Eyes is probably correct that CBS is trying to see if they can get some viewers from the Trump base by hiring someone as completely compromised as Herridge. If I were to guess as to the outcome here, I’d expect to see a flameout along the lines of what happened with Megyn Kelly. I strongly doubt that Herridge can comport herself in any manner that would work for actual journalists in the real world.

It’s truly unfortunate to see CBS caving in like this – the appropriate way to deal with someone who has committed so many journalistic transgressions would be to simply shun her. As it is, there is no reason to believe anything she says – given that she has so actively worked to mislead her viewers for so long.

This segment would have been spit-take funny if it were not for the problem that the deplorables will believe it to be true.

The constant chyron of “The Swamp Boos America” is just silly. The reality was that most of the American citizens in the stands for the baseball game were not fans of the Pence White House and they made that known loudly. When President Obama was booed by conservatives, flacks like Ingraham would regularly cheer it on. It’s only when Pence’s childish spokesman gets a catcall that somehow everyone must immediately clutch their pearls.

Luntz rattled off a list of baldfaced lies about the Dems supposedly not doing anything in the House – when in fact, they have passed dozens of bills and sent them to Mitch McConnell, who has promised to kill them and has refused to allow any to be voted upon. (Kind of the reverse of what was happening with the angry Right Wingers in the House and Harry Reid in the Senate 8 years ago…)

Ingraham seems to be in a bubble of happy news about the Pence White House, and seems to be in complete denial about how the viciousness of this bunch has been received by the rest of the country.

Luntz also blatantly lied about what Hillary Clinton said about the Trump voter base. She did NOT say that “half of America are deplorables”. She said that Trump’s base included, among his supporters a “basket of deplorables” – because that was and is true. And if we’ve learned anything since 2016, it’s that more and more Republicans have inadvertently revealed themselves to be deplorables – by acting in openly bigoted and racist ways.

Interesting to hear York fumbling to come up with a brand new justification for why Trump’s inaugural crowd was so sparse and why President Obama’s was so much larger – except that the Right Wing scream about that for the past 2 1/2 years has been to insist that Trump’s was somehow larger anyway, or the time of the photos wasn’t comparable, or whatever. Someone should get York on the same page as the rest of the Right Wing, one things.

And York’s final comment was another vicious lie – the point of having principled citizens confront the deplorables and the supporters of bigotry isn’t about “harassing anyone who supports Trump”. It’s about making it clear that it is not okay for the bigots to behave the way they have, and it’s not okay to attack the rest of America, and it’s not okay to lie about what’s going on an try to bully the rest of the country while doing so.

The super-wealthy have done EXTREMELY well for themselves while the Pence White House has been in business. The Tax Transfer alone from the end of 2017, but massive numbers in their pockets, while simultaneously skyrocketing federal taxes on Middle Class employees in Blue States.

(The first thing one would hope that an actual majority Dem Congress of both houses and a Dem White House will do is correct that Tax Transfer and take the boot off the neck of the Middle Class taxpayers who got vindictively targeted by the Right.)

We must also note that the wealthy DID NOT return their money from abroad like the Right Wingers said they would. Instead, they took their windfall and kept it offshore. The big companies just did stock buybacks, while a few of them did small bonuses for their employees so it wouldn’t look completely craven. Most companies didn’t do anything different for their employees.

And the employees mostly saw only a negligible effect, in that they may have found an extra 10 to 20 bucks in their paycheck each week, which was then offset by much higher healthcare costs. Employees who made enough to see tax refunds every April got a big surprise with the whacked withholding – where they suddenly discovered that they not only didn’t get a refund in April but now OWED THOUSANDS.

I fervently hope that Middle Class people remember the tax burn they felt this year (and will feel next year) when it comes time to vote next November.

This is actually spit-take funny.

The Pence White House was under “an obligation” to try to blackmail a foreign president into manufacturing dirt on Joe Biden? Pence was under “an obligation” to try to cover it up? Pence was under “an obligation” to send Rudy Giuliani running around Europe trying to get anyone he could to participate in political mud smears?

Who was this obligation to?

Unless we acknowledge that Pence and his childish spokesman were obligated to THEMSELVES to try to get away with whatever they could and then to try and paper it over with their deplorable base.

Why does anyone care what Levin thinks about anything? He’s an unimportant, puffed up blowhard. And he’s openly, blatantly lying.

