considering 100,000-dollar giveaway for christmas. that's it for today, have a great weekend. happy thanksgiving and we'll see you next fox news. howard: on our buzz meter this sunday, the media call it a major bombshell, and president trump says it should end the investigation. >> was there a quid pro quo in. >> as i testified previously with regard to the requested white house call and the white house meeting, the answer is yes. >> what sondland did today was guarantee that the house of representatives are going to impeach the president of the united states. >> now we know that every fantasy about how corrupt this administration was is actually true. >> he took out the bus, and he ran over president bush, vice president pence, mike pompeo, john bolton, rudy giuliani, mick

mulvaney -- >> they pushed him and pushed him again, but gordon sondland would not mouth adam schiff's talking points. >> it was one of the stupidest, most depressing days, and i really felt like all of america's iq dropped about a hundred points because their defenses were in such bad faith. >> on its face it's very damaging, some of the arguments the gop has been making. >> this was the day the democrats, trump ukraine quid pro quo, coup impeachment attempt and hoax officially died. howard: what sondland can actually prove with firsthand knowledge, are the impeachment hearings breaking through the media static, and what about reports that an fbi lawyer improperly alteredded a document of trump campaign aide carter page? msnbc hosts a democrat debate that yen rates few sparks -- generates few sparks

but plenty of talking points, plus, john solomon's ukraine reporting for the hill draws both lavish praise and harsh scrutiny at the impeachment hearings. he'll be here to respond. i'm howard kurtz, and this is "mediabuzz." ♪ ♪ howard: gordon sondland, president trump's pick for board to the e.u., was hailed by much of the media for delivering devastating testimony. the democrat did everything they could to help sondland tell his story, and the republicans tried to pick it apart. >> you testified that that meeting was conditioned as a quid pro quo for what the president wanted these two investigations, isn't that right? >> correct. >> and that everybody knew it. >> correct. >> and the headline on cnn is wrong. no one on this planet told you that president trump was tying aid to investigations, yes or no? >> yes. howard: president trump seized

on one part of sondland's testimony that the president had told him in a short conversation he didn't want a quid pro quo with ukraine and said the quo should be over. >> here's my response. now, if you want fake news -- if you weren't fake news, you'd cover it properly. i said to the ambassador, i want nothing, i want nothing, i want no quid pro quo. tell zelensky, president zelensky, to do the right thing. howard: joining us right now, ben domenech, founder and publisher of the federalist, susan ferrechio, chief congressional correspondent for the washington examiner, and grace juarez, former correspondent for the pbs "newshour." ben, the media almost unanimously describing sondland's testimony, yes, there was a quid pro quo as a game-changing revelation. fair or unfair? >> i think it's a little unfair, and i think there are a number of reasons why gordon sondland

did what he did. byron york, obviously, familiar to viewers of fox, did a great run-through looking at what sondland testified behind the scenes before. and, cleary, there was a need for -- clearly, there was a need to clean up what he had been saying given some of the testimony that had been made. he tried to do this in a way that, i think, pretty much worked out for him which was i think there was a quid pro quo, but that was under my presumption. i was not told directly by the president, i was not told directly by these other officials, but it was the presumption that i had and the way that i operated around this meeting and the situation. in that way republicans on the panel were able to point to it and say, hey, no one told you this. but democrats were able to say, yes, but he was operating in this vein. howard: i think that's a key point because sondland was trump's hand-picked ambassador. he changed his original testimony which was much more favorable to president. so his evolution, shall we say, seemed to journalists to be

problematic. >> right. and i think this is an important point about the clarity behind what the quid pro quo was about. when he first came out and testified was there a quid pro quo, yes. i think those were his exact words. that's been an important headline. but he wasn't talking about the security aid which is really, at this point, at the heart of the impeachment. that wasn't made clear in the recordings. once we get to the part about the security aid further into the testimony, further into the day, everyone's turned the channel to something else. that's when he talked about nobody ever told me that, and that's when we got to the part about the president being on the phone saying no quid pro quo, i want nothing. howard: right. but there was also the question of the white house meeting that president zelensky obviously wanted. that came up in a lot of the evidence. sondland testified that he wasn't happy when the president told him to work with rudy giuliani, and then he briefed mike pompeo, mick mulvaney, his argument that everyone was in the loop.

