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The Daily Beast
‘Morning Joe’ Trashes Fox News Host for Allowing Navarro’s Unhinged Fauci Rant: ‘That’s Fireable’
MSNBCThe hosts of MSNBC’s Morning Joe tore into Fox News host Rachel Campos-Duffy on Wednesday for not challenging former White House trade adviser Peter Navarro’s crazed tirade against Dr. Anthony Fauci, blasting Campos-Duffy’s interview as a “fireable” offense and saying Fox needs “to be called out.”During an appearance on Fox News Primetime on Tuesday night, Navarro launched into a conspiratorial rant that more resembled a WWE-style promo video. Calling the top doctor a “sociopath and a liar” for criticizing former President Donald Trump’s handling of the pandemic, Navarro then went on an unhinged screed, baselessly accusing Fauci of being “the father of the actual virus” and bankrolling the genetic engineering of COVID-19 at a Wuhan lab.“If he wants to be the father of something, he’s the father of the virus that’s killed over a half a million Americans,” Navarro shouted while parroting a conspiracy theory that’s been popular among the far right.Noting that Campos-Duffy offered no pushback at all of Navarro’s claims and instead nodded along and smiled, Morning Joe co-host Joe Scarborough railed against the former Real World star and her network for allowing Navarro’s tirade to go unchallenged.“Oh my god, it’s something I would have expected to be up on Facebook and then be taken down. I’m really shocked what that guy got away with saying,” Scarborough exclaimed. “The same guy who, by the way, had written a memo back in January correctly saying that half-a-million people could die from this pandemic if Donald Trump did nothing. Yeah, guess what, Donald Trump did next to nothing.”Scarborough’s co-host and wife Mika Brzezinski agreed, essentially accusing Campos-Duffy of malfeasance for letting Navarro peddle his conspiracies on-air.“If you’re a news operation, that’s fireable,” she declared. “And it goes on and on. We see it all the time on certain news networks.”After airing the clip of Navarro’s rant, Scarborough said it was “sickening that we had to play that” while denouncing it as “garbage,” all while Brzezinski viscerally reacted.“That was so offensive, deeply offensive, that they just need to be called out,” he seethed. “The fact that they allowed somebody, without any pushback, call Anthony Fauci ‘the father of the virus,’ talking about the communist Chinese and genetically this and that and the other from a lab that Anthony Fauci funded is just so deeply offensive!”Scarborough added: “Again, the sort of thing that would be taken down from Facebook—who has the lowest standards for truth regarding this pandemic. And yet, they run this on a national network. Now we’re going to be hearing idiots running around repeating that in Congress.”Co-host Willie Geist would then weigh in, criticizing Campos-Duffy for offering “no pushback” and just sitting there with a “smile” on her face while Navarro went off on a “lunatic” tirade. He also took aim at Fox News for knowingly giving a platform to this “kind of complete, utter, conspiratorial nonsense.”Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.
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The Telegraph
Gucci heiress says Al Pacino plays her father ‘like an overweight thug’ in new Lady Gaga film
A scion of the Gucci fashion dynasty has criticised the choice of Al Pacino to play her father in a film about a notorious family murder that stars Lady Gaga and Adam Driver. Patricia Gucci, who was born in Britain, accused filmmakers of portraying her father Aldo Gucci as “a diminutive, overweight thug”, saying that in real life he was “tall, slender, and blue-eyed.” The film, directed by Sir Ridley Scott, is due for release in November. “In the movie, he is played by Al Pacino, the actor known for his role in The Godfather as a mobster and Scarface as a drug dealer, stigmatizing generations of Italians and Latinos,” Ms Gucci wrote after seeing photos from the set of the film, which is being shot in Rome, Milan, Lake Como and the Italian Alps. House of Gucci is based on the true story of her cousin, Maurizio Gucci, who was shot dead by a hit man in the foyer of his office in 1995. The assassination was ordered by Mr Gucci’s ex-wife, Patrizia Reggiani, whom he had left for another woman.
