Moderator Savannah Guthrie hailed for keeping Trump in check at town hall

Today show co-host pressed president on debts, coronavirus and QAnon without letting president dominate

Adam Gabbatt - 16 Oct 2020

Donald Trump’s floundering performance during Thursday’s NBC town hall left many feeling there was only one winner from the event – Trump’s interviewer, Savannah Guthrie.

Guthrie, a co-host of NBC’s Today morning show, repeatedly got the better of Trump as she pressed the president on his debts, his actions on coronavirus, and the dangerous rightwing conspiracy theory QAnon.

Trump was at times clearly uncomfortable, and his campaign attacked Guthrie less than an hour after the event finished, suggesting Guthrie had filled the role of “Joe Biden surrogate”.

The criticism from the Trump campaign only served to prove that this was a nightmare scenario for the president, who has restricted himself to rightwing media in recent weeks.

In Guthrie, Trump met someone who not only fact-checked him in real time, but at times pushed back on his usually unchallenged rhetoric.

The tone was set early, when Trump claimed that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had found that “85% of people who wear a mask catch [coronavirus]”.

Guthrie corrected the president, explaining that is not what the survey said – it found that of a group of 150 Covid-19 patients, 85% said they had worn a mask.

It was rare for Trump to be contradicted, given his “interviews” with Fox News frequently consist of him phoning in and talking at length, uninterrupted.

A standout moment came when Guthrie challenged Trump over QAnon, a baseless online conspiracy theory that the FBI believes is a potential domestic terror threat.

Asked by Guthrie if he would denounce the QAnon theory and “just say it’s crazy and not true”, Trump responded: “I don’t know about QAnon.”

Guthrie stuck to the topic and suggested to Trump that he did actually know about the conspiracy theory, which has been widely covered in the press and has found support among many of Trump’s backers.

“What I do hear about it, they are very strongly against pedophilia,” Trump said.

The exchange created one of the headlines of the night, as Trump seemingly offered a tacit defense of QAnon, whose adherents believe that a cabal of Satan-worshipping Democrats, Hollywood celebrities and billionaires runs the world while engaging in pedophilia.

Believers and promoters of QAnon are a regular presence in crowds at Trump rallies, and Trump and other Republicans have been reluctant to criticize the movement.

Just this week Trump shared a post from a QAnon Twitter account which claimed, baselessly, that Joe Biden had had a navy Seal team killed. Guthrie asked Trump why he had done so.

“That was a retweet! People can decide for themselves!” Trump said.

Guthrie responded: “I don’t get that. You’re the president, not someone’s crazy uncle.”

On Twitter, Trump’s niece, who wrote the book Too Much and Never Enough documenting her experiences with her uncle, appeared to suggest Guthrie could be mistaken.

After the event, Trump’s communications director issued a statement hailing Trump’s performance – an assessment that probably seemed surprising to many of those who watched the town hall.

“Even though the commission canceled the in-person debate that could have happened tonight, one occurred anyway, and President Trump soundly defeated NBC’s Savannah Guthrie in her role as debate opponent and Joe Biden surrogate,” Murtaugh said.

Murtagh added: “President Trump masterfully handled Guthrie’s attacks.”

Guthrie succeeded in challenging Trump on his finances – following a New York Times investigation that revealed Trump owns a $421m debt.

“Who do you owe $421m to?” Guthrie said.

Trump equivocated and claimed he owed “a very small amount of money” and was “underlevered”.

Guthrie asked: “Are you confirming that, yes, you do owe some $400m?”

“What I’m saying is that it’s a tiny percentage of my net worth,” Trump said.

“That sounds like yes,” Guthrie responded.

The sense that Trump was being subjected to real journalism recalled a contentious Fox News interview with Trump, and an Axios interview, but they came in July and August respectively.

Guthrie, who was born in Melbourne, Australia, where her American father was posted for work, swiftly won praise on Twitter from Democrats and people on the left.

Unsurprisingly, not everyone was impressed – with the right wing particularly upset at Guthrie’s handling of the town hall.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/oct/15/savannah-guthrie-trump-town-hall-moderator

>>11098507

Savannah Guthrie: The town hall moderator who held Trump to task

Television host is married to former Al Gore political operative

Graeme Massie - 16 Oct 2020

Today show host Savannah Guthrie won rave social media reviews on Thursday night for her tough handling of Donald Trump’s latest town hall on NBC.

The journalist was involved in a string of testy exchanges with the president as she pushed him for answers on his coronavirus response, white supremacy and QAnon.

Australian-born Ms Guthrie is married to former Democratic political aide Michael Feldman, with whom she has two children.

Mr Feldman served as Al Gore’s traveling chief of staff during the 2000 election campaign and is the founding partner and managing director of a communications and advocacy firm.

