♪ howie: this is media buzz. i'm howard kurtz. look at the coverage of president trump denouncing the supreme court, rejecting the latest challenge to the election results in a moment. the new york post broke the story about hunter biden's laptop during the fall campaign, many news outlets blew off or minimized theal lee gas stations and some -- the allegations and some dismissed them as meddling. >> you have said the entire thing is so obviously a russian plot. it is to me and i was never even an ambassador to the russian federation. >> to put it more bluntly than that, russia and trump are both using rudy to spread the same

russian disinformation about joe biden. howie: the story took a sharply different turn when joe biden's son acknowledged the justice department is investigating his taxes. he insists he acted legally and appropriately and that sparked new questions about the media's past conduct. >> it was ignored and it was intentiointentionally ignored yu because most of the media knew it would impact the electorate against joe biden and that to me is a bigger scandal than any of these revelations about hunter biden. >> c envelope n roll -- cnn rolled its eyes, dismissed it as russian disinformation. most media outlets deemed it unworthy mentioning at all. it turns a ought all of them were lying. >> a lot of democrat, it will strike them as political that the investigation seems to have its origins around the time joe biden was beginning his run for president. >> the news that the pamly member of an incoming president is under federal investigation is a big deal.

no person's above the law including of course presidential family members. now, in this era, the probe raises many questions about how the incoming president administration will handle a probe. howie: joining us to analyze the coverage, ben domenech, gillian turner, and ray suarez, washington core upo corresponder euro news. ben, critics of fox news said it was overplaying the hunter biden laptop story during the campaign. now that we know about the federal investigation of his taxes and other matters, is it fair to say that cnn, msnbc and other outlets were underplaying the story and are still underplaying the story? >> they weren't just underplaying it. they were lying about the story. i mean, the simple fact is, there is no proof, there's never been any proof that this was russian disinformation. there is simply no evidence to support that argument. despite the fact that you had

people like john brennan, michael mcfall, mike mor morale and others of claiming otherwise. there was no evidence to support that claim and yet it's one they made over and over again but howie, to me the biggest and most disturbing part of the story isn't the behavior of cable news outlets, it's the fact they went along with what represents from my perspective the biggest suppression, the censorship of the american people on a news story that we've ever seen done by the actual most powerful media companies in america, social media. facebook and twitter, making the choice to cancel and to suspend, to even ban in some cases people who shared this story invading their private messages to prevent them from sending it privately and not just posting it publicly and making arguments in favor of that that were ultimately supported by many members of the media who claim to be for freedom of speech, information and thought, all things these social media outlets are clearly opposed to. howie: i think the social media

giants have damaged their reputation. gillian, the managing editor of npr said we're not going to waste time on a story that really isn't a story. that was the mindset in some quarters. >> we're not going to waste time on it except to completely dismiss it and try to debunk it by calling it misleadingly, like ben said, russian disinformation. a key aspect of this story emerging now is not just that hunter biden has acknowledged this is going on, this investigation, it's that there are actually four distinct probes into his finances going on, led by the fbi, led by different states. so the idea that it is somehow a made-up story has been proven ridiculous. the other thing to note here real quick is i think the story is bringing maybe not yet but over the coming days and weeks and maybe months as it goes on a real reckoning for not just the news media but really for the washington establishment in the sense that this story gets right at the sort of ugly underbelly

of a lot of what goes on in washington. it's like when you lift up the rock and you see everything that's underneath it. it's going to make a lot of people uncomfortable because they're going to learn some hard truths about what government officials do when they leave office before they rotate in and out. they're not going to like it. howie: influence peddling a way of life inside the beltway. ray, the biden transition office preempted an inquiry by cnn by putting out its own statement. don't all the media need to acknowledge now and there is a newly disclosed e-mail from a hunter biden associate saying he hadn't reported $400,000 that he received in income from the ukrainian energy giant burisma. doesn't everybody need to acknowledge this is serious business. >> it's certainly serious for hunter biden and re reputationay serious for joe biden, could cast a shadow over the opening months of his administration now that it's been acknowledged that hunter biden is under active investigation.

