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Twitter again censors Trump

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Nov. 8, 2020 – This is a rush transcript from “Media Buzz” November 8, 2020. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

HOWARD KURTZ, FOX NEWS ANCHOR:  This is MEDIA BUZZ. I'm Howard Kurtz. In the end, it is Donald Trump versus the media yet again. After four long days, all networks projecting yesterday that Joe Biden will win Pennsylvania and with it the election. And the president quickly challenged the media verdict. Quote, "we all know why Joe Biden is rushing to falsely pose as the winner and why his media allies are trying so hard to help him.

They don't want the truth to be exposed. The simple fact is this election is far from over." The race was much closer than the media expected. But Biden ceased upon the network calls last night to claim victory.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE BIDEN (D) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE:  I'm humbled by the trust and confidence you placed in me. I pledge to be a president who seeks not to divide, but unify.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KURTZ:  All this followed a telling moment when the president made unproven allegations of election fraud from the White House, and four networks, CBS, ABC, NBC, and MSNBC, broke away.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, United States PRESIDENT:  If you count the legal votes, I easily win. If you count the illegal votes, they can try to steal the election from us.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE:  We have to interrupt here because the president has made a number of false statements.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE:  And here we are in the unusual position of not only interrupting the president of the United States but correcting the president of the United States. There are no illegal votes that we know of.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE:  W0hat a sad night for the United States of America to hear their president say that to falsely accuse people of trying to steal election, to try to attack democracy that way with this feast of falsehoods.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE:  An attempt to suppress information just like, well, big tech institutions. The corrupt media mob, they cut away from the president speaking so that their own idiotic pundits could trash him.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KURTZ:  Joining us now to analyze the coverage, Mollie Hemingway senior editor at f The Federalist and a Fox News contributor, in New York, Jedediah Bila, co-host of Fox and Friends Weekend, and Ray Suarez, Washington correspondent for EuroNews and host of KQED's WorldAffairs.

Mollie, president of the United States says the media are helping Joe Biden claim a victory he hasn't yet won.

Now, of course, the votes have to be certified by the states. The networks did their mathematical calculations and said Biden will win Pennsylvania in the end. Do you think the president's efforts to cast this as fake news are working?

MOLLIE HEMINGWAY, FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR:  Well, the media clearly are doing everything in their power to help their candidate, who is Joe Biden, be able to claim that he won this election. And they are doing that in part by how they make calls about different states. So even though Pennsylvania has,, like a 100,000 provisional ballots, outstanding and a bunch of mail- in ballots outstanding, far more outstanding ballots than there in North Carolina.

The media are not calling North Carolina because that's a state Trump is ahead in, but they do call Pennsylvania even before the counting is done.

The thing is that the media used to have a position of trust where they could say this is going to happen and people would generally trust it. The media because of how they've behaved for the last four years where every single thing they've done more or less has been done to hurt Donald Trump and his supporters.

To lie about Donald Trump and his supporters, to create false narratives about who is going to win an election or whether there's Russia collusion or whether Bret Kavanaugh is a serial gang rapist. Pretty much everything that 71 million Trump supporters have seen four the last four years has been fraudulent, false, or corrupt.

So even though the media would like to be able to say that if they say someone has won the election that it's over, that doesn't actually mean the votes are no longer being counted or that there aren't legitimate legal challenges or that this is over. So that's just the problem that the media have. And they've made that decision to lose all credibility through their own behavior.

KURTZ:  I don't question your point on credibility. I would note that Fox obviously has made these calls as well. You know, just a quick point here, people -- critics like to say Fox is partisan. MSNBC yesterday, all day was all liberal anchors and Democratic (Inaudible) celebrating what they see as the Biden victory.

Fox and CNN had news anchors in charge. In fact, Karl Rove last night on Fox praised Biden's speech as pitch perfect. Jedediah, it was four years ago that Fox and the other networks projected that Donald Trump have won the election. That's how this works. The president tweeting this morning.

It's already been flagged by Twitter.

This was a stolen election. And you pressed Newt Gingrich this morning about is there's evidence for these claims of widespread fraud.

JEDEDIAH BILA, FOX AND FRIENDS WEEKEND HOST:  Yeah. And you know, I just don't think that these decision desks are on some kind of mission to declare certain states versus others for partisan regions. I don't believe that about our decision desk. I don't believe that about the other decision desks. They have a job to do. And they're looking at the returns coming in.

And I think they have done their job quite well, particularly at Fox News.

