ee night. because when your business is rewarding yourself, our business is you. book direct at choicehotels.com >> president trump's chief of staff blames the media after he tells reporters there was a direct link between withholding military aid from ukraine and insisting on a probe of whether the country meddled in the 2016 campaign. >> i have news for everybody, get over it. there's going to be political influence in foreign policy. that's it! that's why we held up the money, so the president could get this other thing that he wanted from ukraine for his own political purposes. >> the white house fully admits to a quid pro quo, then tries to take it back and blame us for getting it wrong. >> he stood at the podium at the white house and connected the dots for democrats and said, you're darn right. >> so having made those disastrous remarks, he is now

trying to unsay what he said. howard: donald trump and nancy pelosi in a war of words as the media ramp up impeachment coverage and side with the speaker who accuses the president of losing his composure. >> trump's meltdown, democrats walking out of a meeting after the president rails against it. >> i think he is losing it. i mean, i think he is feeling the pressure of this impeachment. >> i think that the democratic leaders actually look like petulant children. >> he called her a third rate politician. of course, the president's right, her party's derangeed, psychotic, the hate trump agenda is all that matters in her world. howard: and as more diplomats testify about trump and rudy giuliani on ukraine, is the press downplaying republican charges of unfairness? hunter biden sits down with abc to try to neutralize the allegations against him, airing hours before the democratic debate.

>> do you regret being on the board to begin with? >> what i regret is not taking into account that there would be a rudy giuliani and a president of the united states that would be listening to this ridiculous conspiracy idea. howard: the cnn and new york times moderators go easy on joe biden with those allegations. plus, ronan farrow presses his case against nbc for spike being his harvey weinstein expose. >> the news organization ordered us to stop, to not take so much as a call and to cancel interviews in some cases with alleged rape victims. howard: and why, given his family history, this is, for him, a very personal mission. i'm howard kurtz, and this is "mediabuzz." ♪ ♪

howard: it was a rare briefing in the white house press room, and mick mulvaney fielding questions of why president trump withheld military aid to ukraine stunned the media world with this add mission about his boss: -- >> he also mentioned to me that's the corruption related to the dnc server? absolutely. no question about that. but that's it. that's why we held up the money. >> what you just described is a quid pro quo. it is funding will not flow unless the investigation into the democratic server happened as well. >> we do that all the time with foreign policy. howard: but the acting chief of staff changed his tune in a statement just hours later. quote: the media has decided to misconstrue my comments to advance a biased and political witch hunt against president trump. let me be clear, there was absolutely no quid pro quo between ukrainian military aid and any investigation into the 2016 election. he was defending himself this morning on fox. joining us now to analyze the cover, ben domenech, cheryl

attkisson, host of full measure, and reese juarez, former correspondent for the pbs "newshour". so mulvaney says there was a connection between military aid to ukraine, between investigating 016 including -- 2016 including a dnc server. does it wash for mulvaney to turn around and blame it on the press? >> i think this was an example of one of the tried and true elements of politics in media when you accidentally say the true thing. he read the soft part loud -- [laughter] in front of the media. i think that one thing we do need to make clear here is that historically we actually do make sorts of demands and conditions when it comes to the aid we send to other nations. we do whether it's the grant-making process, when it's gone through the congressional process and others. but the real core of this question is about the president doing that connected to his own political domestic experience here and wanting to get manager

out of ukraine that would -- something out of ukraine that would benefit him politically. not the broader concerns that have been existent across multiple administrations about the level of corruption we've seen historically in ukraine. howard: anticipated my question to you. it usually means using aid as leverage to advance american national interests, in this case the criticism is, obvious, that it was to advance the president's personal political interests. >> i think it depends on who you listen to. once that statement was made, who are you talking about when you say they made incorrect conclusions depends on the analyst. i do think some people made a leap that then claimed there had been an add mission that president trump -- admission that that's what the aid holdup -- howard: said it was a confession. >> yes x. that's not what was said with that statement. howard: mick mulvaney is usually very smooth with reporters. he had to clean up this mess, and he said media misconstrued,

