Mulvaney remarks spark furor

close

Video

Mulvaney remarks spark furor

He retreats, blames media 'witch hunt.'

This is a rush transcript from "Media Buzz," October 20, 2019. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

HOWARD KURTZ, HOST: On Buzz Meter this Sunday, President Trump's chief of staff blames the media after he tells reporters there was a direct link between withholding military aid from Ukraine and insisting on a probe of whether the country meddled in the 2016 campaign.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MICK MULVANEY, DIRECTOR OF THE OFFICE OF MANAGEMENT AND BUDGET, ACTING WHITE HOUSE CHIEF OF STAFF: I have news for everybody: Get over it. There's going to be political influence in foreign policy.

RACHEL MADDOW, MSNBC HOST: That's it! That's why we held up the money. We held up the money to Ukrainians so the president could get this other thing that he wanted from Ukraine for his own political purposes.

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: The White House fully admits to a Ukraine quid pro quo then tries to take it back and blame us for getting it wrong.

ED HENRY, FOX NEWS HOST: He stood at the podium at the White House and connected the dots for Democrats and said you are darn right.

ANDERSON COOPER, CNN ANCHOR: So having made those disastrous remarks, he is now trying to unsay what he said.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KURTZ: Mick Mulvaney now says the press mangled his comments as part of a witch hunt. Does he have a case?

Donald Trump and Nancy Pelosi in a war of words as the media ramp up impeachment coverage and side with the speaker, who accuses the president of losing his composure.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ERIN BURNETT, CNN HOST: Trump's meltdown. Democrats are walking out of a meeting after the president rails against them.

DAVID AXELROD, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: I think he is losing it. I mean, I think he is feeling the pressure of this impeachment.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I think that the Democratic leaders actually look like petulant children saying, oh, he called me a third-rate politician.

SEAN HANNITY, FOX NEWS HOST: He called her a third-rate politician. Of course, the president is right. Her party's deranged, psychotic rage, obsessive, "hate Trump" agenda is all that matters in her world.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KURTZ: And as more diplomats testify about Trump and Rudy Giuliani on Ukraine, is the press downplaying republican charges of unfairness?

Hunter Biden sits down with ABC to try to neutralize the allegations against him, the interview airing hours before the democratic debate.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

AMY ROBACH, ABC TELEVISION PRESENTER: Do you regret being on the board to begin with?

HUNTER BIDEN, AMERICAN LAWYER, SON OF JOE BIDEN: What I regret is not taking into account that there would be a Rudy Giuliani and a president of the United States that would be listening to this ridiculous conspiracy idea.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KURTZ: Did CNN and New York Times moderators go easy on Joe Biden over those allegations? Plus, Ronan Farrow presses his case against NBC for spiking his Harvey Weinstein expose.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RONAN FARROW, JOURNALIST: This was a case where a news organization didn't behave journalistically. They have ordered us to stop, to not take so much as a call, and to cancel interviews in some cases with alleged rape victims.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KURTZ: And why, given his family history, this is, for him, a very personal mission. I'm Howard Kurtz and this is MEDIA BUZZ.

It was a rare briefing in the White House press room and Mick Mulvaney fielding questions on why President Trump withheld military aid to Ukraine stunned the media world with this admission about his boss.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MULVANEY: Did he also mention to me in the past the corruption related to the DNC server? Absolutely. No question about that. But that's it. That's why we held up the money.

JONATHAN KARL, ABC NEWS CHIEF WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: What you described is a quid pro quo. It is funding will not flow unless the investigation into the Democrat's server happened as well.

MULVANEY: We do that all the time with foreign policy.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KURTZ: But the acting chief of staff changed his tune in a statement just hours later. "The media has decided to misconstrue my comments to advance a biased and political witch hunt against President Trump." Let me be clear, there was absolutely no quid pro quo between Ukrainian military aid and any investigation into the 2016 election. He was defending himself this morning on Fox.

Joining us now to analyze the coverage are: Ben Domenech, founder and publisher of The Federalist; Sharyl Attkisson, host of Sinclair Sunday TV program "Full Measure"; and Ray Suarez, co-host of "World Affairs" on KQED and former correspondent for the PBS NewsHour.

Ben, so Mulvaney goes in the briefing room and says there was a connection between the military aid to Ukraine, between investigating 2016 including a DNC server that has never been proven. Does it wash for Mulvaney to then turn around and blame it on the press?

BEN DOMENECH, FOUNDER AND PUBLISHER, THE FEDERALIST: I think this was an example of one of those tried and true elements of Washington politics in media when you accidentally say the true thing. He read the soft part loud --

(LAUGHTER)

DOMENECH: -- in front of the media. I think that one thing we do need to make clear here is that historically we actually do make all sorts of demands and conditions when it comes to the aid that we send to other nations. We do so whether it's the grant-making process, whether it's things that have gone through the congressional process and others.

But the real core of this question is about the president doing that connected to his own political domestic experience here and wanting to get something out of Ukraine that would benefit him politically, not the broader concerns that have been existent across multiple administrations about the level of corruption that we've seen historically in Ukraine.

