and implying, insinuating that if you weren't for busing then or for any limits on busing, that you're basically a racist?
SABATO: Of course. And again, I hate to put it all generationally, but a lot of reporters are very young, they didn't have a clue, maybe they Googled something in Wikipedia about busing.
KURTZ: Yeah.
SABATO: But they didn't live through this. They don't get it. And because they don't get it, they tend to apply what you apply correctly, the simplistic labels on people about a controversy that actually cut across lines in ways that we haven't seen since.
KURTZ: Yeah. Let's turn to polls because the media just went absolutely nuts when a CNN poll came out after the debate, registered Dems and Democratic leaners showing Kamala Harris surging into second place and trailing a sinking Joe Biden by just 5 points. And there is the Quinnipiac poll that showed Biden up by 2 over Harris, basically a statistical tie. But then, a Washington Post-ABC survey comes out and gives Biden a 29 to 11 percent lead over Kamala Harris, more than doubling her support. Are pundits overreacting to these varying polls in, you know, some numbers saying Biden is soon to be toast?
SABATO: I wish I could get that as a question on Jeopardy sometimes. Obviously, the answer is yes. They always oversimplify. They always react too strongly, too quickly to every new event, to every new poll. Hey, the voting starts in February, you know. I understand there are 25 candidates. They can't report every day that X is ahead because nobody will pay attention. It's not interesting. They have to mix it up, they have to change the leaders, but that doesn't mean it's accurate reporting.
KURTZ: Do you think the polls were influenced by days and days of coverage in which many pundits said, hey, look, there's no question Kamala Harris did herself a lot of good in the debate, and Biden did not look good in that exchange. But all the reporting was like Biden is old, he's slow, he's out of touch, he didn't know how to respond, and she got these glowing profiles, and she was aggressive, and she was a prosecutor, and all of that. When you get bombarded in that kind of environment, does that -- then the next poll is taken, is there a cause and effect there?
SABATO: There could be a cause and effect. What's interesting to me is and what ought to be a cautionary tale for pundits is apparently, their punditting had no effect. In fact, Biden is doing much better and we have gone back to not quite the situation we were in prior to the debate, but approximately the same. So maybe people are still and should tune out the pundits, tune out the commentary, it's enough to watch four hours of debate.
KURTZ: Yeah.
SABATO: You know, you don't have to watch commentary around it. And I think...
KURTZ: Tuning out the pundits is so depressing. Let me just play for you one more sound bite with the interview with CNN.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CUOMO: Eighty percent of your party says it's center left.
JOE BIDEN, FORMER VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: No, I am center left.
CUOMO: Farther left, it's getting more attention, it's getting amplified.
BIDEN: No, no, no, no. Look, look, center left, that's where I am. Where it's not is way left.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KURTZ: Most of the Democratic candidates, Larry, have moved sharply to the left. Biden sees himself more center-left. Are the media misjudging just how liberal the Democratic Party has become?
SABATO: Well, they're misjudging it from the grassroots level because what Biden said is actually true. The party is still center left. Like most Democrats, like most Americans, can't even define a socialist, they don't know what socialism actually is. But there's -- there's a real danger here. And I think Biden unlike some of the younger ones, who are running for president, he recognizes the danger. If Democrats move too far to the left, the election is over.
KURTZ: I agree with you on that. And we will see how it plays out. Larry Sabato, great to see you from Charlottesville.
SABATO: Thank you, Howie.
KURTZ: Thanks very much.
After the break, the video of Andy Ngo's bruised and bloody face goes viral. How much does the media care about left-wing violence?
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
KURTZ: It was a brutal attack by left-wing Antifa members on Andy Ngo, a conservative writer in Portland, Oregon. And it sparked a ferocious media debate since he posted this video of his battered and bloody face wondering what happened to the police and everybody got to see it.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ANDY NGO, QUILLETTE EDITOR: When I realized what was happening, it was too late. A mob of people who were dressed in black and wearing masks started beating me with their fists and some of them used objects to hit me. And all this time, I kept thinking, where are the police.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KURTZ: Joining us now from New York, Kat Timpf, a National Review writer and host of Sincerely Kat on Fox Nation. What is it about this Antifa attack on Andy Ngo and the failure of the Portland cops to step in that has turned this into such a national controversy?
KAT TIMPF, SINCERELY KAT HOST: Right. Absolutely. I see it as being something where if you imagine, if this had been a guy in a MAGA hat who beat up a New York Times reporter or a CNN reporter, I think that people on the left would have covered it a lot more than they did. Now, the left-wing outlets that did cover it, they did say they never condone violence, but in the same breath, they would say things like well, he's provoked them, et cetera, et cetera. I think when someone is beaten so badly, they go to the hospital. It should be this is not OK, full stop.
