THE DAILY NEWSLETTER - WEDNESDAY, APRIL 13, 2022

Media Winners & Losers

MEDIA WINNER:
Chris Wallace

CNN+ host Chris Wallace interviewed First Sister and longtime senior campaign official Valerie Biden Owens for his new show Who’s Talking to Chris Wallace. 

Much of the interview centered around Owens’s new book “Growing Up Biden,” which chronicles her close relationship with President Joe Biden and his family over the years, as well as her work in building his career.

During one tense exchange, an almost apologetic Wallace asked about the strife that has dogged the president’s only surviving son. Owens objected to Wallace’s characterization that Hunter has had “a troubled life,” pushing back and emphasizing how proud she is of her nephew.

Wallace spent a portion of the interview grilling Ms. Owens about President Biden’s promise, made during his inaugural address, that ”We can see each other not as adversaries but as neighbors. We can treat each other with dignity and respect. We can join forces, stop the shouting, and lower the temperature. For without unity, there is no peace, only bitterness and fury.”

After playing a clip of that moment, Wallace asked why “that hasn’t happened,” and about how lambasting Trump in her book fits into her brother’s pledge.

Again it turned into a great exchange.

Wallace's new format for frank conversations with big names, which is also an old format that once dominated the news interview game, continues to deliver for the streaming platform - which to be equally frank, can use the help.

MEDIA LOSER:
Chris Cuomo

Three days before Jeff Zucker fired Chris Cuomo last year, CNN received a letter from an attorney for one of Cuomo’s former coworkers. Per the New York Times, it alleged that while he worked for ABC News, he harassed her and that he “badgered her for sex, and after she declined, he assaulted her, she said. She ran out of the room.”

The letter alleged Cuomo later contacted her “seemingly out of the blue” while he was working at CNN during the height of the #MeToo movement. It claimed the host offered to do a favorable segment about her employer, which turned out to be a public relations firm working for WeWork.

According to the letter, the woman attempted to ignore Cuomo. But he did the segment anyway. The Washington Free Beacon unearthed that old clip on Tuesday.

"Viewers tuning into CNN on a chilly morning in December 2017 might have been puzzled when a treacly corporate promotion interrupted the network's wall-to-wall news coverage of the Trump administration," the Beacon wrote, in a article that characterized it as a “corporate puff piece" delivered out of the blue amid real news coverage.

Not surprisingly, Cuomo did not explain the segment’s supposed raison d’être. In a statement to the Beacon, a CNN spokesperson declined to comment saying the issue “may be related to litigation.”

There's been plenty of that, where Chris Cuomo is concerned. Litigation. Likewise questions going unanswered.

Yet there always seems to be more of both.

The A-Block

The Rock

In the eyes of his former chief of staff, the list of Republicans who could pose a serious challenge to former President Donald Trump has only three names on it. One is obvious. Another is fairly conventional. But the third is way, way out of the box.

Speaking with Politico in an item published by Playbook on Wednesday, former Trump Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney handicapped the 2024 GOP primary field.

“[Gov. RonDeSantis [R-FL] could give him a run for his money. [Sen.] Tim Scott [R-SC] can give him a run for his money. Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson could give him a run for his money,” Mulvaney said.

No, that last name is not a misprint. Mulvaney believes The Rock could lay the smackdown on his former boss in the 2024 primary.

It's not even that far-fetched.


🇺🇦 FOR LATEST UKRAINE COVERAGE CLICK HERE


In Other News...

Reporters Grill Biden After He Accuses Putin of 'Genocide': 'Why?' ... 'What More Did You Learn?'

Megyn Kelly Jokes About Swinging With the Clintons: ‘If Bill and Hillary Ask Us to Swing, We're Doing it!'

'Show Him Love': Rapper Drops Cringe Song Celebrating Matt Gaetz as the 'Chosen One'

RATINGS: April 11 - Rachel Maddow Returns With More Than 2 Million Viewers

Must See Clip

Busing Immigrants

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott delivered on a promise to send a busload of migrants to Washington, D.C. this week.

The bus arrived on Wednesday not at the Capitol building, but in front of one that houses Fox News, NBC News, and CSPAN newsrooms, as explained in a tweet from Fox News anchor John Roberts.

Naturally the destination was meant to ensure the arrival would be caught on camera. And it was.

Links We Like

Banned Books Are About to Be the New Pussy Hats
- Kara Voght, Rolling Stone
How Princess Diana’s Dance With the Media Impacted William and Harry
- Tina Brown, Vanity Fair
Abbott Elementary’s Crisis Comedy
-  Armond White, National Review
I’ve Worked in Porn for Years. I Have Some News for Shows Like Bridgerton.
- Noelle Perdue, Slate
Reading this online? Why not get it in your inbox? Sign up for the Mediaite Live from the Greenroom Newsletter today!
Twitter Twitter
Facebook Facebook
Instagram Instagram
Visit Mediaite Visit Mediaite
Copyright © 2021 Mediaite LLC All rights reserved.

Write to us:  tips@mediaite.com

Problems with these e-mails? Update your preferences or unsubscribe from this list.