Media

MSNBC contributor trashes network, shreds ‘Morning Joe’ colleagues over Trump meeting: ‘This is not working’

Published

3 weeks ago

November 23, 2024

MSNBC contributor Jennifer Rubin went on an unprecedented tear against her own network as well as her “Morning Joe” colleagues Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski on her podcast, defiantly criticizing her employer’s business model and ratcheting up her attacks towards the duo for revealing their meeting with President-elect Donald Trump.

On Friday’s installment of “Jen Rubin’s Green Room,” Rubin accused Scarborough and Brzezinski of “forgetting” that their audience “despises Trump” and that viewers wanted them to “hold the line against Trump” instead of engaging with the incoming president.

“What were they thinking? Who do they think their audience was?” Rubin asked. “Well, perhaps this wasn’t about their audience. Perhaps this was them trying to defend themselves or avoid retribution that they thought was coming their way. But really, these are rich, famous people. What have they got to worry about? It was just an appalling example at how eager so many elites are to fall in line, to curry favor, to deflect attention, to deflect any kind of incoming criticism that might come their way from the White House.”

“So they are getting hammered for it. They are hemorrhaging their audience. And this, of course, only exacerbates the reason and the problem why MSNBC and its other cable networks are being spun off. And that is, cable television is dying,” Rubin said. “Most of you probably haven’t watched MSNBC since the election either, and not understanding your audience and continuing to serve up the same chewed-over talking points with the same panels, essentially same program day, after day, after day, hour after hour, is no longer working. So Comcast has said, ‘Fine, spin you off. You guys go fend for yourselves. And the question after the spin-off is completed will be whether that’s a viable business model. Can they afford to pay Rachel Maddow, God bless her, 20 plus million dollars a year? Is there advertising to support that? Are there cable fees to support that? We don’t know. We don’t know if MSNBC, a year from now, is gonna exist, or whether it’s gonna be in some slim down fashion.”

Rubin, also a Washington Post columnist, went on by offering suggestions on how MSNBC can “rethink their model.”

“Get rid of the pattern of chewing over the same three or four stories all day long with a shuffling of panelists all parroting back the same line to the host, this is not working. It’s boring. It’s not good TV. They need to do something else, and they should look to models that are successful,” Rubin said. “They should look to people like The Onion. Hey, they’ve purchased Info Wars. I can’t wait to watch what they’re gonna program. They should look to shows that, yes, are perhaps lighter on the news, but actually have much more information than they do.”

Source: FoxNews.com

China

Federal Appeals Court Upholds TikTok Ban Law, Setting Stage for Supreme Court Showdown

Published

6 days ago

December 6, 2024

Sara Carter Staff

In a major development on Friday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit upheld a law requiring TikTok’s Chinese parent company, ByteDance, to sell the popular app or face a ban in the United States. A panel of three judges unanimously ruled against TikTok’s petition for relief, solidifying a legal battle that now appears headed for the Supreme Court, reports National Review.

The appeals court ruled that the contested portions of the law withstand constitutional scrutiny, with Judge Douglas Ginsburg emphasizing the government’s national security rationale. “The First Amendment exists to protect free speech in the United States,” Ginsburg wrote. “Here the Government acted solely to protect that freedom from a foreign adversary nation and to limit that adversary’s ability to gather data on people in the United States.”

U.S. officials, including leaders at the Department of Justice, have consistently raised alarms about TikTok’s relationship with the Chinese Communist Party, calling the app a national security threat of “immense depth and scale.”

TikTok argued that the law infringes on its First Amendment rights and that divesting from ByteDance is “not possible technologically, commercially, or legally” by the January 19 deadline. However, the court dismissed these arguments, leaving the app’s fate in jeopardy as the deadline looms.

Both the U.S. government and TikTok had pushed for a decision by Friday to allow sufficient time for potential appeals or alternative measures before the ban takes effect.

With the appeals court’s ruling, TikTok’s next move is likely to petition the Supreme Court. The justices could temporarily block the law’s implementation while they consider the case or allow the lower court’s decision to stand.