In an eye-raising interview, Pennsylvania Democratic senatorial candidate John Fetterman talked with NBC News correspondent Dasha Burns — his first interview since suffering a stroke earlier this year. Some of the interview aired on Tuesday’s “NBC Nightly News.” More will air on this morning’s “Today” show.
Fetterman, who is in a hotly contested race with Republican Mehmet Oz, said he still struggles to understand what he hears and struggles to speak clearly following his May stroke. For the interview, Fetterman read a computer with closed-captioning of Burns’ questions.
“I sometimes will hear things in a way that’s not perfectly clear,” Fetterman said. “So I use captioning so I’m able to see what you’re saying on the captioning.”
During the interview, Fetterman struggled at times to enunciate or find certain words. But he said it will not impact his ability to be a senator.
“I feel like I’m gonna get better and better — every day,” Fetterman said. “And by January, I’m going (to) be, you know, much better. And Dr. Oz is still going to be a fraud.”
Burns questioned Fetterman for not releasing his medical records. Fetterman said, “I feel like we have been very transparent in a lot of different ways. When our doctor has already given a letter saying that I’m able to serve and to be running. And then I think there’s — you can’t be any more transparent than standing up on a stage with 3,000 people and having a speech without a teleprompter and just being — and putting everything and yourself out there like that. I think that’s as transparent as everyone in Pennsylvania can see.”
Burns and Fetterman also talked about political topics, including abortion rights, crime and inflation, as well as how to tackle the opioid epidemic.
Not long after the interview aired on NBC, Axios’ Josh Kraushaar quoted Burns in a tweet: “NBC News’ Dasha Burns: ‘In small talk before my interview [with Fetterman], it wasn’t clear he understood what I was saying.’”
Podcaster Kara Swisher retweeted Kraushaar’s tweet and wrote, “Sorry to say but I talked to @JohnFetterman for over an hour without stop or any aides and this is just nonsense. Maybe this reporter is just bad at small talk.”
Swisher then linked to a recent podcast in which she interviewed Fetterman and tweeted, “Listen to the interview in which we did not edit the ums or ahs out as we typically do for everyone else. There were few slips — I had more — and at no moment did he seem distracted.”
Another big name out at CNN?
Is another big name about to get the ax at CNN?
There was some social media buzz about that on Tuesday. News Cycle Media’s Jon Nicosia had this intriguing tweet: “Another ‘big name’ about to exit @CNN.” He quoted an unnamed Discovery executive as saying this person no longer has a place at CNN.
Not everyone is a fan of Nicosia, who has had a bit of a checkered past and career. Nicosia is not his real name, and he has convictions for larceny, bank fraud and securities fraud. (He wrote about this back in 2014 when he was the managing editor at Mediaite.) He also was fired from The Washington Examiner after the outlet said he shared a lewd video with co-workers. But he also has had scoops about CNN, including that the network would cut ties with Brian Stelter just a few weeks before that happened.
Several names immediately started getting churned through the rumor mill on Tuesday. Instead of listing who it might be, let’s eliminate a couple of rumored names that it probably isn’t.
Two names caught up in the speculation were Jake Tapper and Don Lemon. But Tapper was just tabbed to, for the time being, host the 9 p.m. Eastern hour — Chris Cuomo’s old spot and one of the most sought-after spots in cable news. And Lemon was recently selected to co-host a revamped morning program, which hasn’t even debuted yet.
So it appears highly unlikely that it’s one of those two.
Speaking of Tapper filling in at 9 p.m., Variety’s Brian Steinberg has a new piece out: “Why CNN, MSNBC Are Battling For a Second-Place Finish at 9 P.M.” Steinberg writes about Tapper and Alex Wagner, who takes over for Rachel Maddow on MSNBC from Tuesdays through Fridays. (First place in cable news at 9 p.m. is dominated by Fox News and Sean Hannity.)
Steinberg wrote, “Both Tapper and Wagner are journalists who have tried, by and large, to stick to their knitting. Yes, Wagner has tried her hand at a host of unique activities, from editing a music magazine to hosting the Netflix reboot of ‘The Mole,’ and Tapper has gone viral after taut question-and-answer sessions with candidate Donald Trump and Trump White House adviser Stephen Miller. But both seem more wedded to the business of telling viewers what’s going on rather than telling them what to think, not necessarily the hallmark of a cable-news show at 9.”
Steinberg added, “The new choices at MSNBC and CNN seem like an attempt, perhaps, to take down the temperature. People familiar with Tapper’s primetime effort say it will not view stories through a partisan lens while displaying a ‘hypersensitivity’ to talking points, misinformation and nonsense.”
The big board
