Mediaite’s Winner and Loser of the Day

Axios’ Jonathan Swan called out Congressman Eric Swalwell after the California Democrat raised questions about the timing of Axios’ reporting on a suspected Chinese spy that targeted Swalwell and others.

The report from Bethany Allen-Ebrahimian — who covers China for Axios — details how this suspected spy developed “extensive ties” to several politicians across the country and even apparently entered into “romantic or sexual relationships with at least two Midwestern mayors” before fleeing in 2015.

According to Axios, Swalwell received a defensive briefing in 2015 after investigators were “alarmed” by what was going on, and he “immediately cut off all ties to Fang.”

Swalwell apparently did not respond to Axios’ request for comment, but told Politico he thinks the report’s release may have something to do with the fact that he’s a prominent critic of President Donald Trump.

He said, “I’ve been a critic of the president. I’ve spoken out against him. I was on both committees that worked to impeach him. The timing feels like that should be looked at… What it appears though that this person — as the story reports — was unsuccessful in whatever they were trying to do. But if intelligence officials are trying to weaponize someone’s cooperation, they are essentially seeking to do what this person was not able to do, which is to try and discredit someone.”

He went on to say the report is really important because it “shows how the Chinese communist party operates inside this country” and how they “identify young, in some cases soft targets, people who don’t have a lot of staff around them, who don’t have experience, who don’t actually understand the tactics of the Chinese communist party, and then they follow them up.”

It’s a tough spot in media to have to defend a story that’s negative about a Democrat by saying it probably wasn’t Trump’s fault. But Swan did so, and did it well.

MEDIA LOSER:
Rush Limbaugh and Tom Arnold

Conservative talk king Rush Limbaugh said on his show Tuesday that he thinks the United States is “trending toward secession.”

In the inflammatory segment that went viral online, Limbaugh said that he’s noticed various writers and bloggers saying that the two opposing political and cultural factions in this country are so “distant and separated” currently, and becoming even more so, that ” it can’t go on this way.”

“There cannot be a peaceful coexistence of two completely different theories of life, theories of government, theories of how we manage our affairs,” he said. “We can’t be in this dire a conflict without something giving somewhere along the way.”

In Georgia, as Erick Erickson pointed out on Thursday morning, a website was set up “referring to Georgia’s Republican leaders as enemies of the people and showed their pictures through rifle scopes.” That’s just one of many examples showing the potential for violence over the election and highlighting the dangers of instigating it.

Limbaugh’s “secession” line and “peaceful coexistence” were the two phrases that caught the most fire on social media, and his critics were loud and vicious. He was a trending topic on Thursday morning in a bad way, including a tweet from comedian and actor Tom Arnold that typified the negative reactions.

“I’m looking forward to Rush Limbaugh’s reunion with his maker Abaddon,” he wrote of Limbaugh, who is currently battling lung cancer. There were many more wishes for death.

Which, philosophically speaking, is an interesting reaction to the argument that violence is inevitable between the two sides. In wishing death on him for this view, one is also essentially agreeing with it.

This afternoon, Limbaugh walked back a bit from his comments on Wednesday. So far Tom Arnold has not.