How Did a Pro-Trump Fox Anchor End Up on a Panel of Black Journalists Interviewing the Republican Candidate?
Plus, the right-wing media meltdown over Tim Walz and softball questions for J.D. Vance.
Donald Trump’s disastrous interview at the National Association of Black Journalists convention continues to wreak havoc days after the former president went off the rails and launched a series of racist attacks against his Democratic opponent. Besides titillating MAGA propagandists by fully dragging the presidential campaign into the sewer, Trump’s appearance has also resulted in longstanding members questioning the organization’s leadership and one of the moderators receiving death threats.
On top of that, it was later revealed that Fox News anchor Harris Faulkner, one of the co-moderators of the Trump panel, wasn’t even an NABJ member – despite the organization appearing to require other hosts and interviewers to maintain a current membership.
So, how did Faulkner end up being on the panel? Did the Trump campaign request her as a moderator as a term of the former president’s participation?
These questions and others actually came up during the the NABJ’s annual business meeting on Saturday. “It remains unclear what the qualifications to moderate this panel [are],” CBS Detroit reporter Kyra Azore noted on social media during the meeting.
That’s because it appears that the NABJ required other moderators and hosts at the convention to hold memberships in order to participate. “You are listed as a moderator, author or interviewer for the following #NABJ24 session,” an email a panel moderator shared with Ragebait read. “This is a friendly reminder that you must be an NABJ member in good standing throughout the convention dates of July 31 - August 4, 2024. Please take a moment to renew or join by Friday, July 12th to retain your moderator, author or interviewer status.” Ragebait has learned that this email was sent to several other hosts and interviewers. The NABJ did not respond to a request for comment.
According to a source familiar with the situation, it was NABJ executive director Drew Berry who first approached Fox News about including Faulkner on the panel, calling the network on July 27 to see if the Fox anchor would be interested in interviewing Trump. At the time, the panel was also supposed to include Scott, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Tia Mitchell, and the Washington Post’s Toluse Olorunnipa.
It should be noted that the NABJ contacted Fox about Faulkner’s participation shortly after her lengthy and friendly interview with the former president, suggesting that the organization felt that tapping the conservative anchor would help push the Trump team to accept the invitation to this year’s convention. That interview was also taped just hours before the attempt on Trump’s life.
Berry, of course, had to be aware that Faulkner is not currently a member of the NABJ and has not been for some time. In fact, according to the source, Faulkner was also not a member when she was tapped to co-host the NABJ’s Salute to Excellence Awards in 2019.
“Performative, Journalistic Charades”
Even before Trump took the Chicago stage last Wednesday, the mere announcement of his presence at the annual event sparked disagreement and upheaval within the NABJ. Washington Post columnist Karen Attiah stepped down as co-chair of the 2024 convention, later explaining that she “could not be part of the production and promotion of performative, journalistic charades that degrade our communities.” The NABJ also came under fire for initially declining Vice President Kamala Harris’ request to appear at the convention via Zoom as she was unable to make it in person.
Already steeped in controversy, the former president’s conversation – co-moderated by ABC News’ Rachel Scott, Semafor’s Kadia Goba and Faulkner – ended up being a full-fledged dumpster fire. Starting an hour late because Trump reportedly threw a tantrum over being fact-checked live, the Republican presidential nominee kicked off the interview by attacking Scott personally for asking why Black voters should trust him considering his hostility towards Black journalists and coziness with far-right extremists.
Calling it a “nasty question” from a “fake news” reporter, Trump kept lashing out at Scott throughout the interview, even prompting Faulkner to react with an “oh my goodness” over the former president’s barrage of criticism. When he wasn’t grumbling about Scott being “rude” to him, Trump was questioning the vice president’s blackness. Asked whether he would encourage his supporters to stop calling Harris a “DEI hire,” Trump responded by claiming she was misleading the public about her race.
“She was always of Indian heritage, and she was only promoting Indian heritage,” he exclaimed to gasps. “I didn't know she was Black until a number of years ago when she happened to turn Black, and now she wants to be known as Black.” Trump would later double down on his racist broadsides against Harris while right-wing media would initially defend the strategy of questioning the vice president’s ethnicity, especially since they’d already been going down that road for a while. “Trump told Kamala, ‘you ain't Black,’” Fox News star Jesse Watters cheered.
Many conservative pundits and GOP lawmakers, however, eventually realized that going down this road would backfire spectacularly and urged the former president to back off. “But the biggest thing the Trump campaign can do is stop talking about what her race is, stop talking about if she’s Indian or Black,” Fox News contributor Tomi Lahren pleaded on Friday.
