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By Nicholas Fondacaro
 The highlight of CNN’s primetime lineup Tuesdaywas The Climate Crisis town hall where they teamed up with former Vice President and climate alarmist Al Gore to push his propaganda. “Consensus in the scientific community is clear. Sea levels are rising. The oceans are warming,” moderator Anderson Cooper declared as he started the program. The event became even more ridiculous when Gore equated getting people to believe him was like the Civil Rights movement, in that “it's just really a question of right and wrong.”
Gore’s shameful self-aggrandizing came after Cooper teed him up to push for more U.S. resources to be diverted to solar energy. “You know, you talk about solar, why does the U.S. only get about 1 percent of its electricity right now from solar,” he asked. Progress was slow, according to gore, but a tipping point was to happen very soon.
The former Vice President then smeared those skeptical of his radical and wrong predictions by equating them to racists that opposed the Civil Rights movement. “When I was a boy growing up a lot of the time in the south, I remember when the Civil Rights movement was gaining momentum,” he recalled. “I'll tell you the resistance to Civil Rights laws was just as fierce if not more so than the resistance to solving is the climate crisis.”
“Ultimately, we crossed a political tipping point and people realized oh, it's just really a question of right and wrong,” Gore added without a peep from Cooper.
Out of the nine average Americans who were selected to pose questions to Gore, only two of them offered any kind of push back to his claims. One questioned the morality of actively seeking to put coal miners out of work, while the other dried up Gore’s assertion of rising sea levels.
James Eskridge was the mayor of Tangier Island, an island that has been in the process of being reclaimed by the ocean. But Mayor Eskridge knows it’s not the rising water levels behind it:
I've been working the Chesapeake Bay for 50-plus years and I have a crab-house business out on the water. And the water level is the same as it was when the place was built in 1970. I'm not a scientist, but I'm a keen observer and if sea level rise is occurring, why am I not seeing signs of it?
Being the highfalutin elitist that he was, Gore scoffed at the Mayor’s statement, asking: “What do you think the erosion is due to, Mayor?” Eskridge explained that wave action and storms were responsible for the erosion that “has been going on since Captain John Smith discovered the island and named it.”
“And if I see sea level rise occurring, I'll shout it from the housetop,” Eskridge joked. “I mean, we don't have the land to give up, but I'm just not seeing it.”
Clearly fed up with the conversation, Gore seemed to lament about having to dumb down what he was saying to convince simple people:
Well, arguments about science aren't necessarily going to be of any comfort to you.
…
Yeah. Okay. Well, one of the challenges of this issue is taking what the -- what the scientists say and translating it into terms that are believable to people where they can see the consequences in their own lives. And I get that and I try every day to figure out ways to do that.
There was no mention by Cooper of Gore’s hypocrisy of living an extravagant life style where he got to prance around the globe on a polluting private jet while living in a home with a $30,000 utility bill. But Cooper did allow him to twist a claim he once made to suit recent events.
“Probably the single-most criticized scene in that movie was an animated sequence showing that sea level rise plus the storm surge would bring ocean water into the 9/11 Memorial site where the Twin Towers were and people said that's ridiculous,” he said as he noted how “Super-storm” Sandy did just that.
But Gore’s prediction was not that a storm would flood the site, but that rising sea levels would reclaim the site and permanently reshape the coast line of Manhattan, and much of the United States, by 2014. And since we’re talking about Gore’s wrong predictions, let’s talk about what he had said about hurricanes.
According to Gore’s movie, Americans should be afraid because nearly every future hurricane was going to be another Katrina and was going to reach category four and five in strength nearly every time. But according to NOAA’s own data, since 2010 the U.S. had only been hit by six hurricanes with the strongest one being a category two. In fact, the last time the U.S. experienced a stronger hurricane was back in 2005 when Hurricane Wilma made landfall.
Of course, there was no mention of any of that since CNN was more than happy to aid Gore in his endeavor to push climate change propaganda and alarmism.
Transcript below:
CNN
The Climate Change Crisis
August 1, 2017
9:00:35 PM Eastern
ANDERSON COOPER: We're here for a special CNN town hall on the climate crisis with former Vice President Al Gore. I'm Anderson cooper. I want to welcome our viewers watching in the United States and watching around the world. Consensus in the scientific community is clear. Sea levels are rising. The oceans are warming. But there's not a consensus, at least among politicians here, what to do about it. Now, 11 years after the release of a film "An Inconvenient Truth,” Vice President Al Gore is out with a new film, "An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power."
…
9:23:48 PM Eastern
MAYOR JAMES ESKRIDGE: Vice President Gore, Mr. Cooper, I'm a commercial crabber and I've been working the Chesapeake Bay for 50-plus years and I have a crab-house business out on the water. And the water level is the same as it was when the place was built in 1970. I'm not a scientist, but I'm a keen observer and if sea level rise is occurring, why am I not seeing signs of it? I mean, our island is disappearing, but it's because of erosion and not sea level rise, and unless we get a sea-wall, we will lose our island, but back to the question, why am I not seeing signs of the sea level rise?
 AL GORE: What do you think the erosion is due to, Mayor?
ESKRIDGE: Wave action. Storms.
GORE: Has that increased any?
