Transcripts For FOXNEWSW MediaBuzz 20170529 : vimarsana.com

He didnt. The substance which was the speech President Trump gave in riyadh was very carefully done. It was nuanced. Howie those stories were constantly competing. Nbc and the Washington Post touting this story on Jared Kushner. Nbc news learned Jared Kushner, the president s soninlaw and one of his senior white house advisors has come under scrutiny by the f. B. I. The man called the Deputy President is as they say under scrutiny. Hes the most powerful person in the white house except for the president himself, Jared Kushner, and hes a member of trumps family. So the investigation is now inside the white house. What is a nonelected soninlaw doing representing the United States government to be to the russians, our adversary out there in the world. Why is kushner talking for us . Does it have a singlenamed source to the story . This is most disgusting. Howie reports the president tried to set up a secret back channel to moscow. Is this justified when he hasnt bend called a target. If anybody thinks its unfair to describe a direct line to donald trump called enemies of the state and responsible for beating up a journalist is ridiculous. A trip that was constantly competing for air time with the russian probe. Reports say investigators are look at meetings with Jared Kushner and Trump Officials a month before the inauguration. And he has not been accused of any wrongdoing. Joining us is molely hemingway, joe trippi, the democratic strategist. And erin mcpike. Even many of the president s critics and liberal commentators giving him high marks on this first foreign trip. Do you think there is reluctance on the part of the media to criticize the president when hes abroad representing us . Mollie he talked about principled realism. He critiques the lectures of the Obama Administration and the unnecessary invasion of the obama and bush administration. I think a lot of the appeal trump had with voters is because of his difference in foreign policy. The media laid that out very well. He addressed the muslim world and they didnt quite give that same level of attention. Not so high marks on covering this up. Media expectations were low from a rookie president on the world stage. For the most part the coverage was pretty positive, particularly on the riyadh speech. What you dont see is a lot of sort of getting down to the nittygritty about not lecturing saudi arabia on a lot of human rights. But lecturing nato allies on not paying their fair share. And i think there is a dichotomy. I agree with mollie that the riyadh speech was important for him to give. Howie the coverage of the nato speech was more controversial. Didnt the media originally view this trip as a distraction from the problems at home . Erin there is a little bit of a view of that. But this foreign trip has been on the books for a long time. In february he said he would be going to brussels for this nato meeting. It was essentially created for him. I think the coverage was good in saudi arabia and israel. But it was much more critical of him in europe because he did not perform in europe as well as he did in other president ial trips. Mollie many president s have tried to get nato countries to increase their spending. President trump is the first one getting people to put out their plans for this defense spending to match what their rhetoric is about the supposed threat of russia. If people really think russia is a threat, these countries need to act like it. Howie let me get your take on the reports that Jared Kushner is under scrutiny by the f. B. I. Which is kind of murky. New york times, growing crisis over kushner. Mollie under scrutiny is not a legal term its a journalistic term that makes it sounds like something is going on thats much worse than whats going on. They are starting with conclusions of wrongdoing. Something jr. Nefarious has gone out with this white house. Thats exactly what they are saying at that level. Thats not a goo a policy. Howie others confirmed about Jared Kushner offering to set up a secret Communications Channel with the russians, and this is according to u. S. Intercept. The question is, thats kind of interesting, maybe it was a naive move on his part. Is there anything nefarious in the Incoming Administration or is this a case of the press making too much of its own suspicions. Joe it raises the question of is there something nefarious going on, and thats compounded by the fact that he failed to report the meeting where this happened. This becomes a real news story. Howie but the meetings were made known about. Erin it seems like those are two things he should have disclosed since russia is such a focus. Joe you have the pattern of 18 such meetings by players in the white house. Howie there is such a contrast in the coverage. When these stories broke. Cnn and msnbc, hours and hours and hours. Talking about the kushner story. Fox barely mentioned in prime time. So who is right . Erin Jared Kushner is a very influential figure in the white house. The press reported hes a positive influence on President Trump. Hes obviously hard working. Its time for Jared Kushner address the media and take some questions. Mollie there is nothing