howard: this is media buzz. i'm howard kurtz. ahead we'll talk to jason miller, a top trump strategist. as coverage of the coronavirus intensifies, the u.s. had a record shattering 77,000 new cases thursday, mor more than 70 on friday. the media are tightly focused on a war of words between the trump administration and anthony fauci with the white house sending reporters a list of what it calls the past mistakes. >> dr. anthony fauci, the white house is smearing him, putting

out talking points against him as though he were a political opponent. >> the white house campaign to undermine dr. fauci is dishonest, disgusting, deranged and at a time of a deadly pandemic it is the ultimate in irresponsibility. >> i don't know the political benefit of going after one of your top medical experts in the middle of a pandemic. i don't see the upside. >> there has been a sunlight slight uptick in -- slight uptick in covid deaths this month but the death toll is nowhere near where it was in april. that's good news in a difficult situation. they don't want you living in fear. what they want you to be is demoralized, dumbed down and dependent on the government. howard: things really escalated when white house trade advisor peter navarro trashed fauci saying he has been wrong about everything i have interact with him on. >> well, he made a statement

representing himself. he shouldn't be doing that. no. i have a very good relationship with anthony. >> it is a bit bizarre. i don't really fully understand it. and i think if you talk to reasonable people in the white house, they realize that was a major mistake on their part because it doesn't do anything but reflect poorly on them. howard: joining us now to analyze the coverage, guy benson, host of fox's guy benson radio show on sirius xm. susan ferrechio, chief congressional correspondent and ray suarez, host of kqed's world affairs. guy, the sniping between trump and fauci who spoke for the first time in a couple months and peter navarro seems like a major distraction from the battle against covid-19. are the media over-playing it? guy: in this case, no. i think in the past the media have had a narrative of trump versus fauci and they fueled wit the thinnest -- with the

thinnest rule. you have major white house officials, peter no navarro, trashing fauci in a public op ed, i don't see how this is helpful to anyone involved. if you look at the polling, donalpresident trump is trailine biden on the issue of handling coronavirus, he's underwater by double digits on that question and to basically present to the american people and project internal anger and recriminations and sniping back and forth, that's not going to restore faith in the issue, where we see whether or not the president has a chance of re-election. howard: usa today by the way now says that the navarro op ed wasn't adequately fact checked and didn't meet its standards. susan, why the white house campaign against this 79-year-old doctor who is being more aggressive in pushing back, he's been barred from both tv interviews but on facebook, pod casts, print interviews, are the

media open ofl openly routing fy fauci. >> yes, they are actively routing for dr. fauci. we are at a tipping point with the coronavirus situation, with the lockdowns continuing, people are frustrated. there's questions about whether schools will open at all in the fall. the president's up for election in november. we pitted against fauci on whether we stay in lockdown mode or we start to use a more liberal approach to reopening in some areas and the two are pitted against each other and they have been all along. all along. but the stakes have never been higher than they are right now and that's why i think you see the two loggerheads at this moment. howard: right. there is an election. ray, when the add menstruation tells -- administration tells hospitals to stop sending their information to the cdc, sending it to the federal health department instead, although we talked to a fox medical

contributor who said it's more efficient that way and when information abruptly disappears from the cdc website the press says president trump is trying to control more information for political reasons. is that a fair accusation? >> ray: well, it's a reasonable question to ask, given the president has doubted the dire nature of the pandemic from the beginning. has said things about the numbers, about the extent of the spread of disease that turned out not to be true, often undercutting dr. fauci during the course of a briefing where fauci would say one thing and the president would deny it during the course of the same briefing. so, yeah, i mean, if i was covering this story for one of the major american dailies, i'd be worried about whether i was getting the real scoop. i'd be worried about whether the numbers were being fixed. there was no problem with the cdc's recording of numbers up until now, so why do this this many months into the pandemic?

