Losing My Dinner

For those who wondered when the American mainstream media establishment would finally collapse into irrelevance, the suspense ended with the rescheduled 2025 White House Correspondents' Association dinner this past weekend. 

I can't think of a more disgusting sight in recent memory than Trump donning a "TRUMP 2028" ball cap while giving a monumentally incoherent speech even for him and announcing his fourth presidential candidacy for 2028 despite the fact that he's term-limited.  Members of the White House press corps actually laughed - not at Trump but with him, as if the 22nd Amendment to the Constitution never mattered.  Trump further undistinguished himself with insults directed toward Kaitlan Collins, who had just won an award for her reporting.  As Collins has become famous for holding Trump to account, Trump was eager to bring her down a few notches for insulting her appearance.

She happens to be a beautiful woman.  But, as I learned when I had to shut down my beautiful-women picture blog, that shouldn't matter.

What really made me want to throw up was the behavior of Kristen Welker.  I have already discussed Welker disappointing me and later disgusting me with her acquiescence toward Trump, both before and after the presidential election that forced Kamala Harris into early retirement; Welker, like Collins, started out dealing with Trump nonchalantly and letting him control the narrative.  But while Collins was able to transcend her own supplication and emerge as one of CNN's most fearless reporters, Welker has become an unbearable NBC stooge in the tradition of Chuckles the Clown (formerly Chuck Todd), her predecessor as the moderator of "Meet the Press."  But all of her journalistic crimes before this past weekend are minor compared to what she did at the White House Correspondents' Association dinner.

Welker was actually caught on camera talking to - and laughing it up with - Stephen Miller.    

Stephen . . . Miller.

Stephen Miller, the fascist Trump aide who has thrown migrants in jail for trying to seek shelter in the U.S. and . . . for being brown.  The fascist Trump aide who thinks that people who look like Kristen Welker shouldn't be in this country, and who has his job because Trump was voted back in by people who think biracial people like Kristen Welker - born to a white father and a black mother - are a mistake.  That Stephen Miller.  Not Steve Miller, the rock and roll musician.

Kristen Welker was seen as a bright, sharp TV reporter who also happened to be good-looking back in 2011, when I featured her on my beautiful-women picture blog, and she became my most viewed subject, with comments each made up of a single word - most of those single-word comments being adjectives that complimented her journalistic skills.  I've talked about that before.  At the time I ended my beautiful-women picture blog, Kristen Welker was a big reason I ended it.  Not the biggest reason, but still a big one.  This picture of her enjoying the company of Stephen Miller destroyed any respect I might have still had for her.

I don't even watch or listen to mainstream broadcast news anymore - I haven't since November 2024.  I consume a lot of independent media on YouTube.  Jim Acosta's channel is one of the best.  I hope Kaitlan Collins starts her own YouTube channel when the Ellison family's attempt to buy out CNN's parent company and put Bari Weiss at the head of CNN comes to pass (the takeover is still in limbo) so she can continue her fearless reporting on Trump.  

But even if Kristen Welker were to admit tomorrow that she was wrong and has changed her ways, I'm finished with her.  Given her movie-star looks, not even a Hollywood ending, ironically, can save her career.

These Boots Aren't Made For Welker

I was rooting for Kristen Welker.  I really was.  As the first woman and as the first biracial person (he father is white, her mother is black), to moderate NBC's "Meet the Press," as the most popular woman on my beautiful-women picture blog (my July 2011 post of her has gotten over 51,000 views),  and as a reporter who has a more prestigious and storied career than Kaitlan Collins over at CNN, she had me expecting her interview with Donald Trump, her inaugural feature as the new "Meet the Press" moderator, to be a ball she'd knock out of the park.  I was expecting her to take Trump down in a way no other reporter could.

Instead, she proved no more effective than Kaitlan Collins.        