I was really impressed by a lot of the work they did, not just this year but every year. And I did press that issue, because I think that to come out and say that there is voter fraud, of course, there is a certain degree of voter fraud in every election.

We know that. That's an unfortunate reality. I wish it didn't exist but it happens. But to (AUDIO GAP) about an election being stolen or an election rigged, that can be a dangerous statement. That can really rile people up.

I haven't seen any evidence of that as of yet. Now, of course, these things are in litigations. Some of them have been thrown out.

Some of them are still being considered. Who knows? Maybe it will come up that there is widespread voter fraud, but it would have to be enough voter fraud to change the outcome of the election. I'm not seeing as of yet. And you don't want an electorate that doesn't have faith in the system. You have to have faith in the democratic process. You have to --

(CROSSTALK)

KURTZ:  Ray, does it seem a little odd that a handful of network decision desks and the AP are able to make this declaration and the entire world now recognizes Joe Biden as the president-elect, and the Biden himself whose campaign was pressing CNN and others to make this call, wouldn't give his victory speech until he had that media certification?

RAY SUAREZ, WORLDAFFAIRS PODCAST HOST:  Well, look, the media certification is not based on nothing. It's not media certification. It's the media taking information that they get from governmental bodies that are counting the votes and projecting based on that. If they were in the tank for Joe Biden, why they didn't call the election Tuesday night or Wednesday night or Thursday Friday night.

This idea that they are going to embarrass themselves by saying that election went one way when they clearly went another is ludicrous. And when it doesn't turn out this way, all the people making that accusation will not head to their outlets and say I was wrong. It's ridiculous. And the idea that Biden would expose himself in that way is just as ridiculous. The decision desks have standards and metrics.

KURTZ:  All right. Sorry, Ray. Mollie, what did you make of the four networks breaking away from the president's speech at the White House.

MSNBC cutting after one minute and said no, no, no, no. He's not telling the truth.

HEMINGWAY:  It's unconscionable as is so much of what the media have done, not just this week but weeks prior and years prior. There is this this issue where the standard that we need to meet for voter confidence in elections is that they have trust that these results are accurate. And so the more that people say, oh, there's no evidence of any problem.

That actually leads to people having less trust in the media when they themselves know that mail-in balloting leads to fraud. There's a reason why France banned mail-in balloting in 1975. Why the New York Times used to say that mail-in balloting was ripe for fraud, why Jerry Nadler, a Democratic leader, used to say mail-in balloting is really bad if you care about election integrity.

And so when you have some states that don't even require signature requirements that have sudden and suspicious changes in voting where people are not allowed oversight, where you have credible allegations of dead people voting or people voting illegally or fraudulently in different elections, and the media respond by saying we have no interest in investigating this.

We are just going to assert that it's not true. That actually further corrodes people's confidence in the media if it's even possible at this point. And it's inappropriate, because the standard that needs to be met is that every American needs to have confidence. And a lot of Republican voters, 71 million Republican voters feel that the media are helping a political party basically take any election it wants with no oversight.

And the more the media claim that that's what they -- that there's no -- you know, you can't have any problem with this, the more that people are -- the more that confirms peoples suspicions that this is fraudulent.

KURTZ:  Let me jump in here. Jedediah, I don't have any problem with people on networks challenging the president on widespread fraud and that sort of thing. but to just say we are pulling away now, don't listen to that guy, and then pulling the plug on the president, that strikes me as reinforcing the view that the media are not being fair here.

BILA:  Yeah, I mean, that's not a producer decision I would have made. I would have let him continue because it sets a precedent, right? So now, every time, you know, if Joe Biden is in fact the next president, every time he does a press conference and he says something that's inaccurate, are the media going to pull away from that and fact-check him?

I mean, that is an extremely risky precedent to set. I want to see if they're going to follow through on that. And of course, you know, you have the issue here, which is that some of the things that the president is saying, they are untrue, but politicians do that. He's not the first politician to ever come out and say untrue things.

So you really have selective interjection by the media in certain cases and not others, and that's kind of what bothers me. If they had let him finish his piece and then come in at the end and fact-checked it and had, you know, nonpartisan people come in and say, well, listen. This is what we know as of now. It doesn't match up to what he's saying and here is why.

I have no issue with that. I do have an issue with a cutaway that wouldn't necessarily happen with one candidate but does happen with another politician. That seems arbitrary if not intentional in some way, and that's not good.

