Politics and it ripped to shreds Hillary Clintons campaign. The bias was against donald trump and his campaign and there is a lot of it on displ in this report. This unfounded conspiracy against the president that is touted by the white house actually seems to have worked in favor of the president. There really was a scheme to protect Hillary Clinton from being indicted and smear and slander then candidate and president elect donald trump and now president at all costs. Howie but the report claims comey wasnt influenced by political bias. The president said fake news is our countrys biggest enemy as liberal leaders denigrate his diplomacy. These are awful people and he wants to be best friends with them. I found it rambling and incoherent and giving away more than we got. We have never seen a more trusting acan president in a summit with a foreign leader of any summit in american history. We have to have nuclear war to get trump to fail. I think half of america are in favor of that. Im not exaggerating. Howie the president punches back a Robert De Niro who dropped the fbomb on him at the tonys. My debate with actor and activist rob reiner. After the election you called the outcome the greatest attack on democracy since world war i. Rob i not only agree with that, i would go even further. Howie im howard kurtz and this is mediabuzz. [ ] the Justice Departments Inspector General ripped james comey in that report finding that he broke many rules. And the text between peter strzok and lisa page. Page says trump is never going to be president , right . And strzok says no, well stop it. Steve doocy was the first to interview the president , then followed by a scrum of reporters. What you have seen so far, should james comey be locked up . President trump i would never want to get involved in that. Certainly they seem like very criminal acts to me. I think the report yesterday more than anything totally exonerates me. There was no collusion. There was no obstruction. Howie joining me to analyze the coverage. Mollie hemingway, sara fischer and marie harf, former spokeswoman for the Obama Administration. Howie that scrum looked like an out of control kindergarten that needed a time out. The press saying the president was wrong when he said he was totally vindicated because the report didnt examine whether there was obstructioner. Collusion with russia. Mollie this is focused on the Hillary Clinton email probe. But there is a lot. The same people investigated the Hillary Clinton email probe as the donald trump probe. You have people openly talking about breathtaking bias they of Hillary Clinton against donald trump. And pledging, promising they will prevent him from getting elected. At the same time they are ramping up this investigation. That is exonerating. One of his main arguments is the department of justice and fbi have had widespread problems with bias against him. Howie i think prohillary commentators must be happy. He sat on the Anthony Wiener emails for a month. Marie i think there is something for everyone in this i. G. Report. These fbi officials do have Text Messages that look terrible. The i. G. Report also found no evidence those political leading impacted the investigation. Jim comey comes across very badly as a democrat. Reading what he did which did hurt Hillary Clinton politically. Reading this san sang i decisiog is difficult for me. The president said a number of things about the report that are not accurate and its on the media to call those falsehoods out when he does that. Howie the i. G. Said i couldnt even dig into all the leaks because there are so many of them. Them dozens of fbi staffers having meetings with journalists and accepting meals and drinks and going to sporting events. Sara are they supposed to be funding these . The media is given sources to take out sources. I have never taken a source out golfing. Mollie the Justice Department went after a congressional aide d reporter because they care about leaks over there, when they have a huge problem underneath their nose. The i. G. Said its such a big problem they dont know what to do. Howie a reporter who now works for the New York Times. Lets come back to these iminating texts with peter strzok and lisa page. We hadnt seen this text. I guess was somehow held back. I think it made a lot of headlines because its so over the top whether they were able to carry thatut these people hated donald trump. Mollie the i. G. Said they couldnt determine whether waiting to handle the wiener laptop was based on bias. Its also true these werent just about peter strzok and lisa page texting their extreme bias. There were five different people in this probe texting insults against people who voted for trump. The attorney who was actually asking Hillary Clinton questions during that interview said i am with her when he did that. Its not necessarily the i. G. Is careful to say, there is not hard evidence saying i am with her, therefore im letting her get off. This level of bias is problematic for two investigations. Howie journalists and pundits are cherry picking the evidence. I think the only common denominator is jim comey had flawed Decision Making. So that enables each side to say here is evidence that supports our contention. Marie right, this is the system we live in. What jim comey did was hurt hillary. Howie he didnt bring charges against her. Marie which the i. G. Said was not good practice. The i. G. Is nonpartisan and they have bench more conservative if not republican leading. These Text Messages look terrible. I. G. s conten that theythe didnt find bias. Mollie