Transcripts For FOXNEWSW MediaBuzz 20180528 : vimarsana.com

American leadership around the world. But trump may pull off a peace deal yet. Howie a leaked audio shows a white house aide conducting background briefing. President trump pushes his Justice Department to investigate an informant being put town his campaign. Donald trump is trying to destroy this investigation. Thats whats going on here. Donald trump should be grateful for obamas fbi that spied on him. People who wrote this crap should be ashamed. Why be cant people say the fbi investigates people. Thats what we do. If we think a foreign power is involved with one of our president ial campaigns, thats our job. We sent the informant in to protect donald trump. We are stalking you as a favor. Howie the media lionized Elizabeth Holmes as a superstar and her blood testing theranos as groundbreaking. Elizabeth holmes is part of the new time 100 list just out. Howie it all came crashing down on charges of fraud. Im howard kurtz and this is mediabuzz. White house correspondents were preparing for a june 12 visit to singapore when the president scrapped the sitdown with north koreas dictator. President trump i believe this is a tremendous setback for north korea and a setback for the world. If and when kim jongun chooses to engage in constructive dialogue and actions, i am waiting. Howie now the president says the meeting may be back on. Joining me, mollie hemingway, sara fischer and adrienne elrod. North korea had been using such harsh rhetoric, the president may have had no choice you to cancel this. Mollie the Washington Post repeated multiple times that there was no way donald trump would walk away from the summit because he needed it so bad. If he does walk away, they say hes a bad negotiator. A little less trump focus might be helpful. Howie media skeptics like to say this is an example of trumps Foreign Policy being erratic. But dont the North Koreans bear some responsibility . Adrienne it doesnt happen in a vacuum but the media had a right to be sceptical. Donald trump from the beginning, it almost seemed it was too good to be true. He was able to get this meeting quickly and both sides started squabbling back and forth. So i think the media has every right to view this with scepticism and has the right to provide scepticism when the meeting was cancelled. Howie many in the media didnt like it when President Trump was using incendiary language. And saying enough preparations had not been laid, and the media didnt like it when he canceled. Sara this is the way he does negotiations. So to take one perspective when it looks like its going one way, you have got to take a step back and look how its a big part of his deal making. Howie let me read to you this controversy is kind of exploding this morning. President ial tweet saying the failing New York Times quotes a senior white house official who doesnt exist saying even if the meeting were reinstated, holding it on june 12 would be impossible. Wrong again. Audio was leaked to at journalist showing the person her who trump said didnt exist is a senior white house official conducting a background briefing. But i think its a fair question. What about the president saying the person doesnt exist. And what about somebody who agreed to abide by the rules of the background briefing leaking it. Sara reporters are not supposed to be leaking information when they agreed it was a background meeting. We now clearly the official does exist. Howie let me put up a graphic showing what the Unnamed White House official said. The audio contains this as well. There isnt a lot of time, we lost a lot of time. June 12 is in 10 minutes. Mollie hemingway donald trump says june 12 is possible. But his aides said impossible. The aide did say there is not a lot of time. The ball is in north koreas court. The New York Times did a horrible job characterizing what he said, they say he exists. Did the New York Times Say Something correct or incorrect when it said donald trump is at odds with his aides. They just need to show him saying its impossible. How already clearly the times overstated the statement. Mollie should he have said you mischaracterized the real person . But the problem is the news media have to be accurate. This was a major part of the story. They are saying the aide is at odds with the president. They dont have the evidence to support that claim. There is a pattern where President Trump says with people they dont like. The president said he doesnt exist. Adrienne Donald Trumps erratic behavior is on full display. Whenever he is frustrated with the way the media is covering any story hes involved with. He tries to disparage the source. He took a standard knee jerk reaction approach and he was wrong. This is somebody in his administration. Howie you can say the source was wrongs, biased or had an agenda. But this was at least a real person. The president demanding a Justice Department investigation, that New York Times report on an fbi informant having penetrated the trump campaign. President trump if you look at clapper, he admitted they had spies in the campaign yesterday inadvertently. I hope its not true, but it looks like it is. A lot of bad things happened, we are calling it spygate. You are calling it spygate. Howie they are saying the president crossed the line asking the doj to look into this. Mollie this is an interesting think to say it shouldnt be looked into. The American People need to know what protocols were followed. What made them think this was an okay thing to do. You need that to restore confidence in our law enforcement. The president has oversight over the department of justice. The department of justice is behaving improperly by not turning over to Congress Information they subpoenaed. Howie it does seem to me the president has the right to demand accountability about what was at the very least an undercover effort aimed at his campaign. Adrienne sara his campaign was the entity under investigation. The fbi was using its standard protocol process to gather