the status of of the delaware laptop and the hard drives and whether or not they're russian plants have nothing to do with whether or not hunter biden misstated income on his income tax returns. he's been under investigation for two years and this laptop that emerged in delaware from a legally blind computer salesman may have things on it that were put in there by the russians, may have things on there that were put on by hunter biden. these are two separate things that track on two separate paths. whether hunter biden is guilty of money laundering and tax evasion can be true at the same time that it's true that that was a russian plant. let's wait for the story and continue to investigate the story and continue to report what we find out. howie: right. the question during the campaign was whether joe biden knew about his son's foreign deal making

and that still remains unresolved. but ben, the wall street journal reported that attorney general bill barr knew as early as last spring about the federal investigation of hunter biden, didn't say anything publicly and yesterday president trump retweeted a conservative radio host who said if that's true, the attorney general should be fired immediately. the president added a big disappointment. i'm sure you'll agree with me that bill barr acted properly in following justice department rules against disclosing an ongoing criminal investigation. >> i certainly do agree with you on that, howie. but i do think it's valid for many voters to feel frustrated that this is a piece of information they would have liked to know earlier and certainly the president i think and his supporters are going to feel that way going forward, given the money laundering in question is tied with joe biden. joe biden himself made the claim from the debate stage, endorsing the idea that this was misinformation, disinformation, that it was sourced perhaps to russia, something for which, again, there is not evidence to

make that claim. at the same time, though, i think that we can't sort of put this in the perspective of just being about the media and the way that the cable news went after this. the way that big tech treated this story should scare everyone. imagine them doing this on the other side during the 2016 campaign and then afterwards essentially going in front of congress, in front of the people and saying oh, our bad for suppressing people's ability to share a story that goes to the core of this question about corruption in politics. that should be something of concern to all of us. howie: very fair point. ray, the new york times is taking this seriously. it says this is a no win situation for joe biden. could end up being anything from a distraction to legally perilous. what about conservative pundits who often railed against the bob mueller investigation as a witch hunt but who now are pushing the idea of a special counsel for hunter biden? >> well, we only have to look back -- this is a long, long

time ago, so maybe a lot of people don't remember. but it's 2016 when the head of the fbi revealed that hillary clinton was under investigation eight days before the election but did not reveal that donald trump was under investigation. that set democrat hair on fire and it just seems to be a question of whose ox is being gored. the revelation of ongoing investigations in this case came from hunter biden himself and was reported by everybody. >> well, it didn't actually come from hunter biden. if we take a look at what happened, and this was very but you zelling to a lot of journalists, it came from the biden transition team which was very odd and something that also needs scrutiny. hunter biden is not affiliated with the biden transition team. he doesn't work for them, as far as we know. he doesn't volunteer his time or services. a lot of journalists looked at this and said wait a minute, why is the biden transition team speaking on behalf of hunter

biden, putting out this statement? it's also -- howie: to follow up on that, joe biden had a press conference on friday. none of the reporters he called on -- they asked about the pandemic and other important matters -- asked a question about his son's own statement put out by the transition statement about being under federal criminal investigation. can you imagine a president trump news conference where there was a similar situation involving don junior or ivanka or jared and a question not being asked by any of the journalists. >> we did. fox news can did. peter doocy asked him the question. all he would say is he was proud of his son. but no other outlets felt this was worthy of a question. it's worrisome, right. we're at this moment where the election itself is being contested and people are making the case by the thousands that they don't trust the media's coverage. so when we have a situation like this, you would think that gurn of lifts would take it upon them

-- journalists would take it upon themselves to be even-handed and keep digging. doesn't matter who the president-elect is, doesn't matter who their party is. the job is to keep digging. howie: peter doocy asked the question as the news conference was over. is there hypocrisy among liberal commentators who reported on the russian investigation, about any questions raised about president trump's kids, who think that donald trump should be prosecuted once he leaves office and now they're saying it's kind of unseemly and unfortunate that hunter biden was trading on the family name but it's not really that important. >> the depths of hypocrisy are impossible to plumb. this is something that would be a major story that they would of be clamoring for if it was flipped around. you have big tech and the media working together to offer what is essentially one of the greatest in-kind donations, a partisan one, in the closing weeks of this campaign to

prevent the american people from even knowing about something that should absolutely factor into this conversation and is absolutely a valid question to raise about what now president-elect joe biden knew and when he knew it about the way that his son was selling his name, his family name and gaining profit from it, in very questionable ways, from the chinese communist party. howie: all right. let me get a break here. when we come back, the presidents clast election rhetoric after highest setbacks at the highest level and the media push back hard. if you have moderate to severe psoriasis or psoriatic arthritis, little things can become your big moment. that's why there's otezla. otezla is not an injection or a cream. it's a pill that treats differently. for psoriasis, 75% clearer skin is achievable, with reduced redness, thickness, and scaliness of plaques. for psoriatic arthritis, otezla is proven