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Axios
House GOP memo argues embracing Trump is the party’s only option for comeback
On a flight Tuesday from Indianapolis to Fort Wayne, Ind., two leaders in the House Republican conference discussed a memo that argues that their party’s future demands they “embrace our new coalition” because “President Trump’s gift didn’t come with a receipt.”Why it matters: The document, titled “Cementing GOP as the Working Class Party,” leaves no doubt that Republicans — at least in the House of Representatives — will be doubling down on Donald Trump for the foreseeable future.Stay on top of the latest market trends and economic insights with Axios Markets. Subscribe for freeBehind the scenes: On the afternoon flight between fundraisers, home state Rep. Jim Banks, who leads the largest bloc of House conservatives, the Republican Study Committee, handed his memo to House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy.Banks argues in the memo that “both parties are undergoing coalitional transformations” and that Republicans shouldn’t fight the trend of corporate donors pulling back from the GOP.”Our electoral success in the 2022 midterm election will be determined by our willingness to embrace our new coalition,” the memo says. “House Republicans can broaden our electorate, increase voter turnout, and take back the House by enthusiastically rebranding and reorienting as the Party of the Working Class.””There is an embittered and loud minority in the GOP that finds our new coalition distasteful, but President Trump’s gift didn’t come with a receipt,” he adds.What’s next: Banks offered McCarthy ideas for how Republicans could make further inroads with working class voters. On the messaging front, he recommends:Contrasting the GOP’s immigration policies against “Biden’s border crisis”Hammering the Chinese Communist Party’s “predatory trade practices” and arguing that “Democrats’ coziness with China results from their coziness with Wall Street”Attacking Democrats for COVID lockdowns, hammering “wokeness and identity politics” and going after Big Tech.He suggests Republicans hold “working class roundtables” and create a “working families task force.”When it comes to fundraising, Banks argues that members should effectively embrace their pariah status in corporate America and campaign against corporate fundraising. “Members should use corporations’ preference for the Democrat [sic] Party to drive individual donations,” he writes. “It worked for me.””When Eli Lilly and several other corporate PACs blacklisted me” for objecting to the certification of President Biden’s victory on Jan. 6, “I reached out to individual donors, explained the situation, and asked for their support.””Once my supporters learned that liberal corporations blacklisted me because I refused to cave to their demands on January 6th, they were happy to make up the difference,” he writes. “That’s how, in the first quarter of this year, I regained every penny of the $241,000 I lost in corporate money through individual donations.”Every Republican Member in a competitive district should know exactly how much corporate cash their opponent received in 2020, and they should relay those numbers to their constituents,” he adds. “The NRCC should arm Members with that information and commission advertisements that contrast Republican challengers with corporate-backed Democrat incumbents.”Read the full memo. More from Axios: Sign up to get the latest market trends with Axios Markets. Subscribe for free
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ProFootball Talk on NBC Sports
Nick Saban: DeVonta Smith’s performance speaks for itself
Wide receiver DeVonta Smith has heard a lot of questions about his size and how it will affect his chances of success in the NFL since Alabama’s season ended with a national title. Smith said he can’t control what others think, so he focuses on what he can control on the field. The Heisman Trophy [more]
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Reuters
U.S. private payrolls post biggest gain in six months; housing market cooling
U.S. private employers hired the most workers in six months in March as more Americans got vaccinated against COVID-19, pushing the economy towards a broader reopening, which is expected to unleash a strong wave of pent-up demand in the coming months. Though the private payrolls gain shown in the ADP National Employment Report on Wednesday was slightly below economists’ expectations, the jump in hiring aligned with a recent improvement in labor market conditions. The labor market and economy are also being supported by the White House’s massive $1.9 trillion pandemic relief package.
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KGO – San Francisco
Napa Co. is staying in red tier after COVID-19 outbreak
The Napa County Supervisor says the numbers have been headed in the right direction county-wide, but the outbreak has affected the positivity rate – because of that they’ll stay in the red tier instead of moving into the orange.