KURTZ: Sharyl, Ben anticipated my question to you, which is Mulvaney is right when he says the political (INAUDIBLE) has been part of foreign policy for a very long time. But it usually means -- (INAUDIBLE) -- using aid as leverage to advance American national interests. In this case, the criticism is, of course, that it was to advance the president's personal political interests.

SHARYL ATTKISSON, HOST, SINCLAIR TELEVISION GROUP: I think it depends on who you listen to once that statement was made, who you are talking about when you say they made incorrect conclusions depends on the analyst.

I do think some people made a leap that then claimed there had been an admission that President Trump wanted political dirt for 2020 on Joe Biden and that's what the aid holdup was about which is not --

KURTZ: Journalists (ph) said it was a confession.

ATTKISSON: Yes.

KURTZ: Yeah.

ATTKISSON: And that's not what was said with that statement.

KURTZ:

Mick Mulvaney is usually very smooth with reporters. He had to clean up this mess. He said media misconstrued and witch hunt. Can that work when there are TV cameras there and we're all able to replay the exchanges over and over?

RAY SUAREZ, HOST, KQED: If you're insisting that the thing you just heard me said is -- say is something I didn't say, you're playing a weak hand. And don't blame the sharks after you throw a couple of hundred pounds of chum in the water. This is what he did. And to come back now and say it's been misconstrued, it's plain. It's on video. It's on zeroes and ones. We don't use tape anymore.

But this is a problem when you get up there and say this thing that my side of the game has been saying we didn't do for weeks, we did it. Get over it. Get over it.

KURTZ: I'm sure some of the audience will appreciate your reference to journalists as sharks. On Fox News Sunday this morning, Mick Mulvaney said he didn't say it. Chris Wallace said he did. Here is the video tape. Mulvaney finally said I recognize I didn't speak very clearly, folks misinterpreted what I said.

And by the way, there are all these leaks now about, oh, President Trump is considering replacing him, this is what happens when you get in trouble.

Let me move on to the media going completely and totally bonkers, Sharyl, over Donald Trump's decision to hold next year's G-7 at the Doral Country Club near Miami, your home state, calling itself dealing. He has now pulled the plug. He actually put out a tweet saying that he was reversing his decision based on both media and Democrat crazed and irrational hostility. This was pretty widely condemned. So is it the press's fault?

ATTKISSON: A couple of things. Remember, President Trump has enemies within the Republican Party as the Democratic Party, so let me say both parties dislike a certain decision. There's more to it than just the fact that President Trump is obviously wrong. Sometimes maybe he is, but there's more to it.

But I do think there is a school of thought -- I'm not saying this is the case -- that President Trump knows how to throw hand grenades into the mix to get a discussion about something else going a certain way. And he knew that the media and the public's head would spin off its body once this was announced, and indeed it did.

KURTZ: He had to know. I think he thought he could ride out the storm and Mulvaney said this morning on Fox that the president was honestly surprised at the intensity of the backlash, but there you have it.

DOMENECH: It seems to me like this is something that would have been obvious. Anybody talking to the president about this idea, especially in the context of this political moment in which Republicans have been hammering at the idea of self-dealing on the part of potentially of Joe Biden and his son, it cuts totally against this narrative that Republicans have been attempting --

KURTZ: So let me ask you, Ben, on a sound bite here the other day, it seems like six weeks ago already, that President Trump met at the White house with the Democratic leaders. Nancy Pelosi and her colleagues walked out. Let's play some sound from the exchange that happened when the meeting was suddenly cut short.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. CHUCK SCHUMER (D-NY): He was insulting, particularly to the speaker. She kept her cool completely, but he called her a third-rate politician --

REP. NANCY PELOSI (D-CA): What was witnessed on the part of the president was a meltdown, sad to say.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KURTZ: And the president then tweeted a picture from the meeting with the headline, nervous Nancy's unhinged meltdown, so we have mutual meltdown accusations. And I wonder whether much in the media were quick to adopt the idea that the president had melted down as the Democrats claim.

DOMENECH: You know, are we supposed to be surprised that there's a bad relationship between the speaker of the House and the president that she is working now to impeach? I mean, come on. This is not something that should surprise us at this point.

And, frankly, you know, the degradation of this relationship has been a long time coming. I think this is just reaching a new low and it's going to continue to get worse. The process of impeachment is going to lead to a totally toxic atmosphere not just between them but between all Republicans and Democrats, and not just in Washington.

KURTZ: There's a media narrative from all the armchair psychologists out there that Trump is losing it and he is under great stress. If that is true -- I'm not certainly adopting the meltdown language, we weren't actually in the meeting -- he is under sort of daily assault from the media over impeachment, over Syria, it's kind of a two-front war, actually a three- front war briefly when you consider the Doral Country Club business.

SUAREZ: Look, the inner state of President Trump, that's armchair ridiculousness. And apart from his doctor, which he doesn't have one, I don't think, who knows?

KURTZ: Yeah.

SUAREZ: And writing stories about this with this as the core content of the story, it is watch what he does, not what he says and what effect it has on issues. That's the way to cover this.

KURTZ: Yeah.