information. This time it happened to be the president s former campaign. Howie sarah, President Trump tries to write the media headlines. He tells reporters, you are calling it spygate, except most of of them werent. But now some of them are. Sara at the end of the day his branding techniques are what he uses to get the message out. If he thinks its a spy, hell label it spygate. Now all the media is picking up on it. Howie its short, it fits in a onecolumn headline. President trump quoted you in a tweet, you said on the air everyone knows there was a spy and people involved in the spying are admitting there is a spy. Mollie its true former intelligence officials including clapper and comey. We were doing this but we dont call it a spy. Clapper said i dont like the term spy but we were using spies. He did acknowledge they were doing this. This is scandalous by any measure. To pretend this is not a big deal and an opposey party was doing this. The journalists should be clamoring to find out what happened. We have a fbi as a rule of standard operation spying on political campaigns. All of the things we have learned by the were part of a setup by the government itself. Thats a huge issue. Howie well have more our discussion about the president and the fbi. The press is claiming vindication with the arrest of Harvey Weinstein. Howie adrienne elrod, i think sometimes the media loses the thread. Either the fbi hired this informant because of russia contacts by carter page and george papadopoulos. Or whether the Obama Administration did this for political purposes. We dont fully know, do we . Adrienne the department of justice was conducting an investigation separate from what President Trump was telling the department of justice to do. The department of justice felt it was the right thing to do, to send an informant into an entity that was under investigation. This is not because president obama said please send in a spy to cover trumps campaign. Mollie there are texts that show people in the department of justice said the white house would be told what was going on. Who knew what and when they knew it. I am shocked we dont have more journalists thinking this is a huge story, lets dig into it. Howie the question is, is it a story you dig into because this is a huge story bigger than watergate, the president says, or do you conclude it is one thing or the other. You agree there are Unanswered Questions . Mollie there might be reasonable explanations why four to seven people were wiretapped and there was at least one human informant sent in. Secretly collecting information on behalf of the government ways we call spying. Howie some one in the New York Times earlier said trump repeats unproven claim about quote spy in campaign. The media is engaged in a semantic campaign. As people on the right might feel that this is a vindication for the president , and people on the left will say its not a spy. It comes down to a whatever semantics. And i think its going to be something we continue to debate for a bunch of weeks. Howie commentators are so locked into this idea of the fbi informant. Do you think it cab sells itself out in this sense. But for people who arent following it like we are supposed to do. That it all becomes a bunch of noise, and people just go on with their lives . This is what President Trump wants. Yet again its a distraction. Its another twaip that President Trump and his allies use to discredit the fbi and the government institution. Mollie when the president said he was wiretapped, people in the media said thats not true. Now that we know there are the wiretaps, National Security letters, human intelligence. Now they are saying its not a big deal, its standard operating procedure. Howie sara, i wanted to ask about a federal judges ruling saying President Trump on his twitter accounting not block people because hes a big public official. Sara they made this ruling about all Public Officials. A few months ago the National Archives said you cant delete a tweet without it going into the record. This is new understanding how all Public Officials will be monitored moving forward. Howie journalists block people all time as do others. Thank you for joining us this holiday weekend. Journalists gave rise to a Cultural Movement when they exposed the charges against Harvey Weinstein. Howie less than a year after the New York Times and the new yorker revealed a list of Sexual Assault allegations against Harvey Weinstein, he was arrested friday and charged with rape and a criminal sex act. Hes pleading not guilty complete with a new york perp walk. Joining us is kat timpf. Regardless of what happens in this particular trial. Dozen of others are barred by statute of limitations. What is the impact for others to see Harvey Weinstein being led away in handcuffs. Kat i am sure many enjoyed seeing that pervert led away in hand cuffs. Myself included. This is a moment many of his victims never thought they what see come. You always see men get away with this historically. And it looks like thats changing. Howie its impossible to overstate the impact, those stories about weinstein, the media, Silicon Valley, the corporate world, you name it. Is it also a vindication of journalism as practiced by the times and ronan farrow bringing down someone who seemed to be untouchable and wielded so much power through the media and bullied people through the media, nobody those would actually be charged and led away in handcuffs. Kat i think its a vindication and it represents a huge cultural shift. In the past men used to be able to get away with this if they had political impact. Howie one of the coauthors of one of these investigative pieces quoted various things weinstein told victims in the past. One phone call and you are done. I have eyes and ears everywhere. She writes, not anymore. Is there too much of a celebratory tone to some of these stories and tweets. As much as you and i may have enjoyed seeing weinstein brought down. This is also a tragedy that deeply affected the lives of