howard: the president called fauci a bit of an alarmist in an interview with fox's chris wallace. wallace asked him about the u.s. having the seventh highest mortality rate in the world and then there's a part in between where kayleigh mcenany comes and provides more information to the president. take a look. >> when you talk about mortality rates, i think it's the on of sit. i think we have one of the lowest mortality rates. >> that's not true, sir. >> we're going to take a look. >> we have 900 deaths in a single day. >> do you have the numbers, please. number one low mortality rate. i hope you show this. it shows what fake news is all about. >> i don't think i'm fake news. howard: guy, chris wallace explained that he was relying on johns hopkins university figures. what do you make of that exchange? >> i think you can see this question two different ways. a lot of people in the media and i think a lot of people in the country listening to the media would believe we have the worst

mortality rate in the world which is not true. setting aside the fact that china's obviously lying about their numbers. our mortality rate has been better than a lot of other of countries that have been hit hard by this disease. the raw number of deaths has been higher. so i think president trump was probably talking about one of those things. chris wallace was talking about another one of those things. and so they were maybe perhaps talking past each other which seems to happen a lot lot when discussing coronavirus. and again, i think trump has a good point to make in terms of mortality rates compared to some of the other of countries, especially in europe. a lot of americans i think looking forward over the next three and-a-half, four months are wondering, okay, that's fine for now. whatwhat are we doing to get outbreaks under control. i don't know if a lot of people have full confidence in that process right now. howard: all right. susan, lengthy piece in the new york times today saying the president is responsible for the latest virus surge because between april and june he shifted responsibility to the

states, quoting the piece, an attempt to escape blame for the crisis, perhaps one of the greatest failures of presidential leadership, that's a news story. what's your take? >> the new york times has done great reporting on flaws within the cdc at the beginning of this pandemic and now they're following up with a blame story that president trump is responsible for this latest wave. i think there should be more scrutiny, frankly, of what the latest wave actually is. obviously, we have a huge surge in cases because we reopened parts of america, people are getting back out. but the number of deaths is not increasing the way it did early on in the pandemic and the hospitalizations are even starting to stabilize in some of the hot spots. so i think the reporting was overly harsh and was blamed the president too much for really just an administration working with career professionals at the cdc to deal with really an unprecedented pandemic. lockdown and then how do we

reopen. they're just trying to figure out how to do it. howard: well, what i thought the piece really played down the tremendous political pressure on governors and mayors to get the economy back open. chris wallace, donald trump is talking about democrats and defunding the police. take a look. >> it's really because they want to defund the police. and biden wants to defund the police. >> sir, he does not. >> look, he signed a charter with bernie sanders. >> nothing about defunding the police. >> oh, really? it says abol abolish. let's go. give me the charter, please. >> all right. howard: ray, biden has said repeat edly he doesn't favor defunding the police. chris wallace pushed back on that. your thoughts? ray: it was an effective moment in the interview. often when people are interviewing the president they let him stay stuff like that and don't push back. and that creates the impression, which is the president's desire,

obviously, that joe biden does favor defunding the police. so it was a good moment in an interview that's pretty interesting and i hope all your viewers watch it. howard.>> howey -- howard: let me continue here. i want to say that chris wallace also asked about some of the negative tweets aimed at him and said look, i put democrat as well as republicans on and the president did acknowledge that point. quick once around on the president replacing his campaign manager, brad parscale, putting in long time republican operative bill sepien, the press says the president realizes he's in trouble, he says to chris wallace i'm going to win because these are fake polls. quick thought. >> i would say actions speak louder than words or polls. if the campaign were going well for the president, i don't think they would have had a big shakeup at the top. there's a recognition that something needs to change and now something has. howard: susan, pundits say that

parscale was damaged by the tulsa rally, disappointment, and maybe his high profile. sepien who worked for chris christie when he was governor of new jersey stays off the media radar. maybe that was appealing to the president. >> the president said this morning in the interview saying it was about parscale being better at the digital end of things. the president is right i think to make changes at this point. i think he is afraid he's not going to win. if you look at the polls, it's not just the national polling, it's the battleground states which were pivotal to his victory last time. he's losing in just about all of them right now and clearly something needs to change because if these numbers stay the same, he's not go to win, no way. howard: right. comeback for sepien, he's a peripheral figure in the bridgegate scandal in new jersey. in 2016, president trump had a bunch of campaign managers, paul

manafort, kellyanne con way. a lot of people are saying it doesn't matter all that much who the campaign manager is. ray: political writers love to talk about inside campaign intrigue, especially now when there's not much campaigning going on. neither major party nominee can really get out there and campaign and sketch out their platform. so it's similar of to criminologists watching the mayday parade in moscow and seeing who was standing where. campaigns hire and fire people, they promote and demote of people. howard: particularly in this campaign, donald trump ultimately is his own campaign manager. let me get a break. when we come back, the new york times in turmoil as the top editor resigns, blasts the liberal colleagues for bullying her. people used to care. heck, they'd come

