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mission. they were going to washington to hold press conferences. the new york times, the departure added a cinematic element. they got a tremendous welcome on msnbc and on cnn. >> please pass the john lewis voting rights act and pass the for the people act. >> that was a generous way of saying you're leading by example. howie: this is not about the merits of the texas law. that's worth debating. it's about the portrayal of the lone star state democrats who are blocking a quorum by high tailing it out of austin, in other words, foiling their own democratic process while telling the world they're trying to save democracy. it's so revealing how the press is hailing them as heroes. i'm howard kurtz and this is "media buzz."

♪ howie: ahead, former trump campaign a manager corey lewandowski on why accusations and denials involving the ex president are making so much news. as president biden's vaccination program has stalled and with covid cases rising, a war of of words is breaking out about the white house misinformation, big tech, and the pressure for more americans to get these shots. >> dr. fauci, i don't know how many more times you can say to people, listen, it will save your life. i have this problem with some members of my own family. howie: at fox news, several news anchors have made a psa urging viewers to get vaccinated. but the new york times painted laura ingram and tucker carlson as anti-vaccine. dick durbin ripped the prime time opinion hosts as, quote,

anti-vax quacks. >> this is not about the vaccine. this is about suppressing speech. durbin like the rest of the anti-democrats desires total control over the information flow to you, the voters. no contrary views allowed, especially when those views are backed up by actual facts and data. >> americans have a right to have basic questions answered before they submit to taking a medicine. that is their right. durbin and hacks like fauci persist in pretending that anyone who has questions is somehow a right wing idealogue and that's a lie. howie: joining us now, molly hemingway and mara liasson. molly, the tone of the media debate over getting more americans to get vaccinated has gotten incredibly personal including the attacks on fox. >> it has gotten personal. i think that it's also just been very negative when i think

people could take a step back and look at how much good has been done. the vaccine program in the united states relative to other of countries has gone incredibly well. so many people have gotten vaccinated and the way if you want to have that continue is to have people answer questions honestly and the worst thing you can do is tell people you can't have any legitimate questions or if you have any legitimate questions that you're a walk or a crank -- quack or a crank. it's not a healthy media debate in part because it's too negative. people need to celebrate what has gone well even if president biden missed his personal vaccination goals. howie: among liberal moment day tores, -- commentators, there's amazement, sometimes disdain, for the people who are hesitant or refuse to get vaccinated. the atlantic calls them the proudly irrational. how does that help. >> what we heard from public health officials who studied the way to communicate about the vaccine is that people need to

hear from medical experts and get their questions answered. in other words, the vaccine problem is not going to be solved by people calling fauci a hack or people calling right wing talk show hosts some kind of, i don't know what they were calling them, but attacking them for raising questions about the vaccine. you have to go to people where they are. what i also think is interesting about this whole controversy, it's a big debate happening without donald trump. donald trump is proud of what he did to get the vaccines online fast. for a lot of his supporters, they don't want to take them. he's had the vaccine. he's talked in favor of it. so i think this is kind of interesting. this is a big polarized debate and a it's missing an element that has been present in almost every polarized debate in the last five years. >> really quickly, this is one example that you see, people make it out like it's the republicans that don't want to take the vaccine. 61% of the people who are

hesitant about the vaccines are not republicans. the more the media make it out that it's something that's part a san -- partisan, that will have an effect. it was president biden and vice president harris who said they didn't have trust in the vaccine, that makes people not trust what the media are saying. i think we need to be careful and not have forgetfulness about what was happening in the campaign. howie: press secretary jen psaki causing a major media stir, telling reporters that to better sell the vaccine program, we're flagging problematic posts from facebook that spread misinformation. does that sound like collusion to you. >> we had everybody talking about farism. that's when corporations and governments merge together in their interests and that's what we're hearing people talk about openly from the podium of the white house. this is very dangerous. this is not american.