ESKRIDGE: Not really. I mean –
GORE: So you're losing the island even though the waves haven't increased?
ESKRIDGE: Yes. This erosion has been going on since Captain John Smith discovered the island and named it.
GORE: Well –
ESKRIDGE: It's got to our doorstep now and we focus on it more.
GORE: Well, arguments about science aren't necessarily going to be of any comfort to you and I'm sorry for what you're going through and your neighbors on Tangier Island. I read about you in the paper. There was an article in The Washington Post I believe after President Trump called you up. Won't necessarily do you any good for me to tell you the scientists do say that the sea level is rising in the Chesapeake Bay and you’ve lost about two-thirds of your island already over a longer period of time and the forecast for the future is another two feet of -- what would another -- if there was another two feet of sea level rise, what would that mean for Tangier Island?
ESKRIDGE: Tangier island, our elevation is only about four foot above sea level.
GORE: Yeah.
ESKRIDGE: And if I see sea level rise occurring, I'll shout it from the housetop.
GORE: Okay.
ESKRIDGE: I mean, we don't have the land to give up, but I'm just not seeing it.
GORE: Yeah. Okay. Well, one of the challenges of this issue is taking what the -- what the scientists say and translating it into terms that are believable to people where they can see the consequences in their own lives. And I get that and I try every day to figure out ways to do that.
 …
9:31 14 PMEastern
GORE: And the predictions of the climate scientists in the past have, unfortunately, come true. When the first movie came out, you referred to it, one of the-- probably the single-most criticized scene in that movie was an animated sequence showing that sea level rise plus the storm surge would bring ocean water into the 9/11 Memorial site where the Twin Towers were and people said that's ridiculous. But when super-storm Sandy hit, sure enough, years before it was predicted to occur, the ocean water flooded into that site.
…
9:49:31 PM Eastern
COOPER: You know, you talk about solar, why does the U.S. only get about 1 percent of its electricity right now from solar? I mean, if it's so great?
GORE: Well, it's increasing rapidly, and the big change in the cost reduction has come just in the last few years, and where technology particularly is concerned, also politics sometimes, there was a great economist who died a few years ago, Rudy Dornbush, and he said this. He said, "Things take longer to happen than you think they will, but then they happen much faster than you thought they could."
And we've seen that with all these technological advances like the smartphones and so forth. We've seen it in politics also. When I was a boy growing up a lot of the time in the south, I remember when the Civil Rights movement was gaining momentum. I'll tell you the resistance to Civil Rights laws was just as fierce if not more so than the resistance to solving is the climate crisis. Ultimately, we crossed a political tipping point and people realized oh, it's just really a question of right and wrong. Take the gay rights revolution.
…
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By Curtis Houck
While on his book tour, Republican Senator Jeff Flake (Ariz.) stopped by Tuesday’s Hardball for an interview in which host Chris Matthews heaped effusive praise on Flake’s book Conscience of a Conservative as one that’s not only “tough” and “hard-hitting” on the GOP and President Trump, but a“very compelling” one too.
Flake strangely didn’t wade too deep into slamming Trump and the party’s voters as he did in previous interviews, but it was nonetheless a friendly segment in which his comments were no different than if Nicolle Wallace or Steve Schmidt were instead sitting next to Matthews.
Right from the get-go, Matthews set the tone:
With the publication of the new book today, Senator Jeff Flake of Arizona has quickly emerged as the most outspoken Republican critic of president Donald Trump. And he makes it clear he blames his own party for enabling Trump's rise to power. Well, with the title borrowed from former Senator Barry Goldwater, the book is called Conscience of a Conservative: A Rejection of Destructive Politics and a Return to Principle.
After the interview started with a pointed back-and-forth about whether Trump is the leader of the Republican Party, Matthews teed up Flake by asking“what’s wrong with Trump.”
Flake flaunted himself as Goldwater (and, by extension, L. Brent Bozell II) when the latter wrote the original Conscience of a Conservative:
I talk about it in the book. Barry Goldwater in 1960 thought that the conservative party, the Republican Party had been compromised by the New Deal. And so he wrote Conscience of a Conservative. I think today we've been compromised by other forces. Protectionism, you know, populism and I don’t think those bode well in the long term. That’s not a government policy.
Eventually, Matthews expressed disappointment with how the interview was going but not the book, declaring he’s “fascinated with how tough you are on Donald Trump.”
“Very hard hitting on Trump. Demagoguery is the word you used. Populism, protectionism, you used all the tough words and you don’t like them. You don't think this President is good for the country, do you,”Matthews wondered.
Flake noted that he’s backed Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch and Trump’s “great...cabinet picks” yet “where I think that he's profoundly unconservative is on things like free trade.”
Matthews then continued to sit by as Flake offered red meat for viewers:
FLAKE: I mean, that's something that we can't abandon as Republicans. We are decidedly less conservative if we do so and also, being conservative on policy is just part of it. You’ve to be conservative in demeanor as well. Conservatives —
MATTHEWS: Is he?
FLAKE: — a conservative — No. Conservative foreign policy ought to be measured and deliberate and sober and that's not what we have today.
Despite it having been at least five to six years after Trump’s despicable birtherism crusade against Barack Obama, Matthews gushed over how Flake spent time on this subject in his book.
