MEDIA: Consummate actresses and federal judges

Two new shows and federal judges had us realizing how important someone who knows their job is.   

 

Convicted felon Donald Chump has ensured that his own lack of credibility would be the hallmark of his administration.  He and those serving in his cabinet have lied repeatedly -- to the American people and to the courts.  And it's the latter that has harmed the administration more than anything else. 

 

Nia Prater (THE INTELLIGENCER) noted last month:

Jeanine Pirro’s tenure leading the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington, D.C., has been marked by a poor record in court. The former judge and onetime Fox News host has seen several cases she has brought against protesters and other anti-Trump figures fall apart in front of grand juries, including a well-publicized failure to indict a resident for hurling a sandwich at a federal agent stationed in the capital city last year.

Now, following another one of those setbacks, her office is reportedly dropping its pursuit of a group of Democratic members of Congress whom President Donald Trump has accused of treason. Sources tell NBC News that the U.S. attorney will stop seeking legal action against the six Democratic lawmakers who filmed a video urging members of the military and the nation’s intelligence community to refuse illegal orders, in a clear shot at Trump and his administration.

The reported move comes just weeks after a federal grand jury in Washington, D.C., rejected Pirro’s efforts to obtain an indictment against the Democrats, a once rare occurrence that has become common during Trump’s second term.

 

They couldn't get an indictment from the grand jury.  Because their reputation is in tatters, destroyed by the administration itself.  They've lied too often to the courts.  

Last month, Matt Naham (LAW & CRIMES) reported: 

 

 A federal judge unloaded on the Trump administration for continuing to subject noncitizens already present in the United States to mandatory detention despite hundreds of court rulings to the contrary, drawing the conclusion that the federal government "knows" the practice as applied is "illegal" and yet its behavior does not change.

 In an effort to put a stop to this "intentional misconduct," U.S. District Judge Zahid Quraishi on Thursday ordered federal immigration authorities to "immediately" release Diana Elizabeth Cartagena Hueso from custody.

Expressing frustration with the Trump administration's behavior in this habeas corpus case and many others, Quraishi, a Joe Biden appointee, recounted how he ordered the government to hold a bond hearing and not to transfer the 29-year-old Salvadoran woman out of New Jersey, only to learn that she had already been moved to Oklahoma.

After moving the detainee to Texas and then back to Oklahoma — three total transfers in a two-day span — the Trump administration has "not bothered" to offer an explanation and claims it doesn't have to bring the woman back to the Garden State, the judge said.

 [. . .]

By Quraishi's count, the U.S. attorney's office in New Jersey has violated 72 court orders and "expressly admitted" violating 56, albeit unintentionally, as "[i]mmigrants are swept up into custody and shifted repeatedly around the country without warning or explanation." The judge found that "objectively appalling" and said the formerly Habba-led office has "eroded" the presumption of its credibility.

"That number by itself is objectively appalling, but at least one judge has indicated that it underreported," the judge remarked. "The U.S. Attorney's Office has counted these citations as unintentional. Sadly, the well-deserved credibility once attached to that distinguished Office is now a presumption that 'has been undeniably eroded.'"

In a final blow, the judge threatened to force prosecutors or DHS officials to "testify under oath" and provide explanations if the mandatory detention cases continue to come before him.

"The government's continued actions after being called to task can now only be deemed intentional," Quraishi concluded. "The undersigned will not stand idly by and allow this intentional misconduct to go on. It ends today."

 

 This is the reputation that they have earned.  As we've pointed out, Judge Judy would have washed her hands of their claims long ago.  You lie to the court once, you destroy your reputation.  And that's a basic.  But Chump has hired so many idiots that they don't grasp that and they lie and lie and lie and outrage members of the judiciary.  

 

ATLANTA BLACK STAR NEWS noted last month:

 

Another day, another humiliating setback for President Donald Trump’s Justice Department — and another awkward moment for Attorney General Pam Bondi, repeatedly tasked with executing the president’s hard-edged agenda only to see it stall under judicial pushback.

Federal agents swooped into a Virginia home in January, boxing up laptops, a recorder, a hard drive, even a Garmin watch. The target wasn’t a dangerous suspect but a Washington Post reporter who had done nothing more than her job. At the time, the Justice Department framed the raid as a routine leak investigation carried out in the name of national security.

Weeks later, the very judge who authorized the takedown took a second look and reached a different conclusion: the government investigators now asking for trust no longer deserved it.

Earlier this week, U.S. Magistrate Judge William Porter made that judgment explicit, blocking the Justice Department from searching the seized devices of journalist Hannah Natanson and sharply rebuking prosecutors for how they handled the case. 

