Michael Smerconish tackles the American political and news stories of the week, offering only one kind of talking points his own. The times, by the way, standing by her hire saying they understood her twitter past and understand it for what it was. We had candid conversations with sarah as part of the thorough vetting process which included a review of her social media history. She understands this rhetoric is not acceptable at the times and we are confident she will be an important voice for the Editorial Board moving forward. Interestingly, the fact that the times already knew about her tweets is significant due to another hire in february, quinn norton. When some of miss nortons old tweets surfaced which included racial slurs and an Internet Troll which works for a neonazi website she ended stepping down that same day. In that case, it had not been aware of her tweets before it hired her. We reached out to miss jeong, but we were told she was unavailable. Go to smerconish. Com and answer this survey question. Should sarah jeongs twitter
history have precluded her hire by the New York Times as board member. Joining me now, rich lowery, does it matter if she was counter punching . Usually when youre counterpunching youre counterpunching directly or replying directly to other people on twitter. We all get nasty tweets thrown at us all of the time, but most of us dont react to that with years long history of racist tweets which she did here, so i think that explanation is complete nonsense. I dont like the practice of Rummaging Back through peoples twitter accounts and firing them on the basis of that, so i would probably still support her being at the times, but i think the explanation here is total nonsense. Listen, i want to know the context for all of these controversial tweets. I went looking myself and found that ridiculous animated movie. We can put up just a still image that shows the animation and at
the top of that f the police. Maybe its intended as a joke in that instance. I notice that there were others, many more, in fact, one relative to ferguson which the context, katherine, can you put the ferguson up one as well . Teaching moment music, maybe maybe the lesson of ferguson is f most police. That doesnt seem to be in response to some twitter troll. And the same with the other antiwhite tweets. I dont know how the times can justify firing quinn norton when we look back at her tweets and she retweeted the n word and it was someone using the n word sat iricily, and it was enough for her to be ousted from the times, and i dont know how you stand by sarah jeong and fire quinn norton. It goes to the point that theres a rank hypocrisy here. The New York Times i dont think has a defensible standard because if sarah jeong had used the n word, it doesnt matter what it was, she can go on for years saying horrible things about white people and thats okay. Look, im a big fan of the times. I read it multiple times online every single day so im bending over backwards to try to be fair. In the statement that they released i know that they say for a period of time she responded to that harassment by imfating the rhetoric of her harassers implying they were all tit for tat, but it doesnt seem that way for me. Theyre racist on their face and there are some people who make the argument that there is no such thing as racism against white people. Thats completely ridiculous, and if you have an imus based on the color of their skin and its mostly blame worthy and sarah
jeong should open up to it and at least give us an honest and full explanation or apology. Are you going in the public do main that this should have precluded her hire. I think when you play this game, very often innocent people get shot down the way quinn norton was. We should draw a fine line and i dont think people should get fired from Media Organizations unless theyre saying something when theyre currently employed and twitter is a medium where the context are very important and people are trolling and very often tongue in cheek and often misunderstood and i would not preclude firing her from the times, but again, the Times Standard here is indefensible because it did not have that bright line. It fired kwen norton before firing her and if you were to fire two of them, sarah jeong or
quinn norton in terms of the merit of who they should have kept and clearly it was norton and clearly theyre defending sarah jeong and threw quinn norton overboard. I thought through the Business Ramifications and the way it would impact their brand and play into the hands of those Who Denigrate The Times which i disagree with. Thanks for being here. Thanks for having me. What are your thoughts . Go to smerconish and i will read your responses throughout the course of the program. What have we got . Here is a person who is so overtly biased and Eshg Mobilely Disordered in her thinking that the only job the New York Times should ever give her is selling papers on the street corner. I want to be fair and see the totality of the record and i can get a weak attempt at humor. Watching that ridiculous animated film about big bald