this is not how we handle debates, having the white house flag things they view as misinformation and they're not very good at detecting misinformation. i remember when jen psaki was saying that hunter biden's laptop was russian disinformation. it's not. disinformation is not things that make jen psaki or joe biden look bad. that's not how it's defined. yet, that's how the white house is defining it. that's very dangerous and it does more to hurt, again, vaccine acceptance and trust with government and corporations, the more they're meddling together, colluding together against the american people. howie: let me play for you and our audience what president biden said on friday when a reporter asked him about facebook's role. >> what's your message to platforms like facebook? >> they're killing people. look, the only pandemic we have among the unvaccinated. and they're killing people. howie: much stronger language than the president usually uses. is the white house colluding with facebook or declaring war

on facebook, mara? >> that's unclear to moment i don't know what exactly he was referring to there. i have sat through republican and democratic administrations and beating up on the media, criticizing social media or the giants of social media like facebook is something that's done in both democratic and republican administrations. this is a big public health problem. i think responsible people on both sides want to get as many americans vaccinated as possible. and i don't know if any of this helps in that effort. howie: one thing to beat up on, the media, another thing to accuse a major media company of killing people. jen psaki was asked about this by my fox news colleague peter doocy and let's play that exchange. >> for how long has the administration been spying on people's facebook profiles, looking for vaccine information? >> that was a loaded an inaccurate question. peter, first of all, as you know, we're in a regular touch

with a range of media outlets. howie: molly, the white house position is they're not looking at individual people's posts and that they don't have the power to remove anything online. it's just the typical kind of pushback against the media to complain to facebook about this stuff. >> the bigger problem is the relationship between tech companies and the democratic party. they were happy with the arrangement during barack obama's tenure when they complimented themselves on helping them win. they felt guilty about trump's win. they decided to insert themselves in the political process in a way that's very dangerous. they have algorithms. they sensor people and -- censor people and ban people. in mark zuckerberg's case he meddled in the election and privately funded the election system. we have an alliance between corporate interests and the democratic party that is directly oppositional to free speech which is not just our

law. it's supposed to be our culture, that you can talk about things and you can disagree with people and if you think someone is saying something wrong you tell them why you think it's wrong. the son s press of information is -- oppression of information reminds a lot of people of what happened in the soviet union decades ago. there needs to be major pushback. because the media are by and large with a few exceptions are part of this arrangement we aren't getting the pushback we need and this is terrifying to so many americans to see this oppression of information. howie: facebook continues to ban donald trump. look at some of the other coverage. an administration official told fox about facebook, they've been withholding information on what the rules are and what they put in flies prevent dangerous disinsertion. -- disinformation. they said the white house is looking for scapegoats for missing vaccine goals. the behind the scenes sniping is getting intense as well. >> facebook is a great target for both sides, conservatives

attack facebook, liberals attack facebook. you go on facebook, i think the top 10 trending news stories, generally 90% are conservative. facebook is an equal opportunity offender. everybody loves to hate the media. right now we're having a he debate about how best to regulate these companies they're private companies. should they be regulated like public utilities, should they be left to do whatever they want and this is going to be an ongoing debate and i think the vaccine part of it is one example. howie: mollie jump in. >> the idea they can ban the top person in the republican party and you don't have everybody crying out what an outrage this is, while he was president they did it, it doesn't mean anything if the top ten posts are from the right, if they've so limited people a that they don't let top republicans express their opinion there. this needs be fought. everyone needs to agree, regardless if they personally

don't like the republican party, they need to agree this type of control of information is a huge threat to the republic and cannot continue. howie: i'm personally surprised that the mainstream media are not at this point, six months after donald trump left office, speaking out about the suppression of his voice but i think they're happy about it except they miss the tweets for news making purposes. briefly, the reason that the stakes are so high is that we're now at 31,000 new cases, covid cases a day as of yesterday. that's a fraction of the peak of the pandemic but an increase of 135% just over the last two weeks as this delta variant of the virus continues to spread. let me gate break here. ahead, corey lewandowski joins us on all the news being made by and about donald trump. when we come back, president biden's voting rights speech fueling an increasingly intense media debate. cientist. and i love the science behind neuriva plus. unlike ordinary memory supplements,

