Apologies. United apologizes after a passenger was forcibly dragged off a plane. Im not going. I am not going. I dont go. Howie why did some in the media insist on trashing the 69yearold doctor whose face wound up bloody . Im howard kurtz and this is mediabuzz. It was a refrain throughout the campaign that donald trump was too soft on russia. But this week they accused him of a headspinning shift from coziness to competitors. Is donald trump headed for a nasty confrontation from moscow, the man who helped elect him. This is not consistent with what donald trump ran on except i think it was the right thing to do. I dont think the administration is sure what its going to do. Sending a message to the whole world that we are not going to be walked over. Howie thats a half dozen issues or more. I said it was obsolete. Its no longer obsolete. Howie joining us is erin pike, amy holmes, and marie harf. Erin, huffington post, whiplash. 180. Exclamation point. What you played there, nato hasnt changed. Some countries are slowly in a very small way increasing their defense spending. In part he says, and the secretarygeneral says its because he made it such an issue. But its the same organization. Flipflops like that have to be called out. Howie they have to be reported on. The president accused china of manipulating its currency. President trump tweeted im not going to call china a currency manipulator while we need their help. Things look different once you are in the white house. I would make the argument President Trump is staying true to form if not through substance. Even throughout the campaign he was stays consistent. After San Bernardino he made the comment about the muslim ban, then he pulled that back and moderated. What has been consistent is donald trump has always projected strength. Thats always his top priority and you saw it with the syria bombing and afghanistan. Howie when a politician flipflops or changes to a position the media doesnt like, hes flip flopping. If he changes to a position the media kind of likes, hes growing in office. If hes taking a more realistic policy on x, y, z. Martha . Its a huge change in a short period of time. The second piece is that we have seen voters say that they did think he was going to do what he was running. Voters want candidates to fall through on promises. Howie i can give you a long list of barack obama, george w. Bush. So it depends on how purist you want to be. Marie there doesnt seem to be an underlying set of principles. Amy his popularity has gone up. He was portrayed as a fascist when he was advocating none intervention. Howie a chemical attack by assad, saying it was a proportional response. Eric trump said if there was anything syria did, it was to validate the fact that there is no russia tie. Is the media narrative going to change about hes too close to moscow . Erin no, because there are two separate issues and it was too convenient for eric trump to say. Amy when it comes to conspiracy theories, it doesnt need facts order logic. You saw who he chose for his cabinet. Mad dog mattis. You saw a lot of his in terms of who donald trump would be taking advice from, and they werent going to be the isolationists. Howie the russian ties were rooted in the notion there was an unholy alliance between the trump side and putin side. But you dont think the changes in policy are knocking that down at all . Marie i think they are road in the fact that the Intelligence Community said russia interfered in this election. The f. B. I. Investigations and the congressional investigations, these are ongoing. Howie the notion there is something smelly here. Marie you have multiple trump advisors. It smells fishy because the Trump Administration has not been up front about these ties. They dont tell the whole truth and that makes people suspicious. Amy they can say relations between the two countries are at an alltime high. He fired michael flynn. Erin those things could be true as well, that trump is flipflopping and his voters might see him as a flipflopper. And you have seen both stories come out in the media. Howie his voters are strongly standing by him. The stories about steve bannon extremely negative. I have done some reporting on this, has there been a lot of infighting with bannon versus Jared Kushner, absolutely. The Washington Post called him a marked man. Likened him to a terminal patient in hospice care. Erin i think different times and different weeks there are different leakers. Remember Reince Priebus was on the way out and hes still sitting in the white house. Howie when you look at the tone and the coverage. Bannon is portrayed as a nationalist hardliner blow everything up kind of guy, and Jared Kushner is the leader of this moderate wing, bipartisan, work with democrats. Do you have the sense some in the press are trying to push bannon out of the white house . Amy the coverage of bannon has always been nasty and the press painted him as a darth vader puppet controller of trump. The only story than the press likes more is gop and sex scandals. But at this point the speculation hes going to be pushed out of the white house is pure speculation. The media is licking their chaps at getting to grill steve bannon. Howie has that affected the way hes covered . Marie he treats them with disdain. He said he came to blow up washington and the press is the enemy. When you have sources going to reporters openly talking about this infighting, the president make up this story. I dont think i think its overblown that hes going to be out of a job. I dont think he would be president without steve bannon. Howie bannon thinks this is overblown. The president acknowledged telling them to work it out because the infighting keeps stealing the media spotlight. But i cant get away