witch hunt. can that work when there are cameras there and we're able to play the exchanges over and over? >> if you're insisting that the thing you just heard me said is -- say is something i didn't say, you're playing a weak hand. and don't blame the sharks after you throw a couple of hundred pounds of chum in the water. this is what he did. and to come back now and say it's been misconstrued, it's plain. t -- it's on 0s and 1s, we don't use tape anymore. when you say this is the thing my side of the game has been saying we didn't do for weeks, we did it. get over it, get over it. howard: i'm sure some will appreciate your reference to journalists as sharks. on fox news sunday he said he didn't say it, chris wallace said he did. he said i realize folks misinterpreted what i said, and by the way, there are all these leaks that, oh, president trump is considering replacing him, this is what happens when you

get in trouble. let me move on to the media going bonkers over donald trump's decision to hold next year's g7 at the doral miami, he's pulled the plug, said he was reversing his decision based on both media and democrat crazed and irrational hostility. this was pretty widely condemnedded. >> a couple of things. remember, president trump has enemies within the republican party, so both parties dislike a certain decision, there's more to it than just the fact that president trump is, obviously, wrong. sometimes maybe he is, but there's more to it. but i do think there is a school of thought -- i'm not saying this is the case -- that president trump knows how to throw hand grenades into the mix to get a discussion about something else going a certain way. and he knew that the media's head would spin off its body once this was knowns announced, and it did.

howard: i think he had to know that he could ride out the storm. mulvaney said the president was surprised at the intensity of the backlash, but there the you have it. >> it seems to me this is something that would have been obvious to might be talking to the president about this idea, especially in the context of this political moment in which republicans have been hammering on the self-dealing part of potentially joe biden and his son. it cuts totally against the narrative that republicans have been attempting -- howard: so let me ask you about, the other day -- seems like six weeks ago -- that president trump met at the white house with the democratic leaders, nancy pelosi and her colleagues walked out. let's play some sound from the exchange that happened when the meeting was suddenly cut short. >> he was particularly to the speaker. she kept her cool completely. but he called her a third rate politician. >> -- on the part of the president was a meltdown, sad to say. howard: and the president then

tweeted a picture from the meeting with the headline nervous nancy's unhinged meltdown, so we have mutual accusations. and i wonder whether much in the media were quick to adopt the idea that the president had melted down as the democrats claim. >> you know, are we supposed to be surprised that there's a bad relationship between the speaker of the house and the president that she is working now to impeach? i mean, come on. this is not something that should surprise us at this point. and, frankly, you know, the keg a rahation of this relationship -- degradation of this relationship has been a long time coming. i think this is just reaching a new low, and it's going to continue to get worse. the process of impeachment is going to lead to a totally toxic atmosphere not just between them, but between all republicans and democrats. howard: there's a rumor that trump is losing it, and if that is true -- i'm not adopting the meltdown language -- he is under daily assault over impeachment,

over syria, it's kind of a two-front war, actually a three-front war when you consider the doral country club. >> look, that's armchairly e dick louseness. and a-- ridiculousness, and apart from his doctor, who knows? writing stories about this with this as the core content of the story the, it's watch what he does, not what he says and what effect it has on issues. that's the way to cover this. >> i think like so many things this is a rorschach test. what you see out of the news coverage of everything that's happening -- howard: put that picture up while you're talking so we can see something that actually has been called a rorschach. >> you see nancy pelosi doing the right thing if you're a fan, taking on trump, or you see the opposite, president trump's doing the right thing and she's having a meltdown. when you operate at def con 10 for two years and there's nowhere to go from there, higher

than 10 when the scale is 1-10, you've left yourself nowhere to go. howard: yeah. i think the frustrating thing is that the country's leaders can't even have a civil meeting about syria, that was the topic, without it degenerating into, certainly, there were insults and mutual charges of meltdown. ben, this week we had testimony where john bolton was having called rudy giuliani a hand grenade, the ambassador told the house he was disappointed when trump told him to work with giuliani on ukraine. what about republican complaint that the democrats are doing all behind closed doors, confidential and then leaking out selected tidbits? >> i think this is a valid complaint, and if -- the conventional wisdom in washington today is that we are going to see impeachment possibly by thanksgiving, certainly by christmas, that it's going to progress forward. and yet in all of this stuff still happening behind closed

doors with selective leaks -- howard: which, of course, the media are happy to gobble up. >> they are happy, but it's unfair to the american people. and one of the things that we're seeing right now, obviously, in polled evidence is that the impeachment number is settle around the same number of whether you approve of the president or not. and that's something that i think if democrats really wanted to change that, if they wanted to see that shift in a way that would favor impeachment, they need to come forward with this stuff. they need to be more transparent, have these conversations in public and, frankly, they're not talking about evidence -- there's no evidence that they're talking about things that need to be classified, that need to be behind closed doors. the american people ought to be able to judge this for themselves and not rely on selective leaks. howard: the press is calling this a shadow foreign policy, giuliani on behalf of the president. is that fair? presidents have used private envoys in other cases. giuliani is under investigation and his business associates have been arrested for helping in ukraine. >> this is not a guy from some

