Harris Does Hostile Interview, Changing Nothing Except How People See Bret Baier
Fox unable to get either answers or even non-answers out of Harris
Oct. 17: Fox ejaculates just 30 seconds in … America escalates Yemen bombing … GOP revives attack on abortion drug … Man arrested for FEMA threat delivers emergency supplies of reasons to be hopeful …
No podcast today, but I’m gonna try to get back to them tomorrow and as always you can find all of TFN’s podcasts here.
First they said Vice Pres. Kamala Harris had to do an interview with a big media outlet. Then they said Harris had to do one without Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN) alongside her. Then they said she had to do a hostile interview. With a big media outlet. Without Walz. In a box. With a Fox.
So, last night, Harris sat down with Fox’s Bret Baier and managed to reveal to American voters that Baier is one rude motherfucker. And…that’s pretty much it.
By continually interrupting — beginning before the second hand swept a full minute on the clock — Baier gave Harris cover and ensured that nothing meaningful came out of their exchange. Just like all her past interviews.
But per The New York Times, Baier’s approach “yielded dividends.” The example the Times gave was that Harris:
“...issued one of her clearest comments yet creating distance from the current administration: ‘My presidency will not be a continuation of [Pres.] Joe Biden’s presidency.’”
No, as the kids say, doy.
No presidency has ever been a continuation of the previous one’s. It’s trivially true of every new president and doesn’t actually tell us anything other than that Harris would like not to be associated with an incumbent who doesn’t poll well. No doy.
Ironically, but expectedly, Baier came at Harris from the right. Just like everyone does. Harris does get questioned about dropping her opposition to fracking, but for the media asking it, that’s an “authenticity” issue, not a planet-fucking issue.
Imagine if Baier had asked Harris how she feels about America making climate change worse during the Biden-Harris administration. Or why former Pres. Donald Trump is more of a threat to democracy than a president who illegally provides arms used to violate civil rights.
Or if Baier quoted Sen. JD Vance (R-OH) praising the work of Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan, and pressed Harris on whether she’ll keep Khan on to continue her crusade against corporate monopolies.
But no, Baier conducted the interview as if he actually watches Fox. Zeteo’s Justin Baragona reported that he heard from two former Fox producers who watched it:
"Baier showed, again, he's not a 'straight news' anchor. He's a hack who's no different than [Fox hack Sean] Hannity or [hackier Fox hack Jesse] Watters. He bowed to the pressure from his MAGA fans because he doesn't care as long as they don't change the channel."
"…so interesting to see Bret Baier for who he really is now that I'm on the outside looking in … just so completely in the tank it's hard to believe anyone sees him as a real journalist."
And imagine how flummoxed F[lumm]ox would’ve been if Harris weren’t competing with Trump to be tougher on immigrants? What if Democrats were out there praising immigrants for (a) lowering our crime rates and (b) saving the U.S. economy? Maybe immigration wouldn’t be such an effective issue against Democrats.
Instead of playing defense, Harris could be factually and morally right on the issues and be in a position to return to her original, effective strategy of beclowning Trump and Vance.
What happened to calling them “weird” all the time I enjoyed that!
The focus now, it seems, is on convincing voters Harris is Republican-Lite, embracing GOP narratives on immigration, crime, and even some LGBTQ+ issues. (Harris last night responded to a question about the burning issue of using taxpayer funds for transgender inmate health costs by saying Trump did it, too. There’s a forceful, proud argument to be made for the government’s moral obligation to provide health care for the people it imprisons! It’s the Democratic shame-having that turns people off.)
Maybe your never-wrong TFN is wrong here. Maybe after Harris wins, some genius will show how this Democratic GOP-ness1 nailed down the precise combination of swing-state Electoral College votes needed to secure a victory.
But in a campaign where neither party is celebrating immigrants, Democrats shouldn’t be surprised that former Pres. Bill Clinton’s remarks about Laken Riley getting killed because of border policies got turned against Harris this week.
On That Note, America Just Bombed Yemen
The U.S. last night escalated its military involvement in on Yemen. For the first time, the U.S. military deployed B-2 stealth bombers to strike underground weapons bunkers and then fucked up the whole “stealth” thing by announcing it in a statement.
The strikes were said to have hit five storage facilities in Sanaa, the capital, and Saada. Houthi militias with ties to Iran have been fucking with nearby military and civilian shipping vessels. Yesterday, the U.S. said it will do everything necessary to ensure that Americans are safe in placing their Amazon orders for plastic crap from China.