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howie: the supreme court rejected a texas lawsuit friday night, strongly backed by president trump and 17 republican attorneys general to block the election outcome, his

second setback this week in the high court which also refused to hear a trump campaign aappeal from pennsylvania. >> it was a lawsuit, not to put too fine a point on it, to destroy the union. the decision effectively puts an end to donald trump's most absurd attempt to stage a coup. it was an attempt that had the backing of many in the republican party. >> huge blow, not only to the president but, yeah, 83% of republicans and 26% of independents and even 10% of democrats that have watched and witnessed whistleblowers and eyewitnesses and evidence and video and have concluded this election was never done fairly. howie: the president ripped the high court in an interview with fox's brian kilmeade. >> we've proven it. but no judge has had the courage, including the supreme court. i am so disappointed in them.

no judge, including the supreme court of the united states, has had the courage to allow it to be heard. howie: ben domenech, most of the media from national view on the right to atlantic on the left said the texas suit was ridiculous, it was absurd and it would be tossed out. that's what the supreme court did. a lot of trump supporters took the criticism of the suit as being against the president but wasn't it really just reporting reality. >> i think personally this lawsuit was baseless. i think it was fundamentally anti-federalist in its approach. imagine a situation where after the election in 2000, you had every democratic voting state that had supported al gore standing up and saying that florida's approach to voting had disen fradisenfranchised their n voters. i'm glad the court made the decision they did. at the same time, i do think that we have a situation here where a lot of the very valid claims that were advanced about squirrely actions within the

election are being swept aside in a way that can't give people confidence going forward that these things are going to be addressed in between now and the next election, something which is absolutely essential so that people can have faith in the process, particularly if mail-in balloting is going to be such a big feature going forward of the way that we do elections. howie: gillian turner, the president tweeted of the supreme court decision, it was a great and disgraceful miscarriage of justice, he said we didn't get our day in court. didn't he get a day in court in the sense that nine justices of the supreme court would not grant the relief sought by texas and these 17 other states represented by republican ags? >> yes. it's not as if this was the only suit in the process thus far. case after case after case has been thrown out by courts all across this country at this point. judges who were appointed by presidents obama and trump have thrown these cases out. here's the thing. we had the fox news poll come out this morning that showed 70%

of president trump supporters think this election was stolen from him. that's important. we can't gloss over it. those are the feelings of potentially tens of millions of americans. they are valid and they are important and they need to be addressed. the problem here was that president trump tasked rudy giuliani and jenna ellis, his legal team, with advocating on behalf of those people in the courts and they have failed at every turn to do a good job with this. they have failed to make a case that has been well-received or really even considered legitimately by many judges. so the wrath should start at some point turning to the people who were tasked with making this case. howie: of course. some of those judges are trump appointed judges. 77% of trump voters saying the election was stolen in that fox poll is the precise figure. ben, the media are now excoriating the 106 house republicans that signed onto a friend of the court brief in this texas suit, saying they

knew the suit was a hail mary but they did this because they were afraid of any kind of political retaliation from donald trump, even after out of office, engineering a primary challenge against him. what do you make of that kind of criticism of republicans who supported the lawsuit? >> i don't think that that kind of criticism really stands up because they're just being partisan actors supporting the party and supporting the leader of the party in donald trump and you saw the same thing happen the last time around with the people who were supporting al gore who wanted to continue counting in florida in 2000, well after the point where it was clear that this was just a we've got to find anything, we're desperate for a solution that ends up with our guy winning. so from my perspective, these are two sides of the same coin. they have to make that argument as people who are representatives of their voters who ayou grew with them -- agree with them largely in this instance and that's not something i hold against them. at the same time, i think that this really could lead to a situation where we don't get a resolution to the questions that

gillian was talking about which are the actual really important things to take away from this election. if you believe this was ununfairly, that there was a lot of fraud involved, we need to investigate that in a process that involves more seriousness than what we've seen to this point and to gillian's point, more serious legal representation on behalf of republicans and the president's interest. howie: ray, what do you think of ben's point that despite the media criticism, republicans that backed the suit are being partisan actors, especially when there was an effort to see if they could flip the states at the state legislative level. is this politics as usual or something that we haven't seen before? >> none of it is po politics as usual. the president has been denigrating the votes months before people were walking into polling places to cast their votes. he was undermine omining confidn