During her interview with Trump, Welker encountered every problem that Collins and other reporters had - she had to deal with Trump spewing lies, conspiracy theories, slogans, and all other sorts of verbal trickeries.  She rarely tried to contradict him, given her structured set of questions for Trump, and when she did, she responded to his lies and half-truths about the Democrats, making her seem like an operative for the Democratic Party and confirming, in the minds of MAGA Republicans, the belief that that the media and the government are out to stop Trump and go after anyone who agrees with him.  I mean, how else could you explain this "discussion" of these charges against Hunter Biden, who was just indicted for twelve charges, including a charge of illegal gun possession and several charges of misconduct in business affairs:

DONALD TRUMP: Well, sure, maybe. I mean, let’s see what happens. But this [gun charge] is the only charge that doesn’t affect Joe Biden . . . the gun charge. But gun charges are very serious. You know, people have had gun charges and gone to jail for a lot of, a lot of years. I pardoned some people who I thought it was just horrible what happened. But they were put in jail for many, many years, rappers and others. So, look, it’s a bad thing. But it’s one of 12, and it’s the one charge that doesn’t affect Joe Biden. 

KRISTEN WELKER: Well, of course, there's no evidence that the President has any link to his son's business dealings. Let me ask you, though — 

DONALD TRUMP: Well, I don't — 

KRISTEN WELKER: – about a second — 

DONALD TRUMP: – necessarily agree.

KRISTEN WELKER: Well, there is no — 

DONALD TRUMP: He called in. I mean, he called in to all these meetings. He was calling in on the meetings. He was put on speakerphone and — every single day and — 

KRISTEN WELKER: The witness who testified — 

DONALD TRUMP: – literally many, many calls. And what about the fact that he got rid of the prosecutor for a billion dollars? They said — 

KRISTEN WELKER: Well, the witness who testified — 

DONALD TRUMP: "You don't get rid of this prosecutor, we’re not giving you a billion dollars to Ukraine." He said that. I mean, there are a lot of things here, Kristen.

Even as they kept interrupting each other, Trump managed to complete his sentences while denying Welker the ability to complete hers.

Many media critics agree that Welker should have questioned Trump more extemporaneously rather than stick to a prepared set of questions.  Because Trump knows what to expect why the questions are structured in advance and subsequently bobs and weaves to his own pleasure an the frustration of the interviewer. Somehow, I expected Welker to be more savvy than that. 

Still, Welker has more journalistic credibility than Kaitlan Collins.  Remember that Welker was on tap to replace Chuckles the Clown (formerly Chuck Todd) long before she set herself up to be steamrolled by Trump.  Collins, by contrast, got her own show on CNN after her disastrous town hall with Trump, having perversely gotten her show in the timeslot once occupied by Chris Cuomo for her allegedly masterful handling of Trump.  I could say that, Collins, like Chuckles the Clown at NBC News, benefited from the Peter Principle, but the Peter Principle says that you rise above your competence level when you get promoted to a position you can't handle by not screwing up in your lower-level jobs.  Collins screwed up with Trump and still got promoted.

As for Welker, well, what can I say?  I'm disappointed, of course.  And it now suddenly seems much more trivial than it already was to feature Welker, Collins, and other female news personalities on my beautiful-women picture blog.  In this new world of subjective reality ("Truth isn't truth!" - Rudolph Giuliani), maybe featuring female news personalities on my beautiful-women picture blog isn't so appropriate anymore, given that women in visual broadcast media weren't - or weren't supposed to be - hired for their looks.  Right now, I expect to feature a lot fewer female news personalities on my other blog than before, and I might just stop featuring them altogether.

As for Trump, he would have done what he did to Welker and Collins to a male broadcast journalist as well.  In fact, he could eat punks like George Stephanopoulos for breakfast.

And I think the most effective way to deal with Donald Trump in the news business is . . . not to give him any free media at all.

CNN Minus

You may have noticed that I have refrained from commenting on some of the most talked-about stories in the news in the past few weeks - nothing about mass shootings, no commentary about the border crisis, and not even a mention of the leak of classified documents from that kid in Massachusetts.  The main reason for this is that I don't feel like I either know enough of or have proper insight to such stories.  I don't think there's anything I can add to them and, besides, it's much too depressing to try to keep up with the latest mass shooting in America.

On the lighter side of the news ,though, I can't resist to comment further on the mayhem at CNN, which is the lighter side of the news.

