I don’t know that it’s accurate to say that Pence “won” the debate. The right wing certainly believes that, and Fox News is trying to paint it that way, but I didn’t get that impression when I watched the event.

My reaction was that Pence came across as smug and condescending much of the time, and that he simply had no answer for most of the criticisms that were levelled at him by Kaine. Kaine, for his part, was much more fully prepared, but undercut his own strengths with too many interjections. I note that Pence did plenty of interjections of his own throughout.

Pence’s low points in the debate were his ugly condescension and nastiness regarding women’s reproductive rights, and his really scary answer to the final question of the evening. Both men were asked how they would bring people together after such a negative and divisive campaign (particularly as showcased by Trump’s repeated invective). Kaine responded that Hillary Clinton has been known for reaching across the aisle and working with GOP politicians throughout her career. Pence responded that people just wanted “change” and that this would somehow fix everything. In other words, not a single thought toward looking out for anyone but himself.

I also note that Pence’s discussion was riddled with falsehoods, some of which were fairly outrageous. Many of Kaine’s interjections were his attempts to immediately correct the record.

This is what we’ve been expecting since Trump belly-flopped last Monday. Hannity is in a full panic now. He has no actual substance to discuss and is turning to other Clinton/Obama haters like Ed Klein to lay on as much mud as possible. Hannity did the same thing in October 2012 when he realized how far behind Romney was at that time. He just went to the smear merchants and had a bit of a wallow. The end result was still the same – Hannity wound up sounding bitter and sullen the night after the election, and he continued in that vein for some months afterward. As I expect he will do this year – although one does have to wonder if Hannity will stay on a Roger Ailes-free Fox News, particularly if Trump tries to start a new channel of his own.

The only thing more desperate than Hannity’s ragefest was the right wing hysteria over what they hoped would be the major Julian Assange/WikiLeaks “October Surprise” nearly 24 hours ago. Enough to have fellow spirits of Hannity like Alex Jones openly jumping up and down to see what goodness might come their way from a group they’d repeatedly condemned in the past. Except that WikiLeaks isn’t releasing anything at this time, and may not have anything to release for some time. Even after the right wingers were led to believe by Assange that he had some major bombshell to unleash. I particularly enjoyed the Republican who quipped “We got Rick Rolled”…

Eyes, I’ve got to put in a little quibble of my own.

Fox News is indeed its own bubble.
Sean Hannity is within his own bubble within their bubble.

Hence, a bubble within a bubble…

Fox News descended even farther into panic mode with the attempt to get attention to a leaked audio from February of Clinton discussing the support for Bernie Sanders. Neil Cavuto went so far as to excitedly try to play this as a much bigger story than what little there is here. (He asked John Sununu “Do you think this is Clinton’s 47 percent moment?!!” Sadly, it isn’t. But it does show the desperation the right wing is feeling now.

Let’s see what happens next Sunday. Maybe Trump can somehow calm himself down before then. I don’t think Trump could ever contain himself for very long – his entire history has been about self-promotion and self-celebration. Asking him to hold back on that is truly like asking him to not be Trump. To my mind, the only reason he’s even been able to stay partly competitive has been the success of the right wing in smearing the Clintons over the past 25 years. And that’s an object lesson in why intelligent people need to keep their eyes open when it comes to biased outlets like Fox News and right wing radio. With this election, these guys have very nearly been able to sway enough of the voters to dislike a candidate enough to vote in a different fashion than they otherwise would have. To the backers of Fox News, who do think incrementally, that’s a huge win. If that doesn’t scare people, it should.

Let’s not forget that Kelly followed this up by commenting on a shot of Hillary Clinton leaving the event, “Maybe she’s going home for a rest now”. Kelly must have realized how cheap of a shot this was, because she quickly tried to cover, saying that she would need a rest herself and hurriedly making the same comment as a joke about Trump.

Kelly did seem to understand intrinsically how truly awful Trump’s performance was. Even she had to note that Clinton pretty much had control throughout and that Trump found himself on defense all the way. Even right wingers are being forced to note that Trump’s answers tended to be long-winded and aimless.

I’m really curious to see how this affected the polling, but we won’t know for a couple of days.

