together, we'll weather this storm. ♪ ♪ ♪ howie: this is media buzz, i'm howard kurtz. ahead coverage of joe biden damaging comments to black radio host and matt lauer defending himself but first issues from churches, wearing the mask but what's resinating the disclosure that he's taking antimalaria drug as protection against covid-19 and that's sparking sharply different media reactions including on fox news. >> hydroxychloroquine. >> when? >> right now. yeah, a couple of weeks ago i

started taking it. i've heard a lot of good stories. and if it's not good, i will tell you right, i'm not going to get hurt by it. neil: if you're in a risky population here and you're taking as preventive treatment to ward off the virus or in a worst case scenario you're dealing with the virus and if you're in the vulnerable population, it will kill you, i cannot stress enough, this will kill you. >> i think people aren't getting it when perhaps, perhaps it could benefit them and it's very safe. >> i assure you the president of the united states is not taking hydroxychloroquine. he's not taking something that his own administration has said will kill you. >> he wins this argument, why? because he believes because he's taking a chance, because he's strong, east not the party of no, he's not the democrats, no, don't take hydroxychloroquine

just in case. you stay home, you can't go out. you can't work. howie: joining us to analyze the coverage mollie hemingway, senior editor at federalist. kirsten sol his -- soltis anderson and ray suárez. the conservative national review calling it a stupid side show, your thoughts? mollie: it's very weird how people are in donald trump's medical treatment, usually we have the idea that when it comes in ending unborn's life and i think there's misinformation in play too, whether or not this is a good idea for trump to be taking this hydroxychloroquine, this is very common treatment

not just as malaria. yeah, you need a doctor to prescribe it. it's used widely across the world. people are saying it's harder but that's not good for anybody, it's a public health threat if they can't do proper clinical trials on whether this is a good treatment or not from people who are suffering for coronavirus. howie: right, donald trump defying consistent limited and relying on anecdotal evidence from friends. >> hydroxychloroquine has never been rated as prophylactic drug

for virus and never been proven safe and effect in use of treating covid-19 or treating coronavirus infection. his own medical authority say that. is this a worthwhile thing for the press to cover, yes, because i'm old school, howie, if the president does it it's news. the president says it's news and if the president is touting a drug that hasn't been rated safe and effective for an illness he's taking it prophylactically that's news. howie: kirsten, what really struck me, people are saying he's lying. i don't believe it. he's making it up which struck me as odd. kristin: it definitely seems odd, i don't know how they would know what the president is

taking. like my product that's a pharmaceutical product there's side effects and any ad that you see on to have that talks about any medical product has to have side effects that may include yada, yada, yada. he's got folks out there ha look up to him and so my hope would be that he continues h communicate that there's potential side effects and this is not something that you should take because trump is take it. you should talk to your doctor before you want to proceed with course of medicine. howie: the president made news on friday walking into kayleigh mcenany's briefing. >> i'm correcting this injustice and calling houses of worship essential. i call upon governors to allow churches and places of worship to open right now. >> boy, interesting in a room that desperately wants to see

the churches and houses of worship stay closed. howie: the president calling for churches, synagogues, mosques and houses of worship to be open and the media take is everybody wants them open in theory but it could be dangerous packing people into the pews. mollie: this has not gotten as media attention as it should have in recent weeks you've seen a lot of people at state level taking action to be able to reopen churches or allow churches to reopen if they feel it's necessary. you have governors saying that you can open up wal-mart, cosco or tattoo parlors but they are prohibiting in minnesota. they told they weren't going to comply with the order because it was illegal. favoring religious groups compared to other groups is unconstitutional. it's the very first thing mentioned in the bill of rights and i don't think that we have gotten as much attention on this as it should have and i do think

that reflects to some extent less religiousty than apparent in the rest of the population. howie: i will come back to that in a second. the president also said in brief that he would override the governors if they don't do what he wants on the issue and the reaction by many journalists was does he have authority to do under federal law and brings up what happened a few weeks ago where he would tell the states what to do and then he said i will defer to governments but not on this issue it turns out. ray: well, he wants to put the overall health response into the center of the culture war, get culture war energy to what is essentially a public health problem. my church is closed. i'm longing to go back and see my people, but a lot of them are over 60 and it's an open question whether it makes sense to put us inside a sanctuary before we know that the rate of