wrong with what hes even alleged to be doing by anonymous story. Nobody is named in any of these leaks. Then its presented as if something really bad was happening. Setting up Backchannel Communications is a totally normal thing. Even if its true, its not a big deal. Joe the Russian Technology and their security sources of communications to have that channel mollie the media are pushing two simultaneous stories. One is a leak by intelligence agencies and the other is its supposedly bad to try to avoid these intelligence agencies that cant keep secrets. Howie the president had something to say about this. Its my opinion many of the leaks coming out of the white house are fabricated lies made up by the hashtag fake news media. Fabricated lies . Erin fabricated lies is over the top. That was the president pouring gasoline on the fire. Joe these are all leaks from the white house that are fake. Mollie thats quite the claim to make. And at the same time its true. We have no ability to judge niece leaks. Its always a possibility you will use an anonymous so we are led to believe but we dont have a way to independently determine if thats true. We have no ability to judge these for ourselves. Nobody is willing to put their name on any of these things. What have the media common in the last year . Joe the president of the United States was there saying i love wikileaks. Now leaks from his own white house howie there are so many stories i cant even get them in anymore. There was a story that dan coats asked for a pushback on comeys f. B. I. Probe. Then there was a chyron saying nuke flynn is taking the fifth. Erin there are so many stories coming out fast and furious, we get away from the broader issues. There is minutia every day and its hard to follow. Howie do you think there is a lot of resentment in the media. He married into the family and therefore disparaging his role. The president has given him a lot of responsibility. Mollie the media seem to have an incentive where they need to bring down the president rather than just do their job which is report accurately whats happening. Howie does bringing down the president include bringing down his soninlaw . Mollie of course. Stick to facts and be careful how you present the facts. Dont make everything the most nefarious thing you have ever heard. Howie when we come back, james rosen how a flood of leaks is undermining the trump presidency. How is it trumps fault that a montana candidate physically attacked a reporter . Howie leaks, sometimes illegal leaks are sometimes driving the news. James rosen is here in studio one. Welcome. You worked with Confidential Sources over the years. You were eve enif snared in a lk investigation under the Obama Administration. What do you make of the report that Jared Kushner is the subject of investigation. James it strikes me as a and daished you leak out of an stress gay tough Law Enforcement agency at what we might call an embryonic time of investigation. Not the same sensitivity or order of magnitude as the leaks of President Trumps transcripts of telephone conversations. Howie it has caused a media explosion and you have endless segments on certain cable net w saying Jared Kushner under investigation. Is that a bit unfair when he is not the subject much investigation . James if my source was good or i had a document in hand, i wouldnt. But Jared Kushner probably has some good basis for feeling defamed if he records himself as innocent. But we saw the same things during watergate. People think because nixon and his aides left office that everything leaked about them in the runup to that was accurate and it wasnt. Howie its a crime to leak this kinds of information, but not a crime for reporters in their judgment to decide it should be published or aired. The british were furious over the u. S. Side leaking intel about the horrifying Manchester Concert bombing. The photographs that were leaked. And trump was june set about it and said this posed a grave threat to National Security and ordered an investigation. Somebody is out to embarrass the president , it seems to me. James not necessarily. The motivation of the leakers are unclear. It could have been to curry favor with a reporter at the New York Times or to drive the investigation. We dont know. Howie you talked about the leaks of confidential phone calls or conversations between the president of the United States and form leaders. There was one the philippine president in which the transcript showed revealed there are two u. S. Nuclear subject marines off north korea hu submarines off the coast of north korea. James we are in the age of trump witnessing a zenith for illegal leaks of classified information to the news media. It exceeds what we saw during the nixon presidency. Its something this administration has to get on top of or it wont be able to survive. Howie it seems to me that these are totally designed to embarrass President Trump. Rather than get out to the public some Vital Information the public needs to know. James there are authorized leaks, unauthorized leaks. There are unauthorized leaks to make your boss look good. In the leaking of the unmasking of general flynn which seemed to come from former Obama Administration