there was an example where they did say bias affecd that decision. Marie they cannot determine why they waited so long to look at the Anthony Weiner laptop. Howie minutes after this report was made public, New York Times published an oped by james im that was ready to go. It strikes me as close to collusion. Sara it was minutes after. It gives the appearance the New York Times was willing to take james comeys oped. You had people o right say would go they have done this for a republican . What is james comeys strategy . Couldnt he have just put out a statement . Howie and his leaks earlier. Well talk next segment more about this. The president comes back from north korea and puts up this tweet and really harsh word from the media. So funny to watch thee news. They are fighting hard to down play the deal with north korea. Our countrys biggest enemy is the fake news so easily promulgated by fools. When he says biggestmy i think its too much. Mollie he said fake news is an enemy. Just speaking we need to make sure we are telling accurate facts. On this i. G. Report we had two major story lines that have been if you are the last year. One that it was wrong to fire james comey. This i. G. Report confirms everything he said about rod rosensteins bad Decision Making and failure to adhere to authority and usurpation and the like. We are told you are not allowed to criticize the fbi. They are beyond reproach. And this report shows they are not beyond reproach. Criticizing the fbi and caring what they are doing is important. Howie biggest enemy . Marie the president uses fake news to go after media organizations to report stories he doesnt like. There is a problem with fake news. But to link the north korea summit and his flowery talk about how great kim jongun is, calling the American Press the greatest enemy in our country. That should disturb everyone on the right, on the left and in the center. It has consequences. Howie i see distinction between fake news and biggest enemy. Sara you have to look at this as part of trumps playbook. He knows that helps drive that populist movement that got him elected. If he can diminish the fake news Mainstream Media he can get the American People on his side. Howie Media Coverage of the muchawaited north korea summit. Surprisingly negative. How much of that is personal. Ahh. Summer is coming. And its time to get outside. Pack in even more adventure with audible. With the Largest Selection of audiobooks. Audible lets you follow plot twists off the beaten track. Or discover magic when you hit the open road. With the free audible app, your stories go wherever you do. And for just 14. 95 a month you get a credit, or any audiobook. If you dont like it exchange it any time. No questions asked. You can also roll your credits to the next month if you dont use them. So take audible with you this summer. On the road. On the trail. Or to the beach. Start a 30day trial and your first audiobook is free. Cancel anytime, and your books are yours to keep forever. No matter where you go this summer make it better with audible. Text summer10 to 500500 to start listening today. And im the founder of ugmonk. Before shipstation it was y, l. Its great when you see a hundred orders come in, a hundred orders come in, but then you realize ive got a hundred orders i have to ship out. Shipstation streamlined that wh the order data, the weights of , everything is seamlessly put into shipstation, so when we print the shipping ll everythings pretty much done. Its so much easier so now, were ready, bring on t. Shipstation. The number one ch of online sellers. Go to shipstation. Com tv and get two months free. Howie there is no question kim jongun is a brutal ruler. President trumps detractors in the media were quick to criticize the praise he had for the dictator. President trump hes got a very good personality. Hes fun crane very very smart. Hes a great negotiator. He has a great personality, a very smart guy. He loves his people. Howie several journalists pressing him including bret baier. Bret you call people sometimes killers. He is a killer. President trump he has done some really bad things. President trump but so have other people done some very bad things. Howie some people on the left are upset that he met with this guy. Mollie its hard to hear the president praise somebody like this. But its worth keeping it in context. We had a president who was bashing kim a year ago when he was in seoul when he gave the speech that took him down a notch. Flattery is a tool when dealing with something likeuclear disarmament. Even if that require sos flattery of a dictator rather than make this the time to talk about human rights violations. Howie president obama wasnt criticized for his relationship with cuba. Marie the relationship cans in the press were critical of the Obama Administration during the iran negotiation. Some of those same commentators are not saying anything about donald trump. Howie it sounds like to is hypocrisy on both sides. Marie his language was so extreme, little rocketman, fire and fury. Flattery can be part of diplomacy. But its so striking, especially coming out of the g7 with our allies. Howie arent there lots of legitimate criticism being made. All to bed, the president didnt get much of a turn. I think the question journalists are asking is worth diplomacy. Howie having a meeting no other president has talked to is diplomatic. Sara it says they are going to denuclearize. That was not point of this. It was to get north korea top denuclearize. Howie the president said it was the first step. Some of this