“I think it is a tough, well-written book and I just want to keep you to it. Anyway, a portion of your book focuses on conservative conspiracy theories and the recent spread of fake news. Most notably, you criticized those who pushed the false notion that Barack Obama wasn't born in the U.S.,” Matthews explained before reading two book excerpts.
“To me, the original sin was saying Barack Obama was born in Kenya or whatever and denying he was a legitimate President, calling him sort of a con-artist. That was, to me, racist in its nature, to claim the guy’s not a true American when he was clearly, to make fun of his documentation to say he was sort of an illegal immigrant. I think you're dead right on that. I don't understand why your party went along with it,” an appreciative Matthews added.
At the end of the interview, the longtime liberal pundit and former aide to Jimmy Carter and Tip O’Neil argued that Flake’s book contained the “same principles” as Goldwater’s Conscience of a Conservative. Media Research Center president Brent Bozell would probably disagree with that, as per his statement earlier Tuesday.
He also predicted that “everybody’s going to talk about this book” seeing as how “it’s a tough, hard-hitting book” and “very compelling.”
To be honest, Matthews’s asinine claim of “everybody” falling for this book should just be contained to The New York Times, MSNBC hosts, failed GOP campaign officials, and adoring liberal elites on the East and West coasts.
Here’s the relevant portions of the transcript from MSNBC’s Hardball on August 1:
MSNBC’s Hardball
August 1, 2017
7:30 p.m. Eastern
 CHRIS MATTHEWS: Welcome back to Hardball. With the publication of the new book today, Senator Jeff Flake of Arizona has quickly emerged as the most outspoken Republican critic of president Donald Trump. And he makes it clear he blames his own party for enabling Trump's rise to power. Well, with the title borrowed from former Senator Barry Goldwater, the book is called Conscience of a Conservative: A Rejection of Destructive Politics and a Return to Principle. Flake says that, in the Trump era: “Conservatism has been compromised by a decidedly conservative stew of celebrity and authoritarianism.” And he argues that Republicans are “in denial” about Trump’s presidency: “That unnerving silence in the face of an erratic executive branch is an abdication, and those in positions of leadership bear particular responsibility.” With this book, Flake is calling on conservatives to stand up for their values and challenge President Trump, personally. It comes as the President's son, Eric Trump, echoes his father’s message the party needs on protect President Trump and defend him even more.
(....)
MATTHEWS: I'm joined now by the author of Conscience of a Conservative, Republican Senator Jeff Flake of Arizona. I think it was Frank Mankins who said ignore everything anybody says in Washington before the word “but.” And there he was, Eric coming out saying it is you guys' fault. What do you owe Donald Trump in terms of loyalty as a party?
REPUBLICAN SENATOR JEFF FLAKE (Ariz.): Well, obviously, I’m a Republican. The President is a Republican.
(....)
MATTHEWS: Okay, let’s talk about what's wrong with Trump? What's wrong with Trump?
FLAKE: I talk about it in the book. Barry Goldwater in 1960 thought that the conservative party, the Republican Party had been compromised by the New Deal. And so he wrote Conscience of a Conservative. I think today we've been compromised by other forces. Protectionism, you know, populism and I don’t think those bode well in the long term. That’s not a government policy.
MATTHEWS: You skipped demagoguery this time. It’s your book. Is Trump a demagogue?
FLAKE: I think that all of us, at times, as politicians, demagogue and he does some of it too. But I do think that we bear the responsibility as elected officials to stand up more than we have and I talk, this problem isn't just this administration. It came long before. I talk a lot in the book my time in Congress, 2001 to 2012 in the House of Representatives. We became a decidedly less conservative party and we jettisoned limited government party and we sent like drunken sailors. And then when we couldn’t argue that we were the limited government party, then we started to argue on thing like flag burning and the wedge issues and then, you know, we lost the majority in 2006 and we deserved to do so and then we lost the presidency in 2008. And I fear this majority the Republicans think is here to stay won't be here very long if we continue down the path we' on.
MATTHEWS: What is it in the nature of the Republican Party? Is it just a fact that the polling numbers show that 80something percent of Republicans — registered Republicans — self-identified Republicans like Trump's position on everything and they like him? That explains why there's been such party loyalty to this guy who’s not really a Republican. What explains that sort of everybody down the line refused to do what you're doing? Challenge him?
FLAKE: I think you see it on both the Republican and the Democratic side. There’s fidelity to —
MATTHEWS: This book is about your side. This book is about your side.
 (....)
MATTHEWS: What’s getting this book a lot of publicity and a lot of attention — the reason I'm fascinated with how tough you are on Donald Trump. Not this sort of generalized critique you're offering about the world conditions you’re giving me here. You have a different tone right now in this room than you have in this book. This book is very hard hitting. Very hard hitting on Trump. Demagoguery is the word you used. Populism, protectionism, you used all the tough words and you don’t like them. You don't think this President is good for the country, do you?
FLAKE: Well, let me say —
MATTHEWS: Well, no, in this book, it says he’s not good.
FLAKE: I'll talk about what I talk about in the book.
MATTHEWS: Okay, good.