“This was a unique demonstration of the United States’ ability to target facilities that our adversaries seek to keep out of reach, no matter how deeply buried underground, hardened, or fortified,” said Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin.
The Houthis have said their maritime attacks are in solidarity with Gaza, which still exists despite a year of U.S.-backed attacks by Israel. They have said the attacks will stop once there is a ceasefire in place, which Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu opposes because then he’d have to cease firing. Pres. Joe Biden supports a ceasefire but not enough to cease giving Netanyahu weapons to fire.
GOP Also Capable of Fucking Up Three Weeks Til Election Day
Republican state attorneys general have filed suit in federal court seeking to impose new limits on the abortion medication mifepristone.
As Jessica Valenti writes at her Abortion, Every Day substack, the suit:
“...seeks to make the abortion medication illegal for minors entirely, and targets shield state abortion providers who’ve been shipping abortion medication to patients in states with bans.”
Medical abortions now account for almost two-thirds of all abortions in the country.
The suit is an attempted do-over of past litigation that failed at the Supreme Court level. That case, however, failed because the right-wing, Jesus-worshiping judges ruled that the plaintiffs didn’t have standing to sue. And provided a manual for how subsequent suits might go about pleasing Jesus.
The new suit appears to be an attempt to address those flaws per the right-wing Supreme Court’s guidance and give the court enough cover to issue a different ruling this time when the case inevitably goes all the way to the top.
Clown’s Musical Sequel FLOPS
The reviews are in.
After a wildly profitable blockbuster first outing full of anarchy and nihilism, audiences are not thrilled with seeing their hero in a sequel that includes tons of musical numbers.
I’m speaking, of course, about “Joker: Folie à Deux.” It cost $200 million, is bombing at the box office worse than any superhero movie of the modern era, and getting creamed in reviews by audiences and America’s last surviving professional movie critics.
I’m also speaking (also of course), about Donald Trump: Folie à Duh, a production that’s also burned through hundreds of millions of dollars and also featured the bizarre decision by the director/star — whose 2016 blockbuster caught Hollywood and most sane people by surprise — to turn his sequel, too, into a musical.
And just like Joker 2, Trump 2’s audiences are walking out on him. And/or shooting at him. And wondering why the fuck Trump opted to spend 39 minutes — at what was supposed to be an exciting event with dialogue — “dancing” to his own personal playlist.
The reviews, too, are not great:
“Odd.” - The New York Times.
“Bizarre.” - The Washington Post and NBC.
“Weird.” - MSNBC.
“Swaying like a manatee tangled in seaweed.” - Jimmy Kimmel.
“⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐” - Fox News.
Just like Joker 2, Trump’s production features someone inexplicably falling for a literal clown whose life is a gaudy vulgar train wreck, whose mental stability is questionable at best, and who’s literally responsible for human beings dying.
Even some of the artists whose songs Trump played on Monday are pissed about it. But the Republican National Committee (RNC) said yesterday that the production properly licensed every song used.
Here are some of the selections from the two lunatics’ lunatic productions:
Joker 2: “Get Happy,” “That’s Entertainment,” “Close to You,” “That’s Entertainment,” and “That’s Life.”
Trump 2: “Hallelujah,” “November Rain,” “YMCA,” “It’s a Man’s Man’s Man’s World,” “Rich Men North of Richmond,” “An American Triology,” “Nothing Compares 2 U,” “Ave Maria” (two versions! Instrumental and
dubstepvocals), and funeral favorite “Time to Say Goodbye.”
Anyway, it’s easy to be smug about all this, but people forget just how bad both of the original productions were. And yet, the directors of each somehow got people to back a sequel.
Supermarkets Deploy AI, Facial Recognition…to Help You
Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) is demanding answers from Kroger’s, the country’s biggest supermarket chain, about its use of facial-recognition technology and digital shelf-pricing that it’s deploying to help you because it loves you.
Kroger’s is using “electronic shelf labels,” (ESL) which can be changed remotely, instantly, algorithmically, for individual shoppers, instead of by the teenage stock boy from The Simpsons with one of those cool price-sticker guns. Kroger’s says they’re using ESLs so they can lower prices even more quickly! Out of its love for you.