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howie: president biden sparked a fierce media debate with a passionate speech in favor of the democrats' sweeping voting rights bill which has been stuck in the senate. some liberal pundits complained that he didn't really move the ball. >> the big lie is just that, a big lie. america, if you lose, you accept the results, you follow the constitution, you try again. you don't call facts fake. >> it was the passion. it soaked through the screen. you could feel that. but we're at a point now where we need more than speech. >> this is invincible ignorance, to suggest that this is jim crow or as he said earlier, jim crow on steroids, reveals that he and his staff, whoever writes this stuff for him, have no idea what

they're talking about. howie: the media generally praised president biden's speech on voting rights, and it seems like this has become the overriding issue for the press with the most amped up rhetoric. >> the press have become lobbyists for this particular piece of legislation. joe biden did say something correct in the speech, which is that losers need to accept results. that's something people did not experience from 2016 to 2020 when the media and democrats put forth a lie that donald trump colluded with russia to steal the election. that lie caused so many problems. when 2020 happened and republicans did not entirely trust the results, they were told they can't have anything they can say about that. that's not a good way to handle these types of debates. the idea that the way that we vote needs to be less secure is something that is highly contentious and yet the media portray it as if it's something that -- of course you want to get rid of voter id and safeguards against fraud. that's not true.

that's not where the american people are. the vast majority of people think it should be easy to vote and tough to cheat. the media have become the most prominent lobbyists for watering down election integrity. howie: i want to get your reaction. some of joe biden's liberal boosters, we saw one example saying he didn't change much. senate is against him. they're frustrated he's not able to do more. >> that's right. they're really frustrated. i guess they think he can somehow convince joe manchin to change his mind on the filibuster which is hard to imagine since joe manchin is from west virginia and he understands the politics there and knows how to maintain his brand as the lone democrat at that level in the state. in terms of the media being lobbyists, i think that's a sweepingization.

-- generalizations. they lost the last election, they didn't pick up state legislative seats, they don't have the votes in congress to pass the john lewis act or hr1. and that's why they're in the situation where all they've got is the bully pulpit and joe biden can give the speeches, try to create a backlash and get enthusiasm among democrats to come out and vote but they don't have the votes to stop this and i think a lot of the media has pointed that out. howie: there have been harsh counter attacks as you know on president biden's speech from conservative commentators, saying he's talking about jim crow and the civil war is painting this as some kind of existential national emergency when it is as you say a complicated debate about id voting rights, how much polling places should be open, mail-in ballots and all that. >> the rhetoric is unconsistent unconscionable. there was a time when the black

vote was suppressed. thats was horrible. that's not what's happening right now. we had an election with 150 million plus people voting. it's not a time of suppression. it's a time where people are concerned about integrity of the ballot. we have greatly expanded mail-in balloting without sufficient measures to protect the integrity of the system. without making sure that the people who are voting are the people who say they're voting, without enabling people to have confidence. if people don't have confidence in their elections, they don't have a republic going forward and the media are absolutely pushing not just for this bill, but also to get rid of the filibuster. they're out and out harassing senator sinema and manchin in a way that this is not neutral. this is the media operating as unregistered lobbyists for very particular partisan interests and that is horrible we talked on this program a few weeks ago about the media attacks on joe manchin for taking the position he is, both on the filibuster itself and some of the trillions of dollars that the biden

administration wants to spend. does the media assume automatically that the for the people act, the big sweeping voting rights bill stands for truth, justice and the american way because it does include democratic wish list items like encouraging public financing, cracking down on gerrymandering and establishing ethics rules for the supreme court. >> no, i don't think the -- first of all, the media isn't one thing, one monolithic thing. this is a bill that's been pointed out in the media with a democratic wish list that was written long before the 2020 elections. howie: that's my point. >> kind of a messaging bill. the interesting thing to me is will democrats tear it down to something that maybe joe manchin could support? we don't know. it will never get the republican votes, that's for sure. but will joe manchin ever support it where he'll agree to a carve out of the filibuster. that seems unlikely. when you say the media portrayed the bill as being a great thing, i think the media has -- if you