ATTKISSON: I think like so many things, this is a Rorschach test. What you see out of the news coverage of everything that's happening --

KURTZ: Let us put that picture up while you're talking so we can see something that actually has been called a Rorschach test. Go ahead.

ATTKISSON: Yes. So what you see is either Nancy Pelosi standing up doing the right thing, if you're a Pelosi fan, taking on President Trump, or you see the opposite here being an appropriate President Trump doing the right thing and she is having the meltdown. My point is when you operate a DEFCON 10 for two years --

KURTZ: Yeah.

ATTKISSON: -- and then you -- there is nowhere to go from there as you try to escalate the level, perhaps Trump's opponents, higher than 10. When the scale is 1-10, you've left yourself nowhere to go.

KURTZ: Yeah. I think the frustrating thing is that the country's leaders can't even have a civil meeting about Syria, that was the topic of the meeting, without it degenerating into -- certainly, there were some insults and mutual charges of meltdown.

So let us talk a little bit about the impeachment coverage. Ben, this week, we had testimony where John Bolton was quoted by another diplomat as having called Rudy Giuliani a hand grenade when it came to Ukraine. Ambassador Gordon Sondland, who was Trump's guy and was defending him, told the House he was disappointed when Trump told him to work with Giuliani on Ukraine.

His own people have caused the president some damage. But what about republican complaints that the Democrats are doing all this behind closed doors, confidential, and then leaking out selected tidbits to make the other side look bad?

DOMENECH: I think this is a valid complaint. If -- the conventional wisdom in Washington today is that we are going to see impeachment possibly by Thanksgiving, certainly by Christmas, that it's going to progress forward, and yet all of this stuff still happening behind closed doors with selective leaks. I don't --

KURTZ: Which, of course, the media are happy to gobble up.

DOMENECH: They are happy to gobble it up, but it's really unfair to the American people. And one of the things that we're seeing right now, obviously, in polled evidence is that the impeachment number is settling around the same number of whether you approve of the president or not.

That's something that I think if Democrats really wanted to change that, if they wanted to see that shift in a way that would favor impeachment, they need to come forward with this stuff. They need to be able to be more transparent, have these conversations in public.

And frankly, they're not talking about evidence -- there's no evidence that they're talking about things that need to be classified, that need to be behind closed doors.

KURTZ: Right.

DOMENECH: The American people ought to be able to judge this for themselves and not just rely on these selective leaks.

KURTZ: These are not nuclear secrets. Ray, the press is calling this a shadow foreign policy, Rudy on behalf of the president. Is that fair? Presidents have used private envoys in other cases. This case, of course, is different because Giuliani himself is now reported to be under investigation and his business associates have been arrested for not related to but helping him in Ukraine.

SUAREZ: This is not a guy from some white shoe law firm that you dispatch from the Oval Office. This is a guy who's been trolling the former Soviet Union and the some Warsaw Pact nations for years, picking up clients, doing deals, signing huge consultancy contracts. He is not just some lawyer.

KURTZ: So you think the media criticism is fair?

SUAREZ: He was freelancing foreign policy for the president, a president who had an ambassador in Kiev and who has a foreign policy team whose advice he routinely ignores.

KURTZ: He did replace the ambassador in Kiev and that is sort part of this whole narrative. Now, before we go to break, ABC's world news tonight and GMA were reporting on Turkish airstrikes in Syria when they ran this report.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TOM LLAMAS, ABC ANCHOR: One week since President Trump ordered U.S. forces out of that region, effectively abandoning America's allies in the fight against ISIS, this video right here appearing to show Turkey's military bombing Kurd civilians in a Syrian border town.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KURTZ: But that was old video actually taken from a Kentucky gun range from a couple of years ago. ABC ran an online correction, saying it regrets the error. President Trump said the network got caught using really gruesome fake footage, a real disgrace. I can't disagree. How on earth did this happen?

When we come back, the president hails a ceasefire in Syria as a victory, but the media say that's way off base. And later, Dana Perino on her exclusive sit-down with Mark Zuckerberg.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KURTZ: The headlines called it a turning point as two-thirds of House Republican joined in passing a resolution disapproving President Trump's troop pullout in Northern Syria. But as the region has been thrown into bloody chaos, the president has doggedly defended his decision.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I'm not going to get involved in a war between Turkey and Syria, especially when -- if you look at the Kurds. And, again, I say this with great respect, they're no angels.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KURTZ: After brokering a shaky and temporary ceasefire with Turkey, Trump proclaimed a victory for civilization.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: This is an amazing outcome. This is an outcome regardless of how the press would like to damp it down. This was something that they've been trying to get for 10 years. You would have lost millions and millions of lives.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KURTZ: Sharyl, we have the president saying this is a great victory, amazing outcome, saying the Kurds are happy. But reporting from the region says tens of thousands of Kurdish soldiers and others are fleeing this now Turkish-controlled zone in Syria with no place to go. So, is this the press trying to damp down the president's achievement?

ATTKISSON: This is an important point. I, unlike almost every reporter, journalists and analysts I've heard the past couple of weeks, am not a geopolitical expert with the complex knowledge to comment on what's right between Syria and the Kurds.

