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    Jimmy Kimmel: Ted Cruz ‘Outslimed Himself’ This Week

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    Kimmel happily reported that the children’s book Cruz singled out to make a point about race at the Senate hearings for President Biden’s Supreme Court nominee this week became a No. 1 best seller.Welcome to Best of Late Night, a rundown of the previous night’s highlights that lets you sleep — and lets us get paid to watch comedy. Here are the 50 best movies on Netflix right now.‘The Opposite of Oprah’s Book Club’In his Thursday night monologue, Jimmy Kimmel said Ted Cruz “even outslimed himself” at Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson’s Senate confirmation hearings this week.“On Tuesday, you know, he singled out this children’s book called ‘Anti-Racist Baby’ for promoting critical race theory, which it actually doesn’t. He said the book teaches that babies are born racist, which it also doesn’t. And, as a result of Ted’s tirade, that book is now number one on Amazon — it’s the number one seller. It’s like the opposite of Oprah’s Book Club or something.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“And not only is the book selling well, since Cruz’s little grandstand, Amazon is also seeing a spike in sales of psoriasis medication, wart remover, nose hair trimmers, male Spanx, slug repellent and mullet combs.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“If you’re wondering what Ted Cruz was really focused on during the hearings, somebody got a shot of him on his phone searching for his own name on Twitter. How embarrassing. And can you imagine being Ted Cruz and still wanting to know what people were saying about you online?” — JIMMY KIMMELThe Punchiest Punchlines (Emergency Photo Op Edition)“The president is in Brussels right now for an emergency summit with our NATO allies. Together, the leaders of the G7 nations put out a forceful statement warning Russia not to use chemical or nuclear weapons on Ukraine, and also posed for a series of awkward photographs, starting with a group shot.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Yeah, it was an emergency summit, but don’t worry: NATO leaders still had time for a family photo.” — JIMMY FALLON“I don’t know, this seems unnecessary for an emergency meeting.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Looks like the sales team at a Honda dealership, doesn’t it? I’m expecting them to all say together, ‘We’re ready to serve you.’” — JIMMY FALLON“Yeah, it’s a very diverse group. There are suits of every color.” — JIMMY FALLON“Yeah, that’s either a NATO summit or a conference for ‘men who don’t know what to do with their arms’ photo.” — JIMMY FALLONThe Bits Worth WatchingThe “Uncharted” co-stars Mark Wahlberg and Tom Holland popped by the bodega on Thursday’s “Desus & Mero.”Also, Check This OutFrom left: Ally Bonino, Phillipa Soo, Taub, Hannah Cruz and Nadia Dandashi in the musical “Suffs” at the Public Theater.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesShaina Taub’s musical “Suffs” explores women’s crusade for the vote through a movement often divided along generational, class and racial lines. More

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      'S.N.L.': Taylor Swift Performs and Jonathan Majors Hosts