raccoon. I mean, are you blanking me . Maybe she watches it today, f the police and then the ferguson tweet and all of the others and i cant put those in context. I want to know what you think. Go to my website its smerconish. Com. Answer this question. Should sarah jeongs twitter history have precluded her hire by the New York Times as an editorial member . Is the tsa under fire for the secret Skies Program surveilling ordinary americans hoping to find terrorists and is the idea behind it entirely wrong . Info wars, provok tour alex jones trying to throw out a Defamation Action Stands from his hands that the sandy hook massacre was a hoax. At issue, is he a journalist or pol emcyst. This week a secret tsa program called quiet skies monitoring ordinary u. S. Citizens caused a lot of noise. For months or longer, Federal Air Marshals have been tracking 5,000 or more u. S. Citizens not suspected of any crime or on any Terrorist Watch List and collecting data about their movements and behavior and yet at the same time cnn exclusively reported the tsa is thinking of doing away with security altogether at small airports. Both of these seem like unsettling approaches. In the quiet Skies Program according to an internal tsa bulletins from March Small Teams of Undercover Air marshals are trying to root out unknown or marshally known Terror Firsts by documenting things whether passengers fidget, sleep during the fight, seem overly familiar with the airport or have a cold,
penetrating stare. I want to know more before ill join the critics. I have authored two books about airline security. Im a believer in empowering police to use instinct. Just consider the good work of Jose Melendez perez. It was melendez, an immigration inspector, who stopped Muhammad Al Kahtani who stopped him while entering an international airport. He was a Saudi National because he incorrectly filled out a customs deck lakz. It came up negative. His documents seemed genuine. A check of his possessions, unremarkable, but melendez still didnt let him pass. Why . As he told the 9 11 commission, quote, this guy just gave me the creeps. He also said throughout my ins training and military experience mi First Impression of the subject was that he was a young male, well groomed with short hair, trimmed mustache, black
longsleeved shirt, black trousers and black shoes, 56 in impeccable shape with large shoulders and thin waist. He had a military appearance. He had gestures that appeared arrogant. When i called him into secondary and matched him with papers he had a deep, staring look. The next time the United States encountered katari encountered khatani. He was given Walking Papers by melendez in orlando and there to pick him up as a new arrival was 9 11 ringleader Muhammad Atta that his conduct may have spared the capitol or white house an attack and with this added muscle of khatani on flight 93 as the 20th Hijacker, they could
have continued to washington. The auth are on of the boston globe investigative piece jana winter who was the current globe spotlight fellow. I want to applaud your work and make clear that i thought it was a great report. I just have mixed opinion. I want instinct to be honored by law enforcement, but i dont want them on a fools errand. Do you think we can do both . I would like to think so. I mean, what we know now at this point is obviously theres been a lot of outrage, bipartisan outrage, i would note, which is pretty rare since the story of ours published last weekend and congress was briefed on thursday and ntsb officials said yeah, weve followed 5,000 u. S. Citizens who are not under investigation or suspected of any crime and not on any Terrorist Watch List and 5,000 since march and they have zero threats. They found nothing. They found no one that merited any followup and no suspicious
characters. Nothing. I think according to the air marshalls ive spoken with and other people within tsa that the resources which are slim to none should be focused on things that might actually be a threat. I think thats fair. Give me an example. What stands out in your mind from those cases known to you of someone who has been followed in the sky that would seem ridiculous . I would encourage everyone to keep reading our reporting, but ill say someone being assigned to follow a southwest Flight Attendant who was literally working the flight, writing down the behavior and anything they do if they change direction, the air marshals are looking at the behavior saying if shes not drinking anything, but pouring a drink, did she go to the bathroom . Shes standing by the bathroom . For how long . Flight crew get background
checked by the fbi and if they were a threat my sources say theyd be a threat for every flight they worked and not just the one the air marshals are on. So what would have caused in that example that individual to show up on their radar to begin with. Just where they had traveled previously . What this program is based on is not anything the person has actually done. Its based on whether your travel history matches that of a known or suspected terrorist. So we have Flight Attendants who have on its face suspicious travel because theyre flying all over the place because thats what they do for work. So my family, we went to istanbul two summers ago on vacation. Could something as benign as that cause them to want to then follow me . Oh, yes, absolutely and then anyone youre traveling with. Right now theres a huge focus on anyone who is in turkey for a certain amount of time. So where is this headed . I know youre continuing to report on it. Youve already intimated that there must be more to come. What do you think congress is about to do relative to this tsa program. I think congress is really pissed off because tsa told me on the record that congress had been briefed and the committees had all been told about this program and during the closeddoor briefing on thursday and there is a bit of a back and forth and the Committee Staff were, like, youve never told us anything about this. So this is not something thats going to die down. There are some lawmakers calling for hearings and i think that would probably happen. I dont think anyones letting this go. Theres a lot of people filing. The aclu is doing some things and the Civil Liberties groups i dont think i think theres a lot to stay tuned for. Thanks for the report. Well continue to read. Thanks. Letty so see what youre saying on My Smerconish and twitter pages. I cant get my head around