white shoe law firm that you dispatch from the oval office. this is a guy who's been trolling the former soviet union and the somer warsaw pact nations for years, picking up clients, doing deals, signing huge consultancy contracts. he is not just some lawyer. howard: so you're saying the media criticism is fair. >> he was freelancing foreign policy for the president, a president who had an ambassador in kiev and who has a foreign policy team whose advice he routinely ignores. howard: he did replace the ambassador in kiev. now, before we go to break, world news tonight and gma were reporting on turkish airstrikes in syria when they ran this report: >> one week since president trump ordered u.s. forces out of that region, effectively abandoning u.s.ial i lies -- allies. this appears to show turkey bombing civilians.

howard: that was taken from a kentucky gun range, abc ran an online correction saying it regrets the error. i can't disagree, how on earth did this happen? when we come back, the president hails the ceasefire in syria as a victory, but the media say that's way off base. and later, dana perino with her exclusive sit-down with mark zuckerberg. ♪ but allstate actually helps you drive safely... with drivewise. it lets you know when you go too fast... ...and brake too hard. with feedback to help you drive safer. giving you the power to actually lower your cost. unfortunately, it can't do anything about that. now that you know the truth... are you in good hands?

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turkey -- if you look at the kurds. and, again, i say this with great respect. they're no angels. howard: after brokering a shaky and temporary ceasefire with turkey, trump proclaimed a victory for civilization. >> this is an amazing outcome. this is an outcome, regardless of how the press -- this was something they've been trying to get for ten years. you would have lost millions and millions of lives. howard: carol, we have the president saying this is a great victory, amazing outcome, saying the kurds are happy. but reporting from the region says then tens of thousands of kurdish soldiers and others are fleeing this now turkish-controlled region in syria with nowhere to go. >> this is an important point. p i, unlike almost every reporter, journalist and analyst i've heard the past couple of weeks, am not a geopolitical expert with the complex knowledge to comment what's

right between syria expect kurds. howard: right. >> but i have found a dearth, variety of opinions about the topic, and i recently spoke to a former obama ambassador to the mideast region who told me things that just i haven't heard anybody say on television such as he was shocked anybody's surprised. he said -- this was an obama guy, by the way -- that president trump has consistently spoken since 2016 of his desire to do this, that the message on the ground was supposed to be that we were going to do this, and this diplomat heard that trump's own people, administration people were delivering the opposite message on the ground, telling people we were going to stay there. there's some serious problems with that that are bigger than what we're looking at when you hear 99.9% in one direction. howard: yeah. interesting perspective. but it is true that on the right a majority of conservative journalists, commentators have hit the president pretty hard on syria. not to mention republicans on the hill. mitch mcconnell has an op-ed in the hill saying grave

mistake. it's not the usual. >> the republicans in congress and, frankly, the commentator set that you see in the news are not representative of republican voter opinion or necessarily of american opinions regarding this. look, you know, this is a difficult situation. you're caught between a nato ally and turkey, a treaty ally, and a military ally in the kurds who are, frankly, a stateless people who are occupying, you know, other areas of land within dispute. you're caught between a lot of different moving parts, and yet the opinion is all generally going in one direction. and i find that to be really troubling in this day and age, that we haven't taken a step back from the last two decades of activity in the middle east which, clearly, the american people have soured on, and maybe injected some additional opinions into the mix, opinions that would be more representative of what we see from the american people and less just the conventional approach that washington republicans have had for years. howard: i think that's a fair point, ray. and while the media say is cease

phi, both sides accusing each other of violating, you can't call it an accomplishment because consensus in the press is the president is trying to repair the damage that he caused byfect ily giving erdogan the green light to do this invasion. but much in the foreign media tend to be pro-military action. your take. >> the kurds have been reliable allies when their goals are in sync with that of the united states. so in western iraq, they created a peaceful, decent operating zone without the kind of mayhem that was going on in baghdad and in the areas controlled by shia militias. and they had a lot of support on capitol hill, men like barzani would come to washington, go to all the think tanks. they had a lot of hooks -- howard: now. >> look, a similar thing was happening in northeastern syria. it was pacified.