KURTZ: Right.

ATTKISSON: But I have found very dearth of variety of opinions about the topic. I recently spoke to a former Obama ambassador to the Mideast region, who told me things that just I haven't heard anybody say on television, such as he was shocked anybody is surprised.

He said -- this was an Obama guy, by the way -- that President Trump has consistently spoken since 2016 of his desire to do this and that the message on the ground was supposed to be that we were going to do this.

And this diplomat heard that Trump's own people are -- administration people were delivering the opposite message on the ground, telling people we were going to stay there. There are some serious problems with that that are bigger than what we're looking at when you hear 99.9 percent --

KURTZ: Yeah.

ATTKISSON: -- of analysts in one direction.

KURTZ: Interesting perspective. But it is true, Ben, that on the right, majority of conservative journalists, commentators have hit the president pretty hard on Syria, not to mention Republicans on the hill. Mitch McConnell has an op-ed in The Washington Post. It doesn't mention Trump's name, grave mistake, makes America less safe. So it is not the usual left and right divide on Syria.

DOMENECH: The Republicans in Congress and, frankly, the commentator set that you see in the news are not representative of Republican voter opinion or necessarily of American opinions regarding this.

Look, you know, this is a difficult situation. You're caught between a NATO ally and Turkey, a treaty ally, and a military ally and the Kurds who are frankly stateless people who are occupying other areas of land within dispute. You're caught between a lot of different moving parts.

And yet the opinion on this all generally that you see going in one direction. And I find that to be really troubling in this day and age that we haven't taken a step back from the last two decades of activity in the Middle East, which clearly the American people have soured on and maybe injected some additional opinions into the mix, opinions that would be more representative of what we see from American people and less just the conventional approach that Washington Republicans have had for years.

KURTZ: I think that's a fair point, Ray. And while the media say the ceasefire which both sides are accusing each other of violating, you can't really call it an accomplishment because the consensus again in the press is that the president is trying to repair the damage that he caused by effectively giving Erdogan a green light to do this invasion.

But much of the mainstream media (INAUDIBLE) tend to be pro-military action. We certainly saw this in Iraq. Your take?

SUAREZ: The Kurds have been reliable allies when their goals are in sync with that of the United States. So in Western Iraq, they created a peaceful, decent operating zone without the kind of mayhem that was going on in Baghdad and in the areas controlled by Shia militias.

And they had a lot of support on Capitol Hill. Men like Mahmud Barzanji would come to Washington and go to all the think tanks. They had a lot of hooks in D.C.

KURTZ: But now?

SUAREZ: Look, a similar thing was happening in Northeastern Syria. It was pacified. It was operative. Schools were opening. People were eating three meals a day.

KURTZ: Right.

SUAREZ: So, kicking down this house of cards, no. The situation in Syria could not have gone on forever the way it was two weeks ago, but this ending was not what anybody on either side of the foreign policy establishment in D.C. wanted.

KURTZ: And just briefly, Sharyl, I mean, what gets far less anticipation from the media is that Donald Trump ran against endless wars, that he doesn't want American troops to be a buffer between Turkey and Syria or in other places, and that's probably a populist stance with many if not with a pundit class.

ATTKISSON: I think it is. You're hearing from, as we pointed out, a lot of establishment figures. Sometimes it's not a whole lot of difference on some issues between Republicans and Democrats when you're talking about establishment figures.

And there's also not a lot of context given to the notion that in some instances, maybe not a lot of them, there are financial interests in play. There are military contractors I can tell you and military-connected people that are really fighting this supposed potential pullout in Afghanistan. So there's more context.

SUAREZ: Very quickly, that endless wars thing, those American troops who are being pulled out of Syria, where are they going, Iraq and Saudi Arabia. They're not coming home.

KURTZ: It's a complicated geopolitical puzzle. Great discussion. Ray Suarez, Sharyl Attkisson, Ben Domenech, great to see you all this Sunday.

Ahead, Hunter Biden talks Ukraine with "Good Morning, America." Did that diffuse the criticism of his father? But up next, why a violent video showing Donald Trump gunning down his media and political detractors is anything but a satire.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KURTZ: I'm buzzed off about that video shown at a pro-Trump conference depicting a Trump character murdering and attacking political opponents and media outlets. It's beyond sickening. These included CNN, CBS, NBC, NPR, PBS, The Washington Post and Politico along with Mitt Romney, the Clintons, Adam Schiff, Rosie O'Donnell, and the late Joh McCain.

After all, press secretary Stephanie Grisham said the president hadn't seen the video but condemned it. End of debate, right? Of course, some liberal commentators are not buying Trump's explanation and some anger on the right, as well.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LAWRENCE O'DONNELL, MSNBC HOST: What are the chances Donald Trump has not seen that video? That is code language for his followers to understand that he really doesn't condemn the video, when he tells them he's condemning the video without having seen it --

MEGHAN MCCAIN, DAUGHTER OF JOHN MCCAIN: How easy for all of you judging me that I'm offended and upset by the video. You try doing this when a member of your family it's continued to have this happen over and over and over again.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KURTZ: Meghan McCain. But a few pundits on the right said the video was harmless and that after years of Hollywood and media demonizing right wingers as crazy, this was payback for the taunting of conservatives.

