CNN host Brianna Keilar on Monday dismantled former President Donald Trump's speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC).
Keilar began her remarks by describing CPAC as "candy for conspiracy theorist headlined this past weekend by the Everlasting Gobstopper of lies himself, former President Donald Trump."
After playing a clip of Trump claiming that Republicans had been doing "a lot of winning," Keilar noted that former president's claim is a "straight-up lie."
"Republicans lost the presidential election, they lost control of the Senate, they still don't control the House," the CNN host explained. "Donald Trump lost the popular vote twice. The House impeached him twice, though he was acquitted both times in the Senate. Twitter and Facebook banned him after he incited the insurrection on Jan. 6."
Keilar topped it off by pointing out that Trump and his allies have lost nearly 60 court cases challenging the results of the 2020 election.
The CNN host went on to observe that Trump's CPAC speech "does not play like somebody who's worried about inciting another insurrection."
Keilar said that at another point in the speech, Trump sounded "like a mob boss reading his enemies list."
"He knows what he's doing when he singles out Republicans who put their country before him," she explained. "He did it on Jan. 6. Trump told his followers where to go, lying to them that he would be there with them and then he turned the opposite direction and retired to the comfort of the White House to watch it all go down on TV."
Keilar added: "The only difference is this time he's returning to the comfort of Mar-a-Lago."
Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo lashed out at Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-MI) over a COVID relief bill that was passed by Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives.
Throughout the 10 minute interview on Monday, Bartiromo repeatedly raised her voice at Dingell.
"The schools are not open yet, Congresswoman, so there's that," Bartiromo said.
"They need the money to open," Dingell pointed out.
"Oh, come on," Bartiromo quipped. "And all of these businesses that are affected by COVID, you're saying the arts and humanities were affected severely by COVID, that's why 300 million dollars is going there?"
Dingell tried to answer but Bartiromo continued.
"Museums! And the $200 million going for museums and then that rail car in San Francisco that Nancy Pelosi has been funding, putting as much money as she can every act, every bill -- that!" the Fox Business host complained.
"I mean, seriously, we're looking at the list in front of us. We're not stupid, Congresswoman," she added.
Bartiromo immediately interrupted when the congresswoman attempted to respond.
"I know a hundred restaurants that have gone out of business! Is there any money for restaurants?" she shouted.
"Yes, there is money for restaurants," Dingell replied. "We have money in this bill that will give restaurants relief."
"Only 9% of the money is earmarked for COVID related things!" Bartiromo said. "The rest are just pet projects of the Democrats, like the humanities and the arts industry, like museums and the rest. We have a list here."
But Dingell's defense of the relief was again cut off.
"I don't want to see anybody go under!" Bartiromo yelled. "But people are going under because of the rules and regulations of the Democrat [sic] governors who will not allow these small businesses to open!"
"That's what's going to get this economy to open, not money for the arts!" the Fox Business host exclaimed over the objections of Dingell. "And money for the schools, where the teachers won't go back to work! What is stopping teachers from going back to work? Follow the science! Why aren't we following the science? Young kids are not necessarily vulnerable the way older Americans are vulnerable. How come teachers won't go back to work? They're getting billions more in this package! What is it going to take to get them back to work?"
"We can't make blanket statements," Dingell pleaded. "Each school district decides itself when the circumstances are right."
Bartiromo let loose with another rant about teachers.
"They will not go to work! They want all of this money! But where is the money going?" she bellowed. "Parents want to know. We've got parents watching right now!"
Before ending the interview, Bartiromo became incensed about why a bill that includes provisions for mail-in voting was named "H.R. 1."
"That's not the first bill that Nancy Pelosi has passed," Dingell said, observing that the COVID relief bill was passed first.
"H.R. 1 is what?" Bartiromo shouted. "H.R. 1 means what? H.R. 1 means what? Your priority!"
"But we just talked about the COVID bill," Dingell said.
"H.R. 1 means priority!" Bartiromo exclaimed.
"That's the first big piece of legislation we took on, COVID relief!" Dingell replied.