the outcome, he was undermining efforts of secretaries of state in various states to run the polling and run the count and he continued after november 3rd. everything was unusual, including calling authorities in those states to try to affect the outcome. those 106 congressman, i assume a bunch of them are lawyers. i know some of them aren't. but they know better. they knew better. it was more than just a close call. it was 537 votes in florida. not 7 million votes or even tens of thousands in the states that we're talking about. howie: comparing it to 2000. we will leave it there. ray suarez, ben domenech, gillian turner. thanks for joining us. up next, what was it like to cover the hunter biden allegations when much of the media world was calling it a far-fetched tale?

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howie: the hunter biden allegations are somewhat belatedly big news, a lot bigger news than during the campaign. joining us from wilmington is jackie heinrich, a fox news correspondent who covered the story during the election. what was it like attempting to cover this subject, the allegations during the campaign when the majority of news outlets i would say were either dismissing it or downplaying it? >> reporter: well, it was interesting. i think you had to remember, let's look back to the very first report that came out of this. it was that new york post smoking gun story. they made the allegation that this e-mail that surfaced stated that hunter biden introduced his father to this ukrainian businessman. but if you look at the actual document that they were using to do this story, that e-mail, it was from the ukrainian businessman to hunter, thanking him for the opportunity to spend some time with his father. that word opportunity, we don't know from that e-mail if they actually did have the meeting, or if he was thanking him for the chance to maybe do that and

was potentially just asking for that to happen. so language and being very judicious with those e-mail as they came out was very important in covering it and i think it was really important not to connect the dots where you can't connect them to just stick with what you have but clearly there's enough from this federal probe that we've learned of to report on it especially now that it's come out that this is a federal investigation into his taxes. howie: right. there's certainly plenty of pundits that are happy to connect dots, whether the evidence is clear or not. we mentioned that no reporters on friday asked joe biden about the situation but peter doocy did try to get a question after. let's briefly take a look at that. >> did hunter biden commit a crime? have you spoken to your son, mr. president-elect? >> i'm proud of my son. howie: so jacqui, what's it been like dealing with the biden campaign and transition and

what's obviously a sensitive subject in which the candidate is going to want to defend his son? >> reporter: well, the biden folks have been -- they've answered my questions and they have been careful to stick to just what the facts are, that joe biden is not implicated in this investigation and that he, as of yet, has not appointed his attorney general who might oversee his son's case, has stated policy he wouldn't intervene in any case involving had his son or family member. they have been trying to keep this close to how it pertains to joe and stick only to that point, howie. howie: right. and just briefly, did you get any flak during the campaign, either from colleagues with the biden campaign about why you're covering this story, it's a nonstory? >> reporter: i think that there was pressure because the central claim from the trump campaign was that joe biden profited from his son's overseas business deals and they were tired of the

fact that they had shown that he, the president-elect revealed his tax returns, the senate inquiry, the republican led senate inquiry found no wrong-doing for joe biden and so i think there was frustration in attempts to tie the president-elect to this and at the eastbound o end of the day e learned through our of sources through this investigation is that this investigation doesn't pertain to joe but hunter is very much involved in this. how he handles this case involving a family member is going to be interesting moving forward. howie: it's going to be a challenge. coming up on media buzz, a new sack seen is approved -- vaccine is a proved over the press confronts the president over his handling of the virus surge and also how towns with lockdowns are fighting back switch to our essentials 55 plan and save 50% on your bill vs. the other guys. that's right, iphone 12 on us!