officials seemed to be to under mine the incoming president. Howie we had the president meeting with Bibi Netanyahu. . The highly classified stuff about isis terror attacks, the New York Times saying the source was israel. I never mentioned the word or the name is rail. Never mentioned it in that the name israel. Never mentioned it in that conversation. Howie doesnt he in fact confirm israel was the source of this highly classified material. James he said the word is rail was never mentioned in a particular meeting. Howie the president put on the defensive on another leak designed to undermine him. James the face of Bibi Netanyahu was precious to behold. And the media event was derailed by the president take that question. I dont think it helped the president , but he mass bigger problems right now. Howie let us know what you think. Mediabuzz foxnews. Com. Fox news retracts a story i was wondering if an electric toothbrush really cleans. Better than a manual, and my hygienist says it does. But. Theyre not all the same. Turns out, theyre really. Different. Who knew . I had no idea. So, she said look for. One thats shaped like a dental tool with a round. Brush head. Go pro with oralb. Oralbs rounded brush head surrounds each tooth to. Gently remove more plaque and. Oralb crossaction is clinically proven to. Remove more plaque than sonicare diamondclean. My mouth feels so clean. Ill only use an oralb the 1 brand used by dentists worldwide. Oralb. Brush like a pro. You wont see these folks they have businesses to run. They have passions to pursue. How do they avoid trips to the post office . Stamps. Com mail letters, ship packages, all the services of the post office right on your computer. Get a 4 week trial, plus 100 in extras including postage and a digital scale. Go to stamps. Com tv and never go to the post office again. Howie fox news retracted an online story about a murder in washington, d. C. Seth rich was shot to death during what police described as a botched robbery. There were unsubstantiated allegations the murder was connected to wikileaks. A local fox affiliate in washington and foxnews. Com reported that rich leaked tens of thousands of emails to a wikileaks official. The family said may 16 a story was posted on the fox news website on the murder of seth rich, the dnc staffer it was not subjected to the high degree of scrutiny. Upon appropriate review the article was found not to meet those standards was removed. It would have been better if foxs website had never published that story. Fox news says they would continue to investigate the story. Hannity said those criticizing the story are phoney hypocrites because they are pushing the story of russia collusion. The family said its causing them additional pain, suffering and sorrow. I totally completely understand how upset and how hard this is on this family, especially over the recent coverage of seths death. However, out of respect for the familys wishes for now, i am not discussing this matter at this time. Howie after the liberal Advocacy Group media matters listed hannitys isers, several of them pulled their ads. I have liz claman on the budget and health bill. Why are some pundits blaming the president because a montana howie montana congressional candidate Greg Gianforte slammed a reporter to the ground after he came into his office and shoved a microphone into his face and started asking about the healthcare bill. Reporter gianforte grabbed him with both hand, body slammed him. Got on top of him and started punching and yelling at him. Ben jacob scrambled to his knees and he picked up his glasses. Howie gianforte was charged with misdemeanor assault. But some pundits blamed the incident on President Trump. You dont think its because the guy in office said horrible things about reporters and said they are the enemy of the American People . A guy assaults a reporter. It shouldnt be too surprising in an age of trump where he calls the press the enemy of the people. These reckless words have consequences. Howie i think we can all agree violence against reporters is unacceptable and disturbing. And its also politically stupid. But how did this become possible. Mollie this is insane to think that this has to do with donald trump unless you believe evil never existed in the world until donald trump was on the scene. You wouldnt blame democrats for bobbette ring mabob ethridge maa reporter. The medias response top the president has been extreme. Howie i hate this guilt by association. During the Obama Administration some people blamed obama when a Police Officer was shot. How is donald trump responsible for Greg Gianforte essentially slugging this guy and breaking his glasses . Joe i are dont think you can make that case. The president hasnt been the model of what he was talking about. He doesnt help himself when he tweets this morning congratulations for a great win in montana. No point was said that this was an abysmal abuse of behavior that shouldnt happen. That doesnt mean that you can blame him for ben jacobs. He kind of just never pushes back on stuff. Erin i think both president obama and president bush would have done that. Howie he put out a statement saying or his office did saying these were badgering