CNN seems to be in a state of flux as it tries to navigate between its its coverage of the news and its various special presentations.  The flap over Donald Trump's "town hall" event is hardly likely to die down, as it's become obvious that Trump will be raring to go for another town-hall-style broadcast he can turn into a studio rally - and ratings-hungry CNN boss Chris Licht is just as likely to go for more as well. News personalities at CNN are in a state of flux as well, as Licht decides whom to keep and whom to throw out.  He's already given Brian Stelter the green weenie, and Ana Cabrera has departed for MSNBC. As for CNN's News Central programs, they're pretty good at reporting the news, but they're not very good at presentation; Licht has the anchors of the morning and afternoon programs stand while on the air, and the women are expected to wear high heels.  Even Brianna Keilar. 

Licht has also made it clear that if they want to keep their jobs, they have to forfeit a little integrity.  Hence we have to hear Anderson Cooper and Michael Smerconish, among others, defend - yes defend - the Trump town hall event that featured Trump as the host with moderator Kaitlan Collins in a supporting role,  They're all reading from the same script, saying that Trump is the front runner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination and CNN cannot simply ignore Trump and must give him air time to respond to the voters.  It's the same old song and dance about how Trump is a credible presidential candidate, even though CNN risked and possibly destroyed its credibility by having Trump come on and repeat his lies in front of an appreciative studio audience.  I know I said all this last week, but I cannot emphasize it enough. 

As for CNN's special programming . . . well, the channel is currently showing its multipart documentary about the 2010s, the worst decade in human history until the 2020s got underway.  I found the first two episodes on TV and music a snoozefest, mostly because I find a lot of contemporary television uninteresting and because  I still believe that making strange sounds with a laptop isn't music (and when Renee Graham of the Boston Globe comes on, you know she's going to defend hip-hop to the death as a great form of artistic expression).  Also, Greta Van Fleet were not mentioned.

Much more interesting was Eva Longoria's culinary travelogue "Searching For Mexico," a series originally made for CNN+ but aired instead on the parent channel when the online child died in its crib.  I didn't know half the stuff that Eva Longoria dove into, particularly with the food - and she only visited Mexico City and six of the country's 31 states.  But will it be back for a second season to explore places like Baja California or Puebla, or did Licht just burn off the original episodes made for CNN+?  The channel pretty much left Stanley Tucci's "Searching For Italy" (Tucci co-produced Longoria's show with her) to wither before he could finish visiting his ancestral homeland's twenty regions, because Licht no longer wants to bother with independently produced programs.  I expect Longoria will get the same harsh treatment.

Finally, speaking of harsh treatment, I cannot end this blog post without commenting on the departure of Don Lemon.  Lemon lived up to his name as a newsman, forced to make small talk with Kaitlan Collins and Poppy Harlow on "CNN This Morning" after having hosted his droll, dull evening program for so long, only to get himself in trouble when he said he preferred watching men's soccer to watching the U.S. women's national team (he apparently likes to watch losers like our men's soccer team; I wonder if he's a Pittsburgh Pirates fan?) and called presidential candidate Nikki Haley "past her prime," angering Harlow and Collins and causing them to walk off the set.  (Many guests wouldn't even appear on "CNN This Morning" because he was on it.)  I didn't think it was possible for a gay man like Lemon to be misogynistic, but there's always a first for everything.         

Lemon's stint as a morning-news anchor didn't even last six months, and his last day was a Monday; he only found out he was fired that night.  With MSNBC having everyone they need (including Ana Cabrera), Lemon might want to take the same path taken by Chris Cuomo and join NewsNation.  He'd be better off returning to local TV news like Susan Roesgen did.  Because he might want to remember the story of the woman with two sons.  One went to sea and the other became a NewsNation anchor.  Neither was heard from again. 

This . . . Is CNN??

When I heard that CNN was hosting Donald Trump in a live "town hall" event to meet with voters in New Hampshire, I was skeptical bordering on uneasy.  This town hall, as it was promoted, would give Trump oxygen at a time when he's already getting too much of it.   But he was supposedly entitled to such a format, given that he is the front runner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, and credible presidential candidates - at least credible presidential candidates not named Martin by their mothers and O'Malley by their fathers - are taken seriously be CNN.  And Kaitlan Collins, who got banned from covering Trump by his administration after she asked Trump uncomfortable questions about Vladimir Putin and Michael Cohen at a 2018 White House press conference, was tapped to host the event and was seen as someone who would grill him like a steak n a barbecue.