FLAKE: I say in the book that I've agreed with him on many things. You know, Supreme Court justice, great one. Great, you know, cabinet picks. I worked him on regulatory reform. But where I think that he's profoundly unconservative is on things like free trade. I mean, that's something that we can't abandon as Republicans. We are decidedly less conservative if we do so and also, being conservative on policy is just part of it. You’ve to be conservative in demeanor as well. Conservatives —
MATTHEWS: Is he?
FLAKE: — a conservative — No. Conservative foreign policy ought to be measured and deliberate and sober and that's not what we have today.
MATTHEWS: I think it is a tough, well-written book and I just want to keep you to it. Anyway, a portion of your book focuses on conservative conspiracy theories and the recent spread of fake news. Most notably, you criticized those who pushed the false notion that Barack Obama wasn't born in the U.S. saying that: “When a conspiracy theory becomes a litmus test orthodoxy, objective reality is at risk.” When it comes to the use of alternative facts, you say “giving away one's agency to such confusion of fact and fantasy when one has power – well, that's truly dangerous.” I agree with you. To me, the original sin was saying Barack Obama was born in Kenya or whatever and denying he was a legitimate President, calling him sort of a con-artist. That was, to me, racist in its nature, to claim the guy’s not a true American when he was clearly, to make fun of his documentation to say he was sort of an illegal immigrant. I think you're dead right on that. I don't understand why your party went along with it.
 FLAKE: Well it was an awful thing and not everybody in the party did but more of the party should have stood up at that time and said, hey, this is baloney. Let's get off this kick. Some of us did. More of us should have and because we didn't, we allowed people to move forward spouting that stuff and then it gets worse and you come to a point where today, I saw a poll just last week that half of all Republicans believe that President Trump won the popular vote. No, he won the election. He is the president legitimately. But he didn't win the popular vote. That's an objective fact.
(....)
MATTHEWS: Anyway, I think it’s great you came on. I think it’s a tough, hard hitting book. It is very compelling and everybody’s going to talk about this book.
FLAKE: Thank you.
MATTHEWS: Conscience of Conservative. I read the first one by Barry Goldwater. This one is little different. Same principles, thank you, Senator Jeff Flake of Arizona.
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By Mike Ciandella
 In the past 48 hours, the socialist President of Venezuela, Nicolas Maduro, has installed a new national assembly (made up of his own supporters and relatives) in order to bypass his political opposition, and begun rounding up and jailing opposition leaders. In response, the United States has imposed a new round of sanctions against Maduro himself. So far this year, more than 140 people have been killed in the escalating political violence in that nation.
Yet in all of 2017, NBC's Today has yet to utter a single word about the misery wrought by Venezuela's socialist, and increasingly dictatorial, government. To their credit, this morning ABC and CBS both ran full reports – ABC’s Martha Raddatz called the latest developments "ominous" -- while all three broadcast evening newscasts on Monday night at least noted the dramatic developments.
On Good Morning America, Chief Global Affairs Correspondent Martha Raddatz called these latest developments “truly an ominous turn following the disputed election that gave President Maduro nearly unlimited powers, an election that the U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. has called a sham.” After running footage allegedly showing opponents of Maduro being rounded up and jailed, CBS This Morning correspondent Manuel Bojorquez noted that “their arrests do confirm the fears of the opposition here, and many in the international community who believe that President Nicolás Maduro would use this weekend's vote to rewrite the constitution as a pretext to jail, suppress, and otherwise silence the opposition.”
Good Morning America’s 83 seconds of coverage was more than what the broadcast had given to the topic all year up until this point (56 seconds total). Meanwhile, ABC’s World News Tonight and NBC Nightly News both ran news briefs (21 and 25 seconds long, respectively), although World NewsTonight continues to avoid using the words “socialism” or "socialist." CBS had the most comprehensive coverage, with 3 minutes and 56 seconds total between CBS This Morning and CBS Evening News.
During his World News Tonight report, anchor David Muir mentioned that the election gave Maduro “almost unlimited powers,” but then seemed to downplay Maduro’s power grab by saying that “President Nicolás Maduro celebrated his victory as a mandate from the people, but the U.S. calls him a dictator.” He then went on to observe that “Venezuela has been sinking into political chaos under his leadership.”
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By Scott Whitlock
Brian Williams is not a man for irony. The disgraced MSNBC host, who in 2015 lost his NBC anchoring job because of repeated false statements and exaggerations about his own reporting, does not like the phrase "fake news." On Monday’s show, he repeatedly derided the use of these words as "pernicious” and “insidious.”
Talking about new accusations that Donald Trump misdirected a statement by his son on Russia, Williams seethed, “On top of that, we have the President's lawyers tonight using that insidious label fake news.”
Later, the journalist talked to former Senator Bob Kerrey. Kerrey complained, “To describe the news as fake encourages people not to believe anything.” Williams ranted, “Yeah, that’s pernicious.”
 Except Williams IS the definition of fake news. He repeatedly, and falsely told of being in a Chinook helicopter that took fire from a rocket-propelled grenade. The ex-anchor pompously described the non-event as “ Black Hawk Down meets Saving Private Ryan.”
In 2005, Williams told David Letterman, “Two of our four helicopters were hit by ground fire including the one I was in. RPG and AK-47's.” That didn't happen. One might call it “fake news.” Williams eventually admitted it.
