Ousted “Meet the Press” anchor David Gregory was paid $4 million to leave NBC News and signed a contract not to speak out against the network, sources told Page Six.

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) told Parade that he doesn’t watch House of Cards anymore.

Said Ryan: “I watched the first couple of episodes until he cheated on his wife with that reporter. It turned my stomach so much that I just couldn’t watch it anymore. His behavior was so reprehensible, and it hit too close to home because he was a House member, that it just bothered me too much. And what I thought is, it makes us all look like we’re like that.”

“I had never witnessed police treat journalists like this in the four years I worked as a crime reporter in South Florida. Some officers have tried to keep me away from crime scenes, but never stopped me from covering a story altogether…It was also the first time I had ever felt afraid of a police officer.”

— Alexis Campbell of the National Journal.

Mike Allen: “Chuck Todd, a political obsessive and rabid sports fan, is the likely successor to David Gregory as moderator of Meet the Press, with the change expected to be announced in coming weeks, according to top political sources. The move is an effort by NBC News President Deborah Turness to restore passion and insider cred to a network treasure that has been adrift since the death in 2008 of the irreplaceable Tim Russert. Although Todd is not a classic television performer guaranteed to wow focus groups, his NBC bosses have been impressed by his love of the game, which brings with it authenticity, sources, and a loyal following among newsmakers and political junkies.”

Alternet: “We recently took a look at what’s going on at SarahPalinTV, so you don’t have to. (You’re welcome.) Sadly, it seems that Palin has not taken any of the Twitter suggestions generously offered up for programming on her channel, suggestions like ‘Death Panels, She Wrote.’ Sarah Palin TV runs with more of an ‘Impeach Obama Around the Clock’ kind of theme, along with some of Palin’s homespun homilies. Here are some of the more ridiculous morsels of content streamed on the site.”

“When Kevin Spacey was preparing to play ruthless House majority whip Frank Underwood on House of Cards, he turned to then-actual House majority whip Kevin McCarthy (R-CA),” People reports.

“The actor said he was interested in the mechanics of the job, but also in knowing: ‘How much do you twist arms?'”

Says McCarthy: “I told him I say to members, ‘You vote your district, you vote your conscience, you just don’t surprise me.’ And he stole that line for the show.”

Nate Silver: “The scoreboard so far in July: Fox News has 95 mentions of impeachment, and MSNBC 448. That works out to about 2.7 mentions per hour of original programming on MSNBC, or once every 22 minutes.”

“I’ve been approached by various people to get involved. I’m keeping an open mind about running for office in the future.”

— Radio talk show host Laura Ingraham, in an interview with Real Clear Politics.

For just $9.95 per month: The Sarah Palin Channel.

In a video greeting, Palin promises her new venture will “cut through the soundbites” and “find solutions” for the “problems confronting America.”

Said Palin: “Tired of media filters? Well, so am I. So, let’s go rogue together and launch our own member-supported channel!”

[Read more…]

Longshot New York congressional candidate Nick Di Iorio (R) “has been signed to star in a proposed reality show about candidates running in ‘unwinnable’ races. In a draft opinion released Monday, the Federal Election Commission said Di Iorio can appear on the series — as long as he doesn’t get paid,” the New York Daily News reports.

Sarah Palin told the Hollywood Reporter that she might be interested in hosting a political talk show.

Said Pailin: “But the politics would have to be interspersed with a whole lot of fun and real life and inspiration showcasing American work ethic, because those topics are all pretty much the antithesis of today’s politics, which I find incorrigibly disastrous! It’d be so much fun to shake it up taking on issues that make audiences objectively consider all sides, and I’d do it with my own real-life groundedness, candor and commonsense that I’m known for. Media needs that today, versus the condescension that oozes from TV and radio… You know, someone willing to go rogue.”

Former Rep. Joe Walsh (R-IL) was booted off his own radio program for using racial slurs on-air, the Huffington Post reports.

“Walsh, who has hosted ‘The Joe Walsh Show’ on a conservative Chicago radio station since early 2013, took to Twitter to complain about being cut off by the station’s management. Walsh, by his own account, used several epithets during a discussion on the Redskins’ controversial name, including the n-word.”

“In a turn of events that could signal the departure of all irony from the world, Fox News brought on contributor Judith Miller to discuss the media’s coverage of Iraq,” the Huffington Post reports.

“That would be the same Judith Miller whose credulous, false reporting about Iraq’s non-existent weapons of mass destruction made her perhaps the most infamous example of the press’s failure in the run-up to that war. She criticized the American media for playing the ‘blame game’ in Iraq instead of perceiving, as she said she had, the growing threat of ISIS, the militant group currently sweeping through the country.”

David Carr: “Reporters and commentators might want to pause and wipe the egg off their faces before they go on camera to cluck-cluck about how Mr. Cantor, Republican of Virginia, missed signs of the insurgency that took him out. There was a lot of that going around, and the big miss by much of the political news media demonstrates that news organizations are no less a prisoner of Washington’s tunnel vision than the people who run for office…”

“Plenty of reporters are imprisoned in cubes in Washington, but stretched news organizations aren’t eager to spend money on planes, rental cars and hotel rooms so that employees can bring back reports from the hustings. While the Internet has been a boon to modern reporting — All Known Thought One Click Away — it tends to pin journalists at their desks.”

Ezra Klein: “Perhaps the single most important fact about American politics is this: the people who participate are more ideological and more partisan, as well as angrier and more fearful, than those who don’t.”

“Chelsea Clinton earned an annual salary of $600,000 at NBC News before switching to a month-to-month contract earlier this year,” sources tell Politico.

This is fascinating: Walt Mossberg talks to C-SPAN in 1984 about the old Wall Street Journal newspaper column that was the model for Political Wire when I started the site 15 years ago.

[Read more…]

Hillary Clinton admitted to People that she “totally binge-watched” the first season of House of Cards with husband Bill.

Said Clinton: “A little bit of the ‘Oh, my gosh, I can’t believe we can just sit here and do this,’ and ‘We’re only going to watch one episode, oh, let’s watch another. Okay, well, we have time, we’re not going anywhere, let’s watch a third.'”