Shocking Trump Interview. Appalling Take From Gutfeld. Ted Cruz Is STILL Mad at Big Bird. | Winners & Losers in Today’s Green Room
THE DAILY NEWSLETTER – FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 12, 2021
MEDIA WINNER: Jonathan Karl
ABC News Chief Washington Correspondent Jonathan Karl’s latest book, Betrayal: The Final Act of the Trump Show, is just a few days away from its release date. The book paints a chilling picture of the final days of the former President Donald Trump’s White House, and the excerpts released so far have included some truly stunning revelations.
This latest development is an audio snippet from a 90-minute interview that Karl conducted with Trump at Mar-a-Lago on March 18. In the recording, Trump dispassionately defends the Jan. 6 rioters’ threats against then-Vice President Mike Pence. They had erected a crude gallows on the Capitol grounds and chanted “Hang Mike Pence” as they stormed the building.
Karl revealed earlier this week that photos exist of Pence hiding from the rioters in the bowels of the Capitol building but he was not allowed to publish them, and he asked Trump about the “Hang Mike Pence” chants and if he had been worried for his safety. Trump shrugged off the threats, saying that he thought Pence was “well-protected” and had “heard that he was in good shape.”
Karl was taken aback by Trump’s response, calling the chants “terrible.” Trump replied that “the people were very angry,” again declined to show any concern for Pence, and pivoted to his tired complaints about election fraud, showing more emotion as he repeated his baseless claims than he did regarding threats to murder his vice president.
There have already been dozens of books published about the Trump presidency. What we’ve seen so far from Betrayal exhibits not just Karl’s talented writing, but a keen journalistic instinct to uncover new — and horrifying — details about this critical time in American history.
MEDIA LOSER: Greg Gutfeld
There have been a lot of hot takes on the Kyle Rittenhouse trial, including from the hosts of The View, cable news legal analysts, athletes, political candidates, and even the Merriam-Webster Dictionary.
But Fox News’ Greg Gutfeld stands out in a seemingly endless sea of outlandish opinions for a truly abhorrent take he dropped on Thursday’s episode of The Five.
In response to criticism that the 17-year-old Rittenhouse should not have gone to Kenosha during a riot, Gutfeld said, “The dead guys shouldn’t have gone there either. One was a convicted pedophile who again had anally raped a child. Another was a serial domestic abuser. They should not have been anywhere on a street, right?”
Rittenhouse’s victims, Gutfeld argued, “deserved better from the government, but they didn’t deserve better from Kyle,” saying that the teenager “did the right thing,” and “did what the government should have done,” to make sure “these violent, disgusting dirtbags” weren’t “roaming the streets.”
Gutfeld omits certain facts about the victims, and unfairly disparages the third man who lacked the violent criminal history of the other two, but beyond that, this isn’t how our justice system works. No matter how severe the crime, we do not sentence people to be gunned down in the street by vigilantes and die bleeding out in pain and terror.
Most importantly, even if we accept Gutfeld’s argument that Rittenhouse went to Kenosha because local law enforcement had failed, as Mediaite’s Sarah Rumpf pointed out, we don’t call on children to fight our battles. You have to be 18 to join the military, become a police officer, firefighter, and so on. There were real problems in Kenosha, but a kid from Illinois was not the solution.
Links We Like:
No One Cares! Our fears about what other people think of us are overblown and rarely worth fretting over.
– Arthur C. Brooks, The Atlantic
American Sclerosis: A mix of federal, state, and local regulatory policies are behind our supply-chain woes.
– Scott Lincicome, The Dispatch
The 9 Tribes of American Politics
– Charlie Sykes, The Bulwark
Mugshots Stay Online Forever. Some Say the Police Should Stop Making Them Public.
– Keri Blakinger, The Marshall Project
Read the full Mediaite Green Room Newsletter here, including Ted Cruz’s ongoing feud with Big Bird and some other really bizarre things people have been saying lately.