Later on Monday’s show, Williams allowed MSNBC guest Richard Painter to slime Trump as something close to a Nazi leader:
To have the President of the United States repeatedly attacking the media, attacking his political opponent who lost the election, calling for prosecution of Hillary Clinton and surrounding himself with more generals in the White House. And he goes to the Boy Scouts and he is giving this highly charged political speech in front of uniformed teenagers as if he wants to turn that into some sort of Trump youth organization.
I mean, the signs of authoritarianism are staring us right in the face. If we don't acknowledge that this is a risky situation, and we continue to put up with this, what we could find is that if we are in a war or if the President wants to get us into a war, in order to solidify his control, that he could very, very quickly try to make himself into an authoritarian president or dictator.
Williams' only reaction was to marvel: “As we keep saying, no ordinary time for good reason.”
A partial transcript is below:
The 11th Hour
7/31/17
11:14pm ET
BRIAN WILLIAMS: Richard, you tweeted something that really got our attention today. “Danger signs in any presidency. Lots of generals and civilian posts, authoritarian rhetoric, disdain for judges. Bigger risk in time of war.” On top of that, we have the President's lawyers tonight using that insidious label fake news.
 RICHARD PAINTER (chief WH ethics lawyer, Bush 43 administration): Well, this is a very troubling situation. To have the President of the United States repeatedly attacking the media, attacking his political opponent who lost the election, calling for prosecution of Hillary Clinton and surrounding himself with more generals in the White House. And he goes to the Boy Scouts and he is giving this highly charged political speech in front of uniformed teenagers as if he wants to turn that into some sort of Trump youth organization.
I mean, the signs of authoritarianism are staring us right in the face. If we don't acknowledge that this is a risky situation, and we continue to put up with this, what we could find is that if we are in a war or if the President wants to get us into a war, in order to solidify his control, that he could very, very quickly try to make himself into an authoritarian president or dictator.
And this is not a safe situation for the United States. Congress, Democrats and Republicans together need to get a handle on how to deal with Donald Trump. As I say there are psychological issues here. He does not appear to be very well in the way he is responding to the matters. And all the warning signs are there. We saw that throughout the campaign. But it's just gotten worse and worse. And now he is being cornered on the Russia investigation. And that's where you are most likely to have trouble. Meanwhile we've got a nuclear threat in Korea. And he is the person who has the power to decide how to respond to that. And I'm — I'm quite frankly quite scared about in situation right now.
WILLIAMS: As we keep saying, no ordinary time for good reason.
11:42
BOB KERREY: There is clear and present evidence the Russians tried to interfere with our elections. We had an investigation going on. And he made a decision that he didn't like that investigation. So he got rid of Comey. And now he has a special counsel. He has Robert Mueller. Former United States Marine. Got tremendous integrity, tremendous capability. And at a minimum, he is going issue a report that's going to be unpleasant. And constantly saying that it's fake news. Now, you can disagree. I can say, “I don’t like what Brian Williams said about me. I don’t like what someone said about me.” But to describe the news as fake encourages people not to believe anything.
WILLIAMS: Yeah, that’s pernicious.
KERRY: It’s pernicious.
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By Kyle Drennen
During an interview with South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham on Tuesday’s NBC Today, co-hosts Matt Lauer and Hoda Kotb fretted that Donald Trump was single-handedly destroying the American presidency. Noting that Graham was an “outspoken critic” of the President, Kotb wondered: “What do you think the President could do starting today to regain your confidence?”
After Graham called for greater White House discipline and being “focused like a laser” on reforming health care, Kotb worried: “Do you feel that he’s damaged the Office of the President, just the credibility of the office, over the last six months?” While the Republican lawmaker acknowledged that Trump has “done some things...that to me are unpresidential,” Graham assured that “his presidency can still be very consequential.”
Lauer demanded the Senator attack the President: “With all due respect, though, you didn’t quite answer her question. Do you think to date, in the last six months, he has damaged the credibility of the Office of the Presidency?” Graham quipped: “...a lot of people thought Obama had.”
After listing examples of GOP disagreements with Trump on certain issues, Graham concluded:
I will push back against him, I will call him out when I think he’s saying things bad for the country. But I have an obligation to work with him. And if he will help me and others deliver a new form of health care, I need to help him. He is our president, by the way.
Later in the exchange, after Lauer asked about the threat posed by a nuclear North Korea, Graham asserted: “The only way they’re going to change is if they believe there’s a credible threat of military force on the table.” Lauer pressed: “But every military expert says there is no good military option.” Graham replied: “Well, they’re wrong. There is a military option, to destroy North Korea’s program and North Korea itself.”
The morning show host was aghast at the possibility of military action being necessary: “Just to be clear, are you saying it’s okay to use a military option that immediately endangers the lives of millions of people in that region?”
The fact that North Korea has been endangering millions of lives for years didn’t seem to dawn on Lauer.
The biased interview was brought to viewers by Mazda, Walmart, and Citi.
Here is a full transcript of the August 1 exchange:
7:05 AM ET
MATT LAUER: We're joined now exclusively by Senator Lindsey Graham. Always good to see you, Senator.
SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM [R-SC]: Good morning.