Cavuto did not distinguish himself overmuch in this discussion. In fact, he badly misrepresented Jesse Jackson’s statements, saying that Jackson had said it was the “part of their right” to riot. Jackson said no such thing. He said that the rioting could be thought of as termed by Martin Luther King as the voice of the unheard – a very different concept than Cavuto presented. King and Jackson’s point was that consistently oppressing and ignoring a group of people will result in this kind of blow-up, not that it’s anybody’s right to have a riot.

Of course Cavuto also took time in his interview with Brent Bozell to pull the usual Fox News rewrite of the 2012 Obama/Romney debate where Candy Crowley appropriately challenged Romney on the false statement he was making and then attempting to double down on.

It’s pretty obvious why Cruz flip-flopped. He wants to run again in 2020, and he knows that if he doesn’t make nice with Trump, the GOP will not support him. I just don’t know if he will be able to run in 2020, as I have a feeling he may get primaried in 2018 first and not have any political clout to get away with a second failed run.

The commercial itself is quite nauseating, and not just for all the fact-free stuff running around in it. But the participation by Hannity is quite interesting. If Hannity thought that Trump was such a strong contender to win, a notion he’s been trying to push with Newt Gingrich on the air, then why would he need to participate in a commercial for the man? If Trump is headed to victory, all Hannity would need do is cheerlead from his usual perch at Fox News.

Unless Hannity actually thinks Trump needs a much bigger push to get there.

Meaning that his presence in this thing is more of a sign of increasing panic by the right wing over this election. Hannity is doing this so he can say after it’s over that “I did everything I could to see Trump elected – it’s not my fault he lost.” It’s for the narrative he will attempt to spin starting the day after the election. And it also gets him brownie points with Trump, should that new media idea ever happen.

Given the newer polling and the likely results of next Monday, I’ll be very curious to see how Hannity deals with the impending reality of the election. My instincts say he will begin acting out in wilder ways. Expect to see a lot of Ed Klein and Gary Byrne and other professional Clinton-haters over the next 7 weeks…

It’s obvious that Fox News is pushing a narrative that “Terrorist Attacks are Good for Trump” in the hopes that this will pump up Trump’s desperate supporters and somehow unnerve Clinton and her campaign as they go into next week’s debate. Assuming of course that Trump actually shows up for this debate.

The reality that most people trust Clinton more to handle serious issues like these is not one that fits within the bias that Fox News has shown throughout their existence.

Let’s not forget that this frantic pushing of Trump as a strongman leader is happening in the light of Trump and his campaign making repeated bizarre gaffes over the past few days, including the ridiculing of GOP-admired Robert Gates, jumping the gun on the weekend attacks and the really strange one where Trump’s son used the offensive Joe Walsh image comparing refugees to Skittles.

I’m really curious what the polling shows later this week, and what happens after the debate, again assuming that Trump will show up for the debacle. I expect the Fox News and right wing radio attempts to bolster Trump will only become more panicked and frantic from now until November.

Thanks, David. I couldn’t figure out what James was trying to say there. I think his ketchup thing was an attempt at a joke about the old Heinz anticipation commercials. Not really sure, as the post was mostly vitriolic and incoherent.

Not sure why he wanted to quote that scene from Good Will Hunting, in that there’s an irony I don’t think he understood in this situation.

I agree that it sounds like he frantically threw something out as fast as he could and then ran. Given the current situation for Trump, that’s understandable.

The narrative that is being played on Fox News this evening is “Birtherism is bad, but Hillary did it first”. They’re desperately trying to blame the whole thing on Clinton as a way to make it go away from Trump, which really isn’t going to work with anyone who actually looks into this.

The approach taken on multiple shows today has been to say that yeah, Trump shouldn’t be bringing this up again, but hey, Clinton’s people did it first. How do they justify this? Three specific items, all of which are easily laughed through once you actually look at them.

1. A vile email from Mark Penn from early in the 2008 campaign, wherein he discussed the notion of Obama being foreign but said that this shouldn’t be used as a direct attack. Instead, Penn went with things like the 3am phone call commercial.

