(Fred Weinberg, Penny Press) It used to be that the Sunday morning talk shows were where you went to see a serious discussion of the issues of the day.
Today? Not so much.
In fact, not at all.
Last Sunday, as an example, Fox News Sunday, hosted by the son of the late Mike Wallace, Chris, had a panel composed of Brit Hume, George Will, Neera Tandon and some lady who covers the Clinton campaign at the completely fair and balanced Washington Post, Ann Gearan.
Now, let’s see. George Will hates Donald Trump. Brit Hume told us last year that Trump couldn’t possibly win the GOP nomination. Neera Tanden is a former Clinton staffer and Gearan works for a once great newspaper which was recently sold for a fraction of its former value whose new owner, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, has a history of cozying up to the Clintons.
That’s certainly what I call “fair and balanced”.
Needless to say, most of what these people said was pure, unadulterated bull-feces. They were talking points from Tandon, “I’m much smarter than a mere audience member “sound bites from Will, “I’m trying not to be wrong again points” from Hume and “why am I here” sound bites from Gearan. And Mike’s son was the ringmaster. All in all, very instructive. If you happen to be one of Berosini’s chimps.
As for serious discussion—give me a break.
The rest of us saw it as mostly an anti-Trump screed.
Face the Nation is hosted by Nancy Dickerson’s son, John.
He’s never held a job outside Washington, matriculated from the Sidwell Friends School in DC where the elite meet to be protected by the Secret Service to a degree in English at Virginia and yet he is CBS’s “political director” in addition to hosting the show.
He had on Arizona’s appropriately named junior Senator Jeff Flake.
Flake (his given name—seriously) has no use for Donald Trump and actually thinks the rest of the population agrees with him. If he lived in Nevada, he would have been one of those RINO legislators who gave us the biggest tax increase in the state’s history.
He told Face the Nation “So, I don’t expect that I will be able to support him in November. I would like to, but he’s the Republican nominee. I just don’t see how I can.”
You know what he’s worried about? Him. He’ll never get a better gig than he has now and, like many if not most of his colleagues, Trump’s truth to power is making his knees weak. Jeff doesn’t mind working for Harry Reid if it gets him re-elected.
What he doesn’t appear to understand is that the 15,000 or so Arizona voters who cheered Trump’s immigration speech last week very loudly in person are taking notes. And I can’t wait to see if he sticks to his principles if Trump wins.
That’s the height of the Sunday morning political discourse on Face the Nation save to note their “panel”.
It is composed of Susan Page is “USA Today’s” Washington bureau chief (anti-trump), Jamelle Bouie is chief political correspondent for “Slate” magazine (very anti-trump), and he’s a CBS News political analyst, Molly Ball covers politics for “The Atlantic,” (anti-trump) and Ramesh Ponnuru is a senior editor at “The National Review” (anti-trump). They spent some of their time bemoaning Hillary’s email scandal as the reason she hasn’t yet put Trump away. But they think she will.
We don’t have the space here to write similar things about This Week with former Clinton communications director George Stephanopoulos or Meet the Press with the Ryan Seacrest of politics, Chuck Todd, but the analysis would be exactly the same.
Which is, all in all, a very good reason to sleep in on Sunday morning unless your church or Sunday School starts early.
No legitimate news is being made here. They don’t like Trump and they want you to know it. And the ratings show it. They are dwarfed by the NFL.
Fred Weinberg