from the notion the press does not like bannon. Do you buy that . Erin im sure thats the case. But you are forgetting the president did give a little bit after smackdown to steve bannon. Because hes getting plenty of attention and he was also on the cover of a magazine. This is Donald Trumps presidency. How require wasnt a smackdown. In a couple interviews he said hes a staff guy, he came into the campaign late. It wasnt he needs to work and play well with others. Amy the media is always trying to identify who is the puppet behind the american president. They never give the president credit for coming up with his own ideas. Howie medi meade mediabuzz foxnews. Com. Did you know slow internet can actually hold your business back . Say goodbye to slow downloads, slow backups, slow everything. Comcast business offers blazing fast and reliable internet thats over 6 times faster than slow internet from the phone company. Say hello to internet speeds up to 250 mbps. And add phone and tv for only 34. 90 more a month. Call today. Comcast business. Built for business. Howie Jonah Goldberg has been a fierce critic of donald trump since the campaign and hes still feeling the backlash. He writes every day im criticized because of my coverage of President Trump even if i provide context. You say your criticism of trump has changed your position at fox. Jonah im fine with the position of fierce critic, but praised him when i thought it was his due. When i started criticizing donald trump when he got more popular on the right. What was discouraging is how many people were mad at me for not living down to their expectations. There are a lot of pundits on the right who think their job is to be a cheerleader for their team. Thats not my job. My job is to tell the truth as i sight, and thats gotten a lot of people angry. Howie as far as appearances on tv, you think you have take and hit . Jonah i dont think there is a conspiracy on fox. I used to be on cnn. Television news tends to have a format for the base. If you are a democratic administration, you have conservatives criticizing an democrats defending. I dont follow the talking points of the trump boost terse or the insane left. So sit creates this weird space i have never been in before where i dont have a team where i used to. Howie you were quoted as intaight never trump movement, that was about the gop primary in general, and not the presidency. Jonah which was factually true. For the quote urn quote never trumpers, the point was i wasnt going to vote for him or endorse him, i didnt think he should be the nominee of the republican party. But the fact is hes president of the United States. But what the left wanted the never trumpers to do is say he should not be president. He was lawfully elected. It doesnt mean i give up my scepticism and start waving the foam finger as a cheerleader. But hes a president of the United States and you have to give him a shot. Jonah the New York Times agrees that it was mischaracterized. Howie put in an editors note after you weighed in. Jonah the point of pearl steins argument was by me saying never trump is over, it meant i dropped to my knees and embraced our new president. Its factually not true. I have been very sceptical except when i think hes right about some things. The New York Times fact checker never asked me have you embraced trump as the author suggests. I was asked if i wrote those things that were take out of context. To their credit, i didnt think it was going to happen. I said the issue isnt that it was criticized. The issue of is its fact actually untrue. Howie you support President Trumps airstrikes against syria, but you write. Jonah the problem is hes doing good stuff on china as well. But the flipflops, when i heard your previous conversation about it. D give some people cause, concern that hes not as committed to this thing called trumpism as a lot of us thought. Hes calling these things on the fly and thats something to be aware of. Howie Melania Trump wins a big tabloid payday. How the press treated sean spirals on his comment about why do some cash back cards make earning bonus cash back so complicated . They limit where you can earn bonus cash back to a few places. And those places keep changing every few months. The quicksilver card from capital one doesnt do any of that. With quicksilver you earn unlimited 1. 5 cash back on every purchase, everywhere. Leave complicated behind. Whats in your wallet . Howie Melania Trump sued londons daily mail over allegations that she once worked for an is court agency. They have agreed to pay a settlement and retract it. And the jerry awarded the student at the university of virginia. Tomi lahren went on the view and proclaimed she is prochoice. It is puzzling beck says that she is still being paid. Im struck by every time we go there, you get emotional. My job is my life. I feel lost. When your outlet is taken from you. And you dont understand why, you are so disappointed and blindsided by it, it hurts. Howie i think its fair to say she has a future. Remember when sean spicer told a reporter in the Briefing Room to stop shaking her head. Almost immediately cnn hired her as a contributor. Spicer tells the press hes sorry that his comments about the holocaust and it was the holocaust and it was overplayed. You wont see these folks at the post office. The holocaust and it was overplayed. They have businesses to run. They have passions to pursue. How do they avoid trips to the post office . Stamps. Com mail letters, ship packages, all the services of the post office right on your computer. Get a 4 week trial, plus 100 in extras including postage and a digital scale. Go to stamps. Com tv and never go to the post office again. Howie sean spicer compared Bashar Alassad and his use of