infection in a population has gotten down to a level where we don't put people in danger when we put them in large groups. that's the question. whether making people assuring people that it's okay to be in groups of 100, 150, 200, singing, speaking and praying, makes a lot of sense when we are still in a widespread way giving each other this infection. howie: kirsten, what ray just said -- go ahead, mollie. mollie: you cannot disfavor religious groups relative to other groups. you're allowing other people to gather in groups of larger than 10 and if you're allowing other places to open like tattoo parlors but not allowing churches to make that decision for themselves, that's where it's a constitutional problem and being allow today reopen doesn't mean that churches aren't going to continue to recommend that they're at-risk populations stay at home or do other things like

so many churches across the country have done through this entire situation. >> mollie, goes to crowded tattoo parlors. howie: interesting side debate. kirsten, what ray said comments about the reaction of the room were unfair. he said i go to church, i'm dying to go the church and questioned whether it's safe. do you think there's any effort to paint the press of paint antireligion. kristin: well, certainly, i'm glad there was pushback, because i don't think it's fair that the press corp. is a certain way and saying any time you're generalizing in an entire group and topics are not covered by the media and folks based in dc, new york, they're not interacting with folks that may

live in america heartland and you've seen that pop up with coverage over the last couple of years or so but i don't think it's fair to suggest that nobody in the media wants churches to be reopened, churches should be treated the same way that we treat a wal-mart, same way that we treat anything that's essential, you have to be open and be safe, seems to be a good direction to go. howie: all right, little tight on time, quick answers, the president went to a ford plant in michigan the other day. there was a big debate of whether he would wear a mask. this is what he told reporters. >> i did wear, i had one before. i didn't want to give the press the pleasure of seeing it. howie: mollie, why did the president not want reporters see him wearing a mask and why are media obsessing over this issue? mollie: you saw the attorney general in that state make august political issue of whether the president was wearing a mask or not, it was a proxy of bigger debate about

whether it's time to reopen and the economy should continue to be shut down, there's a huge partisan divide on that issue and media tending to be on the left or on the side that wants to keep the shutdown going and that's why they are so obsessed with the mask. i don't understand their obsession with it. howie: the president saying he's a wacky, do-nothing attorney general. she went on cnn and said he's acting like a petulant child and does not follow the rules. ray: this goes back to the president saying that he's taking hydroxychloroquine. he understands very well that his behavior and his personal gestures are symbolic, wearing a mask or not wearing a mask, that sends a message, taking the drug or not taking the drug, that sends a message. howie: yeah, mask symbolic but a lot of health professionals are suggesting. let me get a break.

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howie: president trump unloaded on 60 minutes after cbs program rick bright who said he was transferring to a lesser job for political reasons. >> i'm not disgruntled, i'm frustrated at a lack of leadership. >> a lot of bad things coming out about him, but you people don't want to write the news and then we have this crazy whistleblower, this fake

whistleblower get out and try and, you know, knock it. howie: trump took to the twitter calling bright a creep, 60 minutes and third-place anchor o'donnell doing everything to demean the country and tonight they put another yet whistleblower, disgruntled employee and spews lies. the whole whistleblower has to be looked at. why would the president denounce 60 minutes for interviewing the guy? mollie: first of all, president is wrong and the reason we know is because he was covered in the media. whether they have applied the scrutiny that they should to anybody who is making any

allegation and you can see where that causes damage. you saw where the previous whistleblower that lead to impeachment, there's a lot of reason to have problem with it. there's an attempt to do this again and it would be good for the media to apply more scrutiny to this and all allegations made against anyone. howie: i'm all for scrutiny, but when the president saying whistle blowing can a racket that needs to be looked at and has been supported by republicans like chuck grassley ray: if you don't want scrutiny and if you don't want ever anybody saying anything bad about you, i guess that's the line to take, but the united states is one of the leaders in the world in the rate of infection and in the rate of

death from this disease and if the source takes you inside the deliberations to have administration, it's a source and it's a story. howie: kirsten, when the president said the other day that having the most for the u.s. to have most coronavirus cases in the world about a million and a half right now was a badge of honor, a lot of criticism. do you think the media misinterpreted what he was trying to say? kristin: i hope that there was a misinterpretation of what he was trying to say and i can't fathom that having the most cases of coronavirus is in any way, shape or form a good thing. you mentioned later in the show you will be talking about the front page in "the new york times". today they list a thousand names of those who have died from the coronavirus which is just 1% of those who have died in the united states, not one of those needed to happen. this was something that it never should have made to shores and nothing about this is positive and nothing unlifting and not a badge of honor having many americans to pass away.