If he really thinks what he’s spouting, he should talk to the judges who sentenced Flynn, Manafort, Papadopoulos, Cohen. He should talk to the multiple Pence White House cabinet members who resigned in disgrace after their grafting was revealed. He should talk to Rudy Giuliani, whose buddies just got indicted.

But he’s hoping you won’t notice any of that, and that you’ll just listen to him jumping up and down and waving his arms. I’d just leave him in his corner and let him rant by himself, like Alex Jones.

I’m sure Smith will be just fine. He was being paid MILLIONS to endure his work at Fox News. He doesn’t strike me as the extravagant type, so he could simply retire if he’d like, and he’d have no problem.

I don’t have sympathy for him, or for Cameron, or for Chris Wallace, for that matter. They knew where they were working and they took the paychecks. Nobody forced them to take millions of dollars to compromise their principles.

Smith could possibly find work at another network at some point, I’m sure – but the stench of the Right Wing propaganda tends to make this difficult for anyone to get a straight job after leaving that building. And frankly, it should. I realize these guys want to be redeemed, but it’s a little late for that. Just as the angry Right Wingers who have supported the Pence White House will find out, there’s no walking back this kind of thing. One just has to live with their shame and understand that it’s a consequence of taking that money.

Re Cavuto, he’s already so completely compromised that I can’t see him leaving. Jon Stewart had him correctly pegged when he coined the term “Cavuto Mark”. Which indicates “just asking” a nonsense propaganda “question” and pretending that it could have any journalistic legitimacy.

Is anyone else seeing this for the nonsensical Wag the Dog move that it is?

Carlson’s approach here is consistent, if you look at his actual goal – he’s trying to do “limited, hang-out mode” in acknowledging that Pence’s childish spokesman crossed the line in making those phone calls. This is not intended to admit criminal fault – just to say “yeah, he shouldn’t have made the calls”. Which then allows him to go to his main point – “BUT it’s too much to impeach him for it.” And that’s likely the fall-back that various Right Wingers will go to over the next few weeks.

Some angry Right Wingers, particularly the more uninformed ones like Limbaugh, disgraced former host O’Reilly and and the looney Glenn Beck, will continue to triple and quadruple down on the notion that the Pence White House is totally above reproach and that everyone should just go with their conspiracy theories about Biden and the Democratic Party.

This secondary approach is likely to be the one that prevails on Fox News, regardless of Carlson’s attempt to hedge. Partly because Fox News takes its cues from Limbaugh, and partly because all involved know that this is an electoral strategy.

The most likely result we could see from this situation is sadly not a trial in the US Senate, and the Democratic congresspeople are fully aware of that. Instead, there may or may not be a vote to impeach in the House, which will go through almost completely on party lines – maybe one or two Red State Dems staying out of it. The GOP will try to maintain a wall of unity against it. Then Mitch McConnell will snicker that he’d said he would be forced to have that trial – but he never said WHEN. And then he’ll opine that this matter should be left to the American people to decide at the ballot box in a year. The Dems will then campaign through the year on the injustice of it all, hoping to win the Senate as well as the White House. The Right Wing will also campaign through 2020 on it, saying that “YOUR PRESIDENT” is under attack and everyone must vote to save him – in addition to continuing to throw around lies about the Bidens. And it will all come down to who shows up to vote in November 2020. Which is frankly the way this was always going to go anyway.

Republicans and Right Wingers in general are DELIGHTED that they were able to impeach Bill Clinton back in the late 90s. They’re pleased with what they did – that they were able to get that asterisk onto his presidency. And they’re frankly terrified that the same thing could happen to their precious spokesman for the Pence White House.

It’s frankly spectacular to hear Right Wing pundits try to play this card about somehow “regretting” having done that impeachment. They didn’t face any consequences – they actually were able to finesse their way into the White House two years later.

If Right Wingers could impeach Bill Clinton again, they’d do it every day of the week – and twice on Sundays.

Sadly, for all of the public scrutiny, there is still no indication that Mitch McConnell has suddenly changed his position on any of this. The Dems will hold an inquiry hearing or three, and there will certainly be discussion about how terrible the Pence White House’s behavior was here, running throughout the 2020 campaign. But I would not hold my breath waiting for a full impeachment proceeding in the Congress. The Republicans have bought completely into the Pence White House. They’re pot committed now. And Lindsey Graham is already publicly defending this White House’s behavior.