it was operative. schools were opening. people were eating three meals a day. howard: right. >> so kicking down this house of cards, no. the situation in syria could not have gone on forever the way it was two weeks ago, but this ending was not what anybody on either side of the foreign policy establishment -- howard: and briefly, cheryl, i mean, what gets far less anticipation from the media is that donald trump ran against endless wars. he doesn't want american troops in turkey or other places. and that's a popular stance with americans. >> i think it is. you're hearing from, as we pointed out, a lot of establishment figures. sometimes it's not a whole lot of difference on some issues between republicans and democrats when you're talking about establishment figures, and there's also not a lot of context given to the notion that in some instances, maybe not a lot of them, there are financial interests in play, military contractors i can tell you and military-connected people that are really fighting this supposed potential pullout in

afghanistan. so there's more context. >> very quickly, that endless wars thing? those american troops being pulled out of syria, where are they going? iraq and saudi arabia. they're not coming home. howard: it's a complicated geopolitical discussion. great to see you all this morning. ahead, hunter biden, why a violent video showing donald trump gunning down his media and political detractors is anything but a satire. ♪ great weather, great friends. you just saved a bunch of money by switching your boat insurance to geico. it was easy. folks, can it get any better than this? is that what i think it is? that is an armada of tiny sushi boats. awesome! i forgot to pack lunch. you had one job... chopsticks wasabi and soy! comin' in a little hot.

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♪ ♪ howard: i'm buzzed off about that video depicting a trump character murdering and attacking political opponents and media outlets. it's beyond sickening. these included cnn, cbs, nbc, pbr, pbs, the -- npr, adam

schiff, rosie ecodonnell and the late john mccain. -- rosie o'donnell. of course, some liberal commentators not buying trump's explanation and some anger on the right as well. >> what are the chances donald trump has not seen that video? that is code language for his followers that he hasn't condemned the video. >> how easy for all of you judging me that i'm offended and upset by the video. a member of your family has continued to have this happen over and over and over again. howard: but a few pundits on the right said this video was harmless, this was payback for the taunting of conservatives. so let me get to the part about two wrongs don't make a right when kathy griffin who's also in this video staged a spectacle with a severed trump-like head, i denounced her.

when shakespeare in central park portrayed a trump-like figure was killed, i denounced that too. trump's miami golf club was promoted by provocateurs, one said it was clearly satirical. here's the thing: trump, the video character, opened fire in the church of fake news. there were pews there. sorry, but when we we've all lived through a church massacre in south carolina and a synagogue massacre in pittsburgh, i don't see the satire. lawyers for the trump campaign have sent cnn a letter threatening to sue the network for unfair, unfounded, unethical and up lawful attacks. cnn says this is a pr stunt and doesn't merit a response. such a lawsuit against a public figure without showing reckless mistakes would face heavy odds if, indeed, it's ever filed. ahead, ronan farrow and the increasingly bitter dispute about nbc sparking his article. but first, how cnn handled joe

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one pill a day, 24 hours, zero heartburn. ♪ ♪ howard: everyone knew that joe biden would finally face questions about his son making big bucks from the ukrainian gas giant at the cnn/new york times debate, so to blunt the impact, hunter biden agreed to an interview that just happened to air the morning of the debate. >> you never thought this might not look like? >> you know what? did i make a mistake, well, maybe in the grand scheme of things, yeah. but did i make a mistake based upon some unethical lapse? absolutely not. howard: that night in ohio, here's how anderson cooper framed the question. >> president trump has falsely accused your son of doing something wrong while serving on a company in ukraine. there's no evidence of

wrongdoing. if it's not okay for a president's family to be involved in a foreign business, why was it okay for your son when you were vice president? vice president biden? >> look, my son did nothing wrong, i did nothing wrong. my son's statement speaks for itself. he spoke about it today. howard: joining us to analyze the coverage in new york, bob sexton, and here in the washington, marla -- national political reporter for npr. what do you make of anderson cooper declaring in advice that biden and his son had done nothing wrong? >> it wasn't a good moment at all for anderson cooper. if you think he's an objective journalist -- i don't, so it didn't surprise me. look, the fact of the matter is that you could make the case that there's nothing criminal in what we already know hunter biden did. but hunter biden has admitted that he messed up. so to say there was no wrong here, there was no wrongdoing is just not in keeping with the