chemical weapons in syria to nazi germany. And dug a bigger hole when he was offered an estate route. We didnt use chemical weapons in world war ii. You had someone as despicable as hitler who didnt sink to using chemical weapons. Quote hitler didnt sink to the level of using chemical weapons. What did you mean by that . When you come to sarin gas, he was not using the gas on his own people in the way assad is doing. Howie he apologized in interviews and the next day at washington museum. I made a mistake. I got into a topic i shouldnt of and i screwed up. Its a holy week for the jewish people and the christian people. To make a gaffe like this is inexcusable and reprehensible. Of all weeks, this compound that kind of mistake. Howie a gaffe by a spokesman led all three network newscasts. Overplayed or not. Erin i think its overplayed when you see Lawrence Odonnell calling him a liar. As we know in journalism and political discourse. Never make the hitler comparison. Strike it off your list. But i think Alan Dershowitz made a comment. Howie there was one mention of this on Martha Maccallums show. Was it newsworthy . Marie absolutely. I know how hard it is to be in the Briefing Room. But sean spicer has shown not just in this case, although this is definitely the most egregious, but throughout the whole administration that hes a little out of his depth. He was trying to make a historical analogy that wasnt historically accurate. When his first briefing started out as not telling the truth about the size of the crowd at the inauguration. Thats how he got off to a bad tart with the press. If you are the press secretary and i asked you to do that, you say no. Howie when you were the state Department Spokesman you got a lot of flack about going after isis and the opportunity for jobs. When you were in that harsh spotlight did you feel there was a lot. Marie i have some sympathy for sean spicer. You are up there briefing on complicated issues. But if you are the White House Press secretary, you need to be better than this. This is the last in a long series of gaffes and misstatements and telling things that werent exactly true. I think that hurts the office of the president and i think that hurts the white house. Howie in realtime it made reporters say this is a big story because its blowing up on twitter. Its amazing how social media drives the regular media. Erin i would also point out when sean spicer is briefing at the podium, he doesnt have the ability to see whats blowing up on twitter and the reporters do. He didnt realize what he had stepped into. Spicer did try to take this apology on in full force which is not something you see from this white house very often. See he deserves so he deserves credit for doing that. Howie we all make mistakes. You just say, i screwed up, and im sorry. Some of the critics werent further. Obviously he said hitler used gas but calling him a holocaust denier. No one thinks thats what he was trying to say. Amy i want to go back to mr. Dershowitz column. He said those kind of criticisms and attacks on mr. Spicer, they serve to diminish the importance of the holocaust and hitler and none of us should be going in that direction. Howie the white house announced it will not make public the visitor logs so people will know who goes in and out of the white house. Isnt that something that mostly affects journalists . Because thats one way we can get stories . Marie it affects journalists and the american public. They have a right to know who their government is meeting with. We get sent to washington as elected official or Public Servants to act on behalf of the american people. This is the latest in a long stream of Trump Administration decisions to keep information from the public. Im not sure what they are trying to hide. But it seems like an unforced error. In the grand scheme of things, bombing syria and afghanistan. This is not the top story. Erin i would say the context is another flipflop because trump and his team said they would have the most Transparent Administration in history and this is not transparent. Howie they say for security reasons, it saves money. Marie harf, erin pike and amy holmes. Happy easter. Why tv news has so little coverage of religion. The dragging of a passenger was turned into a huge media story. What happened to my dad should never have happened to any human being. Howie sometimes the media freakout is justified. United airlines having a a 69yearold doctor dragged off the flight because the company wanted his seat. Oh, no come on come on when you drag someone off who paid for a ticket and you see them bloody his face, its kind of rude. Its horrible, united, you screwed up, the cops screwed up. Howie the airlines totally tone deaf response. The ceo said i apologize for having to reaccomodate those customers. One of the passengers who politely asked to deplane was refused. The ceo apologized on good morning america. What did you think when you saw the man being dragged off one of your planes . Its not as much what i thought as what i felt. The word shame comes to mind. The first thing is to apologize to dr. Dao, his family, the passengers on that flight. Our customers and employees. Howie i sat down with liz claman on fox business network. Obviously the footage of this 69yearold doctor being dragged off the plane by these goons is so appalling everybody covered it. But is there something deeper here . Liz this was the smashed teeth heard around the world. I have been amazed by this. We have seen things that are horrific caught on tape. But this struck at the heart of what people feel is bad treatment on behalf of the airlines. As long as i land safely, to me its a decent flight. But this went far and beyond anything thats called for. But when its caught on