LAUER: Thanks for coming by. We have so much to talk about. I want to ask you about this Washington Post story that says that President Trump may have been the one who crafted that memo released by his son, Donald Trump Jr., about that meeting with the Russian lawyer that said it was primarily about adopting Russian children. We know that's not true now.
GRAHAM: Right.
LAUER: If the President was directly involved in creating that statement, it’s not illegal to lie to the press, does it bother you?
[ON-SCREEN HEADLINE: Did Trump Mislead on Russia Meeting?; Report: President “Personally Dictated” Son’s Explanation]
GRAHAM: Yeah, it bothers me a lot because, one, he put his son in jeopardy. Now we have to wonder about what Don Jr.’s team will tell you about what he actually did. If he didn’t know about the e-mail, the statement may have fooled you. If you know about the e-mail with Don Jr., then it’s a misleading statement.
LAUER: But it sounds like the President himself was trying to cover up the truth about that meeting.
GRAHAM: If that’s true, then that was a bad decision by the President, which will make us ask more questions. When you get caught in a lie about one thing, it makes it hard to just say, “Let the other stuff go.”
LAUER: Let me ask you about John Kelly’s first day on the job. He’s a military guy, he knows what discipline smells and looks like. He wasted no time in getting get rid of a loose cannon in Anthony Scaramucci. Do you feel confident that John Kelly can bring discipline to the West Wing?
GRAHAM: Well, the Marines can do almost anything. So the Marines have landed in the White House, he has a beach head, he’s clearing the beach, and the only person who can kick me off the beach is President Trump. This will only work if President Trump will empower him to continue to do what he’s doing.
LAUER: And if he can install some discipline in the President himself.
GRAHAM: Yeah, I mean, you know, we’re talking about health care and about 40 other things in the same week. If you want to get health care passed, you’ve got to have a laser-like focus. To give up on health care would be a mistake. I’ve got a bill that would block grant all ObamaCare money back to the states, it’s never even been presented to the Senate. I think there’s another round of health care coming, but the President has to work with the governors. We should look outside of Washington to fix ObamaCare, it was a mistake by Republicans not to do that. But for this to work, Mr. President, you’ve got to listen to the governors, work with a group of us in the Senate, and stay on message for round two of health care.
HODA KOTB: Senator Graham, you’ve been an outspoken critic, obviously, of the President. And as we just heard, Senator Flake – and I’ll just repeat what he said in the piece, he said of Trump, “We created him and now we are rationalizing him, when will it stop?” What do you think the President could do starting today to regain your confidence?
GRAHAM: Firing General – having General Kelly in charge really helps. Focusing on health care. Can he make it between now and September 30thfocused like a laser on trying to rally the Congress, working with governors of both parties to come up with a new way to deliver health care? Discipline is what I’m looking for. We didn’t create him. The American people chose him. You know, I like Jeff Flake, he’s a good guy, but he beat me and 16 other Republicans and the former Secretary of State. We should honor his win, but he has an obligation to be president for all of us and to stop the chaos. Most of the chaos is generated by him, and no one else.
KOTB: Do you feel that he’s damaged the Office of the President, just the credibility of the office, over the last six months?
GRAHAM: I think he’s done some things that most – that to me are unpresidential, but it’s not hopeless. If you can pass health care to get money and power closer to the patient, away from Washington, if you can move on to taxes, if you can effectively deal with North Korea, his presidency can still be very consequential. But General Kelly was probably the best choice available to him. He’s a good man, listen to him.
 LAUER: With all due respect, though, you didn’t quite answer her question. Do you think to date, in the last six months, he has damaged the credibility of the Office of the Presidency?
GRAHAM: I don’t – a lot of people thought Obama had. It’s in the eyes of the beholder. Rather than me critiquing the Office of the President, why don’t I do this, not empower him when he does dangerous things. We’re not going to change the rules of the Senate because he tells us to. We’re not going to deal out our Democratic colleagues, for 200 years the minority’s had a voice in the Senate. I don’t want to become the House. I've been in the House, I love it, but I’m not going to change 200 years of history because Donald Trump’s mad.
At the end of the day, we rebuked him when it came to Russia, 97 to 2 to pass new sanctions, where we have to look at any waiver that he may give the Russians is a pretty strong push-back against Donald Trump. I will push back against him, I will call him out when I think he’s saying things bad for the country. But I have an obligation to work with him. And if he will help me and others deliver a new form of health care, I need to help him. He is our president, by the way.
LAUER: On the subject of North Korea, the President has said, “We’ll handle North Korea, we’re going to be able to handle them, it will be handled.” In your opinion, over the next year, is it more likely that there is some sort of military conflict on the Korean peninsula, whether that's a surgical strike or something larger, or is it more likely that North Korea will cement its place as a nuclear threat in the world?
GRAHAM: Well, this is the ultimate question. I know it’s early in the morning, but President Trump has said, “I will not allow them to get an ICBM with a nuclear weapon on top to hit America.” They’re headed that way. The only way they’re going to change is if they believe there’s a credible threat of military force on the table. The Chinese are miscalculating Trump, and so are the North Koreans. He’s got to choose between homeland security and regional stability. Japan, South Korea, China would all be in the cross hairs of a war, if we started one with North Korea, but if they get a missile, they can hit California, maybe other parts of America.