KURTZ:  CNN and Fox did not cutaway from the president. Ray, we have a lot leaks yet again from the White House in the campaign. Wall Street Journal saying one adviser described President Trump's mood as black, advisers urging him to prepare for the eventuality of losing. Washington Post, some in Trump's orbit have worked to calm him and push him toward likely outcome. These are unnamed sources, but are they undercutting the president's message that he continues to argue this election is being stolen?

SUAREZ:  Given the way the news business works, it's inevitable that these stories are going to appear when there's not much coming out of the White House. I read this morning two different stories, one saying Jared Kushner was pushing the president to concede, another one saying that he was leading the forces telling them to stay and fight.

Obviously, both stories can't be true. It would be better if the White House was giving more regular statements but they aren't, and in that vacuum start to come un-sourced stories. They're a problem. But when people won't go on the record, you know, what are you going to do?

KURTZ:  Right. Mollie, in the New York Post, we can put the cover up for a moment. The conservative editorial page is urging the president to stop the stolen election and conspiracy talk among other conservative in the media.

Rick Santorum said on CNN that Trump's comments about widespread fraud were dangerous. Ben Shapiro, very popular podcaster called the comments deeply irresponsible.

Sean Spicer has been critical. So it's not just the liberal media which are saying the president is going too far with his rhetoric.

HEMINGWAY:  Actually, I'm not sure if I agree with that. I think that tens of millions of American voters are deeply concerned about election integrity. They are worried about the fraud that can result, reasonably, from lack of oversight of elections. And this is a great example of how corrupt the media can be. They only put on conservative voices if they are going to tear down the president that 71 million Americans support.

And they're only going to put on people who criticize him. They're only going to have anonymous sources who criticize him. And people are rightfully very concerned about that. You have more unity in the Republican Party than you've ever had in modern history with 95 percent of people supporting this president that with -- you would not believe how many people are concerned about election integrity.

And the more that you have people saying that this is not a real issue, the more concerned people are that there is no way to fix this problem, which is a very legitimate problem no matter how much the media shouts that it's not.

KURTZ:  OK. By the way, another problem is COVID-19. On Friday, record breaking day, 132,000 new cases, 126,000 yesterday, Mark Meadows, five other White House officials testing positive. The president had said there wouldn't be much COVID coverage after November 3rd. But obviously it's a story that will not go away and will plague the next president.

When we come back, how election night stunned many of the pundits who expected a blowout loss for President Trump. And later, Frank Luntz on a national polling debacle.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KURTZ:  There was almost a sense of shock on election night and it deflated mood at the other cable news channels, as hopes of an early Biden win were dashed, and some of the pundits tried to explain how this could happen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE:  I just know that there are a lot of people out there who maybe paid attention only to most Trump-hating pundits.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE:  And I just cannot get over my total surprise at the disconnect between what we are watching on the screen and what has been confidently predicted across the media landscape for months.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE:  You can feel the hopes and the dreams of our viewers falling down, and we can hear liquor cabinets opening all across this great land.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KURTZ:  But when the president's prospects started fading the next day, the trauma turned to taunting.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE:  The most powerful person in the world, and we see him like an obese turtle on his back flailing in the hot sun.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KURTZ:  Anderson Cooper has since apologized, as well he should for that offensive comment. Mollie, the media narrative was easy win for Joe Biden.

And yet, President Trump got 48 percent. A popular vote, it came down to two or three states, and you could really see some of those anchors and correspondents struggling to explain this on Tuesday night.

HEMINGWAY:  Right. When it comes to the media and conservative voters and their politicians, the media lie. They lie. They lie, and then they lie.

They were shocked by what happened because they spent the last four years lying about the success of the Donald Trump administration. They thought they had done enough to cover up all of the corruption of the Biden -- of a potential Biden administration through how they covered that campaign.

They created false narratives such as the Russia collusion hoax, Anonymous, the Kavanaugh situation, the Covington kid. And they lied through -- intentionally false polling which said that this is was going to be a blowout for Democrats. The Democrats were going take the Senate. They were going to have gains in the House and that Joe Biden would win easily in a landslide.

The voters had a say, and that's not what happened. Donald Trump gained votes unlike Barack Obama when he ran for reelection and lost four million votes. Donald Trump gained seven million votes. The House, which the Fox News decision desk predicted would gain five Democratic seats actually gained Republican seats, quite a few of them.

The Senate is not at this point unless you can have similar things that are happening in other states happen in Georgia and Pennsylvania go to -- go to Democrats. And you had more minority voters supporting Donald Trump than any Republican in history. And so all of these things that the media said about Donald Trump were not true. And so yes, they were surprised when the voters had a say.