facts. and i think that's where you see cnn trying to help effectively make this go away with for the person who's the democrat front-runner still which that, i do, find surprising. hunter biden got this job knowing that it's because of who his father was. the same as the job in china which, by the way, he just stepped down from that board. and for the media to try and make this go away just adds to the narrative that they're playing favorites and they're not trying to be neutral party, which i don't think they are. howard: fine to say no criminal wrong doing, but -- >> yeah, probably should have said that. howard: yeah. hunter biden's appearance, here you have the former vice president praising hunter's judgment, but hunter told amy robach he's guilty of poor judgment, he gave ammo e to his father's opponents. so here you have joe biden pointing to his son, but he was willing to admit some screw-ups. >> yeah. the question that anderson

cooper asked biden, which is if you don't like this president's children benefiting, you know, ivanka trump got all sorts of trademarks from china, why was it okay for hunter to do that -- howard: that was a good question. >> which biden did not answer. now, that is the legitimate question. the appearance of impropriety. put aside any criminality for which there is no evidence at this point, and i don't think biden answered the question. but also none of the other candidates pressed that. none of them, including the anti-corruption candidate elizabeth warren. howard: yeah. there was dovenning silence -- deafening silence. it was reported that diplomat george kent testified that he raised concerns about the ukraine job back in 2015 and was brushed off by a biden staff ther. fox covered this a lot. msnbc covered it next day twice that we could find, two sentences in uninstance, one question to a congressman in the

other. doesn't fit the narrative, perhaps? [laughter] >> i think that's absolutely the problem for them. look, anybody that is paying attention to this knows that hunter biden, with no expertise in natural gas, with no expertise in ukraine, while his father is the point man on foreign policy there, had to know in advance, okay, he had to know that this looked really bad and really gross. apparently, there was this quick exchange with joe biden where he said, you know, i hope you know what you're doing. he was cashing in on who his father was at the time, and i just think that from the media perspective we went through this whole charade when hillary clinton was running in 2016 that some of the stuff with the clinton foundation didn't look -- again, there's a difference between ethical and legal -- it didn't look preposterous. bill clinton getting these checks from different foreign entities while he's supposed to be running a charity, and then the donations completely collapsed in 2016. those of us who were skeptical, this time around they're doing the same thing. oh, hunter biden, nobody could have known.

everybody knew. howard: i want to play another sound bite from the debate. mark lacy of "the new york times" pressing elizabeth warren on the cost of her health care plan. >> will you raise taxes on the middle class for, to pay for it, yes or no? >> senator warren, would you acknowledge what the senator just said about taxes going up? >> so my view on this and what i have committed to is costs will go down for hard working middle class families. howard: he tried three times -- >> and when he said a what the senator just said, he was referring to bernie sanders who -- howard: wrote the damn bill. >> because she says i'm with bernie on health care who had just helpfully or maybe not just reminded everyone that his plan does raise taxes for the middle class. don't kid yourself. he did that to undercut her. howard: well, i give the reporter credit for trying. amy klobuchar, it was left to her to bring up, hey, this would throw 150 million people -- >> she's now the can

cofront-runner, she's coming under the kind of scrutiny she hasn't up until now. howard: she took a lot of flak. the pundits were unanimous saying elizabeth warren is now the front-runner because she got the most most attacks. does it really matter given within hours we were back to covering impeach. and the debate vanished from the airwaves? >> these debates are one step at a time. there's still four months to go. dynamic is shifting slowly. now all of a sudden the other candidates ignoring joe biden, that's going to get more and more -- howard: ratings went down for this debate. buck, last question, i've got about half a minute. i thought the moderators were fine, but most of the questions seemed to be from the left. should buybacks take guns off the street, should we pack the supreme court to protect abortion, and then everybody got to beat up on trump over impeachment. your thoughts. >> i just think they're going to have to be careful with this because if they try to go back to the center, things like having every democrat raise their hand in an earlier debate

when they said they would pay for health care for illegals, these far-left positions appeal to the base, i think they appeal to cnn's audience. they may raise issues when they actually have to get undecided voters, moderates, independents. right now it's ratings-driven. howard: great discussion. nice to see you. after the break, ronan farrow tells fox that nbc didn't act journalistically. the network calls that a smear. that's it. ♪ -- that's next. ♪ saturdays happen. pain happens. aleve it. aleve is proven better on pain than tylenol. when pain happens, aleve it. all day strong.