2. An interview with Clinton after the idea went public, wherein she said she had no reason to believe that Obama was Muslim but, in the right wing view, wasn’t emphatic enough that she totally, utterly and overwhelmingly repudiated the notion.

3. A tweet today from left winger James Asher saying that Sid Blumenthal told him that he thought Obama was born in Kenya.

One would think that Fox News had just found the key to the BIG STORY. This is incredible stuff, isn’t it? Half-truths and tweets!

So let’s remember the actual facts. The Birther story was born from two different right wing blogs in March 2008. They were willfully being ignorant about a professor’s blog post at that time which posited a hypothetical about someone saying that Barack Obama wasn’t born in the US. (I believe the professor did this in response to people discussing McCain’s eligibility, noting that it was a silly topic to spend any time on.) So it was a right wing invention, period. About a month later, when it became clear that Obama was on his way to take the nomination, a few Clinton supporters, in Texas I believe, decided they were not going to support the winning candidate and declared their group to be called “PUMA”, or “Party Unity My Ass”. They then cited the right wing blog posts about Obama’s possible non-Hawaiian birth, in much the same way that many Sanders supporters this year foolishly cited long-debunked right wing conspiracy theories about Clinton. These people had no credibility, and as seen in that interview, Clinton was frankly surprised to be asked about something as ridiculous as whether Obama was a Muslim or wasn’t an American. Obama went on to win the nomination and two terms as President. In 2011, Donald Trump decided to really fan the flames of the birther idea again, and then crowed when Obama got the state of Hawaii to break its own legal rules to release the long form version of his birth certificate – and even then, the birthers and Trump weren’t satisfied.

We must never forget that Donald Trump also told us that he had investigators in Hawaii “and they can’t believe what they’re finding.” Nobody has ever taken Trump to task on that – I’d love to see someone ask this at one of the debates – “Mr. Trump, what did your investigators find that was so unbelievable in Hawaii?” Nobody calls him on these statements and it’s frankly irritating to watch him continue to get away with it.

But to answer the Fox News and right wing conspiracy memes of the day, let’s dispense with Fox News’ latest attempt to smear Hillary Clinton and her people.

1. Mark Penn made several offensive comments and emails while he was a chief strategist for the 2008 campaign. He was and is a bare knuckles brawler in campaigns. He eventually alienated enough of the staff from his positions that he was removed from his senior position although not from the campaign itself – he was essentially demoted. Not fired, but demoted in a meaningful way. And his nastier ideas about campaigning were never followed. Meaning that Clinton had no interest in going into the gutter – the 3am phone call commercial was about as far as she was willing to go, and to me, that was already too far, given that right wingers have tried to eat out on it for the past 8 years. So Penn wrote a memo that nobody used for strategy, among other fairly nasty writings, and wound up demoted. Not seeing how this means that Hillary Clinton started the Birther movement.

2. It’s funny that the right wingers want to see Hillary Clinton issue a blanket statement of condemnation in an interview, when she was clearly surprised and frankly shocked to be asked about ridiculous assertions. The tone of her answer is clear: “Are you seriously asking me about something like that rather than a real issue? REALLY?” Could she have been more forceful in her denial of the question’s merits? Sure, but she clearly thought she already HAD been from her tone. She wasn’t as appropriately dismissive as she was when Ed Henry tried to gotcha her about her “wiping the server”, but her tone is pretty clear on this. So if the right wing wants to say that she didn’t deny this strongly enough, we could get into all kinds of discussions about GOP candidates and presidents if they really want to go there. This is an obviously silly ruse, and really just meant as a way to smear Clinton as untrustworthy again.

3. James Asher, who is not a friend of the Clintons, says that Sid Blumenthal told him he thought Obama was born in Kenya. Great. Are we supposed to infer that this means that Blumenthal then told Hillary to go to Texas and set off a couple of wingnuts on a bizarre campaign while they refused to support the Democrat nominee? Or maybe we’re supposed to think that the Clintons secretly thought this. Either way, the assertion makes no sense. Maybe Blumenthal did say this to Asher. So what? Even if Blumenthal believed that kind of nonsense, it was NEVER a part of the campaign and NEVER something that Hillary Clinton or any other official in her campaign would litigate in the press.