read closely, they also point out that it's a message aing bill. hr4, the john lewis act, is something a little different. that would reinstate the voting rights act that congress let expire and never acted on. howie: ten seconds for a response. >> the media maybe are not exclusively monolithic but maybe sufficiently so that you can characterize their behavior as partisan. they're not allowing debate on this. the big problem in america, it's not expanding voting without having anti-fraud measures but precisely the opposite. we need to make sure we can trust our elections, winners and losers alike. howie: thanks very much for joining us this sunday. up next, a flood of anti-trump information is raising allegations against the former president. why the media can't seem to let it go.

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howie: the flood of books about donald trump is reaching high tide, the former president is denying an account in "i alone can fix it" that says general mark mille was worried that trump would attempt a coup. he reported to have compared trump's election fraud allegations to hitler's rise in nazi germany. trump called it so ridiculous, saying if i was going to do a coup, one of the last people i would want to do it with is general mark mille. joining us now from dallas, steve krakauer. these are good reporters. what do you make of the avalanche of books and the accusations by mark mille who comes off as a hero in this book and had to have been a confirming source for the book. >> that's exactly right. i think that the range of books that we're seeing right now really on one end of the spectrum is michael wolff who has essentially admitted to

creating works of fiction, to those that are as you mentioned by a little bit better reporters and so there's obviously some truth to it. this anecdote from general mille is a perfect example, it's almost unfact checkable. this is about what mark mille thought or felt or what he was thinking might happen. first of all, if you want to know where the source comes from, i don't think a lot of people can know exactly what's going monday in general mille's head expect general mille. so you have that. it's also as you mentioned, it makes him, centers him as the hero of the story and it reminds a little of the anonymous saga, i was involved in the trump administration but i'm one of the good guys. it's honestly -- yeah. howie: sometimes it involves what mille said to others. there can be other sources, trump saying mille choked like a dog and some of the stars he produced are actually made of garbage. that brings me to the next question which is how is it that donald trump has generated more news this week between the books and his pushback against the

books than the guy who is currently living in the white house? >> well, it's because the media as we know, a large portion of the media, i don't want to say all the media, there's a trump add addiction in the media -- addiction in the media. yes, he's out of office. six months ago that these events are taking place if not years ago. what are they going to do, cover the news, afghanistan, the border. no, you talk about donald trump and this is where the drift of the media that we've seen, these books and a lot of where we see in the media coverage today reminds me of in touch weekly or star magazine. there's some truth but they're goss i've ration for the -- gossip rags for the media he lead. there's some truth, but you stuff it with things that feel true. it's not about getting the news out there and certainly not about necessarily a valid journalistic representation of the way things were. it's just nice, fun things to share, nice anecdotes to spread

on twitter. howie: gossipy stuff can sometimes be news worthy. obviously people who worked for donald trump say i told them, i warned them, all of that let me torn the guardian which published this week, what assessed to be kremlin documents, that vladimir putin ordered spy agencies in 2016 to help, the quote, the mentally unstable donald trump get elected. apparent confirmation from moscow. with those caveats, i'm pretty skeptical. >> i'm very skeptical. i think that when you talk about playing the hits, this is just the hits of the last four or five years. and every instance, going book the mueller report and -- going back to the mueller report and preelection and the steele dossier, they've been trying to connect russia and donald trump and they've done it so thinly and unconvincingly, they moved out. now we talk about january 6. russia is off the front page except for the guardian. i have no doubt this will be

another in a long line of attempts to make this connection, doing so without any real convincing to the general public and we move on to the next thing which i'm sure will be more russia collusion. howie: there aren't many leaks from vladimir putin's russia. that causes to me to be skeptical as well. next on "media buzz," corey lewandowski on donald trump's increasingly aggressive media strategy and some of the allegations we've been talking about swirling around him. all the time in the world. it's just a saying. but today, for women living with hr+, her2- metastatic breast cancer. more time is possible with verzenio. proven to help you live significantly longer when taken with fulvestrant. verzenio + fulvestrant is for hr+, her2- metastatic breast cancer that has progressed after hormone therapy. diarrhea is common, may be severe, or cause dehydration or infection. at the first sign, call your doctor, start and antidiarrheal, and drink fluids.