>> everyone was in the loop moment was one of the worst moments for the president of the preceding week. there's just no getting around it. yes, it's true that no quid pro quo is run in 6-inch boldface letters across the headline with a little asterisk down here what the quid pro quo was about. we have to remember what lasting impressions are from these moments. if you watch certain media, you'll think that devin nuñes is a hero riding in on a white horse and totally unraveling the story that schiff and company are trying to tell. if you consume other media, you think this whole thing is a foregone conclusion. there are parts of the sondland timeline and storyline that are still confusing, but the parts that are most important are being confirmed by other witnesses. all the yelling about everything being secondhand, you get a firsthand witness, no, that doesn't matter anymore. howard: right. this is what i call parallel universes when it comes to media

coverage. ben, when sondland did describe this call in early september where the president says zelensky should do the right thing, i don't want a quid pro quo, are the media down playing this? >> i think they're definitely depicting it as the latter, howie. we have to keep in mind what we've experienced over the last couple of months, which is from my perspective the democratic leadership has done, has done something i think politically unwise which is that they have outsourced the impetus of this impeachment proceeding to the media. the media's very frustrated in the wake of the outcome of the mueller report and everything that they expected to come -- howard: how, through leaks in. >> well, through leaks and through, i think, a cooperation really between adam schiff of and the democrats on the intel committee and a lot of journalists who are covering this and covering it closely. there's a revisionist history in which jerry nadler screwed up from the perspective of a lot of

democrats the mueller proceedings, gets this transcript from the white house and says what many democrats believe which is this transcript is enough on its face to proceed with articles of impeachment. and if they had done that, if they had gone ahead and struck while the iron was hot, i think they already would have voted on this matter, the senate would already running the trial, and they wouldn't be running political risks -- howard: they clearly have the votes, but how are the media covering this? no direct proof of a quid pro quo. politics is always a part of foreign policy decisions. in the end, nothing happened. and perhaps the most resonant one, even though this thing looks so good, it doesn't rise to level of an impeachable offense. how are the media treating those? >> the headlines aye seen are about was there a quid pro quo, yes, even though we're not getting at about what, you know? we're not getting into that. the headline has really been that the president was conducting with rudy giuliani

and others this shadow foreign policy in ukraine. there was a lot of emphasis on the ouster of the ukraine ambassador which has nothing to do with impeachment. the president's right to call -- recall an ambassador. they're trying to create a storyline that the president is corrupt at many different levels. and if you ask the public, you'll hear a lot of different answers because it's not clear why they're doing it. howard: you mentioned the witnesses all confirming, these are career officials and we know the names, bill taylor, alexander vindman, david holmes, george kent, as well as on theland who never worked in the government before. should the president object when they're all kind of dismissed as deep state partisans who didn't like president trump's policy? >> should the press object in no, the press should just report what's happening in the hearing room and develop external sources to add more flesh to the bones of the story. there are things that are being broken day after day about this story that are not making it

into the hearing room. but they've become part of the overall story. howard: right. president trump had a 53-minute phone interview on fox and fridays friend. here's what he -- "fox & friends." here's what he had to say. >> we have a great day, and then you pick up the phony new york times which is a total phony paper, and you read a story that took place, and they don't tell you what happened. they only put in the bad. they don't put in the good. same thing with "the washington post." it's a phony paper. howard: i'm going to go out on a him and say he wasn't happy with the coverage of the hearings. [laughter] more negative than he would like. but when he says, well, if i are a great day -- which is questionable -- and the press printed everything bad, does he want coverage that's not reflect i have of what happened in that -- reflective of what happened in that hearing room? it wasn't a great week. >> i will say in talking to various senior white house officials, they actually think that the president is leaning

into? , that he feels like -- into this, that he feels hike the way these impeachment proceedings have gone, it has not actually created the kind of momentum for impeachment that could have been possible or looked like it might have been possible a few months ago and that that's a situation where, looking down the road, they see the potential for a perhaps bipartisan vote to acquit the president early next year on these grounds in the senate -- howard: bipartisan vote -- >> -- as something that helps him momentum wise. i'm not sure the white house is actually angry about this. howard: interesting. i'm going to ask for short answers. ray, fiona hill -- the white house russia expert who testified that republicans are pushing a fictional narrative when it comes to blaming ukraine and not russia for 2016 meddling or hacking -- the president has been saying that of most of the press to a degree now, a little degree of vindication there -- >> a widely debunked story

