Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) told NBC News' Chuck Todd on Sunday morning that the House Select Committee on the January 6 insurrection is examining whether Congress should enact “enhanced criminal penalties” to punish the “supreme dereliction of duty” by former President Donald Trump during the attack.
Speaking on Meet the Press, the Wyoming Republican said that the public will learn "new information" about the assault on the Capitol and the events leading up to it.
“Certainly our first priority is to make recommendations,” said Cheney. “And we’re looking at things like do we need additional enhanced criminal penalties for the kind of supreme dereliction of duty that you saw with President Trump, when he refused to tell the mob to go home after he had provoked that attack on the Capitol.”
What she has learned from the committee probe has made her even more troubled by Trump's conduct and the threat it posed to the nation.
“I have not learned a single thing since I have been on this committee that has made me less concerned, or less worried, about the gravity of the situation and the actions that President Trump took and also refused to take while the attack was underway,” Cheney remarked.
WATCH on #MTP: @RepLizCheney promises Jan. 6 committee will reveal "new information."
"I have not learned a single thing since I have been on this committee that has made me less ... worried about the gravity of the situation & the actions that Pres. Trump took." pic.twitter.com/wNq8CURWME — Meet the Press (@MeetThePress) March 20, 2022
Surveying the media landscape and seeing a Beltway press corps that's constantly on the run from Republican attacks, Meet The Press moderator Chuck Todd this week urged his colleagues to stand up to the right-wing bullies, who have spent decades demonizing journalists.
"We should have fought back better in the mainstream media. We shouldn't [have] accepted the premise that there was liberal bias. We should have defended," Todd told The Verge. "We ended up in this both-sides trope. We bought into the idea that, 'Oh my God, we're perceived as having a liberal bias.'"
He added: "Where we did get lost in this, and this sort of happened to mainstream media in particular, is that we did let Republican critics get in our heads, right? The Republicans have been running on, "There's a liberal bias in the media." This has been a 45-year campaign."
Technically, it's been a 52-year campaign, with Vice President Spiro Agnew's "nattering nabobs of negativism" attack on the press in 1969 often cited as the launching point of the choreographed crusade.
The good news is that every 12 or 24 months Todd emerges and makes these types of welcomed, clear-eyed pronouncements about the press, calling out right-wing lies, and urging his colleagues to do better in fighting against dishonest GOP attacks.
The bad news is Todd then goes back to work at NBC and rarely follows his own advice. He makes no structural changes to the programs he oversees to make sure they don't fall prey to GOP tactics. It's easy to view his pronouncements as performative, directed at those who are concerned about journalism and about the state of our democracy in the face of a Republican Party that broke its pact with common sense and instead now worships at the altar of a Mar-a-Lago retiree.
Todd refuses to follow his own lead and produce consistently clear, aggressive journalism, while not fretting about potential GOP pushback.
A quick example.
During Trump's second impeachment trial, Todd introduced a Meet The Press segment in which voters from a toss-up district in Michigan were interviewed about the House proceedings. Touted as a way to take the temperature of everyday voters outside of the "Beltway," the sit-down with six voters from Kent County, Michigan, offered a chance to hear if heartland denizens "cared" about impeachment. Except there was a problem: Every voter interviewed was a Republican, and every voter interviewed opposed impeachment. ("I don't even care. It's just noise.")
This makes no sense. If you wanted anecdotal evidence of the nation's response to impeachment, you'd interview a wide cross-section of voters. Instead, Todd only talked to Republicans even though the Michigan district he focused on is evenly split among Democrats and Republicans. What would explain this type of illogical press behavior other than a fear of upsetting conservatives — of being tagged with the Liberal Media Bias charge?
Todd lamented to The Verge that the press has fallen into a "both sides trope," where journalists strain to place blame on Republicans and Democrats even when it should not be distributed that way. Yet earlier this year, after another deadly gun rampage in America, and after the Republican Party once again categorically refused to support any possible gun safety legislation, Todd went on Meet the Press and blamed Congress — Both Sides — for not doing anything to stop the deadly plague.
In response to my media critiques, PRESS RUN readers often ask, why? Why does the press behave the way it does? Why does it engage in Both Sides nonsense in an effort to water down irresponsible GOP behavior? Why does it view so many news cycles through the prism of Republican talking points? Without question, the overriding cultural reason is the fear of being hit with the Liberal Media Bias label.