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howie: donald trump got a rousing reception at the cpac conference for attacking the mainstream media over what he insists was a rigged election. >> every time the media references the election hoax, they say the fraud is unproven and while there is no evidence -- no evidence? no evidence.

there's so much evidence but the radical left cheat in elections and the fake news media cheats in polling. howie: i spoke earlier from des moines with corey lewandowski, chairman of the make america great again action pac and donald trump's former campaign manager. corey lewandowski, welcome. >> thanks, howie. howie: you were with donald trump at cpac. he continues to promote, despite media pushback and i get several e-mails a day from him to this effect, his unproven conventions that the election was stolen. how does that help the republican party move forward. >> if we don't have integrity in the election cycle, we will never have a republic. we've seen the secretary of state of georgia has said and confirmed that thousands of ballots have been uncovered that he didn't know about. howie, this republic, this constitutional republic was founded on one man, one vote. we have to be able to vote properly. we have to make sure we count those votes properly. and we have to make sure that

only legal citizens are voting. it is paramount to the very republic that we sit in every day and what the president has said and what he has asked for is an honest and fair assessment of what took place in november and i don't know why that's a republican or democrat ideal. that should be an american ideal. howie: i'll note that bill barr's justice department found no evidence of widespread fraud but i understand your point. also at cpac the former president talked about the new york prosecutors who obtained an indictment on tax charges against his company's cfo. what he said was this. >> they're in search of a crime. to them, it did not matter whether any laws had been broken. the crime was opposing the radical left democrat party. this is lawless and tyrannical behavior. howie: the media stopped talking about this minor league indictment but why would he describe it as tyrannical behavior? >> howie, what we have seen in

new york is the political persecution of an individual because of their association with donald trump. you're telling me that after four years of looking into the tax records, the best they can do is come up with this notion that the cfo of the organization might have had a company car that he didn't pay taxes on? this is a complete joke. how many corporate members, how many vice presidents get company cars or other things of value that they're not paying taxes on. look, even jeffrey toobin who was banned from cnn for six months for egregious violations had to come out and say this was an outrageous indictment. if this is the best the tax a pair money of the people of new york can be used for, then we should be you ashamed of ourselves. the attorney general of new york ran on a platform, on a platform of going after donald trump and now they've gone after a 73-year-old man who had a free company car. give me a break. howie: it certainly didn't

match the media hype. i want to ask about the space of anti--- spate of anti-trump books, that said that trump once said hitler did some good things, general mark mille feared a coup. why do you think the books are he getting so much attention and doesn't your former boss fuel it when he says things like the chairman of the joint chiefs should perhaps be court-martialed. >> any time you write a book which is negative or disparaging to donald trump, the media hypes it up. the books that are positive about him nobody talks about it. they said tear gas was used in lafayette square to clear the park, we know that's not true. the same reporters who said a capital police officer was beaten to death with a fire extinguisher, that's why he died. not true. i don't know what's true in some of these books. if mark mille and what he said

potentially about nazis attacking the capital, he's not fit to command our armed services. howie: you're obviously supporting the former president on this. one of the books, there's an incident involving you, a book by mike bender of the wall street journal saying when you joined mike pence's pac, i remember reporting that at the time, trump was furious at his vice president through a crumpled -- threw an article at him, mike pence said it was worked out in advance in terms of hiring you, and threw it back at him. is that true. >> you and i both know it never happened. i'm one of the few people in the world that have been part of the trump organization, part of the trump political movement since january of 2015 and i still run and oversee the president's super pac, make america great again acship. the president would never be upset i was helping vice president pence in his political world. i don't think that information ever happened. i don't think the president took a newspaper, threw it at mike pence who supposedly took it and threw it back at the president. i don't think that ever