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i felt gross. it was kind of a shock after i started cosentyx. four years clear. real people with psoriasis look and feel better with cosentyx. don't use if you're allergic to cosentyx. before starting, get checked for tuberculosis. an increased risk of infections and lowered ability to fight them may occur. tell your doctor about an infection or symptoms, if your inflammatory bowel disease symptoms develop or worsen, or if you've had a vaccine or plan to. serious allergic reactions may occur. learn more at cosentyx.com. howie: even as the fda granted emergency approval for the pfizer vaccine on friday night,

president trump is drawing plenty of media flak for not talking more about the surging coronavirus. >> now, the president doesn't seem concerned about being a war time commander, if anything he seems more like a deserter. he's abglen absent. >> the death of hundreds of thousands of americans while this president is ignoring a disease that's killing us, why are we accepting that. >> operation warp speed has been an amazing success. howie: joining us to analyze the coverage, byron york, chief political correspondent for the washington examiner, and leslie marshall, radio talk show host. with anderson cooper saying president trump is awol in the war against covid, are the media's trump detractors going too far in claiming it all on him, all the death on him and ignoring or minimizing his roame on the development of these vaccines. >> as always.

anderson cooper made the commentary on december 7th, pearl harbor day, in which he likeened the worldwide pandemic, coronavirus, to the japanese attack on the united states in 1941 that started world war ii. and this was happening at a time when the greatest single development of the entire pandemic, that is the approval and distribution of vaccines, is underway as we speak. and i think throughout the pandemic, in some media circles, we have seen a desire for president trump to play a certain role on tv which he doesn't do, and at the same time perhaps de-emphasizing some of the things that he was doing, like starting this p operation warp speed which has led to these vaccines today. howie: you know, leslie, the latest victims include rudy giuliani and jenna ellis, two of the president's lawyers, stephanie rule, ellen degeneres and the virus

shattered the one day death toll here in america, more than 3,300 people died on friday and overall total almost 300,000. so is it fair for the media to question whether the president is still leading the charge? >> i think it's very fair. look, there are two sides here. one, he has been very successful with the vaccines, operation warp speed. but there are many who feel, not just on my side, on the democratic side of the camp, that he failed us when it came to timing, when it came to lockdowns, when it came to masks, and the rhetoric surrounding masks and now a lot of people are very disappointed howie that the president is constantly talking about how the election he feels was stolen from him and completely not mentioning how many lives have been lost like you mentioned that record day, topping sadly the thousands of lives that were lost in our nation on 9/11. so vaccines, you get the check mark in the good column. but other areas, bad. slow with masks, with lockdown

and certainly showing compassion for the people that have lost their lives or their loved ones with covid as opposed to talking about his re-election attempt. howie: byron, what do you make of some of the pundits at cnn and msnbc and elsewhere saying the president needs to talk more about covid and focus on the pandemic. and when he had the summit the networks didn't air any of it. i want to play a sound bite where peter alexander asked this question to the president at that event. >> why not include members of the biden transition team as part of this summit that you're hosting today? >> we're going to have to see who the next administration is because we won in those swing states. howie: and the president went on to talk about the stolen election. was that a fair question and what about the other cable networks not even carrying that event? >> well, it was a perfectly fine question and obviously the president has talked a lot about

the election. as far as not covering the event is concerned, i mean, the president is the president and as i said before, this is a huge development in the course of the pandemic. the other thing is, what do they want to be done? when you look at joe biden's plan to deal with the pandemic, he has appointed a special board and a team that will deal with it after inauguration day but he talks about mostly wearing masks and social distancing, in other words, the plan that the federal government, the president and all states have been pushing for quite a long time. howie: leslie, didn't president trump's response to the nbc question where he sort of unloaded about the stolen election, didn't that kind of wipe out most of the headlines about the vaccine somewhat itself and turn it back to the election which is the thing the media really want to cover anyway. >> sadly, yes, and not what the american people want to hear. there are those that feel the

election was stolen. i don't think they're living in reality, quite frankly and don't want to accept the will of the people and the electoral college and who got the magic number, 270. here's the problem where the president is doing a disservice to himself and the nation when he brings it back to that point is americans tuning in on any network for this type of coverage, they want to know about the vaccine. all of us know help is on the way in the form of a vaccine. people are tired of the lockdowns. people are tired of our of children not being in school, the list goes on. this is an opportunity for president trump honestly to put a check mark in the column of his legacy going forward. i think it was a great question because this virus whether we want to play it or not is not political. and we as human beings need to work together because we are in this together, to put it behind us. howie: i've 20 seconds. shouldn't the president talk more about the coronavirus as opposed to the election. the election is hugely

important. is the media criticism on target there? >> well, all along republicans have wanted him, many republicans have wanted him to give concise updates, briefings on the virus, not go off on various rabbit trails and things like that. that's just not the way the president has operated. his entire time in office. so there are a lot 0 of republicans who wish donald trump would play a slightly different character on tv but that's not what he does. howie: all right. after the break, a tale of two story lines, death threats against state officials over the contested election and small business owners facing ruin in the latest local lockdowns, stay with us.

