Editors’ Blog

A new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast is live! This week, Josh and Kate discuss the Trump CNN town hall, E. Jean Carroll’s victory and the indictment of George Santos.

You can listen to the new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast here.

Does CNN have a scandal on its hands?

According to tonight’s edition of Tara Palmeri’s PuckNews newsletter (sub.req.), CNN set audience ground rules for the Trump town hall which allowed audience members to cheer Trump but not boo him.

Here’s the key part of the interview with Matthew Bartlett (emphasis added)…

I wasn’t able to watch last night’s CNN town hall. I was helping my son prepare for an AP exam. I plan to watch it later today. But I’ve already heard enough reviews and seen enough clips to see that it conforms with what we knew of the Chris Licht model. Licht, as you may know, got the CNN assignment when CNN ended up with its latest corporate overload Warner Bros. Discovery. There’s been a lot of debate about just what Licht’s brief was. But it seems to have been some mix of the ideological fancies of its new owners and a general desire to make it “less liberal.”

For many of us, the idea that CNN is or ever was “liberal” is an absurd enough proposition to get the conversation about Licht’s goals off to a pretty poor start. But the topic clarifies itself when you see the question through the lens a corporation uses to understand questions like this. We don’t need to have an abstract conversation about what constitutes “liberal” in this context. It’s much simpler than that. You’ll know it’s not “liberal” when Trump and Republicans stop attacking it.

At least, that’s what the billionaire is claiming.

Just shortly after Tucker Carlson announced in a video lauding Elon Musk’s social media platform as the only safe space left for Truth Tellers like himself that he’d be taking his “show” to Twitter, the billionaire set the record straight.

Musk — who’s been doing favors for white nationalists and giving far-right extremist rhetoric an elevated platform since his Twitter takeover — tweeted to clarify that there’s no deal with Tucker and also to maintain that he, the founding father of free speech, is not playing favorites.

I’ve seen various accounts of what was discussed or set forth as positions in yesterday’s meeting between President Biden and congressional leaders. So I don’t feel like I know what was discussed. But after the meeting President Biden said that while he’s been “considering the 14th Amendment” approach he’s wary because of the length of time the issue would take to litigate. He seemed to suggest that process would be too lengthy to resolve the current standoff.

I guess it’s good that he’s considering the 14th. But this answer is not only wrong and self-defeating, it suggests the White House simply isn’t in shape for this fight. Indeed, if this is where we’re at it suggests an attitude toward the courts and the broader political context which seems hopelessly stuck in the past.

Let’s walk through this.

Tucker Carlson is scooping up his massive viewership and taking his show to Elon Musk’s janky, zombified Twitter.

Set against the backdrop of what appears to be the inside of a rustic and masculine cabin in the wood, Carlson made the announcement with a familiar scowl and posted the video to his Twitter account Tuesday afternoon. He said a bunch of his usual stuff about the media being misleading and cable news being propaganda, while making some unsubtle digs at Fox, like:

“The best you can hope for in the news business at this point is the freedom to tell the fullest truth that you can. But there are always limits. And you know that if you bump up against those limits often enough, you will be fired for it,” he said.

From TPM Reader JB …

I think that the suggestion that the government pays some bills but not all of them is setting up a lawsuit more than the actual plan. SCOTUS made clear that the President does not have the choice to execute only parts of the spending of the US as commissioned by Congress in  Clinton v. City of New York.

From TPM Reader CB …

Josh, I know I’ve written to you previously about this issue, but this Yellen statement is astounding. If this is their plan, it’s a disastrous plan.

It will make enemies of those who get the short end of the stick, and ingrates of the others. The Republicans, however, will love the plan, because it leaves Biden twisting in the wind, while Republicans cackle and criticize and say to the American people, “Biden is doing this to you. All he has to do is sign on to the House bill and everyone gets paid.”

Let me follow up a bit on this post from last night about Janet Yellen’s CNBC interview. I don’t read her as ruling out “consol bonds” or the 14th amendment or various other approaches. I see her communicating two things: one overarching and one immediate and specific.

Let’s deal with the first of those first.

As we’ve hurtled closer to the cliff, there’s been a rising chorus among those who are fiercely opposed to any negotiation with parliamentary terrorists. That chorus is anxiously asking this question: what is your plan when they call your bluff? What steps are you planning once they start shooting the hostages?

We’ve had this running question for months about just what happens if the U.S. Treasury runs out of funds to meet all the government’s spending obligations. To be clear, those include ordinary spending as well as servicing of the principal of and interest on the U.S. debt. Secretary Yellen went on CNBC this afternoon and I think we got the first piece of an answer. It was a long interview, mostly about other aspects of the economy. But she discussed the debt ceiling standoff at the beginning. Here’s the key passage.