So let me get to the part about how two wrongs don't make a right. When Kathy Griffin who's also in this video staged a spectacle with a severed Trump-like head, I denounced her. When Shakespeare in Central Park staged a play in which a Trump-like figure is killed, I denounced that, too.

Now, the video shown at the American Prosperity (ph) Conference at Trump's Miami Golf Club was created and promoted by conservative online provocateurs with ties to the White House, one said it was clearly satirical.

Here's the thing: Trump, the video character, opened fire in a church, a fake news. There were pews there. Sorry, but when we've all lived through a church massacre in South Carolina and a synagogue massacre in Pittsburgh, I don't see the satire.

Lawyers for the Trump campaign have sent CNN a letter threatening to sue the network for what it calls a sustained barrage of unfair, unfounded, unethical and lawful attacks.

CNN says this is nothing more than a desperate PR stunt and doesn't merit a response. Such a lawsuit against a public figure without showing reckless mistakes would face heavy odds if, indeed, it's ever filed.

Ahead, Ronan Farrow in increasingly bitter dispute about NBC spiking his story. Who is winning that argument? But first, how did CNN and The New York Times handle Joe Biden and the others at the democratic debate.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KURTZ: Everyone knew that Joe Biden would finally face questions about his son making big bucks from the Ukrainian gas giant at the CNN/New York Times debate, so to blunt the impact, Hunter Biden agreed to a Good Morning interview that just happened to air the morning of the debate.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

AMY ROBACH, CO-ANCHOR, ABC: You never -- it never -- you never thought this might not look right?

HUNTER BIDEN, JOE BIDEN'S SON: You know what? I'm a human. And you know what, did I make a mistake, well, maybe in the grand scheme of things, yes. But did I make a mistake based upon some unethical lapse? Absolutely not.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KURTZ: That night in Ohio, here's how CNN anchor Anderson Cooper framed the question.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ANDERSON COOPER, CNN ANCHOR: President Trump has falsely accused your son of doing something wrong while serving on a company board in Ukraine. I want to point out there's no evidence of wrongdoing by either one of you. If it's not OK for a president's family to be involved in a foreign business, why was it OK for your son when you were vice president? Vice President Biden?

JOE BIDEN (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Look, my son did nothing wrong, I did nothing wrong. My son's statement speaks for himself. He spoke about it today.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KURTZ: Joining us now to analyze the coverage in New York, Buck Sexton, a radio talk show host, and here in the Washington, Mara Liasson, national political reporter for NPR and a Fox News contributor.

So, Buck Sexton, what do you make of Anderson Cooper declaring in advance the president was making false accusations and that Biden and his son had done nothing wrong? Why not Biden make that case?

BUCK SEXTON, RADIO HOST AND FORMER CIA ANALYST: It wasn't a good moment at all for Anderson Cooper. If you think he's an objective journalist, I don't, so it didn't surprise me.

But, look, the fact of the matter is that you could make the case that there's nothing criminal in what we already know Hunter Biden did. But Hunter Biden has admitted that he messed up. So, to say there was no wrong here, there was no wrongdoing is just not in keeping with the facts.

And I think that's where you see CNN trying to help effectively make this go away with for the person who's the Democrat front-runner still which that, I do actually find surprising. But Hunter Biden took this job, or got this job, I should say, knowing that it's because of who his father was.

The same thing with the job he got in China which, by the way, he just stepped down from that board. And for the media to try to make this go away on behalf of Hunter Biden just adds to the narrative that they're playing favorites and that any resistance era they're not trying to be neutral parties, which I don't think they are.

KURTZ: All right. Well, fine to say no criminal wrongdoing, but --

(CROSSTALK)

MARA LIASSON, FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR: Yes, he probably should have said that.

KURTZ: Yes. Hunter Biden's appearance, at GMA was obviously timed.

LIASSON: Yes.

KURTZ: But various journalist have pointed out is, here you have the former vice president praising Hunter's judgment. But Hunter told ABC's Amy Robach he'd been guilty of poor judgment, he probably made a mistake in taking the Ukraine job, and he gave ammo to his father's opponents.

So here you have Joe Biden pointing to his son, but his son was willing to admit some screw-ups.

LIASSON: Yes. Look, the question that Anderson Cooper asked Biden, which is if you don't like this president's children benefiting, you know, Ivanka Trump got all sorts of trademarks from China while she's been in the White House, why is it, why was it OK for Hunter to do that when Joe Biden was vice president.

(CROSSTALK)

KURTZ: That was a good question.

LIASSON: That was a good question which Biden did not answer. Now, that is the legitimate question. The appearance of impropriety. Put aside any criminality for which there is no evidence at this point, and I don't think Biden answered the question.

But also, none of the other candidates pressed that. None of them -

KURTZ: Yes.

LIASSON: -- including the anti-corruption candidate Elizabeth Warren.

KURTZ: Yes. There was deafening silence.

LIASSON: Yes.