Meanwhile, NABJ’s leadership – namely president Ken Lemon and Berry – remains under fire over the way this was all handled. During the organization’s annual business meeting on Saturday, Berry acknowledged that Scott had received death threats following her tense interview with Trump, who continues to publicly attack and call for ABC News to fire her.
Additionally, none of the moderators of the Trump sitdown were from a traditionally Black media outlet, something the NABJ leadership admitted was a “blind spot” during the business meeting. “If we had to do this all over again we’d do Black press and mixed gender” for a Trump panel, Lemon said, according to CBS Detroit reporter Azore.
The Trump campaign did not respond to Ragebait’s request for comment.
Walz Come Tumbling Down
What would Chachi do?
In the immediate aftermath of Harris naming Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate, the conservative media infotainment complex attempted to frame the affable former football coach as a radical “socialist” who will turn the Midwest “into Mogadishu.” At the same time, Trump’s Fox News loyalists struggled to settle on a coherent and effective line of attack on the suddenly ascendant Democratic ticket.
The denizens of Fox News’ right-wing round table show ‘The Five’ threw everything at Walz to see what stuck just ahead of his first appearance as the veep candidate. “He’s a male Karen with power and a pot belly,” Fox News “comedian” Greg Gutfeld sneered, adding that the Walz-Harris ticket was “the woke Bonnie and Clyde.” Wailing about how Walz is “Minnesota nuts,” Jesse Watters bounced from one right-wing culture war grievance to another in an effort to cast Walz as a liberal boogeyman. “This guy put tampons in boys' bathrooms. Fourth-grade boys’ bathrooms, tampons. He wants CRT taught,” he cried. “He was all about toppling the Columbus statue. This guy changed the flag of the state to look more like Somalia. What is wrong with this guy?!”
Soon enough, the network’s primetime lineup began hammering Walz for signing a bill that provides menstrual products in public school bathrooms, parroting the online right’s “Tampon Tim” nickname for Walz. On top of that, they also attempted to flip Walz’s viral criticism of the GOP’s weirdness on its head, claiming it was the governor who was actually “pretty weird.”
In the end, whether it was calling on the FBI to “do a background check” on Walz for visiting China or engaging in gross racist fearmongering by warning the governor was trying to turn America into Somalia, the entire evening of outrage came across as farcical once Watters turned to D-list actor Scott Baio for his thoughts – and his advice on debating the Harris-Walz ticket.
Embarg-Oh No
After finding itself in hot water for breaking a news embargo surrounding the major prisoner swap between Russia and the West, which included the release of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gerhskovich from Russian custody, Bloomberg News responded by firing the lead author of the story and disciplining several other staffers.
Bloomberg, however, isn’t the only news outlet that jumped the gun. In the case of the other organizations, though, it appears this was largely the result of institutional confusion and communication breakdowns.
Ahead of the prisoner exchange, government officials spoke to reporters from several news organizations about the details of the pending swap, but only under the condition that they would not publish anything until all of the prisoners had made it safely into American custody. This was prior to the 8 am ET briefing on Thursday the White House gave roughly 30 reporters about the swap, which was also included in the embargo agreement.
While Bloomberg published its “exclusive” story at 7:41 a.m. ET on Thursday morning, which at the time inaccurately said Gershkovich and Paul Whelan had already been released, Fox News ran an on-air news segment eight hours prior that said the wrongly imprisoned journalist would soon be heading home.
“The Wall Street Journal is reporting that its reporter Evan Gershkovich is slated to come back to the United States tomorrow as part of a prisoner exchange. Questioning now whether this is true, this is Jennifer Griffin, the national security correspondent, giving us this information now about Evan Gershkovich,” Fox News anchor Trace Gallagher reported late Wednesday night. A video clip of Gallagher’s report was published on Fox News’ digital news site, only to be quickly taken down.
According to three well-placed Fox News sources, this largely stems from Griffin – a well-respected and highly sourced reporter – not being part of the initial group of reporters and management privy to the pending swap. Only a very small group of Fox employees – which included White House correspondent Jacqui Heinrich – were in the know about the release on Wednesday night, and this didn’t include Griffin. They tried to keep this on a need-to-know basis across the company until the prisoners were fully out of Russian hands on Thursday morning.
Griffin, the network’s top national security correspondent, followed up with her sources after global political consultant Ian Bremmer tweeted on Wednesday night about the exchange. (Reuters had also reported on the possibility of a prisoner exchange.) Confirming with a Pentagon official, Griffin emailed the newsroom her guidance, which prompted Gallagher to go to air with his report, in which he incorrectly said the WSJ was reporting about Gershkovich’s release. Very soon after Gallagher’s report, Griffin spoke to Fox News management, who made her aware of the embargo. She then quickly sent out another email to the entire network to hold off on reporting about the pending release.