howie: much of the media is focused on a risings tide of death threats and protests against state officials by people who are convinced the election was stolen from donald trump. >> it's all fun and games until someone destroys democracy. until someone gets hurt. until the home of michigan's secretary of state is surrounded by angry trump supporters. some armed. while she's inside with her 4-year-old. >> donald trump has never once condemned the violent threats made in his name. howie: fox news is heavily covering local lockdown orders

leading to protests and lawsuits involving restaurants and other of small businesses. >> you are bending over backwards to listen to last month's rules. then they pull the rug out from under you. what does this mean to the local community, the lifeblood of the community? >> it is devastating. >> what are you willing to do to fight this and what does it mean if you don't win? >> i'm going to fight this all the way. i'm not closing my doors for anything. you cannot -- a governor cannot shut down businesses at a whim. howie: byron, my heart goes out to every one of these restaurant owners and other small business owners who are struggling to save their livelihoods and their employees' jobs. the more you focus on them, are you telling with us side of the story? >> look, the pandemic being such a huge event, there are multiple sides of the story so the people who actually get it and suffer terrible from it, their families

and there are people who are suffering the economic effects on it and i think it's absolutely proper to cover those people because there is a huge debate over the issue of lockdowns. there are differences between republican and democratic governors about the issues of lockdowns. it's not as if democrats favor, a all favor lockdowns and republicans don't. there's clearly a lot of difference. there are governors who support targeted lockdowns in some parts of their states, no one size fits all solution. so i think it's entirely proper to cover the people who suffered because of this. howie: i agree. the human impact of the story leslie is a very important part of the story but you have political leaders who are trying to stop this or slow down the covid surge including where you are, la county, goes a little far in my view a ban on outdoor dining, outside restaurants. your take on the coverage? >> it's interesting, because -- not that i'm giving my home

address here but i live in pasadena, which is a city within la county with its own health department and you'll probably see a lot of people outdoor dining here because pasadena fought back and won with outdoor dining. we had so many people from the rest of la county coming here as patrons for these restaurant owners and to get a break from their lockdowns, to sit outside and eat. one of the challenges here, howie, was not just in pasadena but throughout california, please show us the evidence that outdoor dining is tracked to some of this virus contagion and they haven't been able to do that. they have with indoor dining. they haven't been able to do that with outdoor dining and that's the frustration and also the hypocrisy with the film crews, able to shoot and eat outside. we have a lot of movie making here in california, now -- howie: a uniquely hollywood story. there was a pro trump rally in washington yesterday, 23 arrests, at least four people were stabbed, a lot of local election officials, mostly

democrats, some republicans have gotten death threats, there have been protests as we saw earlier. byron, is it fair for the pundits to say that president trump is causing this by fighting the election results? >> i don't think so. look, the event here in washington was really a bunch of characters who i think want todd have a fight. -- wanted to have a fight. the commentary that the president is trying to destroy democracy i think is completely over-heated. he and his alleys are going to court. -- allies are going to court. they've tried going straight to the supreme court. going to court is the way people pursue claims in the united states. i think it's about over. i think his options are gone. we're going to have the electoral college decide tomorrow. the fact that he went to court really was his right to do. howie: and leslie, shouldn't the media be careful about blaming any politician, not just the president, for the actions of some of his craziest

supporters? >> although the media should be careful, howie, leaders need be careful and lead by example. when the president made a comment about standing down, specifically to a white supremacist organization like the proud boys and then you see the proud boys chasing african-americans down the street, attacking people in cars who were wearing masks, assuming that are liberal, burning anything that says black lives matter and removing banners from churches, that's dangerous in any leader, i don't care what your ideology is. you should speak out against this and these types of organizations. howie: i just think the coverage has to put it in perspective. byron, leslie, thanks very much for stopping by this sunday. still to come, cnn's white house correspondent calls president trump a psychopath and msnbc's long-time president is out. that's next.