getting more debunking. no surprise there. the idea that ukraine was really the puppet master pulling the marionette strings in the 2016 meddling is ridiculous. howard: and, susan, you talked about how much this is breaking through. the ratings have gone from 13 million at the beginning to 11.5 million at the end. does this suggest that these proceedings aren't gripping america the way they are people in the media political complex? >> right. but still a lot of people watching them. howard: yeah. >> remember, we're talking about something that is, if you go back to the monica lewinsky-clinton impeachable, think about what that was about. it was about sex and the president. [laughter] i mean, this is about foreign policy, this is about things -- foreign policy never does well polling, people don't pay attention to it, and it's been a lot about foreign policy. howard: yes. long, endless hearings and complicated. when we come back, newspaper reports about possible misconduct by an fbi lawyer seeking court approval for the

surveillance of carter page x. later, why was msnbc's

♪ ♪ howard: "the washington post" and new york times have major stories on a forthcoming report by the justice department's

inspector general based on unnamed u.s. officials. these pieces say the i.g. is quite critical of the fbi's handling of the early stages of the russia probe but does not view is it as tainted by pretty are call bias. errors in omissions in documents, sloppy and unprofessional behavior, a former low-level fbi lawyer who was forced out of the department may have altered a document connected to the surveillance of carter page, a trump campaign aide. howdying a story is this? >> i think -- how big of a story is this? i'm not -- i do want to wait and see what's in the report as opposed to just going off what's been reported so far. howard: sure. >> certainly, i think we have to step back and kind of ask how should we depict these types of reports going forward. foreign interference is not going to be a problem that stops, and it's clearly going to be an issue. but crossing that line where law enforcement and security

agencies are investigating candidates for the white house is always going to be something that's very touchy. we need to make clear there's not going to be bias in the system going forward, and i'm not sure that we have in any way really solved that problem. howard: the fbi was out to get trump, it's got a lot of traction on the right. "the new york times" says michael horowitz made no finding of politically biased actions by top officials like james comey, andrew mccabe and peter strzok. if that's true -- we haven't seen the report -- that would sort of alie with media reports that believe these allegations are overblown. >> it will discredit the fbi, and it will put wind in the sale sails of -- in the sails of people who want to say this whole story is all about a cabal that wanted to remove donald trump from office since before he was even elected. howard: despite the reported findings? >> despite the reported

findings. howard: okay. the president in that long interview over the phone with "fox & friends" addressed this question. here we go. here he is. >> and this was spying on my campaign, something that has never been done in the history of our country. this was an overthrow attempt at the presidency. they tried to overthrow the presidency. this is a disgrace. howard: well, i'd like you to address what the president said, but here's some fodder from the media with. the fbi referred to kevin kleinsmith, texted another official he disparages trump's health and immigration policies, called mike pence stupid and apparently said viva la resistance. so in this case it certainly seems like there's a hell of a lot of bias. >> the president has and continues to have plenty of fodder to make the case that he was treated unfairly and that the prior administration was looking to undo him, to undermine him and to hobble his

presidency. plenty of fodder x. there are many, many people who believe that and will continue to believe that. and they're clearly trying to get ahead of things, giving information to the washington post that no political bias, no big deal. i think the jury's really still out. first, the september 9th report -- we haven't seen it yet -- there's going to be a hearing a couple days later in the senate. and there's a second investigation that's still ongoing into the yen sis of -- genesis of this. it will go beyond political machinations potentially -- howard: as you said, not the final word. but the inspector general has a sterling reputation for fairness. again, we're seeing maybe -- [inaudible] will the media be able to make a distinction between sloppy and unprofessional, which is bad, and so biased they were out to get trump, unauthorized spying on his campaign which apparently remains unproven this. >> i don't think they've done anything at this point to show they're able to make that kind of distinction, howie. look, it's a real problem here.

these agencies are invested with enormous power to conduct investigations into our lives and to, you know, in many ways take steps that we would find, if used for politically biased purposes, very uncomfortable. that's something i think we need to look at as a holistic reform issue going forward, and the media needs to understand even these people who have been their source in the past, their loyalty is not to them. it should be questioning the ability of these agencies to intervening in our lives. howard: one sentence response. >> it doesn't matter what the report says, it's going to be used by devin nuñes and company as a vibd case for their master narrative. howard: i would argue that it's going to be used on both sides. thanks so much for joining us this sunday. ahead, john solomon responds to growing criticism of his investigative reporting on ukraine m but up next, john bolton's mysterious tweet and politicians demanding answers from nbc and abc over their stories on sexual predators.