I don't mean that's what's driving journalists on an hourly, granular level, or that before filing a story or going on the air they consciously think about GOP attacks. But it does remain the dominant ethos and it's been ingrained in newsrooms for decades. (Being the target of right-wing smear campaigns is no fun and it can damage journalism careers.) Consequently, the press spends an inordinate amount of time trying to prove it's not guilty of Liberal Media Bias.
That institutional fear helps explain the inexplicable, like why so many news organizations refused to call Trump a liar for four years, even as they documented his thousands of lies. That was a deliberate decision to turn away from the truth —and from accurate language — while covering the most dangerous president in American history. Afraid that calling Trump a "liar" in straight news reports would spark cries of Liberal Media Bias, the press capitulated. In the process, Trump used his avalanche of untruths to chip away at our democratic institutions.
Eric Alterman wrote an entire, must-read book in 2003 expertly debunking the bias myth, What Liberal Media? Conservatives "know mau-mauing the other side is just a good way to get their own ideas across–or perhaps prevent the other side from getting a fair hearing for theirs," he wrote. I made a similar effort with my book, Lapdogs: How the Press Rolled Over for Bush, where I focused on the media's failure during the run-up to the Iraq War: "To oppose the invasion vocally was to be outside the media mainstream and to invite scorn. Like some nervous Democratic members of Congress right before the war, mainstream media journalists seemed to scramble for political cover so as to not subject themselves to conservative catcalls."
Still, the Liberal Media Bias myth persists and remains a driving engine of the conservative movement. It's arguably more potent today because Trump made it a centerpiece of his political appeal to hate the press. It would be helpful if journalists like Chuck Todd actually took their own advice and combated the fiction head on.
Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney on Sunday defended an effort by White House staff to ask the Navy to move the USS John S. McCain out of sight during President Donald Trump’s recent visit to Japan.
Speaking on NBC’s Meet the Press, Mulvaney argued it’s “not an unreasonable thing” to ask about hiding the ship given “the president’s feelings towards the former senator.”
“The fact some 23- or 24-year-old person went to that site and said, ‘Oh my goodness, there’s the John McCain, we all know how the president feels about the former senator, that’s not the best backdrop, can somebody look into moving it?’” Mulvaney told host Chuck Todd. “That’s not an unreasonable thing to ask.”
WATCH: Acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney tells Chuck Todd that moving a Navy ship out of sight from the president was "not an unreasonable thing to do." #MTP#IfItsSunday
Mulvaney: "The president's feelings towards the former senator are well known." pic.twitter.com/kohFeQflaU
The White House official also said it would be “silly” for someone to lose their job over the incident.
Mulvaney’s attempt to downplay the controversy comes as the Pentagon told the White House to stop politicizing the military. As Time reports, Acting Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan asked his chief of staff to speak with the White House military office “and reaffirm his mandate that the department of defense will not be politicized,” spokesman Lt. Col. Joseph Buccino said.
The acting defense secretary said that his senior staff members were unaware of White House officials’ request to obscure McCain’s name during the president’s visit, but told reporters he does not plan on ordering a Pentagon inspector general’s investigation “because there was nothing carried out.”
For his part, Trump called the request “well meaning.”
IMAGE: Acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney on NBC’s Meet the Press, Sunday, June 2, 2019 via screenshot.
Shadow government ruffians, alt-right “journalists,” and bone broth chocolate milk. Welcome to This Week In Crazy, The National Memo’s weekly update on the loony, bigoted, and hateful behavior of the increasingly unhinged right wing. Starting with number five:
5. Joe Scarborough
I don’t know whether it’s the unscripted nature of Morning Joe or its namesake’s political bipolarity, but Scarborough somehow manages to dig his own rhetorical grave at least once a week. This week — Thursday, to be exact — he tried to perpetuate the thoroughly debunked argument that increased immigration inversely affects the wages of “white working class Americans.”
Contrary to Scarborough’s claim, study after study has found little evidence that immigration negatively affects American’s wages in the long term, and research shows that immigrants tend to take jobs that Americans don’t want.
It’s unsurprising that Scarborough — who fairly recently denounced his old political party — is mimicking the talking points of President Trump, who in early February called the former Florida congressman “a great guy [who] has a great show.”
By then MSNBC execs were reportedly disconcerted by “Scarborough’s friendship with Trump and his increasingly favorable coverage of the candidate.” Of course, Scarborough and co-host Mika Brzezinski subsequently distanced themselves from their old chum, drawing the Twitter ire of Trump.