"Then why is she naming the election -- why does she want mail-in ballots to stay forever?" Bartiromo snapped, referring to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA). "And why is she using the election as her H.R. 1 then? How come COVID wasn't H.R. 1?"
"That bill already had a number," Dingell remarked.
"How about opening the economy being H.R. 1?" Bartiromo countered, ignoring Dingell's answer. "How about opening the economy being H.R. 1? How about getting people back to work being H.R. 1? How about that? How come not?"
"Because H.R. 1 was already a number assigned to election reform," Dingell said. "And by the way, what is wrong with having transparency? What is wrong with a mail-in ballot that lets somebody, who it's not easy to get out of the house and go vote, to vote?"
"I think we all know what's wrong with it!" Bartiromo asserted.
"I think we don't," Dingell disagreed.
"Ballots go to dead people's homes!" the Fox Business host claimed. "And ballots go to parking lots and they come back filled out. I think we all know what the vulnerabilities are around mail-in balloting. And how come you're not stressing having an I.D. to vote? How about having an I.D. to vote? What's wrong with that? You have to have an I.D. to buy a beer! How come you don't have an I.D. to vote?"
Republican strategist Karl Rove on Sunday needled former President Donald Trump for losing popularity among his core supporters at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC).
While waiting for the former president, who was an hour late for his speech, Fox News host John Roberts talked to Rove about the results of a CPAC straw poll.
"95% said they wanted the party to continue his policies," Roberts explained "70% of people said that they wanted to see him run again but 55% said that they would vote for him. I thought that number might have been higher."
"Bingo," Rove agreed. "Remember, this was a group that came to this meeting for largely one reason: President Trump was going to be there. This is the truest Trump believers. And for him to only get 55% says -- as I said in my column -- he is losing strength because he's not introducing something new. He's losing strength whether he recognizes it."
"I'd take that as a cautionary note," he added. "He needs to refresh his act. He needs to change and he needs to offer a vision for the future."
Former President Donald Trump forced attendees to the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) to wait over an hour on Sunday after he failed to show up on schedule.
Minutes before the former president was scheduled to appear on stage in Orlando, Fox News broke the news to their viewers that he just left Palm Beach.
"I was talking to somebody on the ground there at CPAC, it looks like he didn't leave Palm Beach for Orlando until just about probably 25 minutes ago, so he should be on the ground soon," Fox News host John Roberts explained. "They're thinking about 4:55 Eastern Time when he hits the stage. So we've got another hour to go. We've got a lot of TV to fill."
Trump's speech was expected to run over two hours, Roberts said.
Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) on Sunday floated a conspiracy theory claiming Governors Gavin Newsom (CA) and Andrew Cuomo (NY) are being "eliminated" by the Democratic Party so that Vice President Kamala Harris can run for office unopposed in 2024.
Nunes made the claim during an interview with Fox News host Maria Bartiromo.
"This whole throwing Newsom, throwing Cuomo under the bus from Democrats, you say that is a larger theme," Bartiromo asked.
"I think it's real easy," Nunes explained. "The Democratic Party is really a socialist party with a politburo system. That's how it runs out in California."
"You know, Kamala Harris never really had to run for anything," the Republican lawmaker continued. "So, what they're doing here, what I believe they're doing here is that Cuomo and Newsom are expendable now. They're a threat to the politburo system, they're a threat to Harris."
He added: "This is all about eliminating the opposition so that she has a free run in 2024 and isn't challenged by, you know, prominent governors from two of the biggest states."
In testimony on Wednesday, Anchor Soledad O'Brien called on news organizations to ban known liars.
At a House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing on "extremism in the media," O'Brien began her testimony by recalling that then-anchor Lou Dobbs had falsely reported about the number of case of leprosy among undocumented immigrants when both journalists were working for CNN in 2005.
"Dobbs's lie advanced his agenda of demonizing undocumented immigrants so it stuck and he got away with it," O'Brien explained. "It was disheartening and degrading and it was also only the beginning."
According to the veteran anchor, Dobbs had helped to usher in an era of "lies and liars" being embraced by some media.