questions and aggressive behaviour from a liberal journalist. The gotcha question was about the cbo score rather than something personal. Erin i had the opportunity to interview gianforte when i was in montana and i found him to be an uninspired candidate. He was not able to answer tough questions and he couldnt really answer why it is he wanted to come to congress. Im sure he will find a tough audience when he gets to tap hill. Howie the argument would be if President Trump with his criticism of fake news is creating a dangerous climate and we can debate that. But i think people are responsible for their own actions. This guy might have done that if this guy was still selling golf courses. We have not seen that on both sides. There is no justification for body slamming a reporter and no justification for how the media created a clue mast distrust, unfair rhetoric. Its important for the sake of the republic that we youll Work Together as a country and Everyone Needs to make sure they are putting their best foot forward. Howie sometimes you get caught up in these media scrums and you can get elbowed in the head. This was not that. Joe if this set him off, the cbo score, come on, when this guy gets here, as erin said, he can be a big problem. Howie the thing that got an enormous amount of Media Attention had to do with melania trump, the first lady and some video. We have two pieces of video, ill call the alleged hand slap. Here is the closeup, now we are treating this like a film, was this an actual slap or did she just pull her hand away . She pulled her hand away, but i didnt see the slap. Maybe she was high fiving him. I dont know. But it looks like she was walking away. Howie a second video when they were coming off the plane. And once again the first lady is not interested. So what . It never happened to me. Even when you were 16 . Joe no, that never happened. Howie the high road question is, take these incidents. Is there an evident to sort of understand their marriage through these little glimpses . Mollie thats whats going on. People are trying to get a great deal of meaning out of these snippets. But more than that we should also remember that if you are focusing on this type of thing its an indication the trip went pretty well. Howie if thats the worst thing they can say about it. Thank you for joining us. Coming up. The media portrays the president s budget as heartless towards the poor. You wont see these folks at the post office. They have businesses to run. They have passions to pursue. How do they avoid trips to the post office . Stamps. Com mail letters, ship packages, all the services of the post office right on your computer. Get a 4 week trial, plus 100 in extras including postage and a digital scale. Go to stamps. Com tv and never go to the post office again. How report Washington Post, steep budget cuts dont sit well with many in the gop. The New York Times columnist, finally some good news for President Trump. His new budget stands no chance of being enacted by congress. Joining us is liz clayman. The media are casting his budget as hurting the poor and many working class trump voters. Is that fair . And is that whole picture . Liz i have seen more pointedly harsh headlines on this budget than i have seen on the manchester bomber. But is it fair . What can the press do and what should the press do but go to capitol hill. So, they go to capitol hill and of course the democrats are quite vitriolic in their dismissal and criticism of this budget, including some of the cuts, for example, the National Science foundation. You dig into the weeds albuquerque find there were Spending Plans to do research on things like the fashion industry in turkey or viking textiles in iceland. And here is the best one. 700,000 spent by that organization to create a musical on climate change. A musical. So the democrats lose legitimacy when they cant even say that one or two pieces of this need to be cut and thats appropriate. So they go to the republicans. Guess what, some republicans are very critical of it. They say d. O. A. , dead on arrival. Any time you have a budget where you are cutting spending. You can go to potential victims. But at same time there is another side to this. The taxpayers have to pay for all this stuff. I think that focus is sometimes lost in the coverage of this particular bill. Liz i looked around for people who are being realistic about it on cnn and online. The former head of the cbo put an oped on there and said its not as bad as what everybody says. What we have is unsustainable and Everybody Knows that. At what point do we wage and realize we absolutely have the reform this. When President Trump put out his budget, he put out his priorities. His priorities are to not touch Social Security and medicare. To add more spending when it comes to the military and veterans organizations. So if those are his priorities. The press has to look at that and say lets take it from there. We now have the Congressional Budget Office scoring saying 23 Million People over a decade would move their Health Insurance coverage. Some of them with preexisting conditions. This morning the New York Times editorial trump care, cruelty reaffirmed. How does the press