According to a Fox News source, a primary reason the clip of Gallagher’s report was deleted from the digital site was that the anchor completely botched Griffin’s accurate reporting, claiming it was the Wall Street Journal reporting about the pending release.
ABC News also was too quick with a video package. During Good Morning America on Thursday morning, the control room ran a pre-produced video package narrated by White House correspondent Mary Bruce at 8:20 a.m. ET that included all the details about the release, along with photos and previous interviews of all the Americans. According to sources at the scene, Bruce – who was on the White House lawn at the time – urgently informed GMA that they ran the package early and began calling for the show’s producers to cut it right away. The control room did indeed dump out of the package before it was finished and anchor Robin Roberts quickly threw it to meteorologist Ginger Zee for a weather report.
A source familiar with the situation noted to Ragebait that the network got out of the package early due to an abundance of caution.
While Fox News and ABC made mistakes in prematurely reporting Gershkovich’s release, White House reporters who spoke to Ragebait said theirs still paled in comparison to Bloomberg's as they “managed to mitigate the problems” that stemmed from trying to keep a lid on it.
Jennifer Jacobs, the senior Bloomberg reporter who was dismissed because of the story, said in a statement on X that “the idea that I would jeopardize the safety of a fellow reporter is deeply upsetting,” adding that the timing of the story’s publication was out of her hands.
“In reporting the story about Evan’s release, I worked hand in hand with my editors to adhere to editorial standards and guidelines,” Jacobs said. “At no time did I do anything that was knowingly inconsistent with the administration’s embargo or that would put anyone involved at risk.”
Bloomberg editor-in-chief John Micklethwait, meanwhile, has said that the report “could have endangered the negotiated swap that set them free” and was a “clear violation of the editorial standards.” He also noted that he personally wrote letters of apology to the prisoners and “immediately” apologized to his peers at the Wall Street Journal, who said that the main issue was with the initial inaccuracy of the story.
“This was not about a broken embargo,” a Wall Street Journal spokesperson said. “It was a report that Evan had been freed when in fact he had not yet been. We’re happy that Bloomberg corrected it.”
Newsmax Does the Dew!
According to Newsmax hosts and reporters who spoke with Ragebait, the aggressively MAGA network’s cringeworthy interview with GOP vice-presidential candidate J.D. Vance last week at the southern border has caused quite a bit of drama and embarrassment behind the scenes.
Following an extremely rocky rollout as Trump’s running mate that’s been dominated by his past comments about “childless cat ladies” and Democrats painting him as “weird,” Vance traveled to the U.S.-Mexico border last week in hopes of refocusing the attention on immigration. This included him sitting down with Newsmax host Bianca de la Garza with the border fence in the background.
Rather than being seen as a serious discussion about border policies, the sitdown ended up being most noteworthy for the Newsmax anchor awkwardly toasting a Diet Mountain Dew with Vance. Of course, this was a callback to Vance absolutely bombing with a joke about liberals finding the soda “racist” during his first rally as Trump’s running mate, a moment that was highly reminiscent of Jeb Bush’s “please clap” moment.
Even before de la Garza – who is vying for a primetime role with the right-wing channel – sat down with Vance, the interview had already sparked issues at Newsmax. Initially, network sources said, top-rated host Rob Schmitt was supposed to conduct the interview, only for the network to remove him in favor of de la Garza – supposedly over the Trump campaign’s request. Schmitt was very unhappy with the decision, according to sources.
Besides Schmitt's anger over losing the assignment, the interview's tone prompted grumblings among the network’s staffers. “There are reporters and hosts at Newsmax who actually care about reporting on the issues surrounding our border who would have taken the interview seriously,” one host said, whole another simply exclaimed: “Totally cringe!!!” While one Newsmax reporter told Ragebait it was an “utter mockery of the border crisis” and “wasn’t the place to be silly,” other staffers noted that the channel’s programming chiefs were also displeased with the results. “After Bianca’s weird interview with Vance he was literally seeing red. I never saw Elliot so outraged,” one employee noted, referencing Newsmax VP of programming Elliot Jacobson.
Newsmax did not respond to a request for comment.
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sometimes I truly cannot believe this shitshow is real life
And not enough questioners call out Trump right then and there for his endless lies. Like Mehdi says - they need to have the receipts ready when they ask their questions and do NOT let Trump and the MAGA crowd get away with their BS. Trump and Vance and MAGA world always go straight into the gutter. And that folks is what America will get with this crowd. Time for America to move on from this and elect people who actually care about America and Americans and offer a brighter future for America and not the dark future that Trump and Vance and Project 2025 has prepared for America.