KURTZ:  You know, Jedediah, there's no getting the fact that nearly half the country voted for President Trump. And I think that's hard for many in the mainstream media to swallow, your thoughts.

BILA:  Yeah. There's just been, you know, watching those clips, there's been so much nastiness that has come out during the Trump administration from the media, and it's really unfortunate. And I see that Anderson Cooper apologized for that and good for him. He should. But that's the unfortunate reality that now you're in a time where you have Joe Biden coming out and calling for unity.

And that is a great concept. And I would love to be on that page. I would love to have a country that, you know, can sit down and have a conversation again about politics without being at each others throats. The problem is that conservatives feel like they're disparaged all the time. Trump voters have felt, like, for years, no matter what they do they are labeled as racists,

They are labeled as this, that, or the other thing. And they are tired of it, and they feel that the media and the Democrat establishment is always working against them. So they are on edge. They are on defense all of the time. That's an unfortunate reality. So I don't know how you fix that until the media owns up.

Takes some responsibility and begins to objectively, again, look at Democrats and Republicans and really give fair assessments of what's going on and instill confidence again in the electorate that they can at least trust who is disseminating the information. And that includes everyone. And it's a big problem, Howie.

KURTZ:  Ray, four years after Donald Trump's 2016 upset, do you think that many journalists, and obviously most of them live in New York or D.C. or LA, the national political pundits are still having trouble understanding the appeal of this man to much of the heartland?

SUAREZ:  Yeah, I think that's fair. I think they tried during the intervening years to spend more time out in the country and spend more time talking to those voters. And, you know, I saw tons of journalism being committed doing just that, both on the air and in print. And along with those excesses and those overreaches that you saw, and I'm glad Anderson Cooper apologized as well.

There were countless handicaps of the coming counting that said here is what the look for. If the president is doing well, you will see this and this and this. If Joe Biden is doing well, you will see this and this and this. Careful, measured, not slam-dunking, and not predicting, along with excerpts like you just showed. Both thing happened.

It's a big world out there, and a lot of people were being careful, responsible, and not prejudging the race.

KURTZ:  I want to play a clip from Tuesday night because Fox is still the only network that has called Arizona for Joe Biden. His lead now has shrunk to 20,000 votes. The chief of the Fox decision desk aren't (ph) in Michigan defended that call on the air.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE:  I'm sorry. The president is not going to be able to take over and win enough votes to eliminate that seven point lead that the former vice president has.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KURTZ:  There was strong pushback from the Trump campaign about that call.

Many -- some Fox commentators challenged it on the air. I can confirm that Jared Kushner called Rupert Murdoch to complain about the Arizona call, which seemed crucial at the time. Contrary to a Vanity Fair report, however, President Trump did not call Rupert Murdoch who told the Washington Post if the president had called I would not have interfered or change our call.

And I think that shows the independence of the news division. Great discussion, Ray Suarez, Mollie Hemingway, Jedediah Bila, thanks very much for joining us. Up next, how would a change in the presidents -- in presidents affect the media after four years of an insane news cycle?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KURTZ:  After four years of covering a nonstop and frenetic presidency, Matt Drudge giving Donald Trump a sendoff with the catchphrase from The Apprentice. You see it there. How will life change for journalists next January? Joining us now from Connecticut, Charlie Gasparino, senior business correspondent for the Fox Business Network. 

And charlie, the nonstop tweets and battles and controversies have been a huge gift to the news businesses. Clicks are up. Ratings are up. We had three million people watch this program last week, but it's also been exhausting. How will the change at the White House affect how people like you and me do our jobs?

CHARLIE GASPARINO, FOX BUSINESS SENIOR CORRESPONDENT:  Well, it was exciting, accelerating, and it was from the moment he came down that staircase I guess in Trump Tower with Melania when he announced he was running five years ago. You know, it was The Apprentice in many ways often with a lot of policy implications as well.

Listen, it's obviously going to be less exciting with Joe Biden. Joe Biden is a much more laid back guy. He's also older now. He's, you know, it's going to be -- there's going to be snoozier parts of covering the White House every day. However, I will say this, Howie. There's going to be major policy implications in this new president.

You know, how far does he push the left-wing agenda that he ran on? How much does -- did the Republicans keep the Senate, which it looks like they will if you talk to a lot of GOP pollsters and people in the party. How much they push back against his agenda? There could be great stories in this. As a business reporter, there's going to be a lot of financial and economic stories given involving taxes, spending.