referee this . Liz its fascinating to watch how some press do referee fairly, like you see the hockey referees in the National Hockey league. They just want to make sure they are making the right calls. Thats the important thing to do here. And many of them are not. They are only pointing out this headline number that says 23 million over ten years will not be insured. Part of that has to do that this Healthcare Plan i am naits that mandate that you have to buy coverage. But then people are now putting this right back where we were. They dont buy insurance, but they show up at the hospital at their worst point. My dad was a doctor. He says they come at their worst point and that falls on the rest of us who do pay insurance because costs go up. As you look at the trump plan, you have to realize there are things that have to change. Obamacare was going to buckle under its own weight. It already is. Talk to anybody in certain states where there arent any plans left or just one single choice. Howie the coverage is leaving out that part. I love the way you drill down on these things. Your part part of now that iw your father is a doctor i will ask you on this subject. The president meets the pope and the how report president and pope francis after a cordial meeting, the media with a charming headline poach and dope. In that president the president is smiling broadly and the pope is not. Do you think this meeting was a bigger deal than the coverage would have suggested and focused on things like a photo . Mollie you can have a photo with a smiling pope or nonsmiling pope. Whichever one you choose sets the tone for what you are going to say about the meeting. Every time a president meets with a pope there will be areas of common amount and disagreement. Immigration enforce f. , you had that with president obama. The pope was opposed to his position of you a the porting abortion through all nine months of pregnancy. Every president will have certain things they have common agreement on and certain things they wont its better to reflect the full comple full ful complexity. The reporting confirmed they are spokes inman confirmed shiefs a park advertising catholic. So first of all, how is it the media were unaware of it. One of the ways that media violated norms and how they cover president ial politics is we didnt get a lot of those profiles of melania and mrs. Pence. So we have things like we dont know what religion they are its interesting because melania group in a communist country where religion is banned. Sow she didnt have the childhood religion experience. Was she secretly baptized in slovenia or not. Howie this hasnt really been that big a story. I would think given how many catholics there are just in america and around the world that the press would want to know more about this. Mollie kudos to the daily mail for following up on this. They did get confirmation from the white house that she is roe man catholic. Howie sean spice wer shiewns exclude from the meeting with the pope. He is a catholic and really wanted to meet the pope. Mollie this is the palace intrigue story reporters like to eat up. Im sure there were other highprofile meting who werent there as well. There could be thousand reasons. We need to make sure we find out the actual reasons before we speculate. Howie great to see you as always. Mollie hemingway. Still to come, billy bush on that tape thats ended his howie the fcc received thousands of complaints about Stephen Colberts sex broke about donald trump. You can say whatever the blank you want after 10 00 p. M. Which is considered a safe harbor because there are fewer kids in the room. And it was bleeped. Billy bush lost his perch at the today show. He had been a host a decade earlier when a tape showed him yucking it up engage in locker room talk with women. He broke his see you excellence today on rival gna. Do you believe you should have lost your job over this. Mot tape, i understand peoples reaction. I agree, i also felt that way. We live in a visual and digital age. We get this video, this moment, and we react emotionally to it. And then you have social media and the ability to respond in realtime, and a flame becomes a bonfire very, very quickly. I look back and wish i should have stopped it. But i didnt have the strength of character at the time to do that. I wish i did. Howie hes taking responsibility for outtakes he never thought would see the light of day. Thats it for this edition of mediabuzz and howard kurtz. I hope your enjoying your day. I hope you like our facebook page. I respond to people there. Let us know what you think about the media. No political speeches. We have a lot of media news every week to get in and we try to shove in as much as we can. Back here next sunday, see you. Dont forget those who have served. Thank you. President trump is back on u. S. Soil and going after the media already. This is the week he begins a new round of the white house chang changes. The president and first lady arrived after a world when nine days abroad last night. President trump sticking to his America First agenda, pressing for leaders on defense spending and trade. At home, a major staff overhaul is in the works. We have word of that coming up s