♪

♪ ♪ howard: john bolton may have been pushed out as national security adviser, but somehow his name kept coming up at the hearings. >> ambassador bolton told me that i am not part of the, this whatever drug deal that mulvaney and sondland are cooking up. >> bolton viewed giuliani as a hand grenade that is going to blow everybody up. howard: now bolton, who is declining to testify pending the outcome of a court battle, has resurfaced on twitter. first, he said the back story would be coming. then, he charged something nefarious would be happening. we have liberated the twitter account in the aftermath of my less rig nation -- liberated, suppressed, how could that be? bolton had more. declaring he hadn't been in

hiding, the white house refused access to my twitter account. stephanie grisham said it was always his twitter account. look, a former fox news contributor who already has a lucrative book deal could obviously help or hurt the president on ukraine. doesn't he have some responsibility to speak out now? house republican leader kevin mccarthy said abc and nbc, spiking of an interview with jeffrey epstein's accuser. mccarthy framing the issue as one of human sex trafficking wrote: i am deeply concerned that this victim in search of justice went to abc news, provided information and an interview, and abc news chose to bury the truth. meanwhile, before this week's debate for 2020 democrats,

several urged comcast to look into ronan farrow's charges that the network caved to pressure in killing his harvey weinstein expose. they worried about the message it would sent to sexual assault survivors -- [inaudible] to conduct an independent investigation into the toxic culture that enabled abusers and silenced survivors. but they showed up for the debate anyway. now, as someone who's been critical of both networks for their handling of the weinstein and epstein outrages, i still have to ask, should politicians be mucking around in the editorial decisions -- even wrong decisions -- made by news organizations? that could be a slippery slope toward government interference with media companies. ahead on "mediabuzz," rachel maddow asks about impeachable. but first, journalist john solomon has drawn both praise and criticism at the impeachment hearings. he will be here next. ♪ ♪ chevy silverado hd.

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♪ ♪ howard: john solomon, whose reporting for the hill newspaper, has drawn praise from president trump and his allies, has been released -- repeatedly mentioned during the impeachment hearings. >> solomon's reporting on burisma, hunter biden and ukraine election meddling has become inconvenient for the democratic narrative, and so the media is furiously smearing and libeling solomon. howard: but some of his articles were sharply criticized by two of the career diplomats who testified. george kent said one story was, quote, if not entirely made up, it was primarily untruths and non sequiturs. solomon, who joined fox news as a contributor last month, spent years at the ap and washington post becoming editor of the right-leaning washington times. he recently left the hill which last year started labeling him an opinion contributor.

john solomon joins me now here in the studio. welcome. >> good to be with you. howard: you have become, needless to say, a hay profile media -- high profile media target. washington post says you played a role, new york times, his techniques blur the boundaries meant to keep journalist-source relationships at arm's length. your response. >> i'd like to find the flaw. no one's ever cited a factual flaw in my stories and, two, no one knows my source relationships. they're assuming rudy ideal yanni was one of my sources. he is never on the record, off the record source. in june after i wrote the majority of my ukraine comments, he gave me his files. one was a allegation about the servers, the dnc servers being in ukraine. i did report it didn't check out. second one was there was a check to $900,000 to biden, i knew that was not true because i have

the ledger -- howard: since you mentioned rudy, he has been regularly promoting your reporting. >> sure. howard: let's take a look at some of that. >> so today we find out in the hill, john solomon's article, is devastating. >> today's revelation by john solomon is a blockbuster. i went to john solomon, and john had been working on it before me. >> yes. >> and i said to john, i think you should take the lead, and we should put this all in the newspapers. howard: so as you said, john, giuliani told "the new york times" he turned over stuff to you. you said most of your ukraine reporting was already done by that point. but is there an appearance that you're doing what the president's personal lawyer wants in. >> i did what i thought the american people wanted, give some visibility to what was going on in ukraine. i did it because i thought it was an important narrative. if you look at my career, i've always reported against the grain. when people say we were sucker punched on 9/11, i reported, no,