"It's only gotten worse as reporters and anchors chase ratings, toss aside objectivity to divide us into false categories, I believe, of left and right, manipulating facts and debating the liars they booked for their very own shows," she continued. "And when news organizations make decisions based on ratings rather than responsible reporting, disinformation flourishes in dangerous ways."
O'Brien made it clear that she opposes congressional action against news organizations.
"Here's what we can do," she added. "Don't book liars or advance lies. Cover the fact that lies and propaganda are being disseminated but do not book people to lie on your show because it elevates them and presents a lie as another side."
"Every perspective does not deserve a platform," the anchor insisted. "Media thrives on the open exchange of ideas. But that does not mean you have to book a Neo-Nazi every time you book someone who is Jewish. Balance does not mean giving voice to liars, to bigots and to kooks."
O'Brien advised newsrooms to "stop saying you want a diverse staff and go hire one fast."
Former White House adviser Larry Kudlow suggested over the weekend that massive power outages in Texas are "the consequences" of electing President Joe Biden, who has only been in office a month.
During an interview on Sunday, Kudlow spoke to Fox News host Howard Kurtz about his new Fox Business program.
"I think they've moved very rapidly toward the progressive left position on a lot of these issues," Kudlow said of the Biden administration. "He tried to temper it with talk about unity. There was some talk about moving to the center, that there would be more balance, there wouldn't be a far-left progressive agenda."
"Unfortunately in the early weeks -- what, we've got a month here -- it has been a left, progressive agenda," he continued. "He's gone after the energy sector. You saw some of the consequences in Texas. That's just the tip of the iceberg."
Kudlow did not immediately explain what Biden had done to cause the power outages.
According to a report from the New York Times, Congressional lawmakers are finding the national media landscape in a post-Donald Trump presidency much more difficult to manage with the controversial ex-president no longer dominating the headlines and creating outrage on Twitter.
Before his ouster from Twitter -- and then from the White House -- Trump used up all the oxygen in the room with his antics, which allowed GOP lawmakers who made controversial claims or politically damaging missteps of their own disappear from the headlines almost immediately after Trump pulled another stunt or went off on a Twitter tirade.
Case in point, the Times' Lisa Lerer writes, is Texas Sen. Ted Cruz's Cancun vacation debacle which has dominated the airwaves after the Republican was busted for fleeing the winter storm in his home state while constituents lost power and water -- and then deaths began to mount.
Writing, "With millions of Texans freezing in their homes, Senator Ted Cruz fled to a Mexican beach, offering his constituents little more than the political cliché of wanting to be a 'good dad,'" the Times reports that Cruz -- along with fellow Texas Republicans Gov. Greg Abbott and former Gov Rick Perry became national punching bags for their failures related to the crisis.
With Trump mostly keeping to himself at his Mar-a-Lago resort, the three lawmakers are still being pummeled.
"For much of the past six years, former President Donald J. Trump has dominated the political conversation, prompting days of outrage, finger-pointing and general news cycle havoc with nearly every tweet. The audacious behavior of other politicians was often lost amid Mr. Trump's obsessive desire to dominate the coverage," Lerer wrote. "Well, the former president has now gone nearly silent, leaving a Trump-size void in our national conversation that President Biden has little desire to fill. That's been a rude awakening for some other politicians, who find themselves suddenly enmeshed in controversy that isn't quickly subsumed in a deluge of Trump news."
As the Time reports notes, current lawmakers may "pay a significant political price for their actions" that they haven't had to worry about for the previous four years -- knowing Trump would likely ride to their rescue with a new controversy.
Former President Donald Trump made his first media appearance on Wednesday to eulogize conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh.
"He was special," Trump said, recalling that he had given Limbaugh the Presidential Medal of Freedom. "Rush is irreplaceable. He had an audience that was massive."
"He was a fantastic man, a fantastic talent and people, whether they loved him or not, they respected him," he added.
The former president went on to repeat lies about the 2020 presidential election.