He founded the firm The Glover Park Group with fellow Gore campaign advisors Carter Eskew and Chip Smith, as well as former White House press secretary Joe Lockhart.

Ms Guthrie has worked for NBC in a string of roles since 2007 when she joined as a legal analyst after being the national correspondent for CourtTV.

The broadcaster covered Sarah Palin’s 2008 vice presidential campaign before being named the NBC News White House correspondent later that year.

After filling in as co-host on the Today Show she then became a full-time host in the 9am hour.

But she was catapulted to national fame when she became the show’s co-anchor alongside Matt Lauer in 2012 following the acrimonious departure of Ann Curry.

When Mr Lauer was forced to resign in 2017 amid sexual misconduct allegations she and Hoda Kotb became the hosts of the Today Show.

Ms Guthrie fought back tears live on the air as she announced Mr Lauer’s departure, calling the allegations against him “shocking and appalling.”

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-election-2020/savannah-guthrie-who-husband-michael-feldman-trump-town-hall-moderator-b1061953.html

Rupert Murdoch Predicts a Landslide Win for Biden - THE GREAT OZ HAS SPOKEN

The Australian mogul is disgusted by Trump’s handling of COVID-19, remarking that the president is his own worst enemy and telling associates “people are ready for Sleepy Joe.”

Lachlan Cartwright - Oct. 15, 2020

1/2

President Trump’s influential supporter Rupert Murdoch is telling close associates he believes Joe Biden will win the election in a landslide.

The Australian-born billionaire is disgusted by Trump’s handling of COVID-19, remarking that the president is his own worst enemy, that he is not listening to advice about how best to handle the pandemic, and that he’s creating a never-ending crisis for his administration, according to three people who have spoken with Murdoch.

In response to an email inquiry for this report asking him if he believes Biden will win in a landslide and his thoughts on Trump’s handling of coronavirus, Murdoch responded, “No comment except I’ve never called Trump an idiot,” referring to a 2018 report that the media mogul called the president a “fucking idiot” following a chat about immigration.

While Murdoch believes the outcome of the election is a fait accompli, his New York tabloid has been doing everything in its power to help Trump’s re-election chances, publishing a screaming page 1 story on Wednesday under the headline, “Biden Secret E-Mails.” The supposed “smoking gun” emails purported to show that Hunter Biden had introduced his father to a Ukrainian businessman when he was vice president, though the Post relied on unverified documents given to them by Trump’s attorney Rudy Giuliani. (Biden’s team denies that such a meeting took place.)

Murdoch had long prized having unfettered access to the White House, much like the direct line he has enjoyed to leaders in Australia and the U.K. But people familiar with the matter say the two men have not spoken in several weeks after Murdoch grew tired of Trump’s endless complaints about what the president viewed as negative coverage on Fox News.

The 89-year-old has spent much of 2020 in Oxfordshire with fourth wife, Jerry Hall, and is described by people both within Fox and News Corp as “semi-retired” from day-to-day operations of his media empire, having delegated responsibilities to his eldest son, Lachlan, following the sale of vast parts of 21st Century Fox to Disney for $52.4 billion last year.

At one point in the winter, as Murdoch grew increasingly frustrated with Trump, he even considered getting behind another Democratic candidate, having discussions about supporting Mike Bloomberg in his ill-fated presidential run, a Murdoch executive told The Daily Beast.

In the run-up to the 2016 election, Murdoch twice tweeted his support for a Bloomberg run.

But he is now firmly of the mindset that the next president will be Biden, telling one associate, “after all that has gone on, people are ready for Sleepy Joe.”

Friends say Murdoch has never taken Trump seriously and his association with him is out of business necessity. He once tweeted, “When is Donald Trump going to stop embarrassing his friends, let alone the whole country?”

(continued)

>>11098850

2/2

It has been a tumultuous year for the Murdoch family, with youngest son, James, and his wife, Kathryn, unleashing an extraordinary public attack on Fox News and News Corp over their coverage of the deadly Australian wildfires.

“Kathryn and James’ views on climate are well established and their frustration with some of the News Corp and Fox coverage of the topic is also well known,” a spokesperson for the couple told The Daily Beast in January.

“They are particularly disappointed with the ongoing denial among the news outlets in Australia given obvious evidence to the contrary.”

The couple’s combative stance against the family company led to James resigning from the board of News Corp in July, citing editorial disagreements.

“I reached the conclusion that you can venerate a contest of ideas, if you will, and we all do and that’s important,” he told The New York Times about his decision to quit. “But it shouldn’t be in a way that hides agendas. A contest of ideas shouldn’t be used to legitimize disinformation. And I think it’s often taken advantage of. And I think at great news organizations, the mission really should be to introduce fact to disperse doubt—not to sow doubt, to obscure fact, if you will.

“And I just felt increasingly uncomfortable with my position on the board having some disagreements over how certain decisions are being made. So it was actually not that hard a decision to remove myself and have a kind of cleaner slate.”