mollie: i have to take issue with that. it was pretty clear to understand what he was saying. when you have more testing and far and away more testing than any country in the world you will have more cases and high percentage of the cases are completely asymptomatic and that's one of the things that the media need to do a better job of doing. certain amount of lift with getting coronavirus and you don't want to have a media that makes it sounds like it's 5, 10, 100 times riskier than it is. accurate understanding of who gets it, who is at risk or who is not at risk or lower amount of risk and that's something that we are not go -- getting ia media environment. further, i just want to say the u.s. is not at the top when it comes to death per capita, many countries that are ahead of the united states when it comes to death per capita. howie: all right. ray, there were problems with testing for months, the governor complained about it but in recent weeks a testing to point there's not enough people to take the test, shouldn't the

media give some credit to the white house on this whether this should happen or not there's not a lot of press available. ray: there have been a lot of testing. the problem and widely reported that it started too late at scale, we are doing a lot of tests right now. and the raw number, we are the third largest population among all the nations in the world so it's not the raw number that you should be paying million per population we should be paying attention to. howie: i agree with that, ray suárez, mollie hemingway. many pundits saying comments about protrump black ain't black at all.

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howie: president trump drew plenty of media backlash for threatening to cut off funding to nevada. >> we don't want them to go mail-in ballot because it's going to lead to total election fraud. we don't want them to do mail-in ballots, we don't want anybody to do mail-in ballots. howie: michigan said that these were routine applications and nevada secretary of state defending the process. we are back with kristen soltis anderson, you do this for a living, the press says there's no evidence of significant fraud in voting by mail and it may not be true that voting by mail helps democrats over republicans, your thoughts? >> kristin: does it help democrats or republicans more, there's evidence that it doesn't

help one party or the other more. you had instances where in the pickup election for republicans really picked up the seat in california and awful lot of ballots cast by mail were cast by republicans than democrats. there's plenty of study there's mail balloting helping republicans or democrats, there's no bias whatsoever. the most high-profile example was in north carolina, republican strategist who was trying to go around do ballot harvesting and collecting ballots and handing them improperly, it happens infrequent and not just democrats, most prominent case was republican doing it. i think republicans should not push back on this in the way that they are. howie: i'm not saying it never happens. president tweeting about this in the last hour, a lot of absentee voting and

rigged election in history. fox news should fire fake pollster, giving 8-point lead and according to quinnipiac poll, 11-point lead. the president touting cnn poll. howie: kristin: some are looking at likely voters and assumption on who they are focusing on and any type of poll that you're i think to, statistical exercise and the danger in the president saying the cnbc poll is that the next cnbc will be the worst poll, you can't pick and choose. howie: all right, well, you know politicians like to pick and choose when it comes to numbers.

thanks very much. cuomo brothers media criticism for segment of covid-19 in new york. first bill barr getting credit from the media as he rules out prosecution of barack obama and joe biden.

♪ ♪ ♪ howie: president trump talking about what he calls the obamagate scandal, attorney general general bill barr stunned about announcement of criminal probe being done by john durham. >> as to president obama and vice president biden, whatever their level of involvement is based on the information i have today, i don't expect mr. durham's work will lead to a criminal investigation of either man. our concern over potential criminality is focused on others. >> it's the classic lawyerly

legalistic sneaky way of pretending you're doing something by the book because mr. barr is saying you're not going there but also with no evidence, no reason, no rational >> thanks to people in this network and willing to ask for the truth. howie: joining us to analyze emily compango, crimes that changed america. clarence page. he's accusing barack obama of a crime and joe biden in unmasking mike flynn and here is bill barr, i don't see any criminal prosecution. was this a problem for the mainstream media because their narrative that barr is a trump