Instead, she folded like a bridge table. 

Despite looking resplendent in a white suit signifying the struggle for women's equality, Collins let Trump walk and run roughshod all over her as he:

• advocated for a debt default in the event that Republicans don't get the massive spending cuts they want 
• mocked Elizabeth Jean Carroll by seeing she played "hanky panky" in dressing rooms and once again insisted that he has never met Carroll, who just won a civil suit against him for accusing him of rape, despite that photo from the late 1980s shows Trump and Carroll in great proximity to each other while talking to their spouses  
• said it didn't matter whether Ukraine or Russia won the war between the two countries as long as the fighting ends
• said he would pardon many convicted January 6 insurrectionists, saying there was "love in their hearts"
• continued to insist that the 2020 election was stolen
• refused to answer questions abut a possible federal ban on abortion while taking credit for the repeal of Roe v. Wade by appointing three Supreme Court justices
• ridiculed his critics, including Carroll, whom he called a "wack job" 

Instead of exposing Trump for what he is, CNN simply allowed him to tighten his already-firm group on the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, and the heavy promotion of the event drew more eyeballs to the cable channel than you would expect for a political TV broadcast in the middle of May.  Which, of course, translated into big ratings and lots of ad revenue for the channel.

Chris Licht, the CNN boss who is attempting to make CNN less anti-Republican and more neutral, praised Collins for hosting the event and fact-checking Trump in real time, even though her efforts satisfied no one.  She may be in line for a prime-time anchoring slot.  So rather than get a reprimand for her ineffectiveness, she may get . . . a promotion.

And I put this woman on my beautiful-women picture blog?  

I must say, though, she does look good in white . . . which of course is the color of surrender.

Licht can frame this as an example of how the town hall cast light on Trump's despicable behavior, but the event was designed mostly to attract people who are quite pleased with Trump's behavior - i.e., his supporters.  The participants of this "town hall" were mostly MAGA Republicans who were chosen specifically to have Trump's back.  Some reports said that CNN actually coaxed the audience members to cheer Trump's idiotic and hurtful statements to pump some life into the event, but, quite frankly they didn't need any coaxing.  And for every person watching on TV who was appalled by Trump, there was someone else - maybe two people - who were cheering him on.  

Chris Licht is crowing about how his channel made news with this event, but that should not have been, and likely was, the objective.  The objective is to report news.  If CNN wanted to give Trump a platform in which to state his case for being returned to the Presidency, it likely could have found a way to do so without having a live broadcast and without an audience who acted like they had just been warmed up by someone like the late Jerry Springer.  Give Trump a live feed and a room full of sycophants and I doubt that even the late Eric Sevareid couldn't have controlled him.  

This broadcast was a disgrace and an abomination.  Ironically, it may have helped President Biden by destroying the very thing Trump supposedly had that got him this moment in the spotlight in the first place.

Credibility.

No Pressing On COVID?

The biggest disappointment regarding President Biden's first press conference last week, to me anyway, was not what the reporters at the White House asked him but rather what they didn't ask him.

Not one reporter asked him about the COVID pandemic or about his plan to vaccinate as many Americans as possible.  When he opened the press conference with a statement about COVID, he might as well have been talking to a mirror, because the reporters didn't care.

And why is that?  Gee whizbangers, guys, you acted like the pandemic is no big deal anymore!  If it's not a big deal anymore, why did you all sit there looking like you'd just taken Biden hostage, wearing those pieces of cloth over your faces - and sitting six feet apart at that?  Well, it did look like a hostage situation, because Kaitlan Collins was pressing him about whether he plans to run for re-election in 2024 and he clearly looked like he thought he should be talking about something more important!

Like the pandemic.  You know, that bug going around that's now back on the upswing and is giving the CDC director, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the feeling of "impending doom" because it could cause a fourth surge - which is noteworthy in part because other countries that got COVID testing an mitigation right early in the pandemic are only on their third surge?

No wonder Biden doesn't like these press conferences.  It's not because he's afraid of making a gaffe.  It's because you ask him the most ridiculous questions, and he knows he's the sort of guy who'll try to answer them.  

And no, the migrant surge is not a crisis.  The variant surge is.