KURTZ:  And I would just say, you know, Biden also ran against the further left wing of his party and we will see if he resists that pressure. But since Biden won't be conducting Twitter wars or firing people or attacking the press, we presume, won't that leave us with less to cover? I mean, policy is great but, you know, it doesn't drive a lot of ratings and make Washington politics less of a national obsession?

GASPARINO:  Yeah. I mean, Donald Trump has been prepping for this job, and certainly the sort of sales job of it for years. I mean, I've been in New York journalism. I worked for New York tabloids. You know, I covered Donald for years. This was tailored made for him. He's going to leave. There's going to be a vacuum. And I will tell you this, Howie.

Every -- I come from the business side of the media side often merges acquisitions. I talk to a lot of the media suits. They are worried about Trump leaving and, you know, TV ratings going down. People are less engaged in newspapers. Remember, newspapers were dying. But all the online traffic on stories was off the charts.

The Times had record subscriptions online. TV ratings have been off the charts. Will that continue? I can tell you from a business standpoint, the TV suits, the guys that look at the balance sheets are worried that Donald Trump is going to take a bite out of their revenues.

KURTZ:  So isn't it ironic that for some of these organizations that have made Trump actually a business model? In fact, the president has pointed this out. I mean, he's been very good for the cash registers for these organizations that say worst president ever, right?

GASPARINO:  Right. And think about some of the leading Trump bashers. And I have lots of friends there. I think they are great journalists at CNN. I mean, look who runs CNN, Jeff Zucker. Jeff Zucker essentially put Donald Trump on the map as, you know, producing (ph) when he was running NBC, with The Apprentice.

And clearly helped him in his -- in the first time he ran and then turned on him and he admitted. That was a business model decision, by the way.

You're trying to get an audience that's different than ours, because this is a business. You know, this is the sad part about it. I'm a reporter and you're a reporter.

You know, some of this is bashing Trump because it's good for ratings. You know, maybe we will get back to journalism.

KURTZ:  That -- oh, I agree with that. that has been the business model.

Obviously, it's a different environment for Fox because President Trump has done the majority of his interviews with Fox News or with Fox Business Network, and also has close relationships with some of the opinion hosts here. So anybody will be re-calibrating and adjusting.

Charlie Gasparino, got to go. Thanks very much. Great to talk to you.

Coming up, how could so many of the polls have been so wrong about this election? Frank Luntz is on deck.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KURTZ:  Joe Biden may have been declared the winner but the polling business is taking a whole lot of heat for screwing up the 2020 election, including from the incumbent president.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES:  And the polls have got it knowingly wrong. They got it knowingly wrong. We had polls that were so ridiculous and everybody knew that at the time.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KURTZ:  Joining us now from New York is Frank Luntz, the veteran Republican pollster. And Frank, the president says these were suppression polls knowingly wrong. Talk about that but also in the broader picture. What did this nail-biter of an election do in light of all the polls showing a pretty easy win for Biden to the credibility of your business?

FRANK LUNTZ, REPUBLICAN POLLSTER:  Oh, let's be specific. There was this Washington Post poll that had Joe Biden winning by 17 points in Wisconsin.

He ended up winning by one point.

KURTZ:  Yes.

LUNTZ:  It was a CNN poll that had 12-point victory, their final poll of the election. He ends up winning by three points. A host of surveys were wrong and they are wrong for three reasons.

Number one, Trump voters do not like to be polled. They need to know that if you want them to participate, they need to know that their voices are heard, they need to know that it matters, and they need to know that their opinions are not going to be wart or turned against them.

Second, we still have this problem of rural versus urban voters that with the Trump doing so well in the rural communities, very often they get underrepresented by the polls that -- that respond too much to urban communities. And frankly, third --

KURTZ:  OK.

LUNTZ:  -- I don't think the pollsters actually talk to the voters themselves. They do phone calls, they do e-mails, but they don't listen to what the voters have to say. Therefore, they get it wrong again and again.

But Donald Trump is wrong.

KURTZ:  OK, so this -- this is -- he's wrong saying it was deliberate. But this is the second straight election, presidential election that the polling industry is basically botched. How does your business recover from that? Can your business recover from that or is there a series loss of credibility here?

LUNTZ:  There should be loss of credibility. If you can't get it right, if you can't make an accurate prognosis, you shouldn't be hired. So I think what is happening right now is actually awesome. It is accountability in action.

And if you got it wrong this time, you got it wrong twice in a row, you shouldn't be working in the business. There are other things you can do.