The more likely way to handle these guys will be to encourage everyone in the swing states to VOTE next year and evict the whole sordid lot from office. (Not to mention that once Pence’s childish little spokesman is out of office, he can be indicted by the courts in NY who are awaiting their opening.)

The sad reality for Smith is that by choosing to do his work at Fox News, he’s irrevocably damaged his credibility as a journalist. While it’s possible that a much smaller outlet might take him after he’s fired, it’s also possible, that like so many other former Fox News personalities, he’ll struggle to find another gig.

He seems to be a genuinely decent man trying to report the news, but he made a terrible choice about his workplace. And despite his attempts to call out the nonsense, he still chose to keep working there. The tradeoff is that they’ve paid him well. But there is a price.

We’ll see if Fox News wishes to can him – it sounds like they’re going all-in with the full Pence White House support idea. I really don’t know of any legitimate journalist who would choose to work at Fox News at this point, not even for the money they’d offer. Because that price in long-term career and reputation is simply too high for any decent person to want to pay.

Two things:

1. I have repeatedly been stating that people have to be vigilant about the constant attempts by angry Right Wingers to set up false premises in their questions as a way of tricking the listener into inadvertently agreeing with a nonsensical position. (“Do you think the Dept of Education is getting anything done these days, with Betsy DeVos there?” “Uh, no, not really” “GREAT! We on the Right have been saying that for decades! We’ll just eliminate that department right now and you just said you agree with it! Thanks!” “Uhhhh, wait a second…” “Nope! Too late! You already agreed to it! Or are you going to flip flop now?”) So I’d always counter even the premise and make sure that there isn’t an open pitfall or manhole hanging around before agreeing with ANYTHING coming from an angry Right Winger.

2. John is totally correct to note that the people who enabled the Pence White House and cheered on the bigotry will need to be held accountable. My take on it is that they don’t get to walk back their conduct and they’ll simply need to live with their shame. I will never allow a single one of these people to lecture anyone about morality or ethics again. The correct response when any of them complain about the next President cleaning up the mess these deplorables have made will be “NO. YOU SUPPORTED BIGOTRY AND HATRED. YOU TRIED TO BULLY EVERYONE ELSE. YOU CAN SIT DOWN NOW. LIVE WITH YOUR SHAME.”

Nice try by Fox News. This is along the lines of Ed Henry frantically trying to embarrass Hillary Clinton at every opportunity in 2016, including his belly flop with the bit about “wiping her server”, where she rolled her eyes and said, “You mean with a cloth? What?” and then moved on to the actual questions people had.

I do have pity for Camerota, and really for anyone who takes the Fox News paycheck and then realizes too late that they’ve torpedoed their journalism career. But nobody forced her to do this. Nobody forced her to lie on behalf of angry Right Wingers like Roger Ailes. Nobody forced her to inflict propaganda on a daily and hourly basis for years. She chose this, and therefore she owns the consequences for herself.

And she’s even saying that she could have continued the lying and propagandizing, and been further rewarded than she already has been. So while she says she was “wrestling” with her conscience, this wasn’t that tremendous of a struggle, was it? It wasn’t a hard choice. She could have stood up, called out the lies for what they were, and walked out of the building. But she didn’t do that. She just took the paycheck and kept saying and doing what Roger Ailes and the Fox News bunch told her to do.

I realize that people like Camerota and Carl Cameron are desperately trying to distance themselves from their actions while at Fox News, but the hours and hours of tape of their conduct speak for themselves. And I’m not saying that they can’t apologize and ask for some kind of forgiveness – that’s completely appropriate and it would be cruel to refuse that pity upon them. But they don’t get to walk their conduct back and act like they really didn’t mean it after all.

This is exactly the scenario we are likely to see at the end of this miserable epoch of our history, hopefully at the end of 2020 if the swing state Dems have learned their lesson about showing up to vote. We’ll see a bunch of Right Wing pundits and personalities distancing themselves from the Pence White House and saying “You know, I never supported the way they did _____” or “You know I never liked the way they always called people _____”, etc. And if we are to have a sane and civil society, those walkbacks must immediately be countered with. “NO. YOU LIED AND SAID BIGOTED THINGS. YOU TRIED TO BULLY PEOPLE WHILE YOU THOUGHT YOU COULD GET AWAY WITH IT. NOW YOU CAN LIVE IN YOUR SHAME.”