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howard: bari weiss, an opinion editor at the new york times, stunned the media word with a scathing resignation letter, acautioninaccusing the paper of mccarthyism. she said she was constantly bullied by her colleagues. i learned to brush off comments about how i'm writin writing abe jews again. i other employees -- other employees smear me on twitter. weiss described herself as a moderate, has long complained about social media mobs. >> saying i'm offended is a way of making someone radioactive, a way of smearing their reputation. howard: guy benson, this isn't

some outside critic, this was a top editor at the newspaper, who said her colleagues made her life miserable and salsberger did nothing to stop the atmosphere. ray: it was a devastating resignation letter, sounds like she has the receipts, so-to-speak, in terms of slack conversations inside the times newsroom and there was more than a slight hint there might be legal action coming the times' way, based on the way she was treated. she talked about a hostile work environment. i think more broadly speaking, this goes to an institution, the new york times, in crisis. howie, for years the new york times was a very liberal newspaper and it is now becoming an ill-liberal newspaper where you have a left wing mob in the newsroom dictating what ideas make them feel safe or unsafe and, therefore, can or cannot be discussed or published on the even opinion pages of of the times. bari weiss eventually decided this is not worth it anymore for me and she went out in a blaze

of glory and told a lot of important truths. howard: ray, let me get you in on this. bari weiss made mistakes. she is making serious charges, saying there's a point of intoll jens where pushing op-eds of a different viewpoint can hurt an editor's career. ray: she says in effect that the people who run the place have given over their oversight to twitter as a way of describing how a mob mentality makes decisions for the paper. even if just a portion of what she says in her letter is true, they better have some really serious soul-searching going on there at the times. if you have people trashing each other by name in a forum where management is a participant in that forum and sees the posts, something is definitely not in good control in the editorial section there and, look, the new york times is an important

journalistic institution and it needs to be healthy. it's a good thing if it's healthy and well-run, a good thing for everybody. and i hope they get control of their problems if those problems exist in the way that bari weiss describes them. howard: yeah. well, acting editorial page editor says the times will continue to public voices and viewpoints across the political spectrum. susan ferrechio, the point about twitter being the ultimate editor of the new york times, makmaybe could you say that aboa lot of media organizations that live in fear of backlash from something controversial. susan: i think twitter changed the media landscape because it's changed how we look -- review reporters, we see what they think all day on twitter without their tweets being edited beforehand so we have a better idea where they're coming from and it's also i think pushed these mainstream newsrooms further to the left, not just the new york times but the

washington post as well. some of their editors posted controversial far left things that kind of give you the impression that these newspapers are only publishing for certain group of americans and not others. i mean, weiss was brought into the new york times after the trump election for a reason. to help represent people who don't think along the same lines as some of the people in the new york times newsroom and now she's been pushed out. basically, they're rejecting the idea that they can be a newspaper for everybody. they're saying we're only a newspaper for a certain group. that's terrible. we have fewer and fewer newspapers here. howard: i have half a minute here. susan: we're left with the newspapers that represent everybody else. howard: no mention of this at all on cnn or msnbc. imagine if it were a conservative publication. i want to get to this quote, where she says why go through the agony of trying to get a piece in when it's so heavily edited.

we can assure ourselves of job security and clicks by publishing our 4,000th op-ed arguing that donald trump is a unique danger to the country and the world. >> it's a great line. it's obviously true. we remember what happened with senator tom cotton's op-ed a few weeks ago. someone was reassigned because he wrote a mainstream op-ed in the newspaper. what susan says, bari weiss is not a pro trump partisan. she was anti-trump, owe posed him, did -- opposed him, did not vote for him. because she wasn't fan a fanatiy anti-trump, it was so hostile, she's out. howard: ray, i think even liberals should be concerned if the culture at the times has gotten to the point of intolerance of other views. ray: bari weiss says even in the newsroom you can't speak your mind. that's a bad newsroom atmosphere. i guess i'd have to disagree

with guy benson about whether the suggestion to put american troops on the streets of american cities is a mainstream suggestion. >> 58% of the country supported it, so -- howard: it was a suggestion from the united states republican senator. by the way, new york magazine has forced out columnist andrew sullivan who has quite a following. he says that even though he's anti-trump, his views make people at the magazine feel like he's harming them just with his virtual presence, not even going in the answer. he's going to go back to blogging. thanks very much. ray suarez, susan ferrechio, guy benson. just ahead, top straited gist, jason -- strategist jason miller. still ahead, the left wing boycott because the boss likes trump.