many young and aspiring actresses. Kat sure. It was great to see him arrested. The pain he caused never goes away. Also, hopefully this could send a message to other men out there. Maybe you used to be able to get away with this behavior. But times are changing and you cant get away with it anymore. Howie weinstein has become the preeminent symbol in many cases. Kat timpf. Thank you very much. Coming up. Bret baier on similarities between donald trump and Ronald Reagan. A reporter that exposed theranos. Howie time for a deeper dive on the coverage of President Trumps Foreign Policy. I sat down this morning with bret baier. , the author of three days in moscow. The cancellation of the summit with kim jongun after taunting him as little rocket man, and now the summit is back on. Do all these moves in Foreign Policy make it difficult to cover donald trump . Bret yes. You dont know whats going to happen. Also the logistics of following and covering a president. We were scheduled to go to singapore and planning ahead to how that was going to work and the travel and the shows. Covering this summit to be. So as it fell apart, do you cancel the ticket, do you not, do you hold on. Right now we are in limbo and well see. You know, when the president threatens to pull out of nafta and he doesnt. He says hes going to withdraw his troops in syria then he pulls back. You have a group of commentators and analysts who say hes strategic and others say hes erratic. Bret we could be both. We dont know whats driving some of those decisions. Its clear that foreign governments look at him as unpredictable. In some cases that plays to their benefit, the u. S. In other cases it does not. It disturbs allies and causes problems. Unpredictable is clear. Why is not. Howie when Ronald Reagan was proposing the nuclear freeze, reagan says what did 20 years patience get us. It sounds like donald trump. Bret there are a lot of similarities twin trump and reagan in their personality and style. And the threats are very similar. Change the paradigm in washington in Foreign Policy is very similar. Reagan upset the apple cart as far as detante and Foreign Policy. Howie both were outsiders. A twoterm governor. President trump a businessman and reality tv star. I heard echos in the 1980 campaign. A lot of reporters said Ronald Reagan was a war monger and we heard that when trump and kim jongun were at odds and trading nuclear threats. Bret we were going to war with ask north korea three or four months ago, but the prospect of sitting down at a summit is there. Some aggressive speech and tweets and rocket man and how big is your button. Thats not reagan style. But he was saying communism would be to the ash heap of history and the soviet union was the evil empire. At the time those things were seen as inflammatory. Howie reagan got a lot of bad press, revisionist history much better. He said there they go again. The president obviously fights the press. Bret reagan was getting hammered by all the folks covering the administration. And pretty tough. Every administration thinks they have it tough. They all complain. I think reagan had some argument to make. But you are right. He didnt internalize that or turn it around. He kind of blew it off and said maybe i can get them on my side if you explain it the right way. Donald trump is the opposite. Hes a counter puncher. Hes shard scrabble new york. And hes taking it to the press. But politically he used this to hammer the media and picked up his base to say thats fake news. Howie its a very different time with twitter and social media. 60 minutes came out in a forum and recalled a conversation she had with the president elect. She said you beat up on the press all the time its getting old and boring. He said i do it to discredit you all and demean you also when you write negative stories about me nobody will believe you. Howie assuming leslie stahl remembered this exchange correctly, what does it tell you. Bret i dont know the context. Whether he was joking or not, half joking. Serious. Can you hear donald trump saying that . Yes. If thats his thinking and mentality, then that tells you something about some of the actions he has taken along the way. But i think its strange that its taken this long to hear this anecdote. I just think that there is not a lot here that we didnt know. I think its disturbing if you think about thats really his motivation. I dont know thats 100 his motivation. Until you see it, hear it or have context of it. Howie if you flip it around, there are some who view it as their job to discredit the president. Bret baier, thanks very much for sitting down with us. Good luck with the book. Hbo hails john mccain as a hero. After the break, the press was casting Elizabeth Holmes as the next steve jobs until a wall street journal reporter started investigating her company. 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Howie the media hailed Elizabeth Holmes as a Silicon Valley superstar when she launched her blood test company. She was very cool said glamour. The next steve jobs. She was the face of the forbes 400. And television wasnt far behind. You are doing so so profound. The goal is to empower the individual. I regard you as a visionary next generation person. You have been referred to as steve jobs or bill gates. But we should refer to you as Elizabeth Holmes. What you are doing is revolutionizing the blood tests. I started this company to change the reality in our blood test system. You can have a huge impact on the healthcare system. Thats our goal and our dream. A healthcare pioneer is being compared to steve jobs and bill gates. Howie wall street journal reporter John Carreyrou raised questions. Elizabeth holmes played defense in a television blitz. For the first time Elizabeth Holmes is opening up the secret labs of theranos. At the highest level we didnt have the right leadership in the laboratory. You are fighting for the life of your company. What have the last six months been like for you. I am a better leader for it. I feel