KURTZ: Right. Let's put up a little bit of cell phone video of the attack itself. You can't see everything, but it gives you the sense of chaos there. So, you're saying it was a pretty serious charge that if the ideological shoe was on the other foot -- and, wow, just looking at this, it's really something. And if this had been a liberal writer attack, you think the story would have been much bigger by order of magnitude, that's - - that's rough.
TIMPF: I really do think so. I really do think so. Now, I do think that some conservatives went a little bit too far in painting a larger picture in particular, Donald Trump, Jr., wrote a piece in Daily Caller that said that the media response or the lack of media response proved that people in left-wing media or mainstream media are Defacto Antifa supporters. I wouldn't go that far because like I said, everyone did say they don't condone violence when they discussed it, except for maybe a few outliers who don't represent the mainstream media. But I really do think if this had been a MAGA hat and someone going after a conservative -- excuse me, a liberal reporter, this would have been a way bigger story, where people are blaming the President, people blaming Republicans in general.
KURTZ: As happened during the Jussie Smollett hoax?
TIMPF: I was just going to bring that up.
KURTZ: Yeah.
TIMPF: We saw that with Jussie Smollett.
KURTZ: I stepped on your line.
TIMPF: People went after that right away. It was all over the news. We saw the liberal mention it, but it didn't rise to the same level as it did with Jussie Smollett.
KURTZ: Some of Andy Ngo's writing is controversial. But that is utterly beside the point.
TIMPF: Right.
KURTZ: He was covering a protest. This was really an attack on free speech. Aren't liberals supposed to care about free speech?
TIMPF: You would think all -- all Americans should care about free speech. And I'm someone who disagrees with a lot of this journalist's work, a lot of it. I don't agree with him. But I also don't agree with somebody getting beat up so bad, they have to go to the hospital.
KURTZ: Yeah.
TIMPF: Or getting beat up at all for just exercising their First Amendment rights.
KURTZ: And -- and he apparently suffered a brain hemorrhage and he's having trouble with certain memory functions. And it's just absolutely awful. The Democratic mayor of the city, Ted Wheeler, owes him apology. He supervises the police force. There hasn't been very much empathy.
But let me broaden this out. The Washington Post just wrote an op-ed piece by Stephanie Wilkinson. She owns the Virginia restaurant. She's the one who kicked out Sarah Huckabee-Sanders about a year ago for the sin of being President Trump's Press Secretary. She says in this piece, new rules apply. And in this administration, if you're directly complicit in spreading hate or perpetuating suffering, maybe you should consider dining at home. And the Post runs this and nobody cares. Are we in the new age of intolerance toward conservatives and Trump supporters?
TIMPF: I really absolutely think that we are. I think that people say it's synonymous to be a Republican and be a bad person, rather than oh, I disagree with you, it's oh, no, you're a bad person. They think that someone's political views make them good or bad. And they don't -- it's not left or right anymore. It's good and bad for a lot of these people. And with this Washington Post piece, the news hook that she sort of hung it on was Eric Trump getting spit on by a server, which we should all just say unequivocally is unacceptable.
KURTZ: Absolutely.
TIMPF: Yeah.
KURTZ: Any civilized person should say this kind of behavior is unacceptable, as it is toward Andy Ngo and some of these other incidents. Kat Timpf, I'm out of time, but thanks very much for joining us.
TIMPF: Thank you for having me.
KURTZ: Always good to see you.
Coming up, with the debate looming so large is the Democratic race, debate prep veteran Robert Barnett on how he advices candidates and whether the party is moving a bit too far left.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
KURTZ: Robert Barnett has been involved in debate prep for Democratic candidates for decades, often by portraying their opponents in mocked sessions. Bob is a longtime lawyer with the Washington firm of Williams and Connolly that represents many people in the media including me. I spoke to him earlier from Long Island.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
KURTZ: Robert Barnett, welcome.
ROBERT BARNETT, WILLIAMS AND CONNOLLY FIRM: Thank you, good to be with you.
KURTZ: If you were doing debate prep for Joe Biden, given his drop in the polls and given his style, what would you advise him to do in next debate to enable him to bounce back?
BARNETT: Well, I wouldn't be presumptuous enough to tell him what to do. And I think it would be important to be sharp, to be ready, to assume attacks again, and in the perfect world you'll have a couple moments you can deliver that will resonate, go viral, and kind of take back what happened in the first debate.
