Justin Baragona
@justinbaragona
Ragebait author at Zeteo Past: Senior reporter at The Independent, senior media reporter at The Daily Beast. Tips/hate mail: justin@zeteonews.com You can also hit me up on Signal at justinbaragona.85
Fox's Rachel Campos-Duffy issues an on-air correction for calling Van Jones a "self-proclaimed communist," claiming he's a "former communist" who "says he's not a communist anymore." Pretty obvious the control room forced her to make this comment, especially in light of the Kevin O'Leary lawsuit.
Asked to give her thoughts on the escalation of the Iran war and the loss of American soldiers, Fox's Rachel Campos-Duffy says "that the real threat to America is from within" and "it’s the socialists and everything we’ve been talking about earlier" the "closer this gets to the midterms."
Politico finally announces what's been expected for months now -- Jack Blanchard is out as Playbook author, replaced by the trio of Adam Wren, Dasha Burns and Will Steakin. They also reveal that the "official relaunch" of Playbook will taje place on August 31.
Oh yeah, the right-wing chuds aren't taking the success of The Odyssey's opening weekend well.
How carefully is Fox avoiding Trump's election conspiracy speech? Even in this Fox Business segment on China and AI, the host gives the disclaimer that "the president gave an address to the nation last night and he was talking about China and the 2020 election, and his claims were not verified."
This might be the funniest complaint about The Odyssey from the anti-woke grifter class, courtesy of Lauren Chen (the same person who facilitated the Russia propaganda payments to Benny Johnson, Tim Pool and Dave Rubin). Literally whining that Nolan faithfully adapted Homer's story.
Here's the moment when Mark Warner chastised Tony Dokoupil and CBS News for airing a portion of Trump's election conspiracy speech live "as news as opposed to a rehash of falsehoods." Dokoupil, meanwhile, said they were providing context and analysis and pushback by having Warner on to discuss.
Here's John Solomon ambling away from MS NOW's Vaughn Hillyard after he admits that there's no intelligence that shows any votes were flipped in the 2020 election. He blurts out "I'm researching" and "not yet" when Hillyard presses if he has proof the election was stolen. x.com/VaughnHillya...
Fox News correspondent Aishah Hasnie: "Fox News has not seen that evidence yet, and is not in a position to evaluate the accuracy of the president’s statements and claims at this time." Yeah, Fox is definitely playing it VERY cautiously here due to the $787 million Dominion payout.
Yeah, this was all a big nothingburger -- which should have been clear when you have charlatans like John Solomon and Cleta Mitchell leading the way.
Annnnnd Tony Dokoupil decided to bring on John Solomon, Trump's longtime election-denier whisperer who is largely behind this whole farce. His questioning of Solomon was -- not great.
Just tossing on a shit-eating smile after gleefully cheering on all the rape that's gonna happen on military bases by testosterone jacked soliders.
In this week's Ragebait, we put together this supercut of Fox's Red Scare -- the right-wing network's latest obsession and the most recent example of the never-ending Trump-Fox Feedback Loop. zeteo.com/p/lindsey-gr...
Every time Bari needs defending, a buzzer goes off on Dylan's desk.
NBC News' Today Show releases the following statement about the incident that took place at the studio this morning, where an intruder lunged at Craig Melvin and began shouting racist insults. (He apparently was looking for Al Roker, per reports.)
Leavitt ends the briefing with a teed-up question from the MyPillow guy's correspondent about why the "media is so fearful" of Trump's speech, allowing Leavitt to make her final pitch to the networks to air the primetime address.
Karoline Leavitt is devoting much of this briefing to pleading with the networks to air Trump's speech. "This is all the more reason for all of you to carry the speech live and for the American people to tune in tonight so they can hear directly from the president and draw their own conclusions."
Just a reminder that the Washington Post's center-right podcast -- which it launched months ago -- still hasn't cracked 1000 subscribers on YouTube. Currently, this video on the "Feminism Fallout" over marriage and dating has pulled in a grand total of 178 views.
Lara Trump, straight-faced and without even a hint of irony: "Your standard of living decreases while they live like kings. That is how it all works. And that’s why it is terrible for a country."