devastated that we did not catch and fix these issues faster. Howie the sec charged her with massive fraud and she agreed to not be an officer of any company for 10 years. Joining us is John Carreyrou. Author of bad blood, secrets and lies. How does the media give such rocket fuel to a young woman and her company that turned out to be a fraud. Theranos was founded in 2003 when she dropped out of stanford. It operated under the ray dafort media for four years. She had been around for a longer period of time than many Silicon Valley startups. You would expect to have achieved something during that period of time. The company claimed to have pioneered groundbreaking new science where the company had a device that could run the full range of Laboratory Tests from just a drop of blood from the finger. Howie if it were true. And she got an oped piece in the wall street journal. All these luminaries. You were talking to Tyler Schultz as a source. Edcalled you. What happened then . My first original source wasnt tyler but he was an important corroborating source. I first made con account with him through linkedin. Then one afternoon at wall street journals manhattan headquarters. Hes terrified. Hes got a burner phone. He starts telling me about his experience at the company which lasted 8 months and ended with him trying to raise his concerns with elizabeth and her boyfriend who was number two in the company. They basically told him in no Uncertain Terms that he was too young and too green and didnt know what he was talking about and told him to shut up or leave. So he ended up leaving. At which Point Elizabeth called his grandfather george, the famous former secretary of state and told him if tyler persisted in pursuing this vendetta against her, he would lose. Howie elizabeth wouldnt talk to you. But you met with her highpowered lawyer and it got hot. They came to our offices at the wall street journal in 2015. Heather king who had been a partner, and boyce. And we met with them for five hours. And they took a very aggressive stance which was that i had misappropriated theranos trade secrets and i needed to destroy them or return them immediately. It was a surreal meeting. I kept trying to get substantive answers to my questions such as how many tests were run on theranos device and how many were run on commercial analyzers. They wouldnt answer any of the questions and kept invoking trade secrets. W howie one of the people who put personal money into the company was rupert murdoch. How much did that complicate your reporting . I actually didnt know by the. Before we went to press i hadnt heard about it and i heard vague rumors and i wasnt able to confirm them. I was digging into the company for nine months before we published that first story. There was no interference that i could see. It wasnt a factor for me. When i finally got confirmation he was not tomorrow an investor, but the single largest investor, having put 125 million in the company i lettered that a year later. Howie i have got about half a minute. All these magazine covers we showed, the tv segments, the next steve jobs. Looking back in hindsight it seems like a serious indictment of business journalism to provide all that hype for something that turned out to be so flawed. You could make an argument that some reporters should have asked more questions and consulted more experts. But im inclined not to fault people who wrote about her too much because she was outright lying to them. She was bald faced lying to them again and again. They didnt have any reason to think they were dealing with a pathological liar and fraudster. Howie thats why we have investigative reporters like you. Ahead on mediabuzz. A documentary on john mccain. Howie the hbo documentary on john mccain that airs monday is extremely favorable. I have not always done the right thing, but you will never talk to anyone who is as fortunate as john mccain. Howie they showcase the praise for the republican senator who is battling brain cancer from barack obama, joe biden, and clinton. And hes had a warm relationship with fourth estate. Its always a pleasure to appear before the Journalistic Community or what one of my advisors affectionately calls my base. Howie he is a war hero who refusedder release. And hes a figure in the republican party. He voted against repealing obamacare in that dramatic latenight vote. I first got to know the senator during the president ial campaign. He didnt have much money and he would answer questions and then we would talk about sports or movies. The press cast mccain as a maverick. The pundits wrote off mccains Second Campaign in 2007. But once he won the nomination and he was running against obama, the media questioned his temperament. Journalists rediscovered he was in fact a conservative republican. When he emerged as a critic of donald trump, the press started admiring him again. He was ensnared in the banging scandal. And he didnt call for the removal of the Confederate Flag in South Carolina because he didnt want to lose the primary there. Now as he fights his last battle, the media shouldnt paint john mccain as a saint, but report fairly on his courage, compromises and contradictions. Thats it for this edition of mediabuzz. I hope you are enjoying this memorial day weekend. You can continue the conversation on mediabuzz foxnews. Com. Well see you next sunday at. Sandra it is monday, may 28th. This is fox friends first. Happening right now at 4 00 a. M. Here on the east coast. Streets turn to raging rivers. States of emergency just declared over dangerous flash flooding along the east coast. And now several gulf states bracing for a direct hit by a subtropical storm. We are tracking your memorial day forecast. And saving the summit. The white house delegates in north korea right now prepping for potential meeting. So, will it actually happen . What kim jong un and President Trump have to say. Many people think that the ultimate sacrifice is giving up your life. But these soldiers gave up not only their lives but their