"I was disappointed by voter tabulation, I think it's disgraceful," Trump said. "We were like a Third World country on election night with the closing down of the centers and all of the things that happened."
"And he was furious at it," he revealed. "And many people are furious. You don't know how angry this country is. And people were furious."
Fox News host Tucker Carlson on Wednesday praised his network after he was given additional airtime on its streaming platform.
In a statement, Fox News announced that Carlson would host the Tucker Carlson Originals program on the Fox Nation streaming service.
“This is my twelfth year at FOX News and I've never been more grateful to be here," Carlson said in the statement. "As other media outlets fall silent or fall in line, FOX News Media's management has redoubled its commitment to honesty and freedom of speech. I consider that heroic at a time like this."
In recent days, Carlson has accused President Joe Biden and First Lady Jill Biden of faking their marriage. He has also falsely claimed that frozen windmills in Texas are largely responsible for the state's massive power outages.
“The news media are profoundly dishonest," Carlson complained during a recent broadcast. "All of us lie from time to time — that's the human condition. But imagine if lying was your job. Imagine forcing yourself to tell lies all day about everything in ways that were so transparent and so outlandish that there is no way that people listening to you could possibly believe anything you said."
Fox News hosts argued on Wednesday that white children should be taught not to see color, leaving them blind to racial disparities.
Fox & Friends host Pete Hegseth kicked off a segment about racial awareness by complaining that one school had circulated a chart that outlined the stages of "white identities," from white supremacists to white abolitionists.
"There's been some backlash and some people are not liking it," co-host Steve Doocy reported.
"What about the abuse directed at white kids?" Hegseth wondered. "They're told to be guilty for the color of their skin. Haven't we been trying to move past that idea?"
Co-host Ainsley Earhardt agreed.
"Yes, it's a tough topic," she remarked. "And Black Lives Matter -- I'm not speaking for you guys -- but I hear their complaints and it makes me sad and I have paid more attention to that, teaching my daughter not to see color, to see that everyone is God's child. She's five years old. We haven't had those major conversations yet."
Earhardt said that Americans may need to talk about racism "as a country but to put it in our schools and to force those conversations, a lot of parents are saying in New York that it's too much, that they want to be able to talk to their kids about those things and not have the school manipulate or to force them to think a certain way."
Instead of racism, the Fox News host said schools should "focus on mathematics, focus on history, focus on why we're paying these tax dollars to send our kids to school."
"Don't have these conversations at school," she added. "Leave that up to the parents."
Hegseth argued that "certain people" are being condemned "for the color of their skin."
"What I want to teach my kids is that you don't see someone by the color of their skin," he opined. "That's the whole idea that we are one blood. Something like this takes us backwards and says, 'No! You're identity is the color of your skin, white or black.'"
After quoting Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to make his point, Hegseth added, "It's serious because kids are learning it."
Fox News host Harris Faulkner on Monday suggested that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) deserves to be impeached because she did not provide enough security after President Donald Trump incited a riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.
During a segment which ignored Trump's role in the attack, Faulkner reported that Republicans are "demanding answers on security decisions leading up to and on the day of the U.S. Capitol attack."
While slamming Pelosi over a lack of security, Faulkner also complained that about "officials discussing keeping the National Guard in D.C. until the end of the fall."
"The cost for taxpayers has gone over a half billion dollars and they can't agree on stimulus relief," the Fox News host complained. "Oh my gosh!"
Faulkner was then joined by Fox News contributor Sean Duffy, who asked, "What did Nancy Pelosi know and when did she know it?"
"Nancy probably knew more than she's letting on and is trying to play politics as a distraction so the questions aren't asked," Duffy opined.
Faulkner agreed: "If she had intelligence or some information before the riots and that was not conveyed -- because we know the Capitol Hill police potentially knew a few things -- if that was not conveyed to the people who could have protected all of them."
"Like, if she played a role in not getting what they needed there, what should happen?" Faulkner mused.
"I'm just curious," the Fox News host added. "If it comes out do other people start to get impeached now? I'm not being facetious. I want to know who knew about this leading up? Could there be seven people still alive today? That's a fair question."
