O’Donnell Calls Press to Task over Trump ‘Press Conference’

By Michael Woyton

Lawrence O’Donnell had a few choice words on his show Thursday night for the members of the press who were at former president Donald Trump’s “news” conference Thursday at his Mar-a-Lago country club.

The event was planned or mis-planned to avoid having any microphones placed so the actual questions could be heard. All that anyone viewing on television could hear clearly were the words coming out of the former president’s mouth. Even Trump had to ask the questions to be repeated frequently.

Whatever parts of the questions that could be heard seemed to have no relationship — or quickly lost any relationship — on what Trump was saying. At one point, The New York Times had a headline that generously called the press conference “meandering.”

Garrett Haake of NBC tweeted a transcript of his Q&A concerning mifepristone, showing the word salad that Trump produced.

O’Donnell said the reporters and their networks were doing the same thing they did in 2016: letting Trump say whatever he wanted for however long he wanted without even trying to push back on his lies and misrepresentations.

The host of the MSNBC 10 p.m. show said the media is giving Trump credit for having a “press conference,” and tacitly complaining that Kamala Harris hasn’t held a press conference, all while letting Trump continue to spout the same lies over and over again.

“Words spoken after [their questions] are not necessarily answers and are never answers when they come from Donald Trump,” O’Donnell said.

Some of the answers the former president gave were that nobody was killed on Jan. 6th at the U.S. Capitol, the crowd he spoke to before the riot was larger than MLK Jr. had, it was unconstitutional to replace President Biden with Harris for the upcoming election, everyone wanted abortion decisions to be made by each individual state and he was in a helicopter that went down in an emergency with former California politician Willie Brown.

There’s so much more. If you watch the video of the press conference, pause it now and again to Google what he was saying.

“A lie is never an answer,” O’Donnell said, adding that any reporter who says that Trump answered their questions is lying to their readers.

You can watch Trump’s complete press conference through this C-SPAN link.

Vance Accuses Walz of ‘Stolen Valor,’ Lying over Military Service

By Michael Woyton

Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance is hammering away at Democratic VP candidate Tim Walz’s military service saying the latter abandoned the soldiers he was leading as they were shipping off to a stint in Iraq.

What’s interesting and not a little sad about this is that Vance, who served in the military, has leveled accusations that are, if one is being generous, misrepresentations, or, if not being generous, out and out lies.

The effort to discredit Walz is being led by former Swift Boat Veterans for Truth Chris LaCivita. He was a consultant who helped sink John Kerry’s run for president in 2004, according to NBC News. Kerry is a documented war hero who was awarded a Silver Star, a Bronze Star and three Purple Heart medals.

Vance is talking about “stolen valor” and said Walz deserted his unit as it was called up for deployment.

The timeline, from MSNBC, shows something different.

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Walz joined the National Guard just after turning 17 in 1981. He ended his military career 24 years later as a master sergeant in 2005.

The timeline shows that Walz signed paperwork to run for Congress in January 2005 and officially retired from the National Guard in May 2005, after which in July 2005 his former battalion received notification it would be mobilized. One month later, his former battalion was officially ordered to Iraq.

A campaign spokesperson for Vice President Kamala Harris said Walz retired after 24 years of military service to run for Congress, where the chaired the Veterans Affairs committee and advocated for the men and women in uniform, NBC reported.

The campaign didn’t deny that Walz embellished, in an undated video about gun control, that he carried “arms in war,” but said he “carried, fired and trained others to use weapons of war innumerable times.” The spokesperson went on to say Walz thanked Vance “for putting his life on the line for our country” and that he would never “insult or undermine any American’s service” to the United States.

Vance worked as a public affairs Marine in Iraq doing community outreach, NBC reported.

While he was training others to use howitzers, Walz suffered from hearing impairment and was ordered in 2002 to appear before a medical retention board. The board cleared Walz to serve out the remaining years of his last six-year stint in the National Guard, according to MPR News.

Can’t Believe I’m Saying This

As my husband well knows, I’m not really a fan of “Saturday Night Live.” I can take it or leave it, but when I’m watching, I prefer to fast forward through most of it, concentrating on the cold open and the news segment (even fast forwarding through that).

I was curious about David Harbour’s appearance because I really enjoyed “Stranger Things.” And I was even more curious when SNL featured a video with Harbour as a garbageman.

And this is the part that I can’t believe — and neither can my husband. The video, which was a riff on movie superhero trailers, was nothing short of brilliant.

Harbour was perfect as the Grouch, the editing was tight, the music was perfect. It was extremely clever and worth watching again and again.

As a matter of fact, I can’t wait for the movie to come out!

A little introduction

I’m sure most of us sit and watch a movie or a television show and think, “I’ll bet everyone wants to know what my opinion is.” Well, some of us. Well, probably just me. I spend my workdays doing news and there’s no room for opinion — mine at least.

So I’m going to use this as an outlet for my thoughts on television, movies, the arts, music — whatever strikes my fancy.

A brief history: born in Texas, went to college in New Mexico and grad school in New York. Bummed around in editing for throwaways, a couple of newspaper syndicates, freelanced and then reported for a newspaper for a few years. (What’s a newspaper? It’s a big papery blog with advertising that is less and less frequently being thrown on doorsteps in the morning.) Then I transitioned to writing online news. And that brings us to today.

I hope what I write makes you think. I hope you enjoy it, too. Whether you do or don’t, let me know by leaving a comment.