You can sell real estate. You can sell stocks. Stop selling polls.

(LAUGHTER)

KURTZ:  OK. You know, there are also polls showing neck-and-neck in Texas.

Trump is leading that state by 650,000 votes. But you predicted that Donald Trump would take an early lead on election night based on same-day votes and then it would take four days which actually turned out to be the case for Joe Biden to overtake him as more mail ballots were counted.

But you also said a couple of weeks ago that Trump was running the worst campaign you've ever seen, that his advisers were guilty of political malpractice, and yet he came pretty close to winning.

LUNTZ:  Yeah, but that's the whole thing. Donald Trump would have won if he had not done so badly enough for first debate (ph). He would have won if he had started going to the states and he made a very wise decision about where he went.

But he has got to look at himself right now, look at himself in the mirror and say, is it my fault, is it the things I said, is it the presentations I gave.

What we now know is it was a close election. Those pollsters who said it was going to be a blowout, they shouldn't be working anymore. But Trump himself has to really come to grips with that first debate and how damaging it was to his candidacy.

KURTZ:  Right. So you see that as a turning point. Frank, nobody forces journalists to be polling addicts, so when journalists use these polls to make their predictions and prognostications and cast this as Joe Biden would win this election pretty easily, haven't they made as big a blunder as some of your colleagues in the polling business?

LUNTZ:  Sure. Polls are supposed to be a snapshot and that's all they are.

You should not be using them to make predictions. But in the end, they do explain how people think and they do explain how people feel if you talk to the voters themselves.

And Howie, what I'm most focused on frankly are these focus groups. You actually have to listen to what voters have to say. You have to understand why they feel the way that they do, to explain it to give a richer, fuller description of what is actually going on.

And too many pollsters and too many journalists just look at the numbers and they look -- don't look at what's behind the numbers. And until they fix that, they're going to continue to get it wrong.

KURTZ:  Because you did a number of these focused groups in swing states, tell us your thought on why it is the national journalists -- you know, six years after Donald Trump came down the escalator -- still have trouble understanding the motivation, the world view of the nearly half the country that did vote to give Donald Trump a second term.

LUNTZ:  Because the truth is, I am going to bring it down here, they are not listening. And I am not convinced that they want to know. The focus groups that I did for a major newspaper, the people in the newsroom tried to kill it again and again and again. They did not want to have this as part of their coverage. They wanted to control the narrative and they did not want to give it to the voters themselves.

But they felt uncomfortable about me. Howie, the stuff that we did in that very first -- the first session we did that aired on Fox News in the first debate, Donald Trump did not win that debate. He did badly. That is exactly what the focus group showed. But these people in the newsroom don't want accountability. They don't want to hear this voice. And so that's why they get it wrong.

KURTZ:  Actually, Frank, yeah, I assume you don't want to name the newspaper, but in about 20 seconds, you are saying that basically some journalists and news organizations did not want to hear anything that would be more positive to Trump or more negative to Joe Biden. That's a pretty serious charge.

LUNTZ:  I know exactly what I'm saying. I did not mention the name. I know I'm on live television. I think that we need to take a full review of ourselves and how we present ourselves, of how we do things in accurate and accountable way. And that's why I invited reporters on to my sessions. I invited them to ask questions. I was completely transparent.

That's what the news media needs right now, particularly in the newsrooms of newspapers. Genuine accountability. Genuine transparency. Come clean about what you really want and how you're reporting because the American people deserve nothing less.

KURTZ:  Right.  I mean, Joe Biden may have won but journalists have a lot to answer for and they can't just blame it on the pollsters. Frank Luntz, great conversation. It is always good to see you. Thank you so much.

LUNTZ:  Thank you.

KURTZ:  After the break, some of the pundits now hailing Biden's victory totally road him off earlier this year. Plus, why some media liberals are still pretty angry.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KURTZ:  Much of the media is hailing Joe Biden now that he has been projected to win the presidency. But just over eight months ago when he got clobbered in Iowa and New Hampshire virtually, all the pundits said Biden was toast.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE:  It looks like Joe Biden's campaign is collapsing or on the verge of collapse.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE:  He's not going to be present and it's very hard for him, I'm sure.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE:  I think he is on his way out the door.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KURTZ:  And we could have played a lot more. Joining us now to analyze the coverage in New York, Kat Timpf of the "Greg Gutfeld Show" and a Fox Nation host, and Mara Liasson, national political reporter for NPR and a Fox News contributor.