KURTZ: The conventional wisdom is that in multicandidate field, the attacker, the person who goes on offense can also suffer a backlash, but Kamala Harris is riding -- is riding a wave of positive press. Why do you think there hasn't been backlash against her?
BARNETT: There hasn't been much, but there has been some, I think.
KURTZ: Yeah.
BARNETT: I've read some commentary to the effect that it seemed that it was rehearsed and it was going to happen no matter what. I think that there's a skill to being able to deliver an attack to use your words. You have to do it carefully, you have to do it politely, you have to do it intellectually, and you have to do what Kamala Harris did brilliantly afterwards, which was make it very clear that she was not making an accusation about Joe Biden's inclinations with respect to race and that she had in fact, great respect for him.
KURTZ: Right. This is the most liberal Democratic field in decades. There's no question about it. You had 10 candidates raising their hand on the stage saying, you know, let's provide health coverage for undocumented or illegal immigrants. You have Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren among others for Medicare for All in a way that would eliminate private insurance. Even many of the mainstream media now are saying that some of these positions could be lethal in a general election campaign against President Trump.
BARNETT: What you're doing is hoping to be elected President, but you can't be elected President unless you get the nomination.
KURTZ: That's true.
BARNETT: And you can't get the nomination unless you got those caucus goers and primary voters voting in your favor. So you have to keep in mind the immediate audience, which is the activists because that's how you're going to get the nomination, but I have memory of spending hours and hours worrying about just what you described, which is the implications of statements made during the primaries with respect to the general election. It's a fine line, it's never done perfectly, and I think it's premature to make judgments about the general election implications quite yet. But what you have described is real.
KURTZ: Making -- making premature judgments is what the media do. It's our middle name. Now, you have been involved in debate preps going back to 1976. You have played George H.W. Bush, you played Dick Cheney, you played both Obama and Bernie in two different Hillary campaigns. Do you try to copy their speaking style at all and do you try to deliver harsher attacks than the real candidates might in an effort to prepare your candidate for the worse?
BARNETT: I absolutely don't try to imitate or act. I'm not that talented. I simply try to replicate their statements, their rhetoric, their policies. I prepare when I play the role of the Republican candidate. I prepare a briefing with as many as a hundred issues, and what the candidate, the Republican candidate has said about those.
I try to internalize them. I watch every day before the practices, every day before the debates to see if they've done any variance on their themes. And I try to do the best I can to replicate what will be said on the stage. My goal is very simple. I don't want my candidate to leave the stage the night of the debate having heard anything on that stage that he or she has not heard during the rehearsals. If I accomplish that, I've done my job.
KURTZ: All right. Well, I won't ask you to do your Bernie Sanders imitation because you said you will stay in character. Bob Barnett, thanks very much for sitting down with us.
BARNETT: Thanks, Howie.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KURTZ: But hold on. He added a postscript about when he played George 41 before the VP debate with Walter Mondale's running mate, Geraldine Ferraro.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BARNETT: I was pretty harsh on Gerry because it was good to be ready for that, even though George Herbert Walker Bush was a very gentle and professional man. And when I would go too far, she would literally walk over from her podium to mine and punch me in the arm. And I left those rehearsals with a black and blue arm. So physicality does enter this, Howie.
KURTZ: Duly noted.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KURTZ: Ouch. Still to come, Mad Magazine is going down for the count, a look at its enormous impact on the culture.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
KURTZ: Mad Magazine is folding after 67 years except for special occasional issues. And this is stunning news for those who grew up with its biting and sometimes silly satire. Mad had an enormous influence on generations of writers, producers, comedians, who learn today look at the world in a new and cockeyed way. Mad was run by the usual gang of idiots they said. And the magazine mocked everyone from Justin Bieber, Donald Trump from politics to pop culture.
You know, Mad recently popped into the news when Trump said that Pete Buttigieg looked like Mad's What Me Worry mascot, Alfred E. Neuman. The candidate was puzzled, he had to Google it.
Future generations will never know the twisty humor symbolized by that gap- toothed grinning icon. And you know, I have read Mad Magazine for years. All print magazines are having problems. But there's something that's just -- you know, it was so much part of the culture for so many years.
Well, that's it for this edition of "Media Buzz." I'm Howard Kurtz. Hey, check out my Podcast, Media Buzz Meter. We riffed on the day's five hottest stories. And you can subscribe at Apple iTunes, or Google Play, or FoxNewsPodcast.com.
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