| | | | MEDIA WINNER:
Daily Caller's
Richie McGinniss Richie McGinniss, along with his Daily Caller colleague Shelby Talcott, delivered some stunning footage from Kenosha, Wisconsin Tuesday evening.
On the scene to report on the protests and violence that began after police shot a Black man, Jacob Blake, McGinniss and Talcott posted several photos and videos on Twitter as the evening went on. Blake's family has reported that he is in stable condition, but is paralyzed from the waist down, among other injuries.
In an increasingly online media world, on-the-scene live reporting can be especially valuable, to provide verifiable depictions of chaotic scenes. Any live reporting from a protest or riot has the potential to put the reporter in harm's way, but McGinniss went a step above with his actions last night.
In several video clips that have emerged from last night, gunfire can be heard and McGinniss can be seen immediately rushing to the aid of one of the shooting victims, taking off his shirt to use to attempt to stop the bleeding.
A later clip showed McGinniss helping carry the victim to a vehicle so he could be transported to the hospital.
Kenosha Police reported that a total of three people were shot, with two fatalities and the third victim "transported to the hospital with serious, but non-life threatening injuries."
The condition of the man who McGinniss helped is unclear at this time, but his efforts are rightly being praised as heroic. At the moment that he rushed to the man's side, the shooter was still in the immediate vicinity, and McGinniss could have very easily been shot himself.
If the man survived, it is due in no small part to McGinniss' selfless and courageous actions.
6.5.0 |
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| | MEDIA LOSER:
Joe Lockhart CNN political analyst Joe Lockhart invited a swarm of angry tweets Tuesday evening with a snide comment about Nick Sandmann, who spoke at the Republican National Convention.
Sandmann was a student at Covington Catholic who was in D.C. for the 2019 March for Life, when he and his classmates were videoed in a confrontation with Native American activists led by Nathan Phillips. Initial news reports attacked the students as racist and hateful, especially Sandmann, who was seen smiling and wearing a MAGA hat in the video.
The story quickly did a 180-degree spin when additional video clips came out, revealing Phillips and his acquaintances to be the aggressors and no evidence that the students actually said anything racist. Several media outlets, including the Washington Post and CNN, had already published stories blaming the students, causing them to be the target of harassment and threats.
Sandmann filed several lawsuits over the false portrayals, and successfully settled with CNN and WaPo earlier this year. His remarks at the RNC focused on "cancel culture" and fighting back against the "outrage mob."
Lockhart was unimpressed, tweeting before Sandmann's speech, "I'm watching tonight because it's important. But i don't have to watch this snot nose entitled kid from Kentucky."
Twitter users across the political spectrum were outraged at Lockhart's slam on the 18-year-old, but he refused to back down, continuing to spar with Twitter critics for hours and posting a running commentary complaining bitterly about every RNC speaker.
Disagree with Sandmann's support for Trump or think his story was unworthy of a prime RNC speaking slot, fine, but Lockhart's comments were petty and pointless -- and a tacky move for someone employed by the very network that just had to fork over an undisclosed sum to Sandmann for their prior coverage. 6.5.0 |
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| | RNC NIGHT TWO The second night of the Trumpstravaganza included speeches from more people named Trump and several scenes that drew both praise and accusations of Hatch Act violations. Good times for both sides of the aisle, right?
Uninvited!
A lot of the buzz leading up to Tuesday's speeches was about someone who was supposed to speak, but then found herself uninvited. Mary Ann Mendoza had tweeted an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory mere hours before her videoed speech was scheduled to air. Her apology was viewed by many as vague and insufficient -- and it also wasn't the first time she'd shared anti-Semitic conspiracies on her social media.
Ponder pardoned
Trump appeared in a taped video with Jon Ponder, a convicted bank robber who went on to found the group Hope for Prisoners, and Richard Beasley, who was actually the FBI agent who arrested Ponder, to announce that he was issuing a presidential pardon for Ponder.
It was a visibly emotional scene as Ponder and his wife watched the president sign the official pardon, but still drew critics for its inclusion in the party convention.
Five new Americans Trump continued to bust through political tradition by using part of the RNC to air a naturalization ceremony from the White House.
Acting United States Secretary of Homeland Security Chad Wolf led the first part of the event as he presented Trump with five candidates for naturalization, then conducted them through the Oath of Allegiance.
It was a moving scene, but also raised questions about the propriety of using the White House to perform official government functions but to promote and aid a partisan political campaign.
Multiple members of the media attacked it as a Hatch Act violation. Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows dismissed it as no big deal. "Nobody outside of the Beltway really cares," he said.
Boo, nepotism! LOL JK
Pam Bondi had an, ummm, interesting speech. The former Florida Attorney General who dropped her state's investigation into Trump University after he gave her re-election campaign a $25,000 donation (over the legal limit), railed about corruption.
She then complained about nepotism -- as she spoke right before Trump's children Tiffany Trump and Eric Trump, and First Lady Melania Trump.
Come together
Melania Trump had one of the more uplifting speeches of the night, offering her "deepest sympathy...to everyone that has lost a loved one" and addressing the protests and riots that have occurred across the country, urging Americans to "come together in a civil manner."
Biden a socialist? I wish!
Sen. Bernie Sanders had a sharp rebuke to the attempts by RNC speakers to paint Biden as a socialist, sending out an email saying "if only that were true..."
Read it here.
RNC NIGHT THREE
Catch the live program for the third night, as well as all the clips and highlights, via our ongoing coverage.
Night three features speakers to include: Vice President Mike Pence, Second Lady Karen Pence, Tennessee Sen. Martha Blackburn, Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst, South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, Texas Rep. Dan Crenshaw, New York Rep. Elise Stefanik, Lara Trump, former acting director of national intelligence Richard Grenell, and Kellyanne Conway, the White House advisor who is stepping down at the end of the month.
FIND ALL OUR RNC COVERAGE HERE
Awkward backtracking
FDA Chief Stephen Hahn effusively praised the announcement that his agency was approving an emergency authorization for convalescent plasma at a White House press conference on Sunday. On Tuesday, he walked those comments back, significantly.
How far was he off? Oh, about a thousand percent.
Take cover
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott warned that Hurricane Laura presented a growing threat, calling it "an unsurvivable storm," and warning Texans in the evacuation zones that they had mere hours to find safe shelter.
The latest developments show the storm increasing in strength and threatening devastating storm surges that could reach miles inland in Louisiana and Texas. Our thoughts and prayers to everyone in the storm's path.
Blake family takes high road
As violence has erupted in Kenosha following the shooting of Jacob Blake, his family has stepped forward to call for an end to the violence. Several family members gave a public address calling for calm and peace, and Blake's followed up in an interview with CNN's Don Lemon, saying that she and her family were "quite frankly disgusted" by the violence, which was not helping her son.
Lemon himself called for an end to the violence, saying "the rioting has to stop." 6.5.0 |
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| "Turfany or Malaria?"
Late-night host Stephen Colbert went on an epic tear Tuesday night mocking the evening's performances at the RNC, shredding the lineup of speakers as "looking like a racist spelling bee," quipped about the resemblance between Melania's outfit and the "Soviet tank corps," and commented on Trump's reactions watching his own children speak.
We've got the full video with all these jokes and more here. |
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