criticism comes from the right. Blogger Eric Erickson wrote that trump an tagnized the g7 then made kissy face with kim jongun. If obama had done that the republicans would be demanding his impeachment. Mollie the difference between the interventionist type and those tired of that approach to foreign policy. You saw people criticize Obama Meeting with castro. There is another stream that doesnt get a lot of coverage which is a more realist approach to foreign policy. One thing about the medias criticism of the praise of kim. It would be much easier to believe they were genuine if they hadnt spent the olympic praising the sister of kim. Howie some of the president was just personal. Trump was incoherent, trump was naive. Trump was hoodwinked. It just reminds me how visceral some of the comments are. Marie we have to separate out commentators. You can criticize the statement for being vague, short on specifics. We need to be careful not to get into personal attacks. Donald trump makes so much of his attacks and commentary very personal. We are living in this age where his language feels so personal. We in the media have to make sure we are focusing on substance. Does the media fall into the trap of using extreme terms. We need to make sure. At the end of the day we saw a lot in the way the president was handling diplomacy. Howie the president had a light moment in which he was talking about kim jongun. Hes the strong man. He speaks and his people sit up at attention. I want my people to do the same. Howie that was a joke, yet it became the lead in the washington post. He was not serious. Lets there he says a lot of controversial things, you dont have to pick out the jokes. A little editorial there at the end. The media have a new fourletter word for the Republican Party, they are calling it a cult. Howie Kimberly Guilfoyle cohosof the five is dating donald trump, jr. They say they havent hidden the relationship. Kimberly is a commentator, a longtime friend of the family who is free to date whoever she wants. It might have been better if she disclosed it on the air. But what is absurd when a mean spirited piece that describes guilfoyle as a reporter demand that she be fired. She wrote guilfoyle would be better off picking grapes saying she didnt know guilfoyle is part puerto rican. Even his estranged wife vanessa tweeted, the length people will go to to attack a woman simply because she is dating don. The deal that disney had to buy the Entertainment Properties of 21st century box is being challenged by comcast. This was the outcome of a federal judge denying the governments opposition. Maybe its just a coincidence that word leaked thats jeff zucker has a contract that runs through 2020. A company that controls the pipes that control the web and the content means fewer voices for consumers. Rob reiner is throwing out word like treason. But first Robert De Niro drops the fbomb on the president. The first survivor of alzheimers disease is out there. And the Alzheimers Association is going to make it happen. But we wont get there without you. Visit alz. Org to join the fight. Howie the media have a new term for the Republican Party and donald trump. It has deinvolved into a cult. The primary voters in the Republican Party deinvolved into a cult. This is jonestown . Donald trump is accused of leading a cult. To believe that cnn is more a threat than north korea. Howie senator bob corker said this could reporters. Its almost becoming a cultish thing. Its not a good place for any party to end up with a cultlike situation. Howie joining us, emily jashinsky, and cathy areu. Emily, many in the media adopting this label that the Republican Party is a trumpian cult. What does that tell you about the journalistic mindset. Emily i think there is some glee that bob corker gave them the word. Do i believe there is too much deference to the president . Absolutely. I think its tooer to say there is some sort of cult around donald trump. I think its shortsighted. Howie cathy, even well before corker i did a google search. The New York Times last week the cult of trump. National journal last year, trumps cult overwhelms the gop. Cathy i guess the press did it first, but the gop jumped on it so the gop is owning this word. Trump does have followers. Journalists rightleaning journalists as george will was talking to bill maher about this and saying its not so much a cult as a culture of fear. They are dissecting it and analyzing it and take it to the next level. Is it really a cult . We are moving away to the cword and moving to another word. Howie i dont have any problem with the underlying analysis that most of in the gop follow the president because they agree with hip or fear him or fear losing their jobs. But think about this word cult. It suggests its spooky. A cult of people who are in it must be mindless and delusional. They are using this in relation to trump. Its what it implyings to the republicans. This is a president popular with republican voters. They are just i think there is too much deference sometimes. The media is too excited to use this against republican politicians. Howie i think turning to black magic is not a good look. Cathy, i want to talk about the fallout of Robert De Niro saying this at the tony award. Im going to say one thing [bleep] trump. [cheers and applause] howie its almost like hes a caricature of a hollywood liberal and comes out with crude things to say. No sophisticated analysis. Is that because the award show are routine for trump bashing . Cathy de niro used to be so quiet you would call him shy. It seems like with