-- emily: you'll find he's decrying the use of intelligence community and also the fbi and doj as weapons as he said. so i think the irony is that the media portraying him and what he's uncovering corruption and i think the most important thing actually his comments after when he said our concern over criminality is focused on and i think the types of witch hunt without investigation that uncovers evidence that supports it does no favors. final point -- >> howie: i have to get clarence in. for all the media criticism in roger stone case, flynn case,

why don't i see that attorney general stood up to his boss when it comes to his boss? >> clarence: we don't know what the evidence is. he's very smart. he has constitutional view that makes him donald trump's cohen especially with the russia investigation. this aspect of russia investigation, barr, if barr hasn't seen any evidence to link obama and biden to corruption then i would say there's not much evidence and we've already seen that there's not that much evidence behind on obamagate and what others did wrong. howie: that has to play out. i want to turn to joe biden,

take a look. >> if you have a problem figuring out whether you're for me or trump, than you ain't black. howie: emily's comment which he says was a joke is extremely controversial in the black community. do you think the press is giving biden a pass when it comes to judging him what we can only describe is a serious gaffe? emily: yes i do, i think it's more than a gaffe. the media is giving him a pass and displace the notion that the democratic party has taken for granted communities of color, taking for granted people's votes just because they sit into a certain box that their party puts them into. i think as well the evidence is the fact that after the comments when he talked about the ncaap endorsement profoundly reject bid the existing president and ceo and the media has also sort

of refuse today cover that as well. howie: clarence, did you happen to find comments offensive? biden, walking it back, i shouldn't have been so cavalier or wise guy, do you think the media was easy on him? >> clarence: i've been covering joe biden since the 80's, quite seriously this time i think that this could damage him particularly with younger black voters. older black voters like me, we have pretty much made up our minds who we are voting for and we have a choice between trump and biden it looks like. whereas younger voters, getting them out to vote will be tough here. that's why -- biden was on show in the first place and he goes and commits this gaffe which

looks like he's taking black voters for granted as emily said, this is the kind of thing that he does not need right now, so i would be concerned in his campaign about getting young voters excited. howie: right, he makes relatively little news and this is not helpful to him or campaign. all right, half a minute for each of you. the president on a tweet storm last night retweeted a guy who did the filing, posted mockery of hillary clinton calling her a skank, accused nancy pelosi wearing dentures and mocked stacy abrams weight, has this become coverage or we are getting used to insults? >> everything deserves coverage coming out of the presidential office. the real losers are all of us. it comes on the heels of pelosi's comments, i don't have any idea what the president does. this is a constant back and forth, we are paying the salaries of these elected officials and i hope that at some point they can rise above this type of language and the

types of, you know, slanders thrown back and forth. howie: clarence. >> clarence, obese would have been good enough. this remind me of the good-old days when you had presidents that didn't call people names on twitter or any place else. the president was going lash back when he feels not only frustrated about the campaign but also frustrated about inability to hold rallies, so he has one-man rallies on twitter late at night. it does not serve him well. howie: in fairness the president gets called a lot of names as well. emily compagno and clarence. reporting on sexual assault and harassment. is that true

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howie: matt laur launched counter attack on collin farrell, former nbc staffer told farrell that they had drunken sexual encounter.

lauer on media, a few for willing to challenge the accusations against me. journalism and activism. farrell addressed in book last year. >> i think this young woman, the journalists brook nevels presents what i found to be a response to that. >> if he or allies would say that you didn't fact-check the claims. >> extensively fact-checked as everything in the book. howie: takedown piece by new york times columnist ben smith which says reveals the weakness of resistance journalism but thrive in the analysis of donald trump when it comes to damaging reporting about public figures most dislike bid the loudest voice it is rules of fairness can seem more like impediment than journalistic imperatives. joining us from new york kat timpf and when ben smith says