tape and the youtube. There are were so many People Holding up their phones. Howie without the individualouts a he editory. The next date ceo holds a press conference and says how sorry he is. Were journalists outraged that he didnt seem to get it . Liz from a business standpoint we are were are you kidding me . You came out and said dr. Dao was belligerent . Ceos better take a lesson from oscar munoz. You can stand by your employees but still take the part of a 69yearold grand far it. He was a smaller stature and asian. But certainly everybody looked and said he had a ticket, he paid for it and they seated him, and thats been me. Howie how many of us have been on overbooked flights. It turns out the flight wasnt even overbooked. United just wanted the seats for crew members. By saving 800 on the offers they gave people, the stock took a big hit. And tens of millions in bad publicity. Liz it knocked millions of dollars off the market cap value of the company itself because its publicly trade. Thats the monetary aspect. The human aspect is people looked at that and said wow my dad used to say the pen is mightier than the sword. But television may be mightier. You see it and its visual and it became quite dramatic. First its all this its always this horrible, then what is the Company Going to do. Then the Smear Campaign of the victim. Howie we had the new york post, People Magazine and tmz and others reporting on dr. Dao on how 12 years ago he lost his medical license when he traded drugs for sex. I wonder if that was overplayed and unfair to a guy who was a victim here. Liz irrelevant to the crime. When journalists do their due diligence, they will find out peoples backgrounds. But that did not have anything to do with what had happened. Finds somebody who hasnt done something slightly belong their lives. Does that make them unable to complain about the fact that they have a concussion because they didnt want to give up what they paid for . Howie every time i see it i got even more angry. Liz i got even more angry when i heard the teeth were smashed. Let it be a lesson on every ceo on how not to handle a crisis. Howie after the break, the editor of the New York Times admit the elite media dont get the role of religion in peoples lives. Howie christians celebrating easter today and jews are celebrating passover. But religion is often invisible on television news. Mollie hemingway, Senior Editor at the federalist. The media struggled over covering religion. The new yorkbased and washingtonbased media powerhouses dont quite get religion. We have a fabulous religion writer, but she is all alone. We dont get the role of religion in peoples lives. Howie i give him credit for candor. Mollie its something you hear editors say every few years. But you dont see the changes you would like to see so they do a better job of covering the news. A lot of the problems with coverage of religion which is one of the most important aspects for many peoples lives is its not more covered anywhere else from sports to politics. Howie particularly when you get to television news. It seems like its barely covered except major holidays, the pope gives speech, the pope comes to america. Why do you think that is. Mollie for many people religion is a subtle force for good in their lives. Howie there is no conflict. You cant put two people to yell at each other. Mollie someone making a casserole for a neighbor whose husband just died does not make the news. Thats not how it works out in peoples lives. Media outlets need to figure out a way to incorporate that day to day way religion can play a role in peoples lives, the decisions they make. Howie the exception seem to me to have to do when politics plays a healthy role in a religion story. For example will donald trump win over evangelicals. When you reduce it to politics it seems easier to deal with. Mollie for many in the media politics is their religion. There is certainly you are you e certain traditions that go along with it. But i would still argue they dont do a particularly good job even when you take the issue of how it was evangelicals could vote for someone like donald trump. They did not understand how religious people felt the last 8 years, they felt under attack and they voted for somewhere one they might not have otherwise voted for. Howie speaking of trump, Washington Post had a piece that boggled my minds. Its about passover, how some jews are updating the seder. Is it right to cast trump as the pharaoh . That struck me as a phoney trend story before it was cast as a perfectly acceptable question. Poll requires an example of what religious people have become accustomed to. People dont like covering things that happen year after year. They are look to for a twist or turn to make it seem like something different. And you combine that with the insatiable hatred of donald trump. Howie is there co. The media needs to do a bertd job. Thanks for joining us. Do you trust news on facebook . My wish for you is that this life becomes all that you want it to your dreams stay big, your worries stay small you never need to carry more than you can hold and while youre out there gettin where youre gettin to and wants the same things too yeah, this is my wish we begin with a fox news alert. The search continues in ohio for a man accused of murdering an elderly stranger and streaming the killing live on facebook. Just a horrible thing to witness. Here is the suspect. Steve stevens. He is the current case manager at a Childrens Mental Health facility. Police say he should be considered armed and dangerous. Will carr is live with the breaking details. Reporter senseless. Thats the word authorities are using after they confirmed the murder and Facebook Live video are authentic. They are searching for