While the elder Murdoch has dialed back his workload, he is taking a keen interest in a secretive new TV news channel being developed in the U.K. by former CBS News chief David Rhodes, who has been tipped as a future head of Fox News, a network where he served as vice president of news.

People familiar with the project, which is expected to launch early in the new year, remain tight-lipped about its content, giving rise to speculation it will be a watered-down Fox News-style opinion-led platform to take audience share away from the BBC.

All parts of Murdoch’s empire have suffered staff cuts blamed on the pandemic and those with knowledge of the organization’s operations say budgets are being constantly reviewed with more cost-cutting in the cards.

In what many view as an indicator of the organization’s waning commitment to print, the company announced in August it would close its Bronx printing plant and move the printing of The Wall Street Journal, Barron’s, and the New York Post to The New York Times’ printing plant in Queens.

This isn’t the first time Murdoch has predicted a Democratic landslide, telling a conference in 2008 that Obama would win the election in a convincing victory.

The question that continues to be asked is how Fox News and its prime-time stars, who have gone all out for Trump, will react to the Nov. 3 verdict and who the Murdochs look to back in 2024, with insiders talking up the prospect of one of their own—Tucker Carlson—making a run for the White House.

Carlson has previously denied any interest in running for office. “I’ve never been involved in anything like that, I’ve never wanted to be involved in anything like that,” he told Mediaite in August. “I’ll tell you this: I’m completely committed to saying what I think is true, and politics is a hard place to do that.”

https://www.thedailybeast.com/fox-news-owner-rupert-murdoch-predicts-a-landslide-win-for-biden

YouTube follows Twitter and Facebook with QAnon crackdown

Associated Press - Oct 16, 2020

YouTube is following the lead of Twitter and Facebook, saying that it is taking more steps to limit QAnon and other baseless conspiracy theories that can lead to real-world violence.

The Google-owned video platform said it will now prohibit material targeting a person or group with conspiracy theories that have been used to justify violence.

One example would be videos that threaten or harass someone by suggesting they are complicit in a conspiracy such as QAnon, which paints President Donald Trump as a secret warrior against a supposed child-trafficking ring run by celebrities and "deep state" government officials.

Pizzagate is another internet conspiracy theory - essentially a predecessor to QAnon -that would fall in the banned category. Its promoters claimed children were being harmed at a pizza restaurant in Washington. D.C. A man who believed in the conspiracy entered the restaurant in December 2016 and fired an assault rifle. He was sentenced to prison in 2017.

YouTube is the third of the major social platforms to announce policies intended rein in QAnon, a conspiracy theory they all helped spread.

Twitter announced in July a crackdown on QAnon, though it did not ban its supporters from its platform. It did ban thousands of accounts associated with QAnon content and blocked URLs associated with it from being shared. Twitter also said that it would stop highlighting and recommending tweets associated with QAnon.

Facebook, meanwhile, announced last week that it was banning groups that openly support QAnon. It said it would remove pages, groups and Instagram accounts for representing QAnon - even if they don't promote violence.

The social network said it will consider a variety of factors in deciding whether a group meets its criteria for a ban. Those include the group's name, its biography or "about" section, and discussions within the page or group on Facebook, or account on Instagram, which is owned by Facebook.

Facebook's move came two months after it announced softer crackdown, saying said it would stop promoting the group and its adherents. But that effort faltered due to spotty enforcement.YouTube said it had already removed tens of thousands of QAnon-videos and eliminated hundreds of channels under its existing policies — especially those that explicitly threaten violence or deny the existence of major violent events.

"All of this work has been pivotal in curbing the reach of harmful conspiracies, but there's even more we can do to address certain conspiracy theories that are used to justify real-world violence, like QAnon," the company said in Thursday's blog post.

https://www.9news.com.au/technology/youtube-to-ban-qanon-content-conspiracy-theories/97139b93-d077-437b-a3f1-cc6abb9dc876

Lowy Institute Live: In conversation with General James Mattis and Sir Angus Houston

On Thursday 15 October 2020, the Lowy Institute’s Executive Director Dr Michael Fullilove hosted an in conversation event via live video stream with General James Mattis, one of America’s most experienced and influential military leaders. General Mattis spoke about serving as US Secretary of Defense, his career as a US Marine, and the security challenge America faces from a rising China. They were joined by Sir Angus Houston, former Chief of the Australian Defence Force.

This event is part of the Lowy Institute's ‘Australia’s Security and the Rules-Based Order Project’ and is supported by the Department of Defence’s Strategic Policy Grants Program.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b5Kkoz9Ybi0

https://www.lowyinstitute.org/news-and-media/multimedia/video/lowy-institute-live-conversation-general-james-mattis-and-sir-angus

>https://qanon.pub/?q=mattis