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♪ ♪ howard: ronan farrow is pushing back hard against the accusation that his book is a smear, detailing how the network caved to pressure from harvey wipe steven in killing -- weinstein in killing his expose. in an interview with bret baier, he talked about growing up as the son of woody allen and how that may have affected his work on sexual harassment. >> i very openly discuss in this book how i myself struggled with this painful part of my history, how it was weaponized against me by people like harvey weinstein. his sister was sexually assaulted, so he can't report on these stories objectively. that is not the case. it's not what any journalist has thought. what is the case is that i cared about this issue profoundly.

howard: joining us now from new york, kat timpf, and i always wondered whether his background had kind of propelled him toward this crusade of investigative work on sexual misconduct. it was bracing to hear him say that harvey weinstein and others have used it against him in an attempt to discredit him. he's pretty candid. >> absolutely. and i think that's something that's totally unfair because the truth is these are the things that are more pervasive than many people realize because people don't talk about them. they don't talk about them for many reasons, because they're uncomfortable, they could be afraid of not being believed or, in some cases, people have signed ndas and they can't talk about it even if they want to. so it was disqualifying being close to someone who's been sexually assaulted, if that disqualifies you, then no one would be able to report on them. howard: now, the responses to bret seemed very measured.

he said he included nbc's side, matt lauer's side in his book and hillary clinton's side. he's worked for her at the state department after reporting that it felt like a gut punch that hillary clinton's people tried to pressure him to stand down against weinstein who, of course, was one of her big donors. how do you think he's coming off in this sort of war of words against nbc? >> i think that the revelation that powerful men have structural protection if they decide to use their power to abuse women, for a lot of people that's not really a revelation at all. it's more like an expose on the sky being blue. i think people see this and they, you know, may have experienced something similar in the workplace or they know someone who has experienced something similar in the workplace. and again, because of ndas, i think one of the issues is that it actually prevents the people who know the most about this issue, unfortunately knowing about it because they've been through it, from being able to speak about it. so i think that there's a lot

missing from the conversation. i think these things are shocking because they're being talked about, but they're not really as shocking as many people might think. howard: well, that leads to my next question which is nbc news president noah oppenheim insists he and other executives had no prior knowledge of allegations against matt lauer, but ronan comes back and says, well, there were secret settlements, some of them with lauer accusers, and they're vague we don't know how much money was paid out to these women. and unlike when fox news and cbs and other media analysts grappled with similar problems of misconduct by executives and others here and there, there's been no outside investigation by nbc. >> right, absolutely. and so we're supposed to trust nbc saying that nbc didn't do anything wrong. i don't think that that applies in any situation. i mean, when people do things

that are wrong often times they'll say, not me, i didn't do that. and that's why you do need an outside investigation. i think that if nbc really didn't know, then why not vindicate itself with that outside investigation? but the fact that there's never been one speaks volumes. howard: can kat, just a quick answer on this. does the criticism of the network sting because the network has never been able to convincingly explain why it abandoned the story two years ago that kicked off the me too era. >> yeah, absolutely. and it's not doing a good job of explain it now either. it's kind of a blanket denial, no explanation. and, again, independent investigation necessary. howard: all right. on that note, great discussion, thank you so much, kat timpf. good to see you. still to come, why is facebook refusing to police live political ads? dana peep know on her live conversation with the facebook chief in just a moment. ♪

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glad i could help. at xfinity, we're here to make life simple. easy. awesome. so come ask, shop, discover at your xfinity store today. ♪ ♪ howard: mark zuckerberg has been having small, off the record dinners with pundits to counter criticism that facebook discriminates against the right. the guests have included ben shapiro, tucker carlson, guy benson, cnn's mary katherine hamm and hue hewitt. dana perino asked zuckerberg whether silicon valley is buys buys -- biased against california. >> look, california is an overwhelmingly left-leaning place, so i understand why people would ask the question are my ideas getting a fair shake. and all that i can say on this is this is something i care deeply about. howard: i spoke earlier to the host of the daily briefing and coco-host of "the five" from new

york. dana, welcome. >> thanks for having me. howard: facebook has occasionally had to apolo squeeze for selective punishment against conservatives. do you have the sense that mark zuckerberg is deeply concerned or is he doing a charm offensive? >> i think every morning he wakes up, and he has so many problems that he has to deal with, and the perception that the company is biased against conservatives has certainly been manager that he had to deal with. you know, back in 2016, you know, one of the things we talked about is part of the response, the dealing with the perceived bias against conservatives. they changed out the whole news -- and it cost them $100 billion in one day. he said it was worth it because they really needed to make a change. sometimes that is a problem. i do think that he takes it very seriously because he knows that a lot of conservatives are on facebook and are actually doing quite well on facebook. a a great example is our commander in chief, president trump. howard: well, facebook has