transpired. i talked to the president. he put a statement out dissuading that story. people want to sell books. there's a lot of money in selling books. i've written a couple new york times best sellers. there's real money in books. howie: i don't know whether that particular incident is true or not. that's what's in the book. i agree with the former president that the media never really gave him full credit for creating and carrying out operation warp speed. why don't he help complete this you achievement by pushing more forcefully for many unvaccinated americans, many of whom support him, to go out and get the shots? >> look, the president has taken the shot himself. he leads by example. i don't know what more he can do. it's not exactly like the biden administration is asking the president to come out and sit down at the white house. even if he did, i don't know if president trump would do that. howie: he can do that on his own. he doesn't need to wait for joe biden's invitation. >> he did it by example. he got the shot. he told people to do i all you

can do is have a conversation with people. if people don't want to get a shot, this is still america and they can do that. howie: i've got a few seconds. president biden said friday that facebook is killing people by allowing vaccine misinformation to spread on its platform. do you agree with that. >> absolutely not. look, we have to rein in facebook and all these social media giants who are deciding what is and is not proper content. but that is absolute hyperbole. the truth is, people know what the value of the vaccine is and they should be encouraged to do it. but if you choose not to get a vaccine, you do so with the decision s of you and your doctor and your healthcare professionals. that's how we have to leave it. this notion that joe biden is going to send people door-to-door to check on your vaccine status is absolutely outrageous. howie: i agree it's an individual decision. i wish more americans would get the life saving shots. corey lewandowski, thank you for joining us. >> thank you. howie: after the break, the media open ofly admits -- openly

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howie: the new york times, this is not exactly breaking news, says joe biden is usually a very boring speaker with, quote, mumbles, stumbles, pauses and real-time corrections as he struggles through the dense material on the teleprompter. >> for you, anybody under the age of 13, this has got to be

boring, boring, boring for you. right? howie: joining us now, edward isaac dovere, author of the battle for the soul. the times is acknowledging the obvious here, most of the time joe biden is not a stirring or inspiring speaker, he trips over his words a lot. does it matter, is it news? >> well, the white house would point you to the polls, the numbers that came out today for example, on cbs, that people say that he's doing a good job. that's their focus. it is true that joe biden is not as exciting of a soap opera story as donald trump was, the trump white house. but what they are trying to do, what they are trying to focus on is things that will actually have an impact in government. government and policy, again, not always the most exciting stuff if that's what you're looking for. as one said to me that after the trump white house people spend four years in political

journalism on meth, now everybody is getting used to drinking wine again. howie: or going through withdrawal. i would say it matters only if you're a good speem speaker sometimes it's -- speaker, sometimes it's easier to move public opinion. the city's gotten really dull in the biden era, the endless hill negotiations over infrastructure, does anyone other than a bunch of trump addicted journalists care that the news cycle has slowed way down. >> many people are relieved in a certain way. in my book i trace the story of the democrats, trying to figure out what they are. it's not as outrageous a story. it's not -- it's a different kind of thing, it's the party figuring out what it believes about healthcare and racial politics and all the things that are really important that are the things that make a difference in people's lives. but are not nearly as salacious. it's definitely true. howie: government and policy

making really important to people's lives but hard to build dramatic cable news segments or online posts about. let me ask you about the washington post obtaining an e-mail from last november from the republican party's top lawyer, calling the efforts to challenge the election by trump lawyers rudy giuliani and jenna ellis a joke. jenna ellis has quit the gop. she wants ronna mcdaniel, the chairman of the party ousted over this leak. does this bolster the media's case that there's great division within the gop or is it in-fighting involving handful of insiders,. >> sort of both, right. i'm not sure that that many people know who jenna ellis is and are focused on whether she's registered in the republican party or not. this shows there's a large portion of republican leadership that know that they have been publicking parroting lies about the election and doubts that aren't true but they're saying