 In a blistering 22-page opinion, Porter reversed course after initially authorizing the seizure, ruling that the DOJ, led by Bondi, could not be trusted to police itself in light of its omissions, shifting explanations, and priorities that put hunting down leaks ahead of protecting First Amendment freedoms. 

 

 The court determined it could not trust the administration to protect the First Amendment.  That's a huge blow to the image of the Justice Dept.  Pam Bondi, Attorney General, has sullied the reputation of the department and revealed herself to be a partisan operative and not a functioning Attorney General.  

 

She acts like a crazed fool.  That's in front of Congress when she takes her slam book with her filled with insults and that's when she's popping off on social media.  On the latter, Josh Gerstein (POLITICO) explains how the Justice Dept made a request of the courts but then Bondi's social media actions rendered the request moot:

 

In an order earlier this week, Magistrate Judge Dulce Foster said Bondi’s posts on X including the names and, in many instances, photographs of the defendants shortly after their arrests “violated a court order” placing those cases under seal. 

Foster leveled the criticism in connection with the prosecution of Nitzana Flores, a South Haven, Minnesota, resident accused of assaulting two Border Patrol officers during a scuffle last month in Minneapolis surrounding the arrest of another person for allegedly ramming a government vehicle.

The judge said Bondi’s posting of the names and arrest photos undercut prosecutors’ request for an order to prohibit defense attorneys from publicly disclosing personal information about immigration agents involved in the case against Flores. The requested order would also prohibit any defense counsel from sharing that information with their client.

Foster said Bondi’s social media posts made the government’s request for court-ordered discretion for its agents “eyebrow-raising, to say the least.”

“The government failed to respect Ms. Flores’s dignity and privacy, exposed her to a risk of doxxing, and generally thumbed its nose at the notion that defendants are innocent until proven guilty. The post also directly violated a court order sealing the case,” the judge wrote. “Notwithstanding, the government now seeks an accommodation from the Court that it blatantly failed to give Ms. Flores and her codefendants.”

 

 

Federal judges of all stripes have stood firm over the last year and counting and have delivered verdicts rooted in the Constitution and precedent.  Actors who know their craft are overcoming weak material as well.

 

Take THE MADISON.  Like most Taylor Sheridan TV shows, it's gorgeous to look at.  Some of the scenes in the first episode don't play at all.  But Michelle Pfeiffer delivers a powerhouse performance and that keeps the show going.  By the third episode, the actors all appear to have found their characters but Michelle still the one delivering every episode.  

 

She plays a widow dealing with loss and dealing with guilt.  And she's good in the role while her husband is alive but after he dies, she burns down to the embers of the character and is haunting.  

 

AMAZON PRIME's  SCARPETTA is another show saved by the lead performances.  Or two of them.

 

Nicole Kidman has been delivering in one series after another: BIG LITTLE LIES, TOP OF THE LAKE CHINA GIRL, THE UNDOING, NINE PERFECT STRANGERS, ROAR, LIONESS, EXPATS and THE PERFECT COUPLE make up an incredible body of work. 

 

SCARPETTA delivers but it's the weakest of her projects since she started doing TV shows.  That's not her fault and it's not Jamie Lee Curtis' fault.  In fact, the two of them are what makes the show watchable and a pleasure.  

What hurts the show?

 

It's telling us a story from two different time periods.  And someone decided that Nicole and Jamie Lee couldn't play their characters in their 20s and 30s so two new actresses were brought on to play them.  And to play Bobby Cannavale and Simon Baker's character.  

 

Nicole Kidman's voice and speaking manner are distinctive.  When you have an actress playing her as the same character abut 20 years younger, you need to have a voice that sounds similar.  Jamie Lee's voice may seem less distinctive to us because we're American and so is she but it is distinctive and it's jarring to hear another adult actress playing her same character but with a different voice and a different way of speaking.

 

Maybe it would have been smarter to have allowed Nicole and Jamie Lee to do voice overs for the younger actresses?  

 

The two actresses playing Nicole and Jamie Lee's younger selves also don't look like them.  That's especially true of the younger actress playing Nicole's character and especially true of the actress' nose.

 

We go back and forth in time over and over in each episode.  

 

It's jarring.  

 

It's takes out of the story and out of the mood.  

 

Then we switch back to Nicole and Jamie and one of them or both of them does something so original and inspired that we're back in the story and vested all over again.

 

Three actresses who know what they're doing and then some make two new series worth watching.  Federal judges across the political spectrum who know what they're doing are saving the Constitution and the country.  

 

It's why, last week,  Gabe Whisnant (NEWSWEEK) was able to note:

 

A federal judge appointed by President Donald Trump ruled Tuesday that his administration’s effort to shut down New York City’s congestion pricing program was unlawful, allowing the tolling system to remain in effect.

