From The Reporter’s Notebook
In a barrage of lawsuits, current and former employees of Fox News are alleging that the network and its top executives fostered a toxic culture of sexism and racism that percolated down through the ranks, as TPM’s Allegra Kirkland reported. It appears the beleaguered network is gaining a new level of sensitivity to public outrage. One day after Bill O’Reilly’s protégé Jesse Waters caused a mini firestorm with a crack about liking the way Ivanka Trump held a microphone up to her mouth, he suddenly announced he was taking a vacation. When O’Reilly went on vacation amid swirling sexual harassment allegations, he never returned to the network.
Agree or Disagree?
Josh Marshall: “There are obviously sharply divergent opinions on NAFTA: what it did in the 90s and what it continues to do today. But I think most observers would agree that a precipitate withdrawal from the agreement would at least have severe short-term repercussions for all three economies, purely on the basis of the disruption of trade flows and businesses that are based on its being in place.”
Say What?!
“There are many people that want to break up the 9th Circuit. It’s outrageous.”
– President Donald Trump floated the idea of breaking up the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals Wednesday, misidentifying it yet again as the court responsible for the nationwide injunction issued Tuesday against his executive order regarding so-called sanctuary cities.
BUZZING: Today in the Hive
From a TPM Prime member: “You are not going to get appreciable movement from the Trump base in the next few election cycles based on pushing a Democratic message. Even humiliating abject failure by Trump will likely have little impact (but some may result – GW Bush showed that failure can change some votes.) The pyscho-social petrification (putrification?) of this population look decades and has become highly insulated to any attempt at contact from outside the bubble. But certainly a long term strategy of de-conditioning them from the Bizarro World is needed for the long-term health of the nation. The authoritarian racist culture born of the slaveholding south needs to be eventually cleansed from the nation but that is a long term project. 150 years after the Civil War it is still not only alive, but powerful and becoming increasingly so.”
Related: After Canceling Speech, Ann Coulter Calls Berkeley ‘A Radical Thuggish Institution’
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What We’re Reading
The Republican Lawmaker Who Secretly Created Reddit’s Women-Hating ‘Red Pill’ (The Daily Beast)
The Best Thing to Eat Before a Workout? Maybe Nothing at All (The New York Times)
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?p=1055579