So once again, we end up with Fox News and the right wing frantically trying to project their own issues onto their opponents. One would think they would take a minute and just look in the mirror.

And just so we’re very clear on this, as Brit Hume tried to dismiss this today. Birtherism IS racism. It’s not a quantifiable thing where you separate out the birthers from the racists. Birtherism was born from the racist sentiment that Barack Obama should not be President, based specifically on his being an “other” and maybe even an African rather than an African-American. The purpose of the implication was always to provide comfort to racists who hated the notion of a black man becoming President since, hey, he’s not really an American anyway. The fact that Brit Hume would even TRY this line of thinking is extremely telling.

Fox News may well be trying to distance Trump from the Birther movement he so lovingly embraced, but they’re not doing so out of any actual concern for the reality of what happened. They really do just want to blame its existence on Hillary Clinton.

I just posted in that thread, but the short version is that multiple Fox News shows are actually trying to smear Clinton and her 2008 campaign with this nonsense. The new Line of the Day seems to be that the idea is ridiculous and anyway, the Dems did it first. Instead of the No-Spin Zone, how about the No-Fact Zone?

Thanks for catching the Greta news, Eyes.

I have a feeling there will be a post from Ellen on that any minute…

How about the fact that Bush’s AG had to resign in total disgrace, where Eric Holder continued to do his job in spite of dozens of GOP attempts to drive him from office? And the fact that the Bush Admin was mired in very real illegality and scandal, but the GOP has desperately spent the past 8 years trying to generate anything they could to smear the Obama group?

If anything, I would fault the Obama Admin for being too naïve to understand that these people really did want to obliterate them. The Clinton people won’t be taken in so easily.

Dave, that’s not quite accurate. The best we could have hoped for would be to not have the debate commission use anyone from Fox News. Including Chris Wallace lends them legitimacy. True, Wallace may sink that idea by doing what people here are concerned about. But the real point is that Fox News is not a legitimate news channel, and mainstream outlets ignore that distinction at their peril.

Newt is setting himself up for a repeat of the 2012 election, wherein he and others confidently predicted a Romney landslide. If this election goes the way it really feels it will go, I can’t imagine how he saves face this time.

John, I think that would be “I Am Not A Lawyer”

This was obviously a sleazy attempt by Kelly at a false equivalence between Media Matters and Andrew Breitbart’s hate site.

Let’s be upfront and honest about Media Matters before getting into the rest of the discussion. Media Matters was created by David Brock, who had previously run a series of right wing smear jobs, the most notorious of which was his campaign against Anita Hill for having the temerity to publicly speak about the behavior of Clarence Thomas when she had to work for him. Brock did an about face in the latter 90s and dedicated himself to liberal causes, the biggest one being Media Matters. (I note that there was an existing Media Matters idea already running before Brock’s organization – a radio show hosted by Robert McChesney about media issues and bias) It could easily be argued that Brock’s advocacy for Democrats has been equally as blind as his prior smearing for the GOP. But I note that the Media Matters work has really stayed on course as a direct challenge to what the right wing is actually saying – much as this site works. Brock castigates the right wing for their dishonesty and hypocrisy, but he doesn’t smear the right. To me, he’s still the same operative he was as a young man, but he’s learned to stop it with the mud. I don’t know that I’d completely trust him – there’s only so much one can believe he would change.
On the other hand, Brock’s Media Matters is not an open hate-speech organization like what we’ve seen at Breitbart.
Let’s be upfront and honest about Andrew Breitbart. He was emphatically NOT a “great man.” He was an angry, mean-spirited, vicious man who enriched himself by attacking liberals for sport. He pioneered the idea of aggressive personal attacks through the internet as a kind of political bloodsport. He reveled in the publication of misleading and deceptively edited videos as a way to smear those with whom he disagreed. He brought us the still-running saga of James O’Keefe, and the misery that has come from there. He destroyed the careers of various decent people, including Shirley Sherrod, who reportedly won a massive settlement from Breitbart’s estate after his death in 2012. His is a legacy of negativity. He left the world an angrier and nastier place than he found it. We continue to deal with the fallout of his antics, including the continuing existence of what’s left of the Breitbart media empire. Some of his unpleasant acolytes have now spread out across the media and political landscape, such as Ben Shapiro, and it is important that we continue to remember where these guys come from. Like Breitbart, those who have gone on the ride with him and participated in this negativity frankly have no moral ground on which to stand, and no credibility as writers or political thinkers. They are, like Breitbart, simply bullies, and they should be responded to as such.