KURTZ: Now, The Washington Post, Buck, reported the other day that diplomat George Kent testified that he raised concerns about Hunter Biden's Ukraine job back in 2015 and was brushed off by a Biden staffer. Now Fox covered this a lot.

MSNBC, which usually loves Washington Post stories, covered it the next day twice that we could find, two sentences in one instance, one question to a congressman and another. Doesn't fit the narrative, perhaps?

SEXTON: I think that's absolutely the problem here for them. Look, anybody that is paying attention to this knows that Hunter Biden, with no expertise in natural gas, with no expertise in Ukraine, while his father is the point man on foreign policy there, had to know in advance, OK, he had to know that this looked really bad and really gross.

Apparently, there was this quick exchange with Joe Biden where he said, you know, I hope you know what you're doing. Yes, I think he knew what he was doing. He was cashing in on who his father was at the time.

And I just think that from the media perspective we went through this whole charade when Hillary Clinton was running in 2016 that some of the stuff with the Clinton Foundation didn't look -- again, there's a difference between ethical and what's illegal -- it didn't look preposterous.

Bill Clinton getting these checks from different foreign entities while he's supposed to be running a charity, and then the donations completely collapsed in 2016.

So those of us that were very skeptical, this was just the charity not influence peddling.

KURTZ: Right.

SEXTON: Now but this time around they're doing the same thing.

KURTZ: Let me --

(CROSSTALK)

SEXTON: They're pretending, Hunter Biden, nobody could have known. Everybody knew.

KURTZ: All right. Let me jump in because we're short on time. I want to play another sound bite from the debate. Marc Lacey of the New York Times pressing Elizabeth Warren on the cost of her healthcare plan.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MARC LACEY, NATIONAL EDITOR, THE NEW YORK TIMES: Will you raise taxes on the middle class for pay -- to pay for it, yes or no?

MAYOR PETE BUTTIGIEG (D-FL), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Straightforward, yes.

(CROSSTALK)

LACEY: Senator Warren, would you acknowledge what the senator just said about taxes going up?

SEN. ELIZABETH WARREN (D-MA), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: So, my view on this and what I have committed to is costs will go down for hardworking middle- class families.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KURTZ: Marc Lacey tried three times to get an answer --

(CROSSTALK)

LIASSON: Three times. And when he said what the senator just said, he was referring to Bernie Sanders

KURTZ: To Bernie.

LIASSON: -- who had just --

(CROSSTALK)

KURTZ: Who wrote the damn bill.

LIASSON: He wrote the bill that she supports.

KURTZ: Right.

LIASSON: Because she says I'm with Bernie on healthcare who had just helpfully or maybe not just reminded everyone that his plan does raise taxes for the middleclass.

KURTZ: Right.

LIASSON: And don't kid yourself. He did that to undercut her.

KURTZ: Well, I give the reporter credit for trying. Amy Klobuchar, it was left to her to bring up, hey, this would throw 150 million Americans off a private insurance.

LIASSON: Right.

KURTZ: I don't understand why journalists don't press her more on that.

LIASSON: I think she's being pressed. She is now the frontrunner or the co-frontrunner, she's coming under the kind of scrutiny that she hasn't up until now.

KURTZ: She took a lot of flak. Is that -- and the pundits were really unanimous saying well, Elizabeth Warren is now the frontrunner because she got the most attacks. Joe Biden did not. Does it really matter given that the within hours we were back to covering impeachment and Syria and the Doral country club. And the debate kind of vanished from the airwaves?

LIASSON: Does the debate matter? Yes. Look, these debates are like one step at a time. There's still four months to go. Dynamic is shifting slowly. Now all of a sudden, the other candidates ignoring Joe Biden, focusing on Elizabeth Warren.

KURTZ: Sure.

LIASSON: That's going to get more and more intensive as time goes on.

KURTZ: The ratings went down for this debate.

LIASSON: Yes.

KURTZ: Buck, last question, I've got about half a minute. So, I thought the moderators on which included Anderson were fine, but most of the questions seemed to be from the left. Should buybacks take guns off the street, should we pack the Supreme Court to protect abortion, and then everybody got to beat up on Trump over impeachment. Your thought.

SEXTON: Yes. I just think that they're going to have to be careful with this because if they try to go back to the center, things like having every Democrat raise their hand in an earlier debate when they said that they would pay for healthcare for illegals.

These far-left positions they appeal to the base, they think they appeal to CNN's audience. They may raise issues for them though when they have to actually get undecided voters, moderates, independents to vote for down the line.

KURTZ: Yes.

SEXTON: Right now, it's ratings-driven, Howie.

KURTZ: Right. Well, that's primary versus general action. Great discussion. Buck Sexton, Mara Liasson, nice to see you.

After the break, Ronan Farrow tells Fox that NBC didn't act journalistically in killing his Harvey Weinstein expose. The network calls that a smear. That's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KURTZ: Ronan Farrow is pushing back hard against NBC's accusation that his book is a smear. The book "Catch and Kill" details how the network caved to pressure from Harvey Weinstein in Farrow's view, in killing his expose of the Hollywood mogul sexual misconduct.