LAUER: But every military expert says there is no good military option.
GRAHAM: Well, they’re wrong.
LAUER: What’s a good one?
GRAHAM: There is a military option, to destroy North Korea’s program and North Korea itself. He’s not going to allow – President Trump – the ability of this madman to have a missile to hit America. If there’s going to be a war to stop them, it will be over there. If thousands die, they’re going to die over there, they’re not going to die here. And he’s told me that to my face. And that may be provocative, but not really. When you’re President of the United States, where’s your allegiance lie? To the people of the United States. This man, Kim Jong-Un, is threatening America with a nuclear-tipped missile. President trump doesn’t want a war, the Chinese can stop this. But to China, South Korea, and Japan: Donald Trump is not going to allow this missile threat to mature.
LAUER: Just to be clear, are you saying it’s okay to use a military option that immediately endangers the lives of millions of people in that region?
GRAHAM: I’m saying it’s inevitable unless North Korea changes because you’re making our president pick between regional stability and homeland security. He’s having to make a choice that no president wants to make. They’ve kicked the can down the road for 20 years, there’s no place else to kick it. There will be a war with North Korea over their missile program if they continue to try to hit America with an ICBM. He’s told me that, I believe him. And if I were China, I would believe him, too, and do something about it. You can stop North Korea, militarily or diplomatically. I prefer the diplomatic approach. But they will not be allowed to have a missile to hit America with a nuclear weapon on top. And to allow them to do that is really abandoning homeland security.
KOTB: Can we end with just a quick note on Senator John McCain? He’s in a tough challenge, he’s a friend to you, he’s a patriot. Just describe what he means to you and to the nation.
GRAHAM: I can’t think of anything I’ve done in 20 years of politics plus that John hasn’t been by my side. I’ve been his wing man, he’s been my wing man. I’ve traveled every place in the world, mostly crappy places. I am inspired by him. He has taught me what it means to be an American patriot. He’s a good example of what it means to be a senator. And above all, that he’s a friend. Not a Washington friend – a friend. I don’t know what God has in store for John. Every day that he’s here is a blessing. He wants to come back to the Senate, and God willing, he’ll come back and help us fix health care and rebuild the military.
KOTB: Alright.
LAUER: It’s nice to have you here, Senator.
GRAHAM: Thank you.
LAUER: Thank you so much.
KOTB: Thanks for coming on.
LAUER: Really appreciate it.
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By Kristine Marsh
 Monday’sfiring of recently hired White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci along with the replacement of Reince Priebus with John Kelly as Chief of Staff has left the media in an uproar about the “chaos” in the White House. On CNN’s New Day Tuesday, political analyst and former host of NBC’s Meet the Press David Gregory argued that the firings and hirings undermined the integrity of the presidency. “ Well I mean, I just think it’s been a joke,” Gregory scoffed.
That response came after host Chris Cuomo asked Gregory what he thought about the White House’s “problem” with staff, and what Kelly’s solution to fire Scaramucci “may yield.”
Gregory bluntly called the “behavior within the White House” a “joke,” even going on to call Trump a liar for saying he could run an organized White House because he was a business leader.
Well, I mean I just think it's been a joke. The behavior within the White House. I mean the lie from the president that as a business leader he was going to come in and run a great organization like his own organization, and then he has this nonsense. Scaramucci acting like this is seventh grade home room, instead of the west wing, and the presidency. I mean, really a joke.
Gregory then took the Dowd approach in treating Trump as if he was a child that Congress needed to shield from the public:
Now at least Congress has tied his hands on the sanctions. The issue now is the potential to turn the corner. There are people like General Mattis, and now General Kelly who are close enough on really big issues to have the president's ear and apparently have his respect to potentially instill some real discipline in Trump. The question is whether Trump listens to anybody, and that will be the ultimate test, and this whole issue with the misleading comment that The Post is reporting on this morning, what does General Kelly do with that, do with the response to that? That's what we're going to be keeping our eyes on, because you have a chief of staff who has got this kind of power. Let's see him, the evidence of him actually using it on issues that matter, real problems, like North Korea, things like that. Not this nonsense about gossip between advisors.
Gregory has a tendency to react with hyperbole to anything Trump does such as when he compared the so-called “Muslim ban” to the Holocaust. While tending to blow up everything out of proportion that Trump does, Gregory also tends to downplay anything negative found on the Democrats side. Despite the conflicts between Bernie Sanders and Clinton supporters and the DNC’s efforts to push out Sanders, he called the infighting “overblown” and “not as big” as the GOP’s problems.
As much hoopla the media has made of the recent turmoil in the White House staff, this isn’t completely new. As NewsBusters noted after Spicer’s resignation, even the Clinton Administration had similar shakeups, with communications director George Stephanopoulos being fired by President Clinton after just five months on the job.
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By Scott Whitlock
Race baiting MSNBC anchor Joy Reid brought her typical slime to MTP Dailyon Tuesday, insisting that Donald Trump just highlighted the existing “vulgarity” of “right wing talk radio.” Talking to Chuck Todd about Arizona Senator Jeff Flake’s new anti-Trump book, Reid sneered, “If you've been listening to right wing talk radio over the last 20 something years, the same anger and rage and anger at the changes in the country, the same ethic, the same sort of, you know... vulgarity existed.”