Kelly’s false equivalence here is telling. She tried the same approach in her mildly contentious interview with Jorge Ramos during the same broadcast. Ramos of course has had the temerity to point out that journalists who don’t speak out about Trump’s constant hate-baiting and race-baiting will need to answer for that in the future. And he’s clearly referencing the great statement of Martin Niemoller about how people in Nazi Germany didn’t speak up when the Nazis came for the Jewish community, the trade unionists, the communists, etc. But Kelly couldn’t see that. In a strikingly blind comment, Kelly actually tried to pose herself as a completely unbiased journalist. She even tried to shame Ramos by saying “since a majority of people think that Hillary Clinton is a liar and dishonest, would it be fair by your thinking for every host to start any discussion of her with the comment, ‘Well, many people think she’s a liar’?” Which is hysterical on its face, since pretty much every anchor on Fox News does exactly that every time they discuss Clinton. (And that’s without getting into Kelly trying to “gotcha” Ramos with a comment about how his daughter works for the Clinton campaign. Something that Ramos pointed out he’s been very open about, disclosing it frequently and even when he conducted a fairly contentious questioning of Clinton this year.)

Holy Toledo.

From the smoldering wreckage of all the bridges Tantaros just burned, I can’t see any situation wherein Fox News doesn’t go after her with everything they have.

She didn’t just put in materials about Shine and Ailes. There’s some really nasty comments by Ailes about nearly everyone else on “The Five”. And there’s allegations of improper conduct that get very specific not just about O’Reilly but also Scott Brown and John Roberts. O’Reilly’s are the allegations that get really creepy, to be honest.

One has to wonder where Tantaros thinks she’s going to work after this. She’s been exceptionally nasty to liberals as I still recall from her 2013 exhortation where she told her listeners to punch Obama supporters in the face. She has repeatedly purveyed lies and smears during her time at Fox News. Who the heck would want to hire her after a record like this?

It’s terrible to read how she was treated by men and women at Fox News, but that doesn’t change how she treated other people.

Don’t underestimate Roger Ailes’ ability to toss out distractions and viciousness during a campaign. Remember his activities during the 1984 Reagan campaign and the 1988 George HW Bush campaign – particularly the Willie Horton ad. Ellen is correct that he’ll take this campaign even farther into the mud than they’ve already descended.

And don’t underestimate Ailes’ continuing influence on Fox News, particularly with Bill Shine being at the top of the pyramid. My instincts say that Shine and Ailes are coordinating as closely as they can – with Ailes not “officially” working for the Trump campaign but in fact actually doing so. This would explain the increasingly connected messaging of the Trump campaign and Fox News’ coverage. And of course, Fox News will continue to cover every Trump rally they can as though it was newsworthy.

I note in the gutterball territory that Jesse Watters sneered out another debunked cheap shot at Hillary Clinton last night – in which he “just” threw in the notion that Hillary Clinton had stolen 200K of silverware from the White House when she and Bill Clinton left there in 2001. Anyone actually having followed this whack-a-mole story would know that this is not actually what happened, and that if we are to compare departing presidents and their gifts that they take with them, Ronald and Nancy Reagan would dwarf everyone with the millions of dollars of materials they took.

I also note that for some reason, Sean Hannity is now repeatedly setting up “Town Halls” for Trump to appear presidential while Hannity arranges an approving group of right wing talking heads and angry white Trump supporters to buoy him up. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a situation where a “news network” would go all-in like this for a candidate. It’s pretty blatant.

Of course, at the same time, there are several voices at the network that aren’t drinking this Kool-Aid. I’ll be very curious to see how the fallout looks in November and December. I have a strong feeling that some people will not be staying at Fox News afterwards.