the fbi failed to connect the dots. howard: right -- >> same thing. howard: so if the president and rush limb are ball, sean hannity are all promoting your work, are you concerned that it makes you look like you are an activist journalist for that side? >> i don't. listen, in 2001 the democrats were talking about all this stuff about george bush asleep at the wheel after 9/11. people see stories that fit their political narrative. i try to stay with the facts. howard: all right. the charge that the ousted ambassador, marie yovanovitch, gave him a do not prosecute list for certain ukrainians. the state department said that was a fabrication. >> and that was in my first story. howard: okay. he changed the story a little bit saying there was no actual list, telling "the new york times" it was a translation problem. i know you had a follow-up discussion with him, but

question: do you regret relying on the controversial source? >> i don't. let me tell you what happened. after he gave me the interview -- and he gave me the names too, very important. the names are all names that came out in the hearings as people the state department now admits, yes, we did pressure the ukrainians not to pressure those people. it's a he said/she said. i did some reporting. i held the story for a week. i talked to the state department, here's what the state department said. i don't know what went on between those two at the meeting, but it is true those names are people that we expressed concern about. so i gave his side, her side. and then i said to try to referee this, this is what the state department says. yes, there were five people, yes, we did lay on them to back off those people, and i put the whole story out. people don't look at that whole story. they look at the spin. go through that story. i gave all three sides of that story. howard: part of the spin is your reporting maybe indirectly led the trump administration to recall yovanovitch -- >> we know that president trump,

according to rudy giuliani and the white house officials, first asked for her to be removed in 2018. i wasn't a figment in her eye in 2018. howard: all right. lieutenant colonel alexander vindman testified, as you know, that key elements of one of your stories was false. he said, well, maybe except for the grammar. >> there are 28 facts in this story you can pull out and say these are facts. i linked every one of them, an evident piece. colonel vindman should deme which one -- me which one is wrong. fiona hill said i suggested that ukraine meddled in the election and the russians didn't. i always said the russians meddled in the election. i said it's possible ukrainians did too because their embassy told he they tried to -- me they tried to. over the course of the testimony, oh, no, ukraine budget trying to spoil it. overstate what i said and then confirm my facts afterwards. howard: you shared an advanced

draft of one of your hill stories, people working with you, with rudy can. one of them is the ukrainian-american businessman who's under indictment. does that suggest a kind of cozy relationship? >> let me tell you who they were. joe and victoria or -- howard: joe digenova, victoria toensing, frequent fox guests, and let me just can the question, they also happen to be your longtime lawyers. >> that's right. howard: should you have disclosed that? >> if i ever quoted them, i would have. i used them to do libel review on my stories. i'll look back and see, but if i did, i should have, but it fends when it was. i signed a retainer with them when i was doing a book arrangement, and they became my lawyers. howard: as far as sharing an advanced draft with any of these people, as you know, some think

that's -- >> but i didn't share an advanced draft. i submitted it for libel and translation review. lev was what i call a facilitator. we used him all the9 time at the ap. you rely on him to help set up interviews. he helped sometimes translate. here's the part about the e-mail in the state department portfolio, it's missing the top line of what i wrote. dear joe, vicki and lev, please fact check this, i want to make sure i'm accurate and fair. i sent it to my facilitator and my two lawyers. i didn't share it because i was trying to get politics, i was trying to make sure i was fair and accurate, which i've done my whole life. you wrote a book that pointed out i would always check my things with my sources -- howard: and i do know you give people to comment. on judge jeanine last night, you spoke about hunter biden's business partner who also had a lucrative gig. he said several times in other places he may be the nephew of

whitey bulger, the gangster. you treatedded this morning -- tweeted this morning that was not accurate. was that a mistake to say on the air? >> it was. i know that research was probably not right, and the second i knew it, i went out and tried to give the right answer to people. it was in the packet. it has been quoted in many articles, it turns out it's not right, and that's why i corrected it. that's what journalists should do. there's a lot of journalists who should go back to the russia stories because they weren't right in 2017. howard: devin nuñes said you have been smeared by the mainstream media. is that how you see it in. >> politic is the is a rough and tumble game. today we live in an era where there are two sets of facts, and people don't want to acknowledge the other side. i'm in the middle of a mousetrap, but i don't feel any different as a reporter now as when i covered 9/11, harry reid or any other place. when you're an investigative reporter, you're going to create controversy. i haven't changed the way i've reported, and i don't take

anything personally that comes out. howard: john solomon, thanks very much. >> thank you, howie. howard: mike bloomberg getting into the race today and and how msnbc handled that democratic debate, and the media's pitch forgotten about it. ♪ when we started our business we were paying an arm and a leg for postage. i remember setting up shipstation. one or two clicks and everything was up and running. i was printing out labels and saving money. shipstation saves us so much time. it makes it really easy and seamless. pick an order, print everything you need, slap the label onto the box, and it's ready to go. our costs for shipping were cut in half. just like that. shipstation. the #1 choice of online sellers. go to shipstation.com/tv and get 2 months free.