Kat, this was another major media fail in my view. All these pundits writing Biden's obituary saying he was kaput, he was history, he should never be heard from again, and here he is, projected to win the White House.

KAT TIMPF, FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR, FOX NATION HOST:  Absolutely. And as you pointed out, this started after a poor showing in Iowa, despite the fact that Romney, McCain, Clinton, they all won the nomination after having poor showings in Iowa.

I think that's because a lot of people probably had issues before that even, whether he could handle a rigorous, strenuous campaign season at all, and the poor showing just sort of reinforce that.

And I read a piece in Politico from back in July that said actually the fact that they wrote him off probably helped him more than anything because he can't be a bit of gaffe machine. And then by the time --

(LAUGHTER)

TIMPF:  -- July rolled around and he had clinched the nomination already, there was this bigger story, this thing called the coronavirus, so he had that benefit again.

KURTZ:  Yeah, everybody looks brilliant when you win a campaign. Mara, when the media world was saying Biden was too old, too out of touch, insufficiently liberal, I was one of the few discerners because I knew that the Democratic Party wasn't as liberal as it seems on Twitter and that they want voters, rank and file, might want a safe in Joe Biden who has been around roughly forever.

(LAUGHTER)

MARA LIASSON, FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR, NATIONAL POLITICAL REPORTER FOR NPR: 

Yeah, and they did. Look, I think the biggest takeaway for the media on so many levels but especially riding off Joe Biden early on is humility. I mean, just with -- the conclusions that we jumped to weren't necessarily right. It looked like Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, AOC -- it looked like there was all this left-wing energy in the Democratic Party.

Yes, there is at the grassroots. But remember what happened, South Carolina onward, Joe Biden had no money, no field organization, but the Democratic voters heaved him over the finish line. They made a decision. They hadn't heard from him --

KURTZ:  Yup.

LIASSON:  -- from a commercial or a door knock. They made a decision.

KURTZ:  Yup.

LIASSON:  They looked at Bernie, they looked at him, they looked to Donald Trump, they said, we think Biden is the best guy --

KURTZ:  Right.

LIASSON:  -- to beat Trump. And guess what, they were right and they never wavered. He happens to be man at the moment.

KURTZ:  Humility seems to be --

LIASSON:  He might be old and centrist --- yeah.

KURTZ:  Humility seems in short supply in this business. I don't know why I say that. Look, some of the media liberals --

LIASSON:  It is in way a very short supply.

KURTZ:  Even as Biden was going to score 270, you had liberals like the commentator, Toure, former CNN and MSNBC, talking to Trump voters, I hope the pain and anxiety you feel now is excruciating. You voted against America. And here is Jason Johnson, MSNBC contributor, talking about a Biden -- possible Biden presidency.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JASON JOHNSON, PROFESSOR OF JOURNALISM AND POLITICS AT MORGAN STATE UNIVERSITY, CONTRIBUTOR FOR THEGRIO, POLITICAL EDITOR FOR THE ROOT:  I will immediately turn around my head and be excruciatingly critical of him because you cannot come into this White House with the idea that these people aren't the enemy. They are. Mitch McConnell is the enemy.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KURTZ:  Kat, why are so many of these media liberals so angry when their guy was winning?

TIMPF:  Right. I think that this is the exact reason why Trump did do so much better than was expected because a lot of people, they see Trump voters as this monolithic group which isn't the case. There are some people who love the guy, love everything he said, and love everything he has done.

There are others who maybe don't feel that way but they saw it as socialism versus capitalism or something like that. They sort of held their nose and voted for Trump.

When they see things like this where people refuse to sort of consider that that could be possible, that ends up pushing them --

KURTZ:  Right.

TIMPF:  -- further right and further towards Trump.

KURTZ:  Yeah, that's a good point. Mara, on "The View," Sunny Hostin said, well, Trump is misogynist, he is racist, he botched the pandemic, and half of the country looked the other way and supported him. They are selfish and un-American. Why this need to denigrate voters who exercise their right to have a different decision than you made at the voting booth?

LIASSON:  I don't know why the need. I think it's bad. I think it's strategically stupid. I mean, everybody needs allies. And guess who isn't doing that? Joe Biden. What did he say in his speech? He said, to those who voted for Trump, I know what it's like to lose or to be disappointed, I've lost a bunch myself, let's give each other a chance. That's what he said and that's how he is going to try to govern.

Remember, his brand is about uniting, lowering the temperature, seeing if we can get some practical things done together to solve problems.