howard: the media are taking on president trump for an instagram

photo, let's put that up, that shows him posing with beans and other products from goya foods and he tweeted the radical left smear machine backfired. this began when the ceo appeared at the white house for an hispanic initiative and said we are blessed to have trump as a leader, sparking backlash. >> you tell me how a president in the middle of a pandemic has got time for this bull [bleep]. are you kidding me. hawking products. goya, i don't care who it is. howard: had to [bleep] that one. joining us now, griff jenkins, a fox news correspondent in washington. why does the press seem more concerned with president trump posing with goya kidney beans. >> i don't know. let me just say, as a reporter this week when the story popped

up and i had to report on it, i was shocked that a can of beans was the next political battle front between president trump and his critics. just for context, bobby nonway was at the white house for a hispanic prosperity initiative which the ceo of the largest hispanic food group in the nation appeared. he also defended the fact that he appeared under president obama as well when asked to do so. but what's very fascinating is that very quickly, first it was ivanka trump, senior advisor and daughter of president trump who posted with a can of beans and of course already you have seen the possible ethics violations that she brought and of course president trump doubling down on the criticism of ivanka by having that photo op and it's clearly irritated many like chris cuomo, you heard from right there. howard: yeah. there was an ethics complaint

that ivanka may have violated a rule against federal officials promoting products. she's not trying to sell beans and corn, she was trying to take a stand on behalf of the company. some democrats are supporting the boycott. to me, the main story is what about -- why doesn't the press focus on the fact there there's a boycott against a company simply because of the political views of the chief executive. >> a significant one. are they reporting on what has been the backlash of the boycott, a group of trump supporters seizing on this clash if you will by doing a buy-cot, trying to get people to go out. trump supporters were posting pictures of them buying beans and whatnot. it's an interesting thing. the ethics complaint you mentioned, very significant. the law says you can't use your position as an alleged ivanka did to endorse a product. clearly, this wasn't just a random endorsement. this was a political reaction. in a statement that she was

trying to make, because of the attack on bobby nunway. howard: maybe the real story is too boring for the media, that president trump is trying to win hispanic votes by siding with a businessman who is under attack for supporting him. i don't think it may not be all that complicated. coming up, should the press be chastising the president for slamming joe biden from the rose garden? jason miller is next

howard: president trump summoned reporters for the news garden, held forth for 63 minutes, devoting much of the speech to the presumptive democratic nominee. >> joe biden is pushing a platform that would demolish the u.s. economy, totally demolish it. let him define the word carbon, he won't be able to. >> it wasn't a briefing.

it was a campaign rally speech, minus the cheering crowd, of course. there's really nothing to cheer about right now. >> the venue is the rose garden, by the way, owned by all of the taxpayers. goes out there and delivers a campaign speech, using journalists effectively at props. howard: joining us now, jason miller, a 2016 advisor, just joined the trump campaign as senior strategist. this is your second tv interview since joining the campaign. let movies start with a two part question. the president did make news at the briefing about china but then delivered an hour long partisan campaign speech. how do you back up the president's charge that joe biden and his bosses from the radical left will totally destroy the beautiful suburbs? >> absolutely. well, as we've seen, joe biden has taken this very bizarre lurch left in the general election. i've never seen this before, someone wins the democratic primary and try to make themselves out to be the