But with Scaramucci unemployed, Scarborough parroting the right-wing talking points, and Trump ever changing from moment to moment, are we looking at the next White House communications director?
4. Rick Wiles
Some underpaid soul on the RightWingWatch masthead listened to Wiles’s TruNews radio show on Tuesday and clipped the three-and-a-half minutes in which the Florida pastor theorizes that a gang of shadow government ruffians has been injuring politicians in calling-card fashion for more than a decade.
Wiles and his co-host cited vaguely a 2002 incident in which then-President George W. Bush fainted while eating pretzels and sustained a raspberry on his cheek; another in which then-Vice President Dick Cheney, they said, got a “fat lip”; and a third in which Colin Powell, they struggled to remember, broke his arm or leg.
“All three within two weeks” leading up to the US invasion of Iraq, Wiles stressed.
And the violence appears nonpartisan. Wiles also mentioned that Barack Obama and Harry Reid suffered cosmetic injuries between 2002 and Tuesday.
Now with Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) showing up on Capitol Hill to deliver the decisive vote on repeal-and-replace with a surgical scar above his eye, that makes six whole politicians — at least three of which were quantifiably old — getting hurt over the span of just fifteen years.
This will not stand.
3. Mike Cernovich
Cernovich — of Gorilla Mindset infamy — announced on Monday during one of his daily Periscope diatribes that he’d “pivoted from a pro-Trump guy to more of a journalistic guy” after short-lived communications directory Anthony “The Mooch” Scaramucci got the boot.
“I don’t want people to think of me as a pro-Trump guy anymore,” he said. “I want people to think of me as a Mindset guy [whatever that means], a journalist, a commentator, a social media personality, a filmmaker, an author.” Cernovich has a lifetime of pivoting to do, however, before anyone credible thinks of him as anything but a joke — even despite his White House press credentials.
2. Corey Lewandowski
Lewandowski — Trump’s formerly embattled campaign manager who pioneered the unfortunate trend of fired staffers becoming mainstream pundits after taking a reportedly six-figure contract with CNN — reared his closely shaven head on Sunday’s Meet the Press.
On the topic of Gen. John Kelly replacing Reince Priebus as Trump’s chief of staff, Lewandowski abruptly veered off topic to suggest the president fire Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) head Richard Cordray, who’s rumored to be running for governor of Ohio.
“Do you have any business interests here?” host Chuck Todd asked. “Do you have a client that wants to see this happen?”
Lewandowski denied any such stake in calling for Cordray’s dismissal.
In a later segment, though, Politico‘s Eliana Johnson blew Lewandowski’s cover.
According to BuzzFeed, Lewandowski “will headline a fundraiser [on August 3] for US Rep. Jim Renacci, a candidate in Ohio’s competitive Republican primary for governor.” His appearance on Meet the Press was apparently an opportunity to sling mud at his buddy’s opponent on national television.
1. Alex Jones
Last Week Tonight host John Oliver returned from hiatus on Sunday with a long-form segment on Alex Jones — the conspiracy theorist who (it can’t be stressed enough) ate too much chili and lost custody of his kids — and his InfoWars-brand snake oil supplements.
Like Cernovich (see number three), Jones is — prolific’s not the right word. His show runs four hours every weekday. So a rebuttal was bound to come. And it did, on Tuesday.
Of all potential gripes, Jones honed in on Oliver — whom he confused with Trevor Noah — for mocking his Caveman True Paleo Formula, which is available on InfoWars.com, because of course you’re interested. Oliver said jokingly of the chocolate drink made partially from “Bone Broth … and other Ancient Supernutrients,” according to the website write-up, “I can confirm to you that it tastes exactly how you imagine a drink would taste that’s made from chocolate and domesticated bird corpses.”
Jones’s defense:
Everybody knows you leave the bones in in chicken broth when you’re sick — every wive’s tale, every culture.
He said he did market research at Whole Foods and GNC a few years ago and found bone broth to be “the hottest thing.” So he asked his “manufacturer” to produce a bone broth that was “three times stronger than anything else anybody makes.”
And we did it with chicken broth, bone broth — it’s got all the trace elements, the minerals. It’s got the co-factors. It’s got the — basically the stem cells in it. And they take it and they put it together, and it’s super strong.
So no “domesticated bird corpses.” I don’t know about you, but I’m convinced.
Who’s hungry?
—
Check out previous editions of This Week In Crazy here. Think we missed something? Let us know in the comments!Get This Week In Crazy delivered to your inbox every Friday, by signing up for our daily email newsletter.
