Media top headlines June 28
A reporter accused of passing along misleading information about Gov. Ron DeSantis' response to the condo collapse and ABC's Jonathan Karl urging Sen. Joe Manchin to use his leverage to pressure Republicans round out today's top media headlines.
MSNBC's Nicolle Wallace's reputation for sucking up to liberal guests is safe if her interview with White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki last week was any indication.
The unabashedly pro-Biden Wallace fawned over Psaki on Thursday's "Deadline: White House," telling her, "You get such high marks from the vast majority of the people in that [briefing] room. You spar a little bit with some of the president's detractors, but I'm sure privately they give you grudging respect. How do you feel like it's going?"
Psaki replied judiciously, saying it's the media's job to "push me and push us." Wallace replied with a grin, "Stand your ground is my only advice to you."
MSNBC'S NICOLLE WALLACE GUSHES OVER JEN PSAKI: ‘VAST MAJORITY’ OF REPORTERS LIKE YOU
The former George W. Bush communications director and John McCain campaign hand is one of several disgruntled ex-Republicans who have made a lucrative cable news living as committed GOP bashers, but Wallace has stood out with her fervent fandom for the Democratic Party she once opposed.
"I don't think anyone should describe these love-bomb segments as 'interviews.' Telling someone that everyone thinks you're awesome isn't really a question," the Media Research Center's Tim Graham told Fox News of Wallace's style. "But Nicolle has had a fervent audience on Twitter who tells her she's so much better than that awful Chuck Todd, who often asks actual questions."
While interviewing Democratic presidential candidate Beto O'Rourke in 2019, Wallace asked O'Rourke to "play media critic" and tell her what she and other journalists could "do better."
"Play media critic," Wallace told him. "What can we do better, for those of us covering your candidacies far away from where the first votes will be cast? ... Don't hold back!"
Wallace has had what some critics call the zeal of the convert in her rapid shift from GOP flack to liberal Democratic booster. One source close to the McCain campaign reflected with disgust on her and future Lincoln Project founder Steve Schmidt leaking damaging information to "Game Change" authors John Heilemann and Mark Halperin during the 2008 race, accusing her of having no principles.
"The only thing that was important to her is being accepted by the liberal media," the source told Fox News. "When I tell you getting invited to cocktail parties with people like Rachel Maddow is important to people like her, it’s like Black Tar heroin. They don’t care about principles."
Wallace and Schmidt often touted McCain's leadership and integrity in contrast to Donald Trump's since the latter rose to power, but they were not invited to McCain's funeral in 2018. One source at the time told Politico, "Schmidt and Nicolle and [John] Weaver stabbed him in the back."
MSNBC's Nicolle Wallace interviews Joe Biden during his 2020 campaign.
She's been more vocal about supporting Barack Obama and Joe Biden, whom she ostensibly sought to defeat in 2008, in the years since.
Last March, she interviewed Biden as he closed in on winning the Democratic primary. She finished the interview with no less than seven "thank yous" for joining him, and the smiling Wallace called Biden "just a guy in his basement talking to a gal in hers."
Her frequent nodding and laughter during the friendly interview drew derision. At one point, as Biden lost his train of thought on a criticism of Trump, Wallace urged him, "Go ahead." When he declined to elaborate, an awkward moment of silence ensued as Wallace grinned widely and moved onto her next question.
"I could describe the moment when Wallace stares blankly at the camera, an ear-to-ear smile spread across her face, as Biden apologizes awkwardly for comparing President Trump to a yo-yo. I could also describe the moment when Wallace repeats Chinese Communist Party propaganda, parroting the allegation that it is racist to refer to the COVID-19 virus by its country of origin, as Biden dumbly nods along," the Washington Examiner's Becket Adams wrote last year.
It wasn't a shock, given Wallace once said "everyone loves Joe Biden" during a segment on her show. She frequently boasted throughout the 2020 campaign she would vote for whichever Democrat was nominated and offered adoring coverage throughout.
While covering the death of singer Aretha Franklin in 2018, the show played a clip of her singing at the 2009 inauguration of former President Obama, who had just vanquished her boss in that year's election.
"A better time, a better president," Wallace said longingly of 2009, when the country was in the throes of its worst financial crisis in 70 years.
At another point during the 2020 campaign, she called future Vice President Kamala Harris "beautiful," "brilliant," and a "badass," and referred to Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., as "smarter asleep on Ambien" than Trump. Covering her dismal fourth-place finish in the New Hampshire primary last year, Wallace said Warren was a "really, really, really good candidate." Warren eventually dropped out of the race without a single primary win.
In another interview with O'Rourke, she said she was "rooting for everybody" in the Democratic primary fight.
It wasn't just presidential candidates but also possible future ones who won Wallace's affections. In 2018, Wallace's program was one of several cable news stomping grounds for Michael Avenatti, the disgraced attorney who is now facing decades behind bars for a wide array of financial crimes. At the time, Avenatti's legal fights and invective against Trump on behalf of Stormy Daniels made him a popular media booking target.
"I am just dying to hear what you think," Wallace told Avenatti to introduce one appearance, asking for his assessment of a Fox News interview with Trump.
Later in 2018, she said people would be "foolish to underestimate" Avenatti as a Democratic presidential hopeful. Of an upcoming speech to Iowa that year that Avenatti showed to her, she said "it hit a lot of the right notes." But even Washington Post blogger Jennifer Rubin thought the notion of Avenatti as a presidential hopeful was preposterous during the segment.
MSNBC'S NICOLLE WALLACE SUGGESTS SEN. RON JOHNSON IS ‘IN CAHOOTS’ WITH RUSSIA TO HURT BIDEN
Like other media members, Wallace also enthused over New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, D., in 2020 for his coronavirus response. She called him "everything Trump isn't: honest, direct, brave," words that didn't age well in the light of allegations from the state's Democratic Attorney General that he covered up coronavirus nursing home death data.
In an interview this month with Dr. Anthony Fauci in the aftermath of the release of thousands of his emails from the start of the coronavirus pandemic, Wallace cooed, "the true mark of someone is if they look good even when their personal emails come out, so you pass the test very few of us would pass."
Wallace's overtures to the left since the Trump era have seen her go from fired co-host of "The View" to one of MSNBC's stars. Her show was recently expanded to two hours in the afternoon, and she was one of the faces of the network's 2020 political coverage.
She leaves plenty of detractors in her wake.
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"People will do anything to be accepted by the left … People will sell their souls for that s--t. I want to know what the f--- she ever believed in," the source close to McCain's campaign said.