Because everything is racial, Reid snapped, “Wasn't Arizona one of the last states to recognize the King holiday? So, it's a certain kind of state.” Dismissing the conservative base as basically a bunch of haters, she scolded:
Donald Trump recognized better than they did, better than Jeff Flake did, better than John McCain did, that he could simply identify with the text of what people were saying on talk radio or listening to when they heard Rush Limbaugh, the anger and rage they felt all the time, the sense of political correctness, meaning, "I can't say these things because I can't keep my job and be in polite society." Trump said, "Yes, you can or I can say them for you."
Hammering the right as racists, she indicted, “The elites of the Republican Party thinks that the base agrees with them on eviscerating Medicaid, for instance. Donald Trump understands that the base of the party is fine with big government. They don't like that certain people are getting it."
This is the same Reid who, after the shooting of Representative Steve Scalice, chose to deride the Republican’s history on “race.”
A partial transcript is below:
 MTP Daily8/1/17 5:14pm ET
CHUCK TODD: Look, there’s a bunch of other quotes here and in some ways he blames the base. Let me pull this one, Joy. “Giving in to the politics of anger, the belief that riling up the base can make up for failed attempts to broaden the electorate. These are the spasms of a dying party. Anger and resentment and blaming groups of people for our people might work in the short term, but it's a dangerous impulse in a pluralistic society.” The state of Arizona gave us Joe Arpaio. The Republican Party in Arizona there has always been schizophrenic in some ways. It's given us people like Jeff Flake and John McCain on one hand. And then at the other hand, it’s given us, and this goes way back, a guy like Evan Mecham back in the day, who was sort of like— somebody said, People who have just been in the sun too long and their brain sort of, like, had too much sun on them. And they ended up electing that man. The point is — there’s always been — he really is putting himself and this issue front and center for this primary.
JOY REID: Wasn’t Arizona one of the last states to recognize the King holiday? So, it’s a certain kind of state. Look, the reality is, you know, you have to what was Donald Trump’s crime in the minds of Republican elites? I went and I looked up Jeff Flake’s voting record. He has voted 95.5 percent with Donald Trump. Trump’s margin in Arizona was 3.5 percent. So, 538.com’s predicted predictive score would be that he would have voted with Trump about 61 percent of the time. He superseded that by 30 points. So this is not a difference in content or in what they want to do. It is really to me about the gap between the text and subtext. If Donald Trump committed a crime among Republican elites, he made the long-term subtext of Republicanism into text.
Meaning, if you've been listening to right wing talk radio over the last 20 something years, the same anger and rage and anger at the changes in the country, the same ethic, the same sort of, you know, sometime vulgarity existed. It's just that elites in the Republican Party didn't accept that as the way to market the party to the world. Donald Trump recognized better than they did, better than Jeff Flake did, better than John McCain did, that he could simply identify with the text of what people were saying on talk radio or listening to when they heard Rush Limbaugh, the anger and rage they felt all the time, the sense of political correctness, meaning, “I can’t say these things because I can’t keep my job and be in polite society.” Trump said, “Yes, you can or I can say them for you.” So, all Trump did was take a lot of the subtext and anger that was already there. He didn’t invent this. Trump is just making it open and obvious and Republican elites can’t stand it.
...
5:18
REID: The elites of the Republican party thinks that the base agrees with them on eviscerating Medicaid, for instance. Donald Trump understands that the base of the party is fine with big government. They don’t like that certain people are getting it.
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By Kyle Drennen
On Tuesday’s NBC Today, while marking the 75th anniversary of President Franklin D. Roosevelt signing a 1942 executive order to intern Japanese-American citizens in the wake of the attack on Pearl Harbor, co-host Matt Lauer and special correspondent Tom Brokaw both described the internment locations as “concentration camps.” Brokaw also emphasized that it was important to remember that period in our history “especially during these days.”
“This year marks a somber anniversary, 75 years since a shameful chapter in American history,” fill-in co-host Hoda Kotb proclaimed at the top of the segment. Lauer followed: “The year after Pearl Harbor, with paranoia spreading about everything relating to the Japanese, President Roosevelt signed an executive order, 9066. Japanese-Americans were forced from their homes and businesses at gun point and shipped to primitive concentration camps in remote areas.”
Brokaw began his report by reiterating: “In August 1942, 10,000 Japanese-Americans from the west coast were shipped to a remote, barren concentration camp, that’s what it was, in north-central Wyoming, Heart Mountain.”
Following the taped portion of segment, Brokaw noted how “young men of draft age were drafted out of the camp and sent to war....while their relatives were in concentration camps effectively.”
After repeated comparisons of U.S. detention facilities to Nazi death camps, Lauer observed: “...it’s really important for us to go back and remember some of the moments we are not proud of in our nation’s history.” Brokaw agreed: “No, that’s right, absolutely. You know, and so many Americans were really unaware...completely unaware of what had happened there and we do need to be reminded, especially during these days.”
The former NBC Nightly News anchor never elaborated on why Americans needed to be reminded of such decades-old civil rights abuses “especially during these days,” but one can imagine it was meant as a smear against the Trump administration.
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