♪ ♪ howard: "the new york times" called it the debate that wasn't, that was the takeaway on the democratic faceoff in assistant hosted by msnbc and the washington post.

the questions were rather mild, beginning with rachel maddow asking elizabeth warren about her support for president trump's removal from office. >> will you try to convince your republican colleagues in the senate to vote the same way, and if so how? >> do you need to bring the president -- the country together to achieve your goals? >> joining us now, kathy eru, host of the liberal -- [inaudible] podcast. david, there were, in my view, very few questions that challenged the candidates on their records or their rhetoric. let's take a quick look at rachel maddow, the liberal host, being interviewed on her own network right after the debate. >> i felt, sitting here, like, you know, these ten candidates are getting a chance to put their best foot forward and make their best case. howard: should that be the goal of a news organization in the debate? >> of course not. the goal should be to challenge them and try to make it

interesting. the democrats who were debating have a huge charisma gap with donald trump. they're not interesting at all. they come across as either scolding or boring. i mean, bernie sanders has passed his sell by date, and elizabeth warren just knows how to wag her finger. it's not interesting. they're going to have a lot of trouble going toe to toe with trump because they can't keep up with his charisma. howard: kathy, i did think there were some interesting questions on the panel, but basically we learned -- and this was the lowest rated debate of the season -- that the candidates favor daycare, they favor voting rights, oppose climate change. was msnbc satisfied with what was basically kind of a policy forum where the candidates delivered lineses from their stump speeches? >> well were the viewers satisfied, democrats that are looking for the right candidate. yeah, it's for the viewers. msnbc asked the questions, they got out their opinions, their policies. elizabeth warren wasn't able to explain her medicare for all, which was interesting.

cory booker shined, he had a good few moments. biden had his moments. howard: i think you had better moments when you get major pitching that you can hit. pete buttigieg, people thought he'd be attacked, but he wasn't really challenged -- >> it's the fifth debate though. it's the fifth debate, yeah. howard: that's why the ratings were down. let me move on now because we had the breaking news this morning that mike bloomberg officially getting into the democratic presidential race, the former new york mayor. he launched a $30 million ad blitz, david. so have the media turned a little more skeptical of the 77-year-old billionaire since the initial excitement when we knew he was going to get in? >> well, i think so, and i think that's fair to do that. he hasn't given us anything all that interesting or exciting, and he has pledged to take no political contributions of any kind, and guess what? that rules him out of the debates. howard: right. >> that's one of the criteria. so he's trying to run above everybody else.

the last person i saw do this successfully was donald trump. there was one fox news debate he boycotted and held a veterans fund raiser across town. it was interesting, i went. i don't think anybody else could have pulled that off, certainly not bloomberg. howard: i knew bloomberg was running when he apologized for the stop and frisk policy as mayor of new york city, but how are the media treating bloomberg as he eases his way in? he's running, he's got the ad blitz, but he doesn't have to answer questions at least for now from pesky reporters. >> well, it's actually kind of genius. it's very, very dangerous. first time in american history, actually, that anyone has ever jumped so far late into a presidential race. so i knew about it, and i actually told fox news, gave an exclusive, a month ago it was definitely going to happen. my source is a close friend of bloomberg's, and bloomberg said definitely that he was going to run. so it was the first time in history that anyone's ever done this.

he's actually an exciting guy. so we don't know him yet, the press doesn't know him yet. that's why we're not all that excited -- howard: right. >> because we don't know him. >> nothing he does is going to be must-see tv. nothing he does. >> everything he does. howard: the new york press knows him. is second of all, there have been candidates who have gotten in during the primaries, but they didn't have millions of dollars to spend. still to come, the president still to come, the president diagnoses the press as my parents never taught me anything about managing money.