furtherrest left candidate. if we didn't know better, we would think bernie sanders won the primary. to the point -- howard: do you want to run against bernie sanders? >> joe biden, he signed onto bernie sanders' 110 page communist manifesto that will destroy america, 4 trillion in new taxes, a green new deal. howard: how would it destroy the suburbs? >> because what they want to do -- joe biden -- look, in all fairness, i'm not sure if it's joe biden or the crazy left wind handlers, he has signed on to cory booker's plan to get rid of single family zoning in the suburbs, they want to have little downtowns. well, guess what? a lot of folks moved to the suburbs because they want to have space, they don't want to be downtown. but the democrats want to go and remake america. they want to go and have cities encroche our ---encroach our, steal the tax basis. this would be disastrous. no american living in the

suburbs wants to be downtown, otherwise that, would live downtown. howard: president trump told chris wallace in the interview that aired this morning on fox news sunday that biden wants to defund the police. we played this earlier. he said it's in the agreement with bernie sanders who you like to reference. chris wallace pushed back and said correctly there's no mention of defunding the police in this agreement. so did the president misspeak? >> no, the president was spot-on. joe biden and the radical left absolutely want to defund the police. joe biden when he was asked the question, do you want to redirect money, that's liberal code for defunding the police. look at liberal reporters, who said that's code from the left for defunding the police, joe biden said yes, absolutely. if you take a look at the crazy bernie sanders platform he signed onto, they want to quote, unquote, reimagine policing. howie, what does that mean, reimagine policing? i'll tell you -- howard: let me stop you there. i want to jump in. after that exchange, the

president tweeted about this and he said that biden may use different words, but that's what he wants to do. now, jason, you've been in politics a long time. if that's the standard, i could say president trump wants to deport all the dreamers. you would say no, he never said that. well, i think that's what he wants to do. seems to me you want to run against some of the more extreme elements in the democratic part. biden hasn't actually said these things. >> howie, this isn't let's make a deal. what if we literally took your salary and gave it to chris wallace. would you say that you'd be defunded or would you simply say your salary has been redirected. that would be defunding. that would be defunding media buzz which would be a total shame because it's a great show. that is exactly what joe biden and the radical left want to do here. they want to take money away from policing, you look at ilhan omar, aoc, aoc by the way is one of bernie sanders' -- that's who we're essentially talking about is the general election mom knee, but one of joe biden's top

advisors, they want to absolutely defund police, redirect money away. they want to get rid of civil asset forfeiture which would be a big deal, make sure that local police departments don't get surplus military equipment. they want to make sure that they get rid of qualified immunity which would absolutely gut local police. howie, you won't be safe in joe biden's america. howard: all right. i've seen that on your commercials. i'm not throwing anybody lifelines, i'm talking about what the candidate said. brad parscale who as you know recently stepped down as campaign manager, replaced by bill stepien, he said in a statement that the media is a criminal network that has very you few honest people. do you agree with that? criminal? you were a contributor at cnn for a while. are most of us criminals? are we breaking the law? how do you defend that? >> i don't, howie. that's not my opinion. that's not how i perceive the media. look, i like to give it back as much as i take it. and have some good, strong

pushback. i think when we talk about some of the polls that are out there, i think there is a concerted effort to intentionally try to suppress president trump's vote. that's not how i refer to the media. i think most folks in the media are trying to do a good job. there are certain folks who are trying to suppress the president's vote, absolutely. howard: suppress the president's vote. all right. let me play for you a recent sit-down between the president and katherine hairrage. this is what a lot of people have been asking. >> why are african-americans still dying at the hands of law enforcement in this country? >> so are white people. so are white people. what a terrible question to ask. so are white people. more white people, by the way. more white people. howard: so in percentage terms a government study shows nearly three times as many black people as white people are killed by law enforcement. certainly white people are killed as well. why did the president say it's a

terrible question. it's a question a lot of people are asking. >> the president was there to talk about other policy matters. it was presented in a way to put him into a box there. what we should have had in the interview was a more in-depth conversation about president trump's recent actions on police reform. howard: he could have brought it up. >> he was hoping to have a deeper conversation into. it got into where president trump -- they were trying to juxtapose president trump against the bad actions of others. i don't think it was fair. the president was right to push back on it. it is worth pointing out what president trump has done with police preform. why hasn't joe biden done any of this in 47 years? howard: all right. here's another question, which is if you look at the polls out today, fox news poll has the president trailing by 8 points, that's an improvement for the president. washington post says 15 points, there's a wide range there. the president said in the wallace interview these are fake polls. my question to you, particularly