In an interview with Bret Baier, he talked about growing up as the son of Woody Allen who was accused of abusing Ronan's sister though the director has always denied that, and how that may have affected his work on sexual harassment.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RONAN FARROW, AUTHOR, CATCH AND KILL: I very openly discuss in this book how I myself struggled with this painful part of my history, how it was weaponized against me by people like Harvey Weinstein who treated to things like legal threat letters. You know, his sister was sexually assaulted, so he can't report on these stories objectively.

That is not the case. It's not what any journalist has thought. What is the case is that, I cared about this issue profoundly.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KURTZ: Joining us now from New York, Kat Timpf, a National Review writer and Fox News contributor. And I had always wondered whether Ronan Farrow's background had kind of propelled him toward this crusade crusading investigative work on sexual misconduct.

It was bracing to hear him say that Harvey Weinstein and others have used it against him in an attempt to discredit him. He's pretty candid.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KAT TIMPF, FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR: Absolutely. And I think that's something that's totally unfair because the truth is these are the things that are more pervasive than many people realize because people don't talk about them.

They don't talk about them for many reasons, because they're uncomfortable, they could be afraid of not being believed or, in some cases, people have signed NDAs and they can't talk about it even if they want to talk about it.

So, it was disqualifying being close to someone who's been sexually assaulted or sexually harassed in the workplace, if that disqualified you from reporting on these issues, then no one would ever be able to report on them.

KURTZ: That's a really good point. Now, Farrow's responses to Bret seemed to me very measured. He rather just announcing NBC. He said he included NBC's side, had Matt Lauer's side in his book and Hillary Clinton's side.

You know, he'd worked for her at the State Department and after reporting that it felt like a gut punch that Hillary Clinton's people tried to pressure him to stand down against Weinstein who, of course, was one of her big donors.

How do you think he's coming off in this sort of war of words against NBC?

TIMPF: I think that the revelation that powerful men have structural protection if they decide to use their power to abuse women, for a lot of people that's not really a revelation at all. It's more like an expose on the sky being blue.

I think people see this and they, you know, may have experienced something similar in the workplace or they know someone who has experienced something similar in the workplace.

And again, because of NDAs. I think one of the issues with NDAs is that it actually prevents the people who know the most about this issue, unfortunately knowing about it because they've been through it, from being able to speak about it.

So, I think that there's a lot missing from the conversation. I think these things are shocking because they're being talked about, but they're not really as shocking as many people might think.

KURTZ: Well, that leads to my next question which is NBC News president Noah Oppenheim insists he and other executives they had no prior knowledge of allegations against Matt Lauer who denied the latest accusation of rape, but Ronan comes back and says, well, there were secret settlements, over half dozen years. Some of them with Lauer accusers.

And NBC has been vague about this saying, well, they're just the severance agreements but we don't know like how much money was paid out to these women.

And unlike when similar -- when Fox News and CBS and other media analysts grappled with similar problems with misconduct by executives and others here and there, there's been no outside investigation by NBC.

TIMPF: Right, absolutely. So, we're supposed to trust NBC saying that NBC didn't do anything wrong. I don't think that that applies in any situation. I mean, when people do things that are wrong often times they'll say, not me, I didn't do that. And that's why you do need an outside investigation.

I think that if NBC really didn't know, then why not vindicate itself with that outside investigation? But the fact that there's never been one speaks volumes.

KURTZ: All right. Kat, just a quick answer on this. Does Farrow's criticism of NBC sting because the network has never been able to convincingly explain why it abandoned the story two years ago that kicked off the Me Too era.

TIMPF: Yes, absolutely. And it's not doing a good job of explaining it now either. It's really just kind of a blanket denial, no explanation. And, again, independent investigation necessary.

KURTZ: All right. On that note, great discussion, thank you so much, Kat Timpf. Good to see you.

TIMPF: You too.

KURTZ: Still to come, why is Facebook refusing to police live political ads? Dana Perino on her conversation with the Facebook chief in just a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KURTZ: Mark Zuckerberg has been having small, off-the-record dinners with conservative journalists and pundits to counter criticism that Facebook discriminates against the right.

Politico says the guests have included author Ben Shapiro, Fox host Tucker Carlson, Fox News contributors Guy Benson and Byron York, CNN's Mary Katharine Ham, and MSNBC's Hugh Hewitt.

In an exclusive Fox interview, Dana Perino asked Zuckerberg whether Silicon Valley is biased against conservatives.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MARK ZUCKERBERG, CEO, FACEBOOK: Look, I mean, California is an overwhelmingly left-leaning place, so, you know, I understand why people would ask the question are my ideas getting a fair shake. And all that I can say on this is this is something I care deeply about.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KURTZ: I spoke earlier to the host of the Daily Briefing and co-host of The Five from New York. Dana Perino, welcome.

DANA PERINO, FOX NEWS CO-HOST: Thanks for having me.

KURTZ: Facebook has occasionally had to apologized for selective punishment against conservatives. Do you have the sense that Mark Zuckerberg is deeply concerned about bias or is he doing a sort of charm offensive that includes Fox?

