Front Row Seat

Jonathan Karl, chief White House correspondent at ABC News, joins Sarah and Steve to discuss ...

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Jonathan Karl, chief White House correspondent at ABC News, joins Sarah and Steve to discuss his new book Front Row at the Trump Show and how this presidency has changed the way we think about politics.

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  1. Avatar photo
    WKDawson

    Is it usual for a president or presidential candidate to ask for the firing of reporters?

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    Kevin Townsley

    Thought this was a great podcast. Steve, I hope you do a bit more interview style pods in the future. (Not discounting Sarah here, she's fantastic, but she already does some great interview pods on AP).

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    Kevin Johnson

    This one was really good. Never heard Steve so animated and clinical. He cleverly laid out media bias with just enough tact to get Karl to more or less agree...although he implied it was the suits, not beat reporters like him that harbor bias. This admission was valuable. Steve’s Trump impression, following the fax story, was a 10, grading on a scale since it was from...Steve, from whom we have come to expect more analysis and wine advice than performance. Loved Sarah’s Tyson pull, and both Sarah and Steve did a food job getting Karl to discuss real issues while still being friendly. You come away liking Karl, I must say. You really pulled this off, but, please, let’s not leave the Jonah out again, unless there is a real emergency...not just this virus stuff! Thanks so much!

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  4. Joe Curtis

    Not sure I buy Karl’s claim that media was just as hard on Obama. Obama was just orders of magnitude better at managing the media.

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  5. Richard Fulmer

    If you play the tapes of Trump’s corona virus briefings backwards, his musings make far more sense.

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  6. Nathan Shiba

    13:26 seconds into the podcast, I was in the middle of penning a post on how sneering and condescending Karl was with his flippant comment about tanning beds. I'm glad that I listened to the end. He handles his biases better than most and I should be listening to his reporting more than I do now . . . which is none.

    And had I not listened until the end, I would have missed Sara pulling the Mike Tyson quote out of mid-air when Karl and Steve failed to do so:

    “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth”

    Damn, girl! Are you sure you're not from Chicago? :)

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  7. Collin Saunders

    This was a great podcast!! I hope you all decide to interview someone like this on Fridays! Maybe with Jack Jenkins of Religion News Service? He’s got a new book called “American Prophets: The Religious Roots of Progressive Politics and the Ongoing Fight for the Soul of the Country.” It’s really focused on progressive leaders, but it deals with issues up your alley.

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  8. Paul Detlefs

    How do we sign up for or find the live Zoom podcast Sunday. Not at all clear.

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      Steve Hayes

      Hey Paul -- Details/link here: https://thedispatch.com/p/glop-culture-livestream-sunday-night

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  9. Avatar photo
    Kevin Durant?

    “You aren’t going to inject people with bleach are you?”

    just simply is a not a good question. It is designed to be confrontational or shaming and serves no journalistic purpose. Meanwhile, the leader of the free world was just rambling incomprehensibly and we still don’t know what about. Maybe try

    “You were just talking about scientific research with light and disinfectant. Can you or your advisors clarify on that? I heard injecting?”

    Maybe they *are* talking about injecting bleach. Was this from Qanon? Let’s please get to the bottom of this. Don’t ask them about the worst interpretation so that they give you a flat “no” and a bunch of defensive bs. Hand them rope. Pretend you are interested in this new cure. Flies with honey. Find. Out. Information.

    “Mr President aren’t you hurting America with bleach?”

    does nothing. Might as well have the OANN lady ask about how much better Trump’s bleach is than Obama’s weak diluted bleach

    Please just act like you are trying to elicit information. Not too much to ask

    Also, enjoyed how Karl mentioned that the Sharpie incident originated with him pestering the President about how he had incorrectly stated that Dorian was going to hit Alabama. This got under Trump’s skin and the result was one week of idiotic useless ‘news’

    This is NOT journalism. Getting under the President’s skin by highlighting misstatements to make him look bad is not journalism. That isn’t adversarial journalism. It’s just adversarial and it serves no purpose

    Anyways, Johnathan Karl is by far the best reporter in that room so I guess I’m just nitpicking. Also I didn’t watch the entire briefing so maybe there were great questions I missed. I just saw the clips. If anything useful happened it certainly wasn’t reported widely

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    1. Nathan Shiba

      What was truly unfortunate about Thursday's briefing was that the information about sunlight (UV rays) and humidity rapidly degrading the virus was lost in the news maelstrom about Trump's blurting out thoughts he should have kept to himself, and many in the press suggesting that Trump was encouraging Americans to inject themselves with bleach.

      The summer sun can't come to Chicago soon enough!

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      1. El Kabong

        this reminds me of a recent Babylon Bee tweet where Trump tells America to drink more water and the press reports it as Trump tells America to drown themselves.

        Trump has a unique ability to get people he knows don't like him to chase squirrels for days on end about irrelevant stuff.

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        Kevin Durant?

        Trump was rambling incoherently. Now he has come out and said he was being sarcastic and we will never know what he was rambling about and this is the problem

        If you hate Trump, and they do, how is it not bad enough that he’s rambling? Why not drill down carefully and strategically, to get more information and let him embarrass himself further? Because they have to make him evil and dangerous, that’s why. Embarrassing is not enough

        Is it dangerous that he read something stupid on the internet and thought maybe it was credible, like Chris Cuomo’s wife bathing in diluted bleach? Yeah kinda. You don’t want a naturopath as President. But that wasn’t enough. It had to be injecting poison because that will kill you immediately, as opposed to Trump entertaining, and never actually executing, wacky ideas, which won’t affect you

        So instead of being a reminder that our President, who will be gone soon, is dumb. It was much more a reminder that our media, which is permanent, is biased to the extent that they will lie, to create political advantage for Democrats, even when they don’t have to

        You see because rambling is a 6 out of 10 on the danger scale, but injecting bleach is a 10 out of 10. So, if you are exceptionally greedy, why bother gathering information when you can already plausibly argue the case for a 10?

        Re summer in Chicago, the idea that they can’t play baseball right now, empty seats in Florida, when you can still get on a bus and walk into a grocery store, is insane. If we are going to take these levels of precautions then everything should be cancelled forever

        Using this ‘logic’, grocery stores should absolutely be closed and and distributing food to cars in line like the food banks for the 0.4% of people who can’t order online

        Q: “But I didn’t want canned beans and bananas”

        A: “wHaT aBoUt DeAtH tHoUgH?”

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  10. Avatar photo
    Pastorfbt

    At about 30 minute mark, where Steve does his Jonah imitation - priceless

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    1. Nathan Shiba

      I don't know, I thought Steve's imitation of Trump was pretty bad. Needs to work on it. Jonah's is OK, but Ben Shapiro's Trump imitation is spot on! John Podhoretz's "Jewish New Yorker Trump" is pretty good, too.

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        Steve Hayes

        It was. Sorry, I don't do impressions - ha. That one just kind of slipped out.

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