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Note to David Frum: When You Are Too Extreme for MSNBC, That Should Be a Reckoning Moment

Brad Slager
Brad Slager  |  Dec 05, 2024
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Artisanally-Crafted Narratives – THE ATLANTIC / MSNBC

  • When you incur rebukes from THAT network, you have really screwed up.

David Frum was on MSNBC to discuss the Pete Hegseth drinking controversy, and while on “Morning Joe,” he made some broad sweeping comments, rooted in anonymous claims:

If you’re too drunk for Fox News, you’re very, very drunk indeed — so, that's alarming.

The hosts rather abruptly changed topics, and then after a while, Frum’s seat was vacated. Mika Brzezinski next came back on and issued a retraction regarding Frum’s comments, in an attempt to save face legally.

Frum wrote of this issue, indicating how he was removed from the set by the producers. He then goes on to write how the personalities at Fox News have shirked responsibility by not speaking out about Hegseth’s condition. Except…they have. A large number of Hegseth’s co-hosts have gone on the record to say the reports of his binge drinking at the network are complete garbage, but Frum clings to reports made from anonymous sources with mysterious jobs.

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Pathological Media Amnesia – CNN

  • CHEERS! To your obliviousness!

CNN has been particularly obsessed it seems over the Pete Hegseth nomination, and today they leaned into the drinking aspect of it. Dana Bash staged a lengthy discussion of Hegseth being found to have consumed beer on camera! 

Now, we need a ruling: Is this considered worse than when CNN personalities became positively polluted on camera during New Year’s Eve telecasts, or drinking on "The Today Show" for Super Bowl prep?

Both Kinds of Standards – THE NEW YORK TIMES

  • Wiping out any and all rulings over the course of a decade is not an insult to the courts, we presume?

Drew Holden draws up a glorious side-by-side from The New York Times on its approach to presidential pardons when it comes to the current president and the former and future President Trump.

It comes down to Trump “aggressively” overriding the sanctity of our legal system when he employed pardons in the traditional manner, while Biden is a religious man tormented by family anxiety. 

Just precious work, gang!

Low-Octane Gaslighting – MSNBC

  • Now it seems to us that maybe you have this backward…maybe?

Oh, we can always depend on Joy Reid. For her latest nuttier-than-squirell-crap commentary, she came out in defense of gender-altering surgeries for minors and did so in her patented hyperbolic hysterical style.

In defending “gender-affirming care,” she likened any opponents to this procedure as repeating the same words heard from Nazi Germany in the 1930s. Small problem with your assessment there, Joy: When looking over the dark history of the likes of Dr. Mengele, you see him committing tortuous experiments on people and performing ghastly surgeries. Which, sounds rather close to the procedures you are defending, Ms. Reid.

First Amendment Strike Force – CBS NEWS

  • “We can’t have him giving a live interview – what if he says something opposing our narratives?”

Deposed investigative reporter Catherine Herridge gave an interview on NewsNation where she detailed an episode she experienced on her former network home, CBS News. Herridge was poised to interview Elon Musk concerning the hot-at-the-time issue of The Twitter Files, and the various revelations to come from that series of documents he was exposing after purchasing Twitter.

But, after scheduling the interview to take place live, she was told by network brass that she would not be permitted to go through with the interview.