howie: cnn white house correspondent was on air talking about president trump's efforts to overturn the election results when he said this. >> you've got to conclude that the president's a little bit crazy. i don't see how of you avoid the conclusion that the president of the united states is a straight-up sociopath. howie: joining us now from dallas, steve krakauer, former staffer at cnn as well as fox who publishes the fourth watched newsletter and produces the megyn kelly pod of cast. john howard is a smart guy. would a reporter be allowed to say things like when you were at cnn? >> no. i think howie the cnn you were at for a long time, the cnn i was at, that is gone. they make a big push about facts first. that's fact-free analysis there and john horwood, whose been at

cnbc for a long time, he used to have the mask of objectivity. it used to take wikileaks to say he's having behind the scene e-mails about what to ask jeb bush. now the veil is completely gone. the analysis is out in the open and it's completely fact-free, it's completely just invective that's being hurd and this is what's happened in the trump era. howie: huge backlash against it. a wall street journal op-ed, talking about jill biden, he said she should stop calling herself dr. biden because that's fraudulent because she has a a doctor in education degree. your take on the criticism of this story. >> this fits in line with the types of stories the media likes to go completely nuts over, this idea of broad-brush of miss on e

and grammar. i think this was a bad opinion. i think we need to have opinions in our media that are bad and room for that. the idea that northwestern is removing his bio from their website. hit was on the website. now they're removing it. he's been completely cast aside. i happen to completely think it's a ridiculous opinion. i think that to then take it an extra leap, that's what the media loves of to do these days. howie: biden's spokesman called it a disgusting and sexist attack. time magazine, i want to put up pictures of covers the magazine has run about president trump's presidency, detected as an orange melting blob. now time named joe biden and kamala harris as the person of the year, or persons of the year. very la udat oory piece. it's their choice. what does this tell you about the editorial direction of time. >> time magazine has named the

winner of the presidential election the person of the year going back to 1996, every cycle. in that way it's not surprising. i think they threw on kamala harris in this with -- instead of joe biden, not naming a cis gender old white guy. the biggest thing about this is time magazine it used to have a lot of power and influence. and that's completely gone. i think you saw a little bit of reaction to it. i think ultimately it's completely meaningless. time magazine is barely time magazine anymore unfortunately for the print world. howie: it's not meaningless mes because it always gets a lot of media attention. msnbc president, phil griffin, is now out. he will be replaced by ra rashia jones, what's the significance of this? >> yeah, i think on that level it's historic. she is very young, in her 40s, to be running a network. i think that's really admirable,

the rise she's seen at msnbc and across the industry. phil has been there for a long time. he's done a good job. one of the things you can say about msnbc, you know what they are, they're a liberal news network. that came into a little bit of a problem earlier in the year when there's was the bernie sanders campaign and that wing of the democratic party really were very strongly against msnbc because it's an establishment left type network. we'll see if it changes. phil has done a great job for a long t this will be a change in direction. we'll see if they open the liberal tent a little more now. howie: okay. and you've done a good job with this lightning round. good to see you. steve krakauer, thanks for joining us. and that's it for this edition of media buzz. i'm howard kurtz. check out my facebook page, follow me on twitter and all that stuff. also of, appreciate if you take a look at my podcast, media buzz, where you can describe at amazon music. while you're rock and rolling, i don't sing on the podcast but it's another easy way to

subscribe. we talk about the buzz of the day's hottest stories. we are out of time. appreciate your watching as always. we're back here next sunday, 11:00 eastern. see you then with the latest buzz. to severe psoriasis, ...little things... ...can become your big moment. that's why there's otezla. otezla is not a cream. it's a pill that treats plaque psoriasis differently. with otezla, 75% clearer skin is achievable. don't use if you're allergic to otezla. it may cause severe diarrhea, nausea or vomiting. otezla is associated with an increased risk of depression. tell your doctor if you have a history of depression or suicidal thoughts or if these feelings develop. some people taking otezla reported weight loss. your doctor should monitor your weight and may stop treatment. upper respiratory tract infection and headache may occur. tell your doctor about your medicines, and if you're pregnant or planning to be. otezla. show more of you.

arthel: as the u.s. hits a critical noint the pandemic with coronavirus killing nearly 300,000 americans, there is hope on the horizon. the first trucks carrying pfizer's vaccine to distribution centers across the country pulled out of a michigan manufacturing facility early this morning. hello, everyone. welcome to america's news headquarters. i'm arthel neville. hi, eric. eric: hi, arthel. thank you for joining us. i'm eric shawn. we have been waiting for this day to finally come. fed ex and ups began shipping more than half a million doses by airplane and guarded trucks to distribution sites nationwide. the first shots we're told could