KURTZ:  We will see if he's able to pull that off. Kat, I got half a minute here. Mainstream media gave Joe Biden a pass this whole year on doing few national interviews and limiting press access. Do you see that changing if he's president, when he's president?

TIMPF:  I certainly -- I certainly hope not because I think it's important, no matter the party for us in the media and also as citizens, to hold the people in power accountable because it is a check on their power. I think it certainly will be as tough as they were on Trump. But I really, really do hope that we can maintain that.

KURTZ:  Well, if the media are not nowhere near as tough on Biden as they have been for six years on Trump, that is going to make a lot of Trump supporters feel again that they are not getting a fair shake from this business.

Let me get a break here. Still to come, Twitter is at it again, suppressing and censoring posts from President Trump and his team. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KURTZ:  Twitter has hidden or slapped warning labels on more than a dozen tweets by the president, his campaign, his son Eric, and top aides, raising questions about whether the tech giant is blatantly biased.

Just yesterday, Twitter flagged this presidential tweet. I won this election by a lot. Earlier, there was this one from Eric Trump. The amount of fraud being reported in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Nevada, Georgia, and Wisconsin is unreal.

Kat, Twitter is at it again this morning, flagging tweets by the president himself when he talks about thieves in places like Philadelphia, stolen election. Why does Jack Dorsey's company, after the Hunter Biden fiasco, thinks it has the right to suppress and censor tweets by the president and then say well, we are not politically bias?

TIMPF:  Right. Twitter has the right to censor whatever it wants. It does not -- it cannot, as you point out, do it this way and say it's not bias. I saw a piece last week that I thought was really great, saying, hey, if their goal here is to try and stop the spread of misinformation and/or to lessen the president's influence, the way they are handling it feels on both.

Because if you start looking at Twitter and saying I expect this to all be completely factually true, they are not going to catch everything, and that is going to go wrong.

Second of all, you know, the hiding of the tweets, that draws more attention to them and it makes the people who support the president do so more passionately because they see him as a victim and it just pushes them further that way towards him.

KURTZ:  Oh, yeah, it shines a spotlight on him. Mara, maybe there's an argument about flagging tweets that claim widespread fraud or whatever. It is maybe. But I don't understand the president says I won this election or I won Pennsylvania, says it prematurely. I mean, people get it. It is political speech or spin. They can figure it out. Why would you suppress that?

LIASSON:  Yeah. Look, you know, Twitter is a private company that has been given tremendous protections by Congress about what it can do and what it can't do and what it is responsible for and what is not responsible for.

And unless Congress wants to regulate Twitter in the way that forces them to let anything be said, that's one alternative. There could be conservative Twitter just like there are now conservative capable networks where there didn't used to be.

I am not sure what the solution to this is. I will tell you, though, that on social media, when conservatives compete, they generally come out on top. What's the fastest, biggest trending post on Facebook right now? The ones you just read by Donald Trump.

KURTZ:  Yeah, naturally. Kat, some Democratic lawmakers are calling on Twitter to suspend the president's account. That's not going to happen. But isn't that a pretty blatant attempt, to use Silicon Valley, to silence the opposition?

TIMPF:  Absolutely. There were pieces -- I mean, sure Independent, Guardian, but also even in USA Today kind of pointing out that Twitter always said he has special treatment because he is considered news worthy individual because he's the president of the United States --

KURTZ:  Right.

TIMPF:  And that he will no longer have that when he's not the president of the United States. So I think we are going to hear those calls get louder.

KURTZ:  Yeah. He will still be a newsworthy individual and he has got the -

-

(LAUGHTER)

TIMPF:  He will make sure of it.

(LAUGHTER)

KURTZ:  Mara, I've got half a minute. I want to get you in on the question about whether one sees in the White House Joe Biden will feel the need to engage with reporters more, to hold news conference, to give more interviews. Quick thought.

LIASSON:  Certainly more than he's done during the campaign. I don't think he will ever be as accessible as Donald Trump, but yes, I think so, because he really engaged at a very, very minimal level during the campaign and I expect that to change.

KURTZ:  Yeah, he was playing it safe. By the way, you know, for all the critics of President Trump from the media, nobody in journalism can argue that the president didn't deliver incredible access to the point where we got used to talking to him five times a day. That's done and we are done.

Mara Liasson, Kat Timpf, thanks for joining us.

That's it for this edition of MEDIA BUZZ. I am Howard Kurtz. Thanks for watching, especially during this election year and especially in such large numbers.

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