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♪ howard: president trump's unscheduled visit to walter reed last weekend prompted plenty of media chatter. >> they say relatively high risk of heart attack or other heart disease over the next 3-5 years. that's probably the top of the list of concerns. he's at risk. doesn't mean he's had a problem. howard: the president, who said he had some tests, offered his own diagnosis in explaining what happened when he returned from the hospital. >> we understand you had a heart attack. i was called by our people in public relations, sir, are you okay? i said, okay from what? the word is you had a heart attack. cnn said you may have had a

heart attack, you have massive chest pains, you went to the hospital. these people are sick. they're sick. howard: david, in fairness, cnn didn't say president trump had a heart attack, but there was someone who said maybe he's having small strokes. your take. >> a lot of it malpractice, frankly. we as the media pool, the press pool at the white house, saw trump leave the white house under his own power, saw him leave walter reed under his own power, and yet reporters are retweeting this kind of conspiracy nuts online. it's a huge problem, and i think a lot of us should really be ashamed of it. howard: kathy, did the media chatter go too far? >> no, there's nothing wrong with that. the media chattered about a president who choked on a pretzel for about a month. so if they can talk about a president choking at the white house, we could talk about a visit to walter reed. nothing's wrong with that. howard: nobody's saying we shouldn't talk about the fact, it's whether or not some of the speculation went too far.

>> right. howard: i want to turn now in our remaining moments to don lemon on cnn interviewing joe biden and asking him about the way he sometimes hesitates and misspeaks and even about overcoming a childhood stutter. >> this is what president trump said about you on fox news, and i quote here, all right? he said, well, i don't know if joe can make it mentally. [laughter] he is -- >> i think it's appropriate for people to look at all of us and decide are we in the physical shape, are we in the mental shape, are we based on your age, it's all appropriate. but all i can say is just watch me. howard: lemon, to his credit, asked whether biden had lost a step. was he right to press joe biden on these questions? >> well, of course. it's a fair question do. i personally don't think biden's eshoo is his health, i think it's the fact that he doesn't know how to be an emotional campaigner. fear, love, anger, greed and

sympathy. trump is really good at four of them, even if it means he's leveraging anger and greed against himself, joe biden doesn't know how. howard: kathy, should journalists ask more of these questions of people like joe biden? i guess he just turned 77. biden seemed so so sigh -- to say that this was fair game for public debate. >> absolutely. journalists, we are allowed to ask the tough questions. that is our job. we do it for the public. that is our job. they don't have to answer the questions, and that says a rot about them. -- a lot about them. we are allowed to ask these questions. how they respond is a different story. and because he doesn't name-call and say lock her up and things like that doesn't make him a worse candidate than trump, name-calling doesn't make you a great leader by any means. i don't agree with that. howard: all right. we have less than a minute. let me circle back on mike bloomberg getting into the race, david. do you think that he is going to undergo a lot of media scrutiny now? he's got a 12-year record as

mayor of new york city. >> i i think the scrutiny will last about two weeks until people realize he has little to offer that is interesting to people. there are democrats who could get in that would be interesting to watch. mitch landrieu, stacey abrams, he's not that guy. howard: mike bloomberg's going to spend a lot of money, but he also has to deal with reporters, kathy. >> reporters have tried to do an expose on him, found out he gave more money as mayor than any in the history of new york. the country's going to love him, and republicans, the gop, my sources love him as well. both sides love this guy. he's going to be a tough one. howard: we'll see about the whole country. david and kathy, thanks. and that is it for this edition of "mediabuzz." i'm houser kurtz. check out my -- howard kurtz. check out my podcast, subscribe at apple itunes, google play, foxnewspodcast.com or on our amazon device. hope you'll like our facebook page, we post a lot of my daily

columns there, and continue the conversation on twitter@howard kurtz. the clock is ticking, so i just have time to say we hope so to see you here next so we're in this little town near salerno and everyone has dad's eyebrows! we chose eleanor. it was great-grandma's name. so apparently, we come from a long line of haberdashers, which is a fancy word for... they left everyone, and everything so they could get here. and start this family. every family has a unique story. this holiday season, help your family discover theirs.

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♪ oh no. there's a wall there now. that's too bad. visit geico.com and see how easy saving on renters insurance can be. heather: good morning to you, it is monday november 25th, happening at 4:00 a.m. on the east coast. fox news alert for you, the pentagon calling for navy secretary's job review over eddy gallagher navy seal, top military official at odds with the white house, how he just responded. today opens new chapter in impeachment inquiry, key poor decision could land trump allies in the hot seat, we will tell you who, house democrats prepare