U.S. District Judge Lewis J. Liman said the U.S. Department of Transportation lacked the authority to unilaterally revoke federal approval for the program, which charges drivers to enter Manhattan south of 60th Street. In a 149-page decision, Liman vacated a series of letters sent by Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy that threatened to withhold federal funding unless the tolls were halted.

 

 While the federal courts have shown a willingness to obey the Constitution, the Supreme Court has not and Chief Justice John Roberts has shown no inclination to protect the federal judges.  Joe Patrice (ABOVE THE LAW) points out John Roberts' silence on the attacks on the federal judges:

 

He’s sat around as Trump spent the next year attacking lower court judges in terms that generated a 327 percent increase in threats against the federal judiciary. Federal judges sounded the alarm that they feared for their lives, telling NBC News that the Supreme Court “doesn’t have our backs.” One judge said flatly that if nothing changed, “somebody is going to die.”As the leader of the judiciary, Roberts responded by issuing a year-end report about how Thomas Paine would probably yearn for a return to the monarchy and collecting a funding boost for Supreme Court security. 

 

Maybe it's time to recast the Supreme Court. 

 

 

 

Media: Tony Dokoupil and Bari Weiss destroy CBS NEWS

Some CBS NEWS friends have been upset that we've been silent, some CBS NEWS friends have been thankful, most have just been wondering if it's time to go?  We'd say yes and we'd note we gave CBS EVENING NEWS four weeks to get their act together and they failed.

 

Bari Weiss (editor in chief' of CBS NEWS) and  Tony Dokoupil (anchor of the evening news) are the source of the problem.

 

In four weeks, they've destroyed THE CBS EVENING NEWS.   Completely wrecked it   Run off viewers and are running off the staff.  On the latter, Wiktoria Gucia (THE DAILY BEAST) reports:

 

CBS News is offering buyouts to CBS Evening News staffers less than 24 hours after editor-in-chief Bari Weiss told employees to leave the company if their views don’t align with her new vision.

The buyouts, offered to non-union staffers, were announced at a Wednesday morning meeting by the executive producer of CBS Evening News, Kim Harvey, according to Variety.

 

 She had a meeting last week where she appeared before CBS NEWS employees and made a series of statements.  Scott Nover and  Laura Wagner (WASHINGTON POST) reported:

 

Weiss told the CBS News staff that she wanted the network to appeal to political moderates. “We’re for the center. We’re for the center-right, and we’re for the center-left,” she said.

She also outlined a critique of the network’s current standing. “The honest truth is right now we are not producing a product that enough people want,” she said. “I am here to make CBS News fit for purpose in the 21st century.”

Weiss argued that CBS is too focused on maintaining its broadcast audience rather than building for the future. “Our strategy until now has been clinging to the audience that remains on broadcast television, and I’m here to tell you that if we stick to that strategy, we are toast,” she said.

 

So let's recap.  First, she wants to appeal to the center. Second, she's going to attract more people to CBS.  Third, broadcast TV is not the future of CBS NEWS.  

 

 

She's not qualified for her job.  Let's start with number three, she is the editor-in-chief of CBS NEWS.  Her job is to focus on CBS NEWS.  Those above her will focus on a future beyond broadcast news for CBS NEWS.  But as CBS NEWS is defined today, it is broadcast news.  She has no experience in broadcast news so she doesn't understand it and, not understanding it, wants to immediately dismiss it.  

 

 

Her lack of experience just causes her to bluster and bully.  

 

 

She's in over her head and we noted that in "Media: The best and the worst of TV showed up in December."  She's not a journalist, she was an opinion writer.  She had no experience in broadcast TV but was put in charge by the new owner to appease Donald Chump.  She says one of her goals is to attract more viewers to CBS NEWS.  

 

 

One of her goals?  That's all she was hired for.  CBS NEWS is about ratings and the number of viewers The future of CBS NEWS is something she might be consulted on but what her job is right now is to deliver viewers.  That's all her job is.  But she's too much of an idiot to grasp that.

 

 

She wants to appeal to the center?  

 

 

Then maybe not market yourself as right-wing.  Which is what she did and what the program has become.  And Tony The Pony, so eager to be in the anchor seat anywhere, assisted her on that with his reaching out to right-wingers.

 

 

Bari and Tony are foolish and don't understand that when you reach out and cater to right wingers, you're running off moderates.  

 

They both also don't understand the brand of CBS NEWS.  Tony felt the need to compare himself to one of the most praised anchors of all time: Walter Cronkite.  And not only did he compare himself, he insisted he was going to be better than Cronkite.   Bill Goodykoontz.(ARIZONA REPUBLIC) observed of Tony's nonsense: 

 

Dokoupil's response was curious.

"What did you love most about him?" he wrote. "I can promise you we’ll be more accountable and more transparent than Cronkite or any one else of his era."