this. They follow people around who dont follow terror or fighting, what a waste. I think what were hearing is you dont get followed for nervous behavior and once youre being followed and you might think the an appropriate defense, then youre noting everything, your habit asks your posture. Look, i want to be clear, i really like what shes uncovered. As a taxpayer it seems like a waste of resources, but lets want go so far that heroes like Jose Melendez perez who are operating on instinct because the guy gives him the creeps and the guy turns out to be the 20th Hijacker cant get stopped because i want them to be empowered as members of law enforcement. Sandy hook parents are suing
provoktour alex jones. Is that going to fly . In this primary in kansas thanks to the states lack of age requirement, are several candidates ready for this . Not yet old enough to vote for themselves. Ill talk to two about being part of the 2018 political climate. At crowne plaza, we know Business Travel isnt just business. Theres this. A bit of this. Why not . Your hotel should make it easy to do all the things you do. Which is what we do. Crowne plaza. Were all business, mostly. Zipfile . Really big files . In seconds, not minutes. Just like that. Like everything. The answer is simple. Ill do what ive always done. Dream more, dream faster, and above all. Now, ill dream gig. Now more businesses, in more places, can afford to dream gig. Comcast, building americas largest gigspeed network. Is making up a heinous lie about tragic deaths something you could be sued for or is it covered by freedom of speech. Thats a case being litigated in the case of a parents whose child was killed in the Sandy Hook Elementary School and theyre suing alex jones for defamation for his repeated claims that the massacre is a hoax. Heres a Sample Of Jones assertions that the family finds actionable. The official story of sandy hook has more holes in it than
swiss cheese. My gut tells me the white house, people controlling the government were involved in this. So dont ever think the globalists that have hijacked this country that they killed little kids all day every day, its not the government. Its the globalist. Theyre doing it. Theyre doing it. Theyre staging it. In court, jones lawyer admitted, quote, maybe its fringe speech. Maybe its dangerous speech. Thats not defamation. Thats rhetorical hyperbole at its core. Its the citizen participation which protects Citizens Rights to free speech against those who which to silence them through costly litigation . Joining me is a reporter who has been covering the trial, the chief political reporter for the Austin American statesman. I remember speaking to you two years ago when alex jones was in the midst of a child custody battle. Right. And his own lawyer at that time said this is all schtick. Dont take it so seriously. That would be like holding Jack Nicholson accountable for his depiction of the joker in the batman movie. Same thing is going on here, right . Pretty much. In fact, in that case which was back in April Of 2017 they were largely able to exclude any use of alex jones onair personality in that case so they didnt even have to make that argument to any great degree, but yes, its the same thing. People tune in to watch the bombast and they have a certain expectation and they know this is alex jones and they know what hes doing and they dont take it literally, though apparently in a few cases they do take it quite literally and act on it. We know that some people take it literally because according to the plaintiffs in this austinbased Defamation Action theyve been stopped and theyve had to move a number of times. Explain. Well, so these are the
parents of one of the children who were killed and he has placed them in the middle of this sort of broad because he says in a cnn interview growing up de la rosa was with Anderson Cooper and they were using a blue screen so they werent at the scene so there was something fishy about the way it was done and that would suggest they were a part of this hoax and as a result of this, theyve been stalked and there was a woman who ultimately was sent to federal prison for issuing Death Threats against them and she was instructed that on her release from prison she cant listen to Willa Exjones anymore. So they resisted suing him for many years and then back in April Of 2017 he reissued these claims and they decided enough
is enough and hes not going to stop doing this so they finally filed suit and in Texas The Defamation Law requires you to file within a year. So by remaking or restating some of these claims he kind of revived their ability to sue him and thats part of whats at issue here is has he said enough within the year of the statute of limitations to qualify as defamation . Heres the takeaway. At least according to me and youre on the scene. The takeaway is that people follow this guy. I mean, some people in high places follow this guy. When push comes to shove and hes challenged in a courtroom his lawyers say you didnt really believe that, right . Its the equivalent of wrestling, its b. S. , something jones has to fight against to keep that audience. Yeah. Yeah. In fact, on this blue screen argument his lawyer says you know, you cant prove that what he said was was defamatory
and even if it was wrong it was merely and his audience understands that its opinion masquerading as fact. Thats the term of