in light of the campaign shakeup is, is your guy now the underdog. >> no, we run every day like we're the underdog. we work hard and fight like we're trailing. it's how we did it in 2016 and how we'll do it in 2020. i think we're going to win. i want to break down the polls. one important question for you, howie, do you think that from 2016 until now that 27% of all republicans just vanished into thin air? do you think that's the case? howard: go ahead and make your case. >> because that's exactly what the washington post abc poll is saying. the exits both in 2016 and in 2012018, including cnn's existsd republicans at 38%. there's a 27% decrease. no, 27% of republicans haven't magically disappeared. that's what some folks in the media, not all, but some, want to do to intentionally drive down and suppress president trump's vote. it's ridiculous. our numbers show it's either

tied or leading in every place that we need to get to 270, confident about where we are, howie. howard: jason miller, good to see you. hope you come back. nice to have you join us. >> thank you. howard: after the break we go to the other side with a democratic strategist and later the washington post discloses a huge sexual harassment scandal at the redskins. apples as the first ingredient. and key nutrients you want. so you can have a daily multivitamin free of stuff you don't want. one a day natural fruit bites. a new way to multivitamin. whether it's bribes ...or an overdue makeover. get all your pet essentials right when you need them, with curbside pickup at petsmart. just order online, drive up, check-in, and pick up.

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we asked joe biden's aides for a guest but the campaign was not able to join one today. joining us now, hank sheinkopf, a veteran democratic strategist. why doesn't joe biden do more interviews and talk to hotterrers more often -- talk to reporters more often. the cynical media explanation is he's ahead in the polls, why risk making mistakes, he can stay home in delaware and let the media spotlight be on president trump. hank: why do anything and let the president -- the president's doing a very good job right now, into red states and the complete craziness that's going on in america's streets and the economy, put them together, it's a -- howard: the answer to why do anything is that as a major party nominee, you have some responsibility to communicate with the press and to show that the people who might have doubts about you that you can hit major league pitching. hank: that may be true but strategically it's better for joe biden to do that when

trump's numbers fall, and should they fall, why give the incumbent any opportunity to attack biden directly, when the attack can be by the public when you're doing it that way. he's the president. howard: i hope the former vice president will go out more including on this program. i hope to get his campaign people as well. same question i asked jason miller. biden said he doesn't support defunding the police. the president told chris wallace, yes, he does. they got into a dispute over that. the trump campaign says biden will be the captive of radical democrats and regards police as the enemy. hank: that's a great strategy, directed at suburban women, that trump needs to hold onto or get back, states where people are feeling some concern and most of the country is. but deep concern in those states. and to bring back his base at the same time. it's a smart strategy. the rhetoric is correct. but it might not be good for

america. it's more about politics than it is about leadership. howard: well, certainly there's an effort to tie joe biden to some of the more radical elements. obviously he's had to try to align himself with bernie sanders to win over some of those voters in november which brings me to the $2 trillion climate bill that he announced this week. much more ambitious than joe biden supported in the primaries. and the press is casting this as a bow to bernie wing but it also gives the republicans and the trump campaign a pretty big fat target given the size and the cost of that plan. hank: no question about it. what the trump people likely do is make him into a job killer if they haven't done that already. what the bernie sanders or left wing of the democratic party will do is tout it as their victory. in order for biden to win he believes whether it is true or not that he has got to grab enough of the so-called progressives within the democratic party to turn out. the trump issue is somewhat different. he has a more united party, with

less factualism, it's become the good trump party, not the republican party, and he can count on a definitive portion of the electorate that's already his. he's never changed to drop much below 40%. there is public opinion polling that shows the job is less difficult in some ways than biden's. howard: the president and his campaign have not been subtle saying joe biden has lost a few steps, he has said he should play a cognitive test. let me play you more from that interview. >> i'm going to ask you a correct question about joe biden. is joe biden senile? >> i don't want to say that. i say he's not competent to be president. joe doesn't know he's alive, okay. howard: the president also said let biden sit for an interview like this, he'll be on the ground saying mommy, mommy, take me home. all of that is it effective in cold political terms? is it unfair? and how should the press deal with it?

