THE DAILY NEWSLETTER  - MONDAY, JANUARY 11, 2021

Media Winners & Losers

MEDIA WINNERS:
Igor Bobic

A member of the United States Capitol Police is being hailed as a hero after he apparently led President Donald Trump’s supporters away from the U.S. Senate chambers during the storming of the Capitol. And a reporter on the scene, doing his job, is why we know about it.

Huffington Post's Igor Bobic was in the Capitol during the Trump-incited insurrection, and he shared numerous photos and videos to document the events that took place that day. One of the most alarming things he posted on Twitter was a video of Officer Eugene Goodman, who was forced to confront the mob alone before they reached the Senate chamber.

Officer Goodman was being pursued by angry rioters when he saw that an entrance to the Senate chamber was not guarded. Goodman can be seen on video distracting the leaders of the mob, baiting them and leading them away from the open access.  

The leader of that angry, motley crowd, later identified as Doug Jensen, was arrested days later, as were others who were identified an charged.

Journalist Bobic was in the thick of the riots that day, and among the important moments he captured, this quick-thinking act of heroic action became a viral sensation. It highlights the dangers faced by officers and press, and the individual acts of heroism and valor that helped prevent a terrible and deadly attack from being potentially much, much worse..

Goodman was a hero. And Bobic is a clear media winner for bravely capturing the moment.

MEDIA LOSER:
Mick Mulvaney

Mick Mulvaney, President Donald Trump’s former chief of staff, resigned as US special envoy to Northern Ireland after the horrific storming of the Capitol incited by President Donald Trump’s rhetoric to his supporters about the stolen election.

But Chris Wallace really grilled him on Fox News Sunday over his resignation, even questioning Mulvaney for trying to claim Trump is “different” now.

“After all of the controversial things Donald Trump did over the past four years, why was this week the final straw?” Wallace asked.

Mulvaney said he could “defend almost all” of the things people say about Trump, dismissing the critique of the president’s rhetoric as “stylistic differences,” but said, “Wednesday was different. Wednesday was existential.”

He suggested there would be a better case for impeachment now than last time, and when Wallace asked whether he would vote to impeach if he were in the House, Mulvaney said he'd look at it closely.

At one point Wallace even directly asked him, "Do you feel any responsibility for enabling Donald Trump?" Mulvaney said, "I feel a lot of emotions this week." He said Trump "has the ability to be presidential," before remarking, "I don't know what's different. If it's different about him now, if it's different about his advisers. He used to love vigorous debate from all sides of a particular issue. I don't know if he still has that."

Whatever new role in media or politics that Mulvaney is wrangling for, the "different" is the lamest, least believeable, and judging by tweet reactions, least believed wiggle possible.

The A-Block

Revamp

Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott has just announced a new daytime programming line-up that will debut on Monday, January 18th.

The most notable changes have news anchor Martha MacCallum moving from her 7 p.m. slot to hosting a dayside show at 3 p.m. Harris Faulkner will no longer host Outnumbered Overtime a 1 p.m.and will now host The Faulkner Focus at 11 a.m.

And that's not all...

Shake-up

It’s lineup shuffling day at the major cable news networks. Less than an hour after Fox News announced a series of changes, CNN is following suit with a shakeup of its own.

Via press release Monday morning, the network announced a number of new assignments for their top anchors and correspondents in Washington. Most notably, Jake Tapper’s daily afternoon show, The Lead, is expanding permanently to two hours. It will now air from 4-6 p.m., shortening Wolf Blitzer’s The Situation Room by an hour. 

And that is also not all...

A New Tweet Thesis

Twitter shares dropped significantly on Monday after the company permanently suspended President Donald Trump’s account — prompting CNBC’s Jim Cramer to urge the platform to find a new attraction “very, very quickly.”

Cumulus Cowed

Cumulus Media, the radio broadcasting company that's home to a number of major conservative talkers, is reportedly telling their hosts they'll be fired if they continue to spread baseless claims about the 2020 presidential election.

Send Them to Gitmo

Meghan McCain said she wouldn’t be opposed if Trump supporters who invaded the U.S. Capitol were punished by being sent to Guantanamo Bay.

This is a pretty good question.

Freshman House Republican Rep. Ashley Hinson (IA) is asking Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) to explain why a state-backed Chinese newspaper is showing up in congressional offices.

“I did not request China Daily, nor did my staff,” Hinson wrote in a letter to Pelosi, noting she had discovered the paper in her office upon arriving in Congress. “I am appalled that this could happen,” Hinson added. “I write to insist you use the control you have as Speaker of the House of Representatives to stop the [Chinese Communist Party] from distributing its state-run publication within our hallowed halls.”

China Daily, a propaganda organ of China’s Communist Party, distributes copies of its English-language version to members of Congress, and periodically draws attention for making wild claims backed by the Chinese government. Those have included its assertion this month that the Chinese “reeducation centers” holding millions of Uighurs have helped women to become more than “baby-making machines,” and its claim last year that AIDS “spread to the world” after it was “first discovered” in the United States.

Parler Censored?

Social media app Parler was removed from the Google Play and Apple App stores, the company’s email services and even legal services were discontinued, and, at midnight Pacific last night, Amazon Web Services removed Parler entirely after a warning period, effectively shutting the company down.

Many conservatives are loudly objecting on the grounds of free speech. A legitimate argument to make, but one should at least be aware of what was actually on the platform that triggered the take-down.

It's frankly shocking.

Parler Sues 

Parler on Monday filed suit against Amazon, alleging that it had violated antitrust laws and breached a contract between the companies by suddenly refusing to provide service and forcing the platform to go dark.

“When Twitter announced two evenings ago that it was permanently banning President Donald Trump from its platform, conservative users began to flee Twitter en masse for Parler,” the company wrote in the suit, filed in U.S. District Court in Seattle. “The exodus was so large that the next day, yesterday, Parler became the number one free app downloaded from Apple’s App Store.”

“AWS’s decision to effectively terminate Parler’s account is apparently motivated by political animus,” attorneys for Parler wrote. It is also apparently designed to reduce competition in the microblogging services market to the benefit of Twitter.”

The company also accused Amazon of informing BuzzFeed of its decision far enough in advance that the website was able to publish a story about it before Amazon ever informed Parler.

Read more from Mediaite's Rudy Takala here.

 

Must See Clip

Broken Glass

Arnold Schwarzenegger reacted to the violent mob of Trump supporters storming the Capitol with a video Sunday that drew a very clear parallel to Kristallnacht.

“I grew up in Austria. I’m very aware of Kristallnacht, or the Night of Broken Glass. It was a night of rampage against the Jews carried out in 1938 by the Nazi equivalent of the Proud Boys,” the former California governor said. “Wednesday was the Day of Broken Glass right here in the United States.”

He got very personal talking about the physical and emotional pain he witnessed from “broken men” when he was growing up who were riddled with guilt “over their participation in the most evil regime in history,” even his own father.

Watch the full video here.

Links We Like

Republican No More: The GOP’s Existential Crisis
- Ed Morrissey, Hot Air
The Phony Free Speech Martyrs
- Jay Caruso, Monday Notice

Biden Has Historic Opportunity To Meet The Moment With Inaugural Address
- Hugh Hewitt, Washington Post

Surprise, Surprise: Off-Duty Cops From All Over the Country Were in D.C. During Capitol Coup Attempt
- Ishena Robinson, The Root

The Conservative Cult of Victimhood
- David Frum, The Atlantic
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