Oscar-winning filmmaker Alex Gibney has been quietly filming a documentary for the past four months titled Totally Under Control, which puts a spotlight on the White House’s failed response to the global pandemic and how it could have been prevented.
It will be released in mid-October. Here’s the trailer.
Jane Mayer: “A daunting gender gap: according to a recent Washington Post/ABC News poll, he trails Joe Biden by thirty percentage points among female voters. As part of his campaign, Trump has been doing all he can to showcase female stars in the Republican Party, from nominating Amy Coney Barrett for the Supreme Court to naming Kimberly Guilfoyle, the former Fox News host and legal analyst, his campaign’s finance chair.”
“Guilfoyle, however, may not be an ideal emissary. In November, 2018, a young woman who had been one of Guilfoyle’s assistants at Fox News sent company executives a confidential, forty-two-page draft complaint that accused Guilfoyle of repeated sexual harassment, and demanded monetary relief. The document, which resulted in a multimillion-dollar out-of-court settlement, raises serious questions about Guilfoyle’s fitness as a character witness for Trump, let alone as a top campaign official.”
A new lawsuit says Fox News legal analyst Judge Andrew Napolitano forced a man he met at a New Jersey restaurant to engage in a “bizarre sex act” involving father-son role play, the New York Daily News reports.
“Fox News is up to five times more likely to use the word ‘hate’ in its programming than its main competitors,” according to a new study.
Also interesting: “We found Fox’s usage of ‘they hate’ has increased over time, with a clear spike around the polarizing 2016 Trump-Clinton election. But Fox’s use of ‘hate’ really took off when Trump’s presidency began.”
“Christopher Cantwell, the neo-Nazi podcaster charged by federal prosecutors with threatening to rape a rival neo-Nazi’s wife has been found guilty of extortion and threats,” The Informant reports.
“I would encourage people to be critical thinkers, and to get their news from a variety of sources and make up their own mind and be a skeptical, discerning electorate — which is what I think is the best defense against malign foreign influence.”
— FBI Director Christopher Wray, quoted by CBS News.
President Trump said he doubted that Fox News anchor Chris Wallace would ask Joe Biden difficult questions during next week’s presidential debate, The Hill reports.
Said Trump: “Chris is good, but I would be willing to bet that he won’t ask Biden tough questions. He will ask tough questions of me and it will be unfair, I have no doubt about it. He will be controlled by the radical left.”
“Pro-Trump cable network One America News is selling QAnon emojis on its YouTube channel, cashing in on the conspiracy movement that the FBI considers a potential source of domestic terrorrism,” the Daily Beast reports.
Ben Smith writes the story of Donald Trump and Jeff Zucker “is a kind of Frankenstein tale for the late television age, about a brilliant TV executive who lost control of his creation.”
“And it illustrates the extent to which this American moment is still shaped not by the hard logic of politics or the fragmented reality of new media, but by the ineluctable power of TV.”
ABC’s 90-minute town hall with President Trump drew fewer viewers than NBC’s “America’s Got Talent,” ESPN’s NBA Playoff telecast and Fox News prime-time programming, The Hill reports.
Tonight, Joe Biden will appear on a CNN town hall event.
“This is not like embedding with the Marines in Fallujah. It is like you are taking your family with you to Fallujah.”
— ABC News White House correspondent Jon Karl, quoted by National Journal, on covering indoor Trump rallies.
NBC said that Jim Carrey will play Joe Biden on the coming 46th season of Saturday Night Live, which begins on October 3, the New York Times reports.
Fox News accused ABC News of ambushing President Trump at a televised town hall with undecided voters in Pennsylvania and host Laura Ingraham suggested “the DNC may as well have put the whole thing on.”
Alan Dershowitz filed a $300 million defamation lawsuit against CNN on Tuesday, arguing that the network spread a “false narrative” by reairing a clip of his comments during Trump’s impeachment trial that omitted a portion of his statement, The Wrap reports.
President Trump announced on Fox & Friends that he will be coming on the show once a week — mostly, on Mondays — until Election Day, NBC News reports.
It was news to the show’s hosts.
Said Steve Doocy: “Thank you very much. You may want to do it every week but Fox is not committed to that. We’ll take it on a case by case basis.”
Just released: #Unfit, a documentary featuring George Conway, Anthony Scaramucci and Bill Kristol.
“For the first time, mental health professionals go on the record, in an eye–opening, science–based assessment of the behavior and stability of Donald J. Trump.”
Popular Information: “Facebook has permitted a large network of Facebook pages and groups — with names like Trump’s Deplorable Army, To The Death Media, and One Angry Conservative — to spread disinformation about voting in the 2020 election to millions of people.”
“The network operates by funneling traffic to Conservative Brief, an obscure right-wing website. Conservative Brief does not engage in any original reporting. Instead, it distorts reports from mainstream sources to sow doubt about the legitimacy of the upcoming election.”
“Over the last 90 days, the network of pages that promote Conservative Brief has generated 30.65 million engagements… That’s more engagement than the main New York Times Facebook page generated over the same period of time (26.48 million).”
Michael Cohen, out this week with the best-selling book Disloyal, on Monday will launch a weekly podcast, “Mea Culpa.”
Cohen told Mike Allen he will set out to “dismantle the Trump legacy.”
He added: “I’m interviewing someone very special.”
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Political Job Hunt, Electoral Vote Map and the Political Dictionary.
Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.
Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.
Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.
Goddard is the owner of Goddard Media LLC.