decided not to police the content of political ads which has drawn a lot of criticism from democrats about certain trump ads. you asked zuckerberg about this. take a look. >> i just think in a democracy it's important for people to see for themselves what politicians are saying. and, you know, political speeches are the most scrutinized speech that is out there. so that's already happening. howard: so i know it's a murky area, but how does a tech company decide that it will allow content that might be filled with lies by either side and then zuckerberg just kind of throws up his hands and says, free speech, you guys figure it out? >> maybe there should be some rules, and i think you'll see a debate about that going forward. about a month ago, facebook put out a policy saying we are going to take a stand and make a policy that politicians should be able to put out their information and that we are not going to decide what is true and what is false. now, that has upset some on the left, in particular senator warren being the leading charge

on this which is to say how can you in good conscience, mark zuckerberg, put up an ad that you know is false. this is what i would say to that -- howard: i think it's a mistake for a company that has taken so much heat for allowing misinformation and propaganda in its news feed, but your thoughts? >> again though, who do you want policing what's truth or not? so, for example, are they going to get into with a situation where every time senate warren puts out an ad about medicare for all and she describes how she would pay for it and let's say somebody from the trump campaign says that's not true, you should take that ad down, i mean, this would be a never ending saga. and i think what mark zuckerberg is saying is let's take a step back. bigger picture. is america for free speech? is that one of our greatest values? howard: zuckerberg was caught on a leaked audiotape for saying if elizabeth warren was president that would, quote, suck. but can you really blame him? >> anybody who has a company

doesn't want it broken up, and they will try to make arguments against it. mark zuckerberg says he absolutely will try to do that. i think for some people you'd think, well, why would you break up facebook? like, are a hundred more facebooks going to be better? better for competition? possibly. but i think they're going to have a really hard time making that argument unless donald trump decides to get behind it because there could be wisconsin partisan -- bipartisan support for it. howard: finally, just briefly, how did you get this interview? >> yes. i had an opportunity to participate in some of this media outreach that he's been doing behind closed doors which is, basically, open up to people a little bit. you don't see him very often. it's not his natural habitat. he's very polite. he is so thoughtful. he is a genius. but going out and doing media interviews is not something that he likes to do, so we really appreciated that he gave fox news an exclusive interview and so much time in order to ask him lots of questions.

howard: fascinating conversation. dana perino, thanks for joining us. >> thank, howie. howard: that's it for us. i'm howard kurtz, i hope you'll subscribe to my podcast at apple i tubes, google play or fox news podcast.com. now, just a personal note, i was here late the other night covering the democratic debate going on the air, but i had another tv going, and it had the washington nationals game. and i was watching at the nats beat the cardinals to get into the world series, and i gotta say, at times the game packed a lot more punch than the three-hour debate. i kept turning off the sound. don't tell anybody. when i moved to d.c., there was no baseball teem. there was no baseball team here for 33 years. the last time there was a washington franchise in the world series, 19 33. you know who threw out the first ball? fdr. i was watching "fox news sunday," and he had a special guest come out. you see teddy roosevelt, one of the four presidents who made the

rounds at the nationals game. world series fever here in the nation's capital. hope you'll join us 11 eastern next sunday, see you then with the latest buzz. ♪ rought me home, that day. i've been plotting to destroy you. sizing you up... calculating your every move. you think this is love? this is a billion years of tiger dna just ready to pounce. and if you have the wrong home insurance coverage, you could be coughing up the cash for this. so get allstate and be better protected from mayhem, like me-ow.

>> we begin with breaking news from georgia. the u.s. army says three soldiers were killed during a training accident at fort stuart earlier this morning. three other soldiers were injured and taken to the hospital. the army says the six soldiers were riding in a tank-like vehicle when the accident happened. no other details were released and the army is still investigating. we, of course, will bring you new information as we get it. arthel: over now to syria where kurdish-led forces say they have fully evacuated from an embattled border town as time winds down on a u.s.-brokered ceasefire between turkey and the kurds. hello, everyone, welcome to "america's news headquarters." i'm arthel