the Trump Administration he has come out of his shell. This is the latest. Howie i will stop you right there. This renowned actor goes on National Television and uses the f word against the president of the states and you say hes come out of his shell . Cathy i think cussing on tv like that is a little extreme. Then the president writes and says was it dumb . Howie the president tweeted that de niro is a very low i. Q. Individual who received too many shots to the head by real boxers in movies. Let me turn to you emily. Cbs bleeped the word. But everyone knew what he was saying. What i find disturbing is he gets a standing ovation. Emily i thought of course. This is one of our award show. Hollywood is trying to trump each other with the award show. When i read there was standing ovation. I was surprised they were able to muster that amount of enthusiasm knowing what this is going to look like for the rest of the country. Howie there has been a big debate about immigration and separating children from families. A local newspaper editor, playboy columnist and cnn contributor. Take a look. Dont you have any empathy for what these children are going through. Brian, i know you want to get some more tv time. They have nothing, they come to the border with nothing. Around parent of young children. Dont you have any empathy for what they go through. Howie cnn put a contributor on the air who said he was passionate. About her kid a lot in a talks political context. This was theater and much less interested in substance than attention for brian karem. Howie karem said i was hearing b. S. If you want to be inhe press room as an accredited journalist, ask a polite question. Cathy rule number one ofjournaf into the story. You are there to collect facts and give facts to your reader. He broke every rule of journalism making it about him self and making it about the press secretary. Sarah sanders was very professional. Howie a rare moment of agreement. I go toe to toe with rob reiner on his Harsh Criticism of president trump. Man i got scar tissue there. Same thing with any dent or dings on this truck. They all got a story about what happened to em. Man 2 it was raining, there was only one way out. I could feel the barb wire was just digging into the paint. Man two bulls were fighting, thud bam hit the truck. Try explaining that to your insurance company. Woman another ding, another scratch. Itll just be another chapter in the story. Every scar tells a story, and you can tell a lot more stories when your truck is a chevy silverado. The most dependable, longestlasting, fullsize pickups on the road. Howie rob reiner is an unabashed hollywood liberal who uses harsh language about the president. We sat down to talk about that and his new film shock and youd awe. Robert de niro goes on the tony award stage and says f trump and gets a standing ovation. Can you see where this would be offensive to the 40 who support the president . Yes, and i can see how its offensive to the 40 who dont support the president. I dont think thats particularly helpful for those of us who dont want to see trump in office and dont want to see him continue to be in office. Howie you tweeted when an american president attacks our closest allies and embraces enemy powers, hes in a conspiracy to commit treason. I dont say he is, i said one can only conclude. And there is a difference. Howie thats fine distinction. I dont know whether or not he committed treason. That will be something we discoverr dont discover as muellers investigation which unfortunately the house and Senate Investigations are not moving along. So well have to see what happens. Howie you dont see that as an overly inflammatory word to use against a president . It is a very inflammatory word. But if it turns out to be lets put it this way. If. Lets put it this way. From what i see right now, there is a lot of blanks that need to be filled in for sure. Howie after the election you called the outcome the greatest attack on thisemocracy since 1941. You are comparing the lawful election of a candidate through the Electoral College to the attack on pearl harbor. I not only agree with that, but i would go even further. We are not talking about when we start looking at what happened to america, people have to understand this. This is one of the mostf difficult parts of understanding the russians. Howie we had an election. You are comparing it to 2,000 americans being killed at pearl harbor. Im not talking about that. What im talking about, its important to understand this. This is the key to us here. We are talking about a foreign enemy power influencing an election. In the world of cyber warfare, it is insidious. And we dont necessarily feel it. We do know the capacity. We are learning the capacity. Not just from a Disinformation Campaign and active measures. The soviets and russians have been doing it forever. Howie lets talk about the press. You call it staterun media. I presume you know fox has a thriving News Division with Chris Wallace and bret baier. I also tweeted out about Shepard Smith and by the way, i have met Shepard Smith and he is reporting the news. There is no question by the. Hes telling the truth. And so is Chris Wallace. I havent seen as much of bret baier. And i know there is a difference between a news reporting and opion and editorial and all of that. But what im saying is the editorial part of fox news which is, you know, hannity, and tucker carlson, and laura ingraham. Those shows not they are really in support of trump. And that is fox news has a good array has strong ratings. There is a