>> is it effective? no. is it unfair? no, there is no fair in political combat. you've got to win. aggressive tactics require especially when the polling data being released shows you're in serious trouble in some places. will biden bite the bait? if he does, it would be not the smartest thing. let the president continue to drop, covid spreads, the tragedy of deaths of more americans and the unemployment numbers will increase. that's a problem. howard: spoken as a true political operative, what matters is winning. hank sheinkopf, we appreciate it. good to see you this morning. hank: thank you, howie. howard: still to come, heads are rolling at the washington redskins after a newspaper expo expose of sexual harassment and the great twitter hacking silences the elite.

howard: three top executives at the washington redskins were fired or resigned after the washington post published a devastating account, former employees said they were harassed or hit on. one of them is emily applegate. >> someone makes a comment about what you're wearing and it snowballs from there. it really gives most people no time to comment on my appearance. there were many times i would be in the car crying on the way home. howard: we're back with griff jenkins. griff, this story abou about harassment, the team changing its name is the least of their problems right now. it's a reminder a newspaper can still do outstanding investigative work. griff: absolutely. kudos to the two writers who wrote that devastating expose because there was so much hype,

howie, on twitter, on social media, because the story was being worked on but you had people in the sports media community and in local washington sports coverage saying something is coming, something is coming. we were really breathless, hyper ventilating, a lot of rumor about what it contained. in the end, we got an unbelievable personal account and it wasn't just that the team's former female employees, two reporters that covered the team as well involved in the whole thing. so the -- howard: let me jump in to say that the owner, dan snyder wouldn't talk to the paper and now says such behavior has no place in our franchise, ordered an investigation. but the damage to the brand from this detailed story i think has been done. do you agree? griff: absolutely. ronlron rivera, is wondering wht did i sign up for. he has such a number of problems. but perhaps it will be under this new coach and ultimately a

new name that they can change the culture both inside and outside in terms of how this club runs their operations. howard: right. let's close with this. there was a major twitter hack this week by part of a bitcoin scam, the biden and obama accounts, elon musk, bill gates and others of. for a couple hours, the verified account, people with blue check marks, full disclosure, you and me are in the category, were frozen. people had a lot of fun saying class war against the blue checks and overthrow the blue checks. why all this resentiment? griff: because they have a bigger platform, the blue checks, like you and i than the -- there was a great piece, calling it the great -- it was basically -- they were saying that those that normally don't have as many followers and as much influence in twitter and on platforms, well, they were muted. my favorite tweet by the way was from a non-blue check mark person, howie, that said, hey,

blue checks, if you need to tweet, dm me and i'll do it for you, 10 o 1 bucks at a -- 10 but a time. howard: i think we're pretty nice guys. look, the reason that people have blue checks is they're well-known or have large followings. the trump account wasn't affected because he has special security. you seem to be taking it in stride. i didn't try to tweet during those hours. i didn't know i was silenced. griff: didn't affect me as well. however, it is interesting because, you know, twitter, social media is the frontier now, particularly during the pandemic when we're in quarantine, that we go to get our news and certainly some have more you power than others. howard: griff, thanks so much. that's it for this edition of media buzz. i'm howard kurtz. we hope you like our facebook page, we post my daily columns there and we can continue the conversation on twittedder. check out my podcast, media buzz meter. you can subscribe at apple

itunes, google podcast, get it on your amazon device. there's the promo graphic. we're back here next sunday, 11:00 you eastern, a lot more to talk about with this environment, covid, the campaign and just about everything else. see you then with the latest buzz. they will, but with accident forgiveness allstate won't raise your rates just because of an accident, even if it's your fault. cut! sonny. was that good? line! the desert never lies. isn't that what i said? no you were talking about allstate and insurance. i just... when i... let's try again. everybody back to one. accident forgiveness from allstate. click or call for a quote today.

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eric: more testing, more cases, yet a higher rate of infection as coronavirus is spreading. the u.s. seeing nearly 70,000 new infections yesterday. this as the world health organization reports a record increase in cases for the second straight day. the world wide total rising by 260,000 cases in one day, while across our country people are told to wear masks and please take the proper precautions. hello, everyone for this sunday, welcome to america's news headquarters. i'm eric shawn. hi, arthel. arthel: hi, i'm arthel neville. parents are growing more concerned about school plans for their children as president trump pushes