PERINO: I think that every morning Mark Zuckerberg wakes up, and he has so many problems that he has to deal with, and the perception that the company is biased against conservatives has certainly been something that he had to deal with.

You know, back in 2016, you know, one of the things he talks about is part of the response, the dealing with the perceived bias against conservatives was they changed out the whole news tab. And it cost them $100 billion in one day. And he said it was worth it because they really needed to make a change. Sometimes that is a problem.

I do think that he takes it very seriously because he knows that a lot of conservatives are on Facebook and --

KURTZ: Yes.

PERINO: -- are actually doing quite well on Facebook. A great example is our commander in chief, President Trump.

KURTZ: Well, Facebook has decided not to police the content of political ads which has drawn a lot of criticism from Democrats about certain Trump ads. You asked Zuckerberg about this. Let's take a look.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ZUCKERBERG: Look, I just think that in a democracy it's important for people to see for themselves what politicians are saying. And, you know, political speeches is one of the most scrutinized speech that is out there. So that's already happening.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KURTZ: So, I know it's a murky area, but how does a tech company decide that it will allow content that might be filled with lies by either side and then Zuckerberg just kind of throws up his hands and says, free speech, you guys figure it out?

PERINO: So, which means he doesn't have any rules. You had and maybe there should be some, and I think that you'll see a debate about that going forward.

But about a month ago, Facebook put out a policy that said we are going to take a stand and make a policy that politicians should be able to put out their information and that we are not going to decide what is true and what is false.

Now, that has upset some on the left, in particular Senator Warren being the leading --

KURTZ: Yes.

PERINO: -- charge on this which is to say how can you in good conscience, Mark Zuckerberg.

KURTZ: Right.

PERINO: Put up an ad that you know is false. Now this is what I would say to that --

(CROSSTALK)

KURTZ: I think it's a -- I think it's a mistake for a company that has taken so much heat for allowing misinformation and propaganda in its news feed, but your thoughts?

PERINO: Well, again though, but who do you want policing what is truth or not? So, for example, are they going to get into a situation where every time Senator Warren puts out an ad about Medicare for all and she describes how she would pay for it and let's say somebody from the Trump campaign says that's not true, you should take that ad down, I mean, this would be a never ending saga.

And I think what Mark Zuckerberg is saying is let's take a step back. Bigger picture. Is America for free speech? Is that one of our greatest values?

KURTZ: Now Zuckerberg was caught on a leaked audiotape for saying that if Elizabeth Warren was president that would, quote, "suck." But can you really blame him for wanting to protect this company from being broken up which is the position that the senator and others take?

PERINO: Well, I think anybody who has a company doesn't want it to be broken up, they don't want to be called a monopoly and they will try to make arguments against it. Mark Zuckerberg says he absolutely will try to do that.

I think for some people you'd think, well, why would you break up Facebook? Like, are a hundred more Facebooks is that going to be better? is that going to be better for competition? Possibly. But I think they're going to have a really hard time making that argument unless President Trump decides to get behind it because there could be bipartisan support for it.

KURTZ: It seems to me be penalizing success. But finally, and just briefly, how did you get this interview with Mark Zuckerberg?

PERINO: I had an opportunity to participate in some of this media outreach that Mark Zuckerberg had been doing behind closed doors which is, basically, open up to -- you know, basically open up to people a little bit. You don't see him very often. It's not his natural habitat. He's very polite. He is so thoughtful. He is a genius.

But going out and doing media interviews is not something that he likes to do, so we really appreciated that he gave Fox News an exclusive interview and so much time in order to ask him lots of -- lots of different questions.

KURTZ: Fascinating conversation. Dana Perino, thanks very much for joining us.

PERINO: Thanks, Howie.

KURTZ: Well, that's it for us. I'm Howard Kurtz. I hope you'll subscribe to my podcast "Media Buzz Meter," you can subscribe at Apple iTunes, Google Play or foxnewspodcast.com.

Now, just a personal note, I was here late the other night covering the Democratic debate going on the air, but I had another TV going, and it had the Washington Nationals game. And I was watching as the Nats beat the Cardinals to get into the World Series, and I got to say, at times the game packed a lot more punch than the three-hour CNN debate. I kept turning off the sound, turning on the sound. Don't tell anybody.

But the reason this is such a big deal when I moved to D.C., there was no baseball team. There was no baseball team here for 33 years. The last time there was a Washington franchise in the World Series, 1933. You know who threw out the first ball? FDR.

So, it's been a long time coming and I was watching Chris Wallace's show "Fox News Sunday," and he had a special guest come out. You see Teddy Roosevelt; he is one of the four presidents who make the rounds at the Nationals game. So, World Series fever here at the nation's capital. Forget about all this other stuff.

I'll be back here next Sunday morning. We hope you'll join us 11 Eastern. See you then with the latest Buzz.

Content and Programming Copyright 2019 Fox News Network, LLC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Copyright 2019 CQ-Roll Call, Inc. All materials herein are protected by United States copyright law and may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, displayed, published or broadcast without the prior written permission of CQ-Roll Call. You may not alter or remove any trademark, copyright or other notice from copies of the content.