it for their political advantage to help them out or to help out the republican party and that's not good for the republic. howie: i think it's a challenge for journalists to cover. there's a split between anti-drum factions and -- anti-trump factions and we have the tendency to overdrama tizethings. there was an explosion among liberal pundits, your colleague at the atlantic tweeted this reflects a pathological disregard for other human beings at this point with consequences made clear by ruth bader ginsburg's death. isn't it strange for some liberals to be rooting for the 82-year-old justice to retire. >> this was a topic very much on the minds of a lot of liberals, sort of expectation that briar would retire, an assumption that he would from many. obviously, he's chosen not to do

that at least for now. he hired clerks for the next templet he says he's not -- term. he says he's not going anywhere. that may change. it sets up a situation where, look, it's a 50/50 senate, full of a lot of older people. someone could have a health problem. that could change the balance of the senate, if somebody were to die. and we go into the midterms next year with this potential issue in that way. it is always wrong to think the supreme court is separate from politics. howie: i get why some people want him to retire so joe biden can appoint a younger liberal, just beating up on breyer continues to amaze me. edward isaac dovere, great to see you this morning. >> great to see you. howie: still to come, steven smith apoll guys, news max -- apologizes, news max -- why is britney spears doing cart wheels? the buzz beater is next.

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howie: time now to race the clock on this week's buzz beater. go. britney speeshes is doing cartwheels on her instagram feed, her way of celebrating in her battle to free herself from the suffocating conservatorship. quote, you have no idea what it

means to be supported by such awesome fans, god bless you all. a judge allowed her to hire her own lawyer. britney used social media to change public opinion. she says how dare the people you love say anything at all. espn's steven smith caused an uproar when he went after a japanese born baseball star, saying he can't be the face of major league baseball because he doesn't speak english in interviews, the back lash prompted him to say he's sorry. >> let me be the first to stand up and say that i want to express my sincere apologies to the asian community and asian american community. i am a black man. i religiously go off about

minorities being marginalized in this nation. howie: i'm glad smith apologized after striking out. on what planet do you denigrate an athlete because he doesn't speech your language. there hasn't been much media coverage of hunter biden's plan to sell s his strange art for as much as half a million dollars a painting. former government ethics chief walter shout told cnn the approach is disingenuous. >> there's no way to look at this and believe for a second that hunter biden is not trying to profit off his father's public service by selling art at these extraordinary prices when he hasn't juried into a community art fair before. howie: if donald trump junior made big bucks by siling his art wouldn't the media have painted that as a colorful scandal. news max host rob schmidt went

way over if line in questioning the push to get more americans vaccinated against covid-19. >> i feel like a vaccination in a weird way is just generally kind of going against nature. like i mean, if there is some disease out there, maybe there's just an ebb and flow to life where something is supposed to wipe out a certain amount of people. howie: what? like a thinning of the herd? the network says it backs the biden vaccine programs and hosts are guests that may not be supporters of the efforts, do not reflect the position of news max. i hope not. and sasha baron cohen won a major lawsuit along with cbs filed by roy moore. he did a skit, he pretending to have technology that could spot moore as a sex offender. the judge said it's obvious it was clearly a joke. i didn't make it that time. that is it for this edition of "media buzz."

i'm howard kurtz. we hope you'll like our facebook page. you can come at me on twitter@howardkurtz. check out the podcast. you can subscribe. we've got the whole show in, last week we spent half of it narrating richard branson's space landing. we are back here next sunday. sue you then with the latest media buzz. it's the simple act of enjoying time with friends, knowing you understand your glucose levels. ♪♪ . . . men, you need to get off the couch and get with the program. with golo, i lost 50 pounds. it feels really good to be able to button your jacket and not worry about it blowing up. -(laughs) -go to golo.com

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more brain performance? yes, please! neuriva. think bigger. arthel: chaos at the ballpark as gunshots rang out during the national game in d.c. last night players and fans running for cover, some fans jumping into the dugout but the shooting happening outside of the park, three people were injured, hello and welcome to fox news live i am arthel neville. eric: that is really scary, i'm eric shawn welcome to fox news live, two other big stories at this hour at least three of the texas state democratic legislators who flew without wearing their mas