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Christiane Amanpour voices dissent over Trump town hall, says she had ‘very robust exchange’ with CNN chief
Christiane Amanpour voices dissent over Trump town hall, says she had ‘very robust exchange’ with CNN chief, Oliver Darcy, CNN
“Be truthful, but not neutral,” Amanpour urged. “Bothsidesism is not always objectivity. It does not get you to the truth. Drawing false moral or factual equivalence is neither objective or truthful. Objectivity is our golden rule and it is in weighing all the sides and hearing all the evidence, but not rushing to equate them when there is no equating.”

“There is a 100% connection,” she said, “between a robust, independent, free and fair press and a functioning democracy and the advance of human rights and justice.”
Abolish Live TV Audiences in the 2024 Presidential Race
Abolish Live TV Audiences in the 2024 Presidential Race, Walter Shapiro, The New Republic
CNN’s shameful town hall was a gift to Trump. Enough is enough.

[T]hese days, TV production values matter more than serious content, even when Trump isn’t dominating the stage. A cheering audience creates a level of ersatz excitement, whether it is for a prime-time, ratings-boosting CNN interview or a lowbrow, desperately cheerful syndicated quiz show. It is why all the 2016 and 2020 primary debates in both parties were tricked out with space-age sets and impossible-to-silence audiences.

But in an era of accelerating hyperpartisanship and vicious attacks on the news media, allowing a peanut gallery at such events only indulges our worst tribal instincts. That’s why the networks—broadcast and cable alike—should conduct their candidate interviews and debates in TV studios rather than trucking in disruptive crowds.

Maybe the underlying problem is with the town meeting format itself. The questioners were all Republicans and independents who plan to vote in the 2024 GOP primary in New Hampshire. They were not chosen at random. “CNN handled all the selecting of audience members and audience questions,” The Boston Globe reported. That was apparent from the way Collins called on them by name, as if they were contestants on a game show: “Jennifer Simpson … is a stay-at-home mom and a former town selectman from Windham.” And it was CNN’s decision that none of the questioners came from the ranks of never-Trump Republicans and independents who can easily be found among New Hampshire voters.
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13 Ways of Looking at Kamala Harris
13 Ways of Looking at Kamala Harris, Jill Lawrence, The xxxxxx
Is it time to reset how you think about the vice president?

13. That same day Harris went on a field trip to high-tech Babylon Micro-Farms in Richmond, Virginia. It was National Small Business Week and the company had received a $150,000 grant from the State Small Business Credit Initiative in the 2021 American Rescue Plan. “Has anybody been able to tour this facility? It’s fascinating,” Harris said as she arrived at the lectern. “Really, congratulations,” she told the two founders and their team. “I could speak at length about what I think is the significance of this work, for our country, for our workforce, what it means in terms of a step, a very smart step, towards preserving precious resources like water. What it means in terms of developing the skills of the workforce, and the global impact of this kind of approach.”

Call me credulous, but she sounded like she meant it. It’s no stretch, after all, to believe a political leader from California would understand the import of a business that’s helping to meet what she called the defining twenty-first-century challenge of “growing more food with less water.” Beyond that, Harris seemed just like she did in the 2019 turkey-brining tutorial: gesturing enthusiastically, completely in the moment, comfortable with the subject, and making personal connections with people she had just met.

Here’s a fourteenth way to look at Kamala Harris: After a rocky start, maybe she’s found her footing.
Sacking Tucker Carlson has put a dent in Fox News’s ratings
Sacking Tucker Carlson has put a dent in Fox News’s ratings, The Economist
Although the channel’s viewers skew conservative, they are open to persuasion from other sources.

Yet so far, Mr Carlson’s audience has spurned the rotating cast of hosts in his 8pm slot. According to Nielsen, a research firm, viewership fell from 3m during his final week to 1.5m the following week. It has been flat since then. Sean Hannity, whose show followed Mr Carlson’s, has also lost a quarter of his audience. The biggest beneficiary has been Newsmax, a channel even further right than Fox, whose viewership at 8pm rose from 150,000 to nearly 500,000.

However, that leaves 1.15m people who have stopped watching cable news at 8pm. Could a reduced intake of right-wing media affect their opinions? According to a recent study by David Broockman and Joshua Kalla, just 32% of regular Fox viewers are “strong” Republicans, a group likely to vote for the party no matter what. In contrast, 31% were “weak” or “leaning” Republicans, and 36% were independents or Democrats.

The authors also found that Fox’s audience was open to persuasion. They randomly chose some Fox viewers to get paid to watch cnn, a more liberal channel, for a month. Compared with study participants who did not switch, this group was more likely to hold views aired on cnn, like covid-19 causing long-term health problems, and less likely to hold those stated on Fox, such as protests being likely to get more violent if Joe Biden became president.
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Trust in Supreme Court fell to lowest point in 50 years after abortion decision, poll shows
Trust in Supreme Court fell to lowest point in 50 years after abortion decision, poll shows, Mark Sherman and Emily Swanson, The Associated Press
Confidence in the Supreme Court sank to its lowest point in at least 50 years in 2022 in the wake of the Dobbs decision that led to state bans and other restrictions on abortion, a major trends survey shows.

The divide between Democrats and Republicans over support for abortion rights also was the largest ever in 2022, according to the General Social Survey. The long-running and widely respected survey conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago has been measuring confidence in the court since 1973, the same year that Roe v. Wade legalized abortion nationwide.

In the 2022 survey, just 18% of Americans said they have a great deal of confidence in the court, down from 26% in 2021, and 36% said they had hardly any, up from 21%. Another 46% said they have “only some” confidence in the most recent survey.

The drastic change was concentrated among women, Democrats and those who say a woman should be able to get an abortion if she wants one “for any reason,” the survey shows.
The best way to deal with the debt ceiling: Ignore it
The best way to deal with the debt ceiling: Ignore it, Neil H Buchanan and Michael Dorf, The Los Angeles Times
Once we hit the debt ceiling, Biden will bump into a constitutional obstacle no matter what he does. Failing to spend appropriated funds, raising taxes or borrowing money to pay the bills would all infringe on Congress’ constitutional powers. The president would face what we have called a “trilemma” in which all his options are unconstitutional.

Does that mean the president should do nothing? Hardly. It’s not even clear what “nothing” would mean in this context. Not pay the bills? That would amount to unconstitutionally cutting spending. Hide out at his beach house in Rehoboth? That would simply force other executive-branch officials to decide how to encroach on congressional powers.

Even so, a choice has to be made. Comparing household and government finance is often unhelpful, but here it offers some guidance.

Consider a financially distressed tenant who risks eviction if she skips a month’s rent but also must buy gas and make loan payments on the car she needs to get to work. She explores alternatives: Maybe the landlord will cut her some slack; maybe she can ditch the car and take a bus. Even if there is no escaping an unappealing choice, she doesn’t simply give up. Rather, she chooses the least bad option.

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