In a statement, Kroger’s said, “Any test of electronic shelf tags is designed to lower prices for more customers where it matters most.” Because love.
And the Kroger cameras that will look at your face and identify you? That’s to make sure you’re getting relevant ads! #Love.
As Tlaib points out, facial recognition has a history of discriminating against people of color that may have something to do with being programmed by people with a history of discriminating against people of color. But even if Kroger’s is telling the truth (about which, more in a moment), there are real problems here.
One, of course, is that intentions don’t matter. Capabilities matter. No matter how much the current Kroger’s board of directors loves us, for all we know, tomorrow Kroger’s will get bought by Elon Musk and converted to Xroger’s and start identifying our faces, figuring out that we really need to use the bathroom, and telling all those ESLs to jack up the prices the second we hit the toilet paper aisle.
And even with good intentions we’ve got problems. Big Food has already fucked a couple generations of Americans with what it puts in what used to be our “food.” The combination of Kroger’s two new technologies empowers Big Food to influence our eating patterns even more. Even worse.
Lowering prices could fuel terrible eating choices. For us. For the planet.
And that’s all if Kroger’s really truly loves us. But does it? Well, like anyone who wants to vet a lover’s true intentions, your dogged TFN turned to the internets. And wouldn’t you know it, as recently as August, here’s a Kroger’s executive admitting they jacked up the prices on eggs and dairy even above the inflated prices they were paying.
You broke my heart, Kroger’s.
Trump Fan Charged with Threatening FEMA Workers
Suppose you believed things you read on Facebook. And suppose you had guns. And suppose you thought the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) was not delivering relief aid to your neighbors after a natural disaster.
Would you:
A) Go help distribute aid to your neighbors.
B) Do a little research to find out whether Facebook lied to you.
C) Call for people to swarm FEMA and steal the aid from them.
Keep in mind, option (C) requires believing that FEMA had relief supplies, chose to ship them to the affected area (in this case Lake Lure, NC), and then, uh, just sat on them for reasons.
Well, if you think option (C) is obviously absurd, meet 44-year-old William Jacob Parsons!
Parsons saw the rumors lies online and — being an anti-government, anti-vax, conspiracy-theorist MAGA who’s lost the narrative of his own life — posted this:
“We the people are seeking volunteers to join us and overtake the FEMA site in Lake Lure and send the products up the mountains this Saturday.”
Parsons didn’t explain why FEMA would bring aid to Lake Lure in order not to distribute it. But either way, Parsons was pissed about it. So he loaded guns into his truck and went to the site that FEMA had set up to not distribute the relief supplies they had chosen to bring there for reasons.
Parsons ended up getting arrested — because actuarial tables show us that’s a strong possibility when you believe Facebook shit. But here’s the part I love: Parsons didn’t actually attack FEMA. Here’s why:
“I went up and saw that there was absolutely nothing there, so I stayed, and I volunteered all day.”
In other words, empiricism happened! So the problem isn’t that they’re epistemologically impervious. It’s that they are unduly credulous and yet also so confident and so enamored of the American narrative of “It’s Hero Time!” that they take it upon themselves to do shit.
When he saw the facts, he wanted to help!
If, like Parsons, some MAGA are still vulnerable to facts, maybe we can reel a lot more of them back in with a culture that doesn’t encourage unquestioned confidence or “It’s Hero Time!” thinking. (Both of which are probably factors in this offering this proposed remedy, obvi…)
TCB
I hope to be back to my full, non-brain-fuzzed self tomorrow next week. Thanks for hanging in there with me. As always, you can support TFN with a one-time PayPal donation or by upgrading to a paid subscription:
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I recommend LOLGOP’s Substack for finding things you can do in the final days of the election and recommend BoltsMag.org for good reporting on lower-profile races. Most of all, TFN recommends keeping calm and carrying on.
Go get ‘em, kids!
Say it out loud. #NSFW.
The Harris campaign continues to be discouraging. I already early-voted for Not-Trump/Vance/MAGA (Harris/Walz), but I’m beginning to fear all were going to get is another Obama-like slight-right-leaning _status quo_ tweaker, rather than the genuine reformer we need.
oh COME ON. Harris was her usual professional self, answered questions however rudely or provocatively phrased, and hopefully made a showing to convince at least a few Fox-News-ies to vote Blue (or at least stay home). Good practice for the pressers she will take as our next PRESIDENT.