uses double standard when going after unpolitically targets let's say donald trump, does he have a point? kat: interesting, right, because he certainly does have a point, but it's also true that no matter what, if you're a journalist you're also a human being which you're coming to be coming to any story with preconceived notion, your own bias and that's always, always going to be the case. it seems that with ronan farrow, some things he missed in fact-checking, ben smith is a human too and reporting on ronan farrow. well, i think it's bigger than ronan farrow and good reminder to readers that these aren't robots that are writing the stories, these are humans just like us and they have their own bias and we do too as readers as

well. howie: right, it's an important debate. putting aside the other allegations against lauer, he said he betrayed the trust of many people, he said he talked to four people at nbc and gave names and phone numbers which verified this which were never contacted by farrow and say what is his book says of conversations with brook nevels never happened which she described con sensual affair. she went crying about supposed assault and the control guy said it didn't happen. did lauer make a case in allegation. kat: i read matt lauer's piece was, wow, how can he possibly think that we wanted one word from this guy, let alone 5,000 words, he's more of a narcissist

than i thought. that would have been something pretty easy to do, ronan farrow said -- i couldn't find that he said anywhere, how or what details, i did not see those and it's a case that's better made by ben smith than matt lauer. howie: in his book, there are no quotes even unnamed where he describes conversations. here is farrow's response, brief on twit internal revenue, matt lauer is wrong, catch and kill is fact-checked. i reached out to matt lauer yesterday told me he was stunned that ronan farrow has not done a single interview or respond today a single specific point that lauer raised. i think that's interesting. kat: it is interesting because when you look at ronan's

reporting you can't deny that what he's done if you go back to weinstein and that story, these are positive outcomes that came from the reporting but i think that also makes it more difficult because you're not going to see people out there saying you know what, he wasn't fair to harvey weinstein because i don't think people really care. weinstein not a good guy. and matt lauer as well. he's admitted that he's done a lot of things that are wrong and also sort of feel bad for him because mistakes and he's sitting on a decent pile of money, these aren't really good victims. i think that could make it easier to, you know, i don't know if i want to say get away with because i'm not sure that that's what ronan farrow was trying to do w. the human minds things can happen subconsciously all of the time. howie: so lauer entitled to defend himself in my view. we shouldn't put him in harvey weinstein category. one of the things that lauer

said, he clashed with nbc. lauer said how can ronan farrow be objective of anything that happened at nbc? kat: i would say he

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the coronavirus can ruin people's lives, it suffered a stroke and was not found for days because he was not missing from work, the fitness center had been shut down. local d.c. stations in the tennis channel have done stories on the community rally behind them. >> for decades, they held countless tennis players throughout the area. >> he is one of those guys you dream about having in your community, everybody knows him and loves him when he's teaching you can hear his contagious laugh from five courts away. >> this is very personal for me, steve parker has been my tennis coach, he has taught me too love the game, he taught my kids starting from scratch, i watched him connect with kids of all ages, everyone who has

encountered steve, everybody without exception considers him a friend, i watched him play the game with such joy and such enthusiasm, it is absolutely infectious. he is an incredible human being, warm, gracious, funny, work 12 hour days, rarely took a day off. i was stunned to learn he has no health insurance paid he is out of the hospital but has a long ways to go in rehab because he could barely talk and has trouble moving in his right side. hard to me to fathom because he's always been in great shape. a lot of people have contributed to a gofundme page for steve parker, all hope you read more of his story there. that is it for this edition of "mediabuzz", i hope you're enjoying this memorial day weekend getting out enjoying sunshine, social distancing, let's continue the conversation on twitter and we hope you will check out my podcast "mediabuzz" reader, you can subscribe at many places including apple itunes, google podcast or spotify, also if you want to read my daily columns, there on

the facebook page, we will try to break ground there and we do that before we get on the air on sunday. we will be back there at 11 eastern next sunday, we will see you then with the latest buzz ♪ ♪ >> it is sunday, memorial day weekend, we honor those who have given the ultimate sacrifice for our country, we are mindful of the coronavirus siege that our nation still faces. predictions say the virus will spike in some areas of the south and midwest of the coming weeks but that thread is not stopping big crowds from coming out "coast to coast", and testing our ability to social distance and take the proper precaution to protect ourselves. this is americans kick off the unofficial start of summer amid a pandemic.