Robert Bianco

Former TV Critic for USA Today. Current happy husband.

[Burgess Everett @burgessev]

A top staffer to Sen. Tina Smith emailed Sen. Mike Lee’s top staffers on Monday about “how much additional pain you’ve caused on an unspeakably horrific weekend”

Full email below

[Brian Allen @allenanalysis]

What an absolutely pathetic display of fragility and hate. The bare minimum—shaking someone’s hand—is apparently too much for these people.

This is cave-dweller behavior, plain and simple.

No class, no decency, just pure spite.

[Eric Holder @EricHolder]

Hunter
Here’s the reality.

No USAtty would have charged this case given the underlying facts. After a 5 year investigation the facts as discovered only made that clear.

Had his name been Joe Smith the resolution would have been - fundamentally and more fairly - a declination.

Pardon warranted.

Ask yourself a vastly more important question. Do you really think Kash Patel is qualified to lead the world’s preeminent law enforcement investigative organization? Obvious answer: hell no.

[Jeff Tiedrich @itsJeffTiedrich]

pro tip: if you said nothing when Donald Trump pardoned donors, cronies, extended family members, and war criminals, then sit the fuck down and shut the fuck up about Joe Biden pardoning his own son. just put a fucking sock in it

[Secular Talk ([email protected]) @KyleKulinski]

Lowest IQ take of all time is Biden pardoning Hunter opens the door for Trump to do bad pardons. TRUMP ALREADY PARDONED 5 CORRUPT GOONS FROM HIS ADMINISTRATION LAST TIME AND HE 100% IS GOING TO DO MORE THIS TIME NO MATTER WHAT BIDEN DOES. What are you 12?

[Robert Bianco @BiancoRobert]

@Deggans Another reason to love the Steelers.

[Switching Codes with Eric Deggans @Deggans]

Interesting…

[Justin Baragona @justinbaragona]

One of the presidential campaigns is out here suggesting they'll end childhood vaccines if they win.

Maybe we could spare a little more coverage on that as opposed to whether or not Biden used an apostrophe?

Just a thought.

[💙Jillian Hurley @JillianMHurley]

They want to hold Harris responsible for something Biden supposedly said?

They don’t even hold Trump responsible for what Trump says.

[Ally Sammarco @Ally_Sammarco]

CNN has been covering the “garbage” thing all day. Meanwhile, Trump just called Democrats “horrible people” five minutes ago.

The media is failing us.

[Thomas Chatterton Williams @thomaschattwill]

How did our culture devolve like this on virtually every level. For so many fools, there’s just no respect for anything anymore.

[Armando @ArmandoNDK]

It’s pretty telling no Beltway Reporters are even mentioning this.

[Robinson Meyer @robinsonmeyer]

This section of Bezos’s op-ed is incredible. The Washington Post has chronically underinvested in DC local coverage, despite having a more open lane than equivalent NY outlets. If you want to push up household penetration in the DC metro then you need to cover the DC metro!

[Katie Mettler @kemettler]

Okay, I’ll bite.

We cannot talk about our decline in local subscriber penetration in the DC region without talking about the company’s failure to invest in local news business strategy — and local news journalism — under Jeff Bezos’s ownership of The Washington Post.

[Jenna Amatulli @ohheyjenna]

incredible move by the Washington Post TikTok guy: He made a TikTok about the paper’s non-endorsement move on the Washington Post account.

top comment is: “fascinating that THIS was allowed”

[Derek Thompson @DKThomp]

100k foot view of the WaPo situation:

I suppose it’s possible that Bezos sincerely formed, in his private thoughts, the principle that presidential endorsements are bad, and the timing of this articulation ~just happened~ to coincide with this principle being *obviously* advantageous to his company Blue Origin. It’s … possible!

But, as a general matter, if you come up with a personal principle at the very moment when that principle is most convenient, the price you pay for that convenience is that nobody will trust you. Nor should they.

To make a ludicrous but I think sort of helpful comparison: My principle on kitchen hygiene is I don’t think my kitchen countertops need weekly scrubbing. That’s the sort of thing to make clear to my wife when the counters are clean. If I articulate this principle for the first time 0.5 seconds after my wife tells me to scrub the kitchen counters on a day when I'm kind of busy, *of course* she won’t believe me. She *should not* believe me. It would be sort of touchingly hilarious if she did!

“We don’t endorse presidential candidates” is a defensible position. Coming up with that principle during the editing process for a Harris endorsement days before your company is scheduled to meet with Donald Trump is not a decision whose timing deserves anybody’s trust. And the media environment is too competitive for news organizations to carelessly set fire to their integrity without enormous consequences.

[Rob Owen @RobOwenTV]

Shameful but unsurprising given the current owners

[David Simon @AoDespair]

Just read the insights of Jeff Bezos in his opinion piece in The Post. I wasn't going to join 200,000 others and cancel my subscription because doing so won't hurt Bezos -- he paid more for his yachts than his newspaper -- and, yes, the Post newsroom where good people, and some friends still labor continues providing meaningful journalism. But, my god, this man's insipid defense of his own transparent cowardice is provoking.

I cancelled. I wasn't going to do it. I probably shouldn't, and certainly, if this technobrat oligarch ever releases his grip on what needs to be an independent newsroom and editorial board, indifferent to the financial positions of its publisher, then I'll return. But this kind of abuse of a public trust by a publisher is unacceptable.

[Elie Mystal @ElieNYC]

It could not be more “on brand” for the Republican Party right now than to invite a racist comedian to their Nazi rally, claim that all the racism is “jokes,” then feign offense at you pointing out their racism and and calling their event a Nazi rally.

[Robert Bianco @BiancoRobert]

Garden of deplorables.