chunk of media that is verbally and overtly in support of donald trump. Thats just true. Howie there was a chunk of media that was in support of barack obama. Lets talk about the runup to the iraq war. You are playing john wolcott. An old colleague of mine. In terms of name i. D. , would you think tom hanks was would have an easier time. Alec baldwin was set to play that part. We had been shooting for a week and on the saturday before he was supposed to shoot on monday he called and dropped out. I said what do i do . My wife michelle suggested i play the part. I thought i dont know, i dont like directing and acting. I said im available so i will do it. The one bit of direction i got, she said try to be less jewish. I thought i dont know, im from the bronx, i will see what i can do. Howie more of my conversation with rob reiner in a moment as we debate the media record during the runup to the iraq war. [ male announcer ] introducing worx pegasus, a nextgeneration, allinone work table and clamping system. Ordinary work tables cant compete. Pegasus has integrated clamps that hold materials tight at any angle. Steel reinforcement makes pegasus superstrong. To prove it, we had pegasus support a car. Sets up in seconds and folds flat for easy storage. Strong. Versatile. Portable. Howie more now with rob reiner as we turn to his film about the press, the Bush Administration and the press. You say the media werent tough enough and nonexistent. In one scene you playing wolcott call the. Inquirer and complain they are not running your stories. That was the case. That actually happened. Knight Ridder News Service was supplied to a number of newspapers around the country. They were supplied by a lot of military bases. My character says we dont write for people who send other peoples kids to war. We write for people whose kids get sent to war. We were concerned the Knight Ridder stories were not getting out. Many of these papers did not print. They didnt print them. Howie were they not getting a lot of pickup because of the mindset in the Mainstream Media . Bob wood ward told me afterwards he was part of the mind think. We were swept up in patriotism, 9 11. And people went with the group think. The Bush Administration in a smart way from their standpoint, they never responded to these articles. They gave them no oxygen. They didnt rebuke them or talk about them. So it never got any attention. Howie the underlying attention, the Bush Administration was lying about iraq. But that as opposed to cherry picking intelligence as opposed to not being sceptical about the intelligence. Even john wolcott to this day says he doesnt know people are lying. We are saying cheney lied. We are saying cheney lied at this one thing about the idea in general because he had he talked about a connection between Mohammad Atta and iraqin tell jones which didnt exist. They talked about them being on the vernal of getting a nuclear weapon. Howie one thing that turned out to be untrue as terrible as it is is not the same as lying and deliberately peddling falsehoods. Thats true. But if you know you made the assumption you want to go to war d you are crafting bits and pieces of intelligence to make that case, and ignoring the vast amount of intelligence. Because we havent been inside iraq with weapons inspectors in four years. Howie in fairness he got a lot of negative coverage in noise question about it. Primary season and even during the general he got the kind of there is one thing to say negative coverage and one thing to say Due Diligence and scrutiny. Real scrutiny. I dont think he got that. Howie you had a civil debate with anthony scaramucci. Are you going to do an odd couplew . I didnt know. They said scaramucci i didnt know he was going to be there. Are we going to do a show like crossfire . No, i dont think so. Howie you are giving it a thumbs down. Probably not. Howie thanks very much. Thanks for having me. Howie thats it for this edition of mediabuzz. Im howard kurtz. Happy fathers day to all you dads out there. Ill chang out with my girls later. Let me know what you think on twitter howardkurtz about any aspect of the show or the coverage in the news. You can dvr the program and we would like to get to you check it out. Well be back here next sunday. See you then with the latest bu. And its time to get outside. Pack in even more adventure with audible. With the Largest Selection of audiobooks. Audible lets you follow plot twists off the beaten track. Or discover magic when you hit the open road. With the free audible app, your stories go wherever you do. And for just 14. 95 a month you get a credit, good for any audiobook. If you dont like it exchange it any time. No questions asked. You can also roll your credits to the next month if you dont use them. So take audible with you this summer. On the road. On the trail. Or to the beach. Start a 30day trial and your first audiobook is free. Cancel anytime, and your books are yours to keep forever. No matter where you go this summer make it better with audible. Text summer10 to 500500 to start listening today. Heather monday june 18th and this is fox friends first. Happening right now 4 00 a. M. Headed to hot seat Michael Horowitz hours away from testifying in front of congress over scathing report over clinton email probe. What republicans hope to uncover . President trump pushing congress to pay for his long promised wall. What stands in his way as law makest kick negotiations into high gear. Kathy griffin strikes again. First this disgusting picture of president trumps severed head and now attack on americas