Today, the media is covering Donald Trump, Anthony Fauci and … Bob Hope?

President Donald Trump at a campaign rally in Arizona on Monday. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
The election can’t get here soon enough. The latest reason for feeling that way? Bob Hope was trending on Twitter on Monday.
Hey, nothing wrong with Bob Hope, but he hasn’t been alive since 2003. He was bouncing all over social media on Monday because President Donald Trump invoked his name while ramping up his disdain for Dr. Anthony Fauci.
Trump tweeted on Monday, “Dr.Tony Fauci says we don’t allow him to do television, and yet I saw him last night on @60Minutes, and he seems to get more airtime than anybody since the late, great, Bob Hope. All I ask of Tony is that he make better decisions. He said ‘no masks & let China in’. Also, Bad arm!”
The last reference was about Fauci’s awful ceremonial pitch at a Washington Nationals game.
But this is where we are. Exactly two weeks from the election and Trump went on what feels like a whirlwind tour of insults and grievances as he desperately tries to change the momentum of a presidential race that polls say he is trailing.
At the center of his attacks Monday was Fauci, the nation’s leading infectious disease specialist. During a call with campaign staff that reporters listened in on, Trump called Fauci a “disaster” and seemed to suggest he would fire Fauci if it wouldn’t be a public relations nightmare.
“People are tired of COVID,” Trump said on the call. “I have the biggest rallies I’ve ever had. And we have COVID. People are saying, ‘Whatever. Just leave us alone.’ They’re tired of it. … People are tired of hearing Fauci and these idiots, all these idiots who got it wrong.”
He said Fauci was a “nice” guy, but “he’s been here for 500 years. Every time he goes on television, there’s always a bomb, but there’s a bigger bomb if you fire him. This guy’s a disaster.”
Trump’s latest issues with Fauci could stem from Fauci’s appearance on Sunday’s “60 Minutes.” Fauci told “60 Minutes’” Dr. Jon LaPook that he wasn’t surprised Trump contracted COVID-19, especially after seeing the scene of Amy Coney Barrett’s Supreme Court nomination announcement at the White House.
“I was worried that he was going to get sick when I saw him in a completely precarious situation of crowded, no separation between people, and almost nobody wearing a mask,” Fauci said. “When I saw that on TV, I said, ‘Oh my goodness. Nothing good can come out of that, that’s got to be a problem.’ And then sure enough, it turned out to be a superspreader event.”
“60 Minutes” also reported that the White House has restricted Fauci’s TV appearances, which led to Trump’s line about Bob Hope.
‘You’re a criminal’
Trump also continues to falsely beat the drum about his opponent, Joe Biden, being a criminal. And he said Biden isn’t the only criminal. During a brief Q&A with reporters outside of Air Force One in Phoenix on Monday, Trump called Biden a criminal and then told Reuters’ Jeff Mason, “You know who is a criminal? You’re a criminal for not reporting it.”
And then he repeated it, and added that “the media” is a criminal, too, for not reporting on Biden.
So what about all this?
Hunter’s emails. Sounds familiar, right? Replace “Hunter” with “Hillary” and we’re back in 2016 again. Perhaps that is Trump’s plan as we head into the home stretch of the election.
While the media might have been complicit in the “Hillary’s emails” story back in 2016, is there a danger of that happening again in 2020? Is it already happening?
Not as much.
Hardly any media outlets, except for conservative ones, are giving the story any credence at all. In fact, the biggest story to come out since the New York Post’s supposed “bombshell” on Hunter Biden was Katie Robertson’s New York Times piece that pretty much obliterated the Post story by showing that even writers at the Post didn’t want their names associated with it.
But should the media even mention the Hunter Biden story? Or what Trump says about Fauci? Or rigged elections? Or the debate moderators?
Should it even go down the rabbit hole of chasing any Trump-generated stories that are meant to distract us all from actual legitimate issues?
The argument to be made is that anything a president says is newsworthy and the media is simply reporting on what the president says. Then again, the counter-argument — and one that deserves weight — is that covering Trump as if he is a normal president is dangerous because there is very little that is normal about the Trump presidency. To normalize Trump because of his job title, perhaps, does a disservice to news consumers.
In a really smart essay on his “Reliable Sources” show, CNN’s Brian Stelter talked about how Trump can suck the oxygen out of any news cycle. Isn’t this what Trump wants? To be the center of attention, the main headline in the newspapers and the top story on the evening news — even if it’s for saying something controversial and really not all that newsworthy?
But Stelter asks, “Is all the attention, is all the air time for Trump — is it working for him this time around? Or is it now working against him?”
There do seem to be some signs of a Trump fatigue, even among his supporters. Even Fox News has stopped airing many of his rallies in their entirety. His recent town hall was watched by fewer people than watched Joe Biden’s town hall that aired at the same time.
You’re, obviously, going to still see plenty of Trump stories between now and election day. But this time around, it feels as if the media is much less complicit in Trump’s strategy — if he actually has a strategy — of holding up shiny objects for everyone to look at. Instead of amplifying his message, it feels as if the media, this time, is exposing it for what it is.
Hitting the mute button
After the first presidential debate was mired by interruptions from President Trump, there were calls for the debate commission to do something about it before the next debate. Couldn’t they just have a mute button?
Well, apparently the answer is yes, they can. The debate commission announced Monday that the microphones for Trump and Joe Biden will be muted for portions of Thursday’s debate. Each candidate will be able to speak for two minutes uninterrupted at the start of each segment.
The Trump campaign isn’t happy about the new wrinkle, but still plans to debate. Campaign manager Bill Stepien said, “President Trump is committed to debating Joe Biden regardless of last minute rule changes from the biased commission in their latest attempt to provide advantage to their favored candidate.”
Trouble for Toobin

Jeffrey Toobin (Evan Agostini/Invision/AP)
Vice’s Laura Wagner reports that The New Yorker has suspended reporter Jeffrey Toobin after, according to sources, he masturbated on camera during a Zoom call last week. The call was with members of The New Yorker and WNYC radio.
In a statement, Toobin said, “I made an embarrassingly stupid mistake, believing I was off-camera. I apologize to my wife, family, friends and co-workers. … I believed I was not visible on Zoom. I thought no one on the Zoom call could see me. I thought I had muted the Zoom video.”
A New Yorker spokesperson told Wagner that Toobin is suspended while it investigates the matter.
Meanwhile, Toobin often appears on CNN as chief legal analyst and even appeared over the weekend. But, in a statement, CNN said, “Jeff Toobin has asked for some time off while he deals with a personal issue, which we have granted.”
Wagner wrote that it happened during a Zoom meeting to simulate the election. Check her story for more of the details.
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