This is like an undrafted rookie boasting before his first NBA game that he's going to be better than Michael Jordan. Whatever points Dokoupil earns for confidence, he's docked more for saying such a dumb thing. Read the room.

 

But he can't read the room.  Which is why ensuing weeks saw such moments of 'journalism' as Tony crying on air that his father was a drug dealer (thie left him "robbed of the full Miami experience," he sobbed on air) and even bringing on his own mother to be an 'expert' and to lie.   Mekishana Pierre (ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY) noted last week:

 

Tuesday's episode of the evening news series featured a segment focusing on a study that found grandparents who care for their grandchildren score better on tests of memory and language and decline more slowly than those who do not. Dokoupil turned to a "big source" for commentary on the study's finding — his mom, Gail. 

"I find that they give me a sense of purpose. They energize me more than drive me down," Gail said of caring for her grandchildren. Dokoupil, who made his debut as the anchor of CBS Evening News earlier this month, has four children: two with his current wife, MS NOW anchor Katy Tur, and two with his ex-wife, Danielle Haas.  

 

Does anyone see the problem with this?  Well there are multiple problems.  But he brought on his mother as an expert -- four grandchildren that she takes care of.  She doesn't take care of four.  The two with Danielle Haas live with their mother . . . in Israel.  His mother is not taking care of those two children.  

 

Walter Cronkite never brought his own mother on the network news as an expert.  If he had, people would have laughed at him.  And they would have crucified them if they'd known that two of the four grandchildren are being raised in another country.   

 

Then there's the freaks Bari Weiss keeps bringing onto CBS NEWS as experts.  Cynthia Littleton (VARIETY) notes that Bari's elevated a quack who just got exposed for his long relationship with convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein: 

 

 A week after being named as a CBS News contributor, Dr. Peter Attia is coming under fire after the latest raft of documents from the Jeffrey Epstein files includes more than 1,700 mentions and evidence of a friendly relationship with the wealthy convicted sex offender who died in prison in 2019.

 The correspondence makes it clear that Attia maintained a relationship with Epstein long after the financier faced sex trafficking and prostitution charges. “I go into JE withdrawal when I don’t see him.,” reads a line from Attia to Lesley Groff, who was an Epstein assistant. The remark, found in a January 2016 email, has spurred negative reaction on social media.

 

Caitlin McCormack (NEW YORK POST) adds: 

 

Anti-aging physician and newly named CBS News contributor Peter Attia swapped hundreds of chummy, eyebrow-raising emails with Jeffrey Epstein — including once joking that female genitals counted as a “low carb.”

The disturbing correspondence came to light just days after the celebrity doctor was named as one of the network’s 19 new contributors.

The emails were included in the trove of 3 million documents released by the Department of Justice Friday, as mandated by the “Epstein Files Transparency Act.” Attia is mentioned in the files 1,741 times.

In stomach-churning missives, the controversial anti-aging physician frequently asked after Epstein’s wellbeing and alluded to the convicted sex offender’s “outrageous” lifestyle. 

“You [know] the biggest problem with becoming friends with you? The life you lead is so outrageous, and yet I can’t tell a soul…” Attia wrote in one 2015 email — with the chilling subject line “Got a fresh shipment.”

A photo of the referenced “shipment” was redacted.

Attia, 52, renowned as a “longevity influencer” specializing on metabolic health, also cheekily offered his health advice to Epstein.

“P—y is, indeed, low carb. Still awaiting results on gluten, though,” Attia wrote in one email from 2016, eight years after Epstein had been convicted in Florida of procuring a child for prostitution and soliciting a prostitute.

 

This story brewed all weekend without the necessary note, "CBS and Attia have agreed to end Attia's contract."  Why?  Because Bari doesn't understand moderates.  She doesn't respect them.  And she doesn't know how to appeal to them.

 

She hopes to trick them.  Last week, the big news story was the murder of Alex Pretti by the US government.  Monday started off with criticism of THE CBS EVENING NEWS for its coverage which largely sidelined Alex.  That never got better.   

  

Some strong coverage on Alex was done by WCCO.  Here's a sample of three reports WCCO created. 

But you didn't see them on THE CBS EVENING NEWS.  This despite the fact that WCCO is a Minneapolis station -- where Alex was murdered by the US government.  And this despite the fact that WCCO is not a CBS affiliate, it's a CBS owned station.  WCCO is fully aware that they were cut off as a resource by their network's evening news program.  

 

She and Tony had access to news and chose not to share it on THE CBS EVENING NEWS.   

 

There's no come back for Bari.  She's been one embarrassment after another and she's proven to be unqualified for the job.  Tony?  With a better news executive behind him, he might be able to rebound.  But that would require Bari Weiss leaving her current post immediately.  The longer she's around, the more damage she does, the more she is tied to Tony Dokoupil and the further he sinks.