It’s not hard to understand why Fox News and Right Wing media are pushing this canard. They see it as a big campaign talking point they can get the deplorables to buy. They’re trying to retroactively establish a “fact” about how somehow the Pence White House has actually been building this “big beautiful wall” as a racist middle finger to Mexico. If they can repeat that lie a few times among their usual channels, then they’ve got campaign fodder for the next year.

The truth is that they haven’t been able to do anything other than reinforce existing sections of fencing, which is something that is normally done. The huge concrete wall and moat idea is one that has been repeatedly and appropriately blocked by sane judges, and even the attempts to illegally seize funding from other parts of the government have been held up. So when the 2020 election happens, it is more likely than not that Pence will have been unable to see even a single inch of this “big, beautiful wall” built.

Angry Right Wingers have also tried to parse the notion of how “Mexico is going to pay for it”, saying that this would be done in the form of vicious tariffs, or in other indirect notions. But none of those things have happened.

In reality, this is simply another expression of Right Wing blind anger toward everyone that is not of their small group. It is truly sobering to think that in 2019 we are still having a discussion about American bigotry being this prevalent.

We’ve seen the evidence of the danger of Fox News and of AM Radio shock jocks like Limbaugh in how they have maneuvered multiple elections – 1994, 2000, 2002, 2004, 2010, 2014 and most fatally, 2016. The people who believe the nonsense on Fox News are practicing that belief in a big way. They repeat the lies whenever they are in a position to do so, they shout down anyone who points out the truth, and they have resorted to cruder and cruder demonstrations of their rage.

The squeaker victory of Trump in 2016 and the resultant Pence White House should be a major pail of cold water to every sane voter in this country. The ONLY reason that Trump prevailed is because 2-3 million Dem voters across the key swing states simply did not show up to vote, and simultaneously, the deplorables who loved the bigoted GOP campaign DID show up. I had said throughout 2016 that the only way Trump could prevail was this exact equation. It had been my hope that those Dem voters would be sensible and show up – but they unfortunately chose to flake out instead. We all must work to make sure that they’ve learned their lesson and will show up next year or this situation will get much worse.

A re-elected Mike Pence and a GOP Congress will move quickly to skyrocket taxes once again on Blue States and Middle Class employees and they will fast-track the scrapping of Social Security, Medicare and any other programs they can. And they will begin the wholesale closing of multiple Cabinet departments. It’s not an accident that Pence has repeatedly appointed people to departments where the appointed Secretary actually is hostile to the very existence of the Department they are supposed to be leading. This has been an intentional way to foul those departments and trick Dems into saying that the departments (like Education, HUD, EPA, Energy, etc) aren’t getting anything done – which then sets the table for a re-elected Mike Pence to say, “You know what, you’re right! The Dept of Education doesn’t really get anything done. Let’s close it!” I do hope people are paying attention to these feints and not falling for them.

But I would also note a more basic truth. The deplorables who believe every word they hear from a Fox News pundit and refuse to listen to reason are, frankly, not that intelligent. They are also driven by an emotional need to only listen to something with which they have been conditioned to agree. Ellen is correct that they should not be dismissed, as their power to do harm to everyone is quite sobering. But I would recommend keeping an eye on them. They’ve already shown a tendency toward rage and toward a completely uninformed perspective on the world. With the rise of Mike Pence, they’ve also revealed themselves openly as bigoted deplorables. We should be extremely aware of who these people are – particularly if they try to walk their behavior back in the event of the swing state Dems showing up next November.

It’s pretty clear that the answer is behind door number two. McCallum knows who pays her salary and where she is supposed to go in her interviews.

It’s not hard to understand why the Right Wing hates a minimum wage so much – it’s because they hate the people who earn that wage. It’s the same thinking that has them pushing for everyone to be an “independent contractor” and not a member of a “$%$## union!” It’s the same thinking that has them pushing to end programs like Social Security.

I’ll give these guys points for consistency. And I have to admit, they’ve demonstrated that keeping a drumbeat going about how all of those concepts are somehow harmful can pay off in a lot of uninformed people striking out against them without having any idea what they are really doing.

It’s a darn good thing I wasn’t drinking water when this complete sycophant began spewing his nonsense. I do need to thank Fox News for this. I haven’t laughed this hard in a LONG time.

No surprise that Fox News is regularly turning sycophant for the Pence White House. And it won’t be a surprise when they predict a landslide re-election for Pence next year. The key will be to work to make sure that the re-election doesn’t happen, so that we can get to the business of repairing this country and Fox News can get to the business of frantically trying to walk their behavior back.