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      The sketch show, hosted this weekend by Jonathan Majors, also featured a 10-minute performance from the musical guest Taylor Swift.Back in 2012, when the then-Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney professed his affection for Big Bird but nonetheless vowed to cut funding for PBS, “Saturday Night Live” brought in Big Bird himself to explain that he wasn’t a political creature and didn’t “want to ruffle any feathers.”Almost a decade later, after the fictional, good-natured Big Bird said in a tweet that he had received a Covid vaccine, he has drawn the ire of Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, who complained that the tweet was “government propaganda for your 5-year-old.”This time around, “S.N.L.” didn’t get the support of any actual Muppets, so the show created its own alternate version of “Sesame Street,” which it called “Cruz Street.”Aidy Bryant, who played Senator Cruz in the opening sketch, stood in front of what looked like a familiar brownstone and explained, “For 50 years I stood by as ‘Sesame Street’ taught our children dangerous ideas, like numbers and kindness.”She continued: “But when Big Bird told children to get vaccinated against a deadly disease, I said enough. And I created my own ‘Sesame Street,’ called ‘Cruz Street.’ It’s a gated community, where kids are safe from the woke government.”Following the show’s theme song, Bryant was joined by Cecily Strong as Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, toting what she said was an AR-15.Strong said she was “just taking a break from releasing the phone numbers of Republicans who voted for the infrastructure bill so they and their families get death threats, and I thought I’d stop by.”Bryant’s Cruz was also visited by Kyle Mooney, dressed in a makeshift Big Bird costume that probably wasn’t fabricated by Sesame Workshop. He said that in the week since he had gotten the vaccine, his feathers had fallen out (among other physical side effects he claimed to be experiencing).To help out Mooney, Bryant brought out Pete Davidson, who played the comedian and podcast host Joe Rogan. He offered his own unreliable remedies, which consisted of “zinc and ayahuasca and some horse medicine.”Other cast members played alternate versions of “Sesame Street” characters, including Alex Moffat and Mikey Day as Bert and Ernie; Chris Redd as a furry green creature called Oscar the Slouch (“Papa Joe Biden gave me so many stimmies, I decided to quit working and live in this trash can”); and Aristotle Athari as the Recount Count.And hey, for good measure, the sketch brought out Chloe Fineman as Britney Spears, newly released from her yearslong conservatorship. “Oh my God, you guys, we did it,” she said.Fake ad of the weekSpare a thought for all the men who discovered during the pandemic that they didn’t know how to form adult friendships and are now bereft of peer groups.For their support — and for the benefit of their spouses and significant others — “S.N.L.” has given us the Man Park, a dog park-like place where these well-meaning recluses can come together and share useless trivia, argue about “Rick and Morty” or communicate with one another simply by saying “Marvel” over and over.We’re not saying we’re the target audience for this particular service, but when Andrew Dismukes asked “Who’s the GOAT, Michael Jordan or Tom Brady?” and Athari answered “How about Bo Burnham?” it felt so real.Musical performance of the weekTaylor Swift got only one song on the show, but boy did she make it count: She delivered a blistering, 10-minute rendition of “All Too Well” from her newly released album of re-recordings, “Red (Taylor’s Version).”Her performance — which ran even longer than Prince’s fabled eight-minute, three-song medley from an “S.N.L.” appearance in 2014 — was accompanied by a short film that Swift directed, starring herself and the actors Sadie Sink and Dylan O’Brien. The re-emergence of “All Too Well” (a shorter version of which was originally released in 2012) has also resurfaced speculation on who the song might be about — speculation that the film seems to be reinforcing? — and we recommend that you give the song a full listen if you want to at least understand the leadoff joke on Weekend Update.Weekend Update jokes of the weekOver at the Weekend Update desk, the anchors Colin Jost and Michael Che riffed on the indictment of Stephen Bannon, the Kyle Rittenhouse trial and, yes, Taylor Swift.Jost began:Well, guys, I think the lesson we all learned this week is, never break up with Taylor Swift. Or she will sing about you for 10 minutes on national television. At the very least, return the scarf.He continued:But in real news — I don’t really know what’s real anymore — ex-Trump adviser Steve Bannon, seen here moments after shooting out of a sewage pipe — sorry, I should use his full name, Stephen K. Bannon; the K stands for three Ks — was indicted this week for contempt of Congress. If convicted, Bannon would face up to two years in prison. Which from the looks of him, might be a life sentence.Che pivoted to Rittenhouse:Legal experts are saying that Kyle Rittenhouse crying on the stand as he described how he shot his victims will help him with the jury. Man, is there a White Tears Law School that I don’t know about? I notice that every time y’all get in trouble, you start crying, and everything just works out for you, whether you’re trying to beat a murder charge or trying to be a Supreme Court justice. [His screen displays a picture of Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh.] More

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      Push to ‘Free Britney’ Gains Steam on Capitol Hill

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      As lawmakers share social media posts and messages of solidarity, activists hope the increased attention on Britney Spears’s conservatorship case will prompt legislative change.In the weeks since Britney Spears publicly denounced the long-running legal arrangement that has controlled her life, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have jumped in to declare their support.Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, dedicated the latest episode of his podcast to the conservatorship, which has limited Ms. Spears’s decision-making and finances since 2008. “I am squarely and unequivocally in the camp of #FreeBritney,” he said, referring to the movement among her fans and fellow celebrities pushing for the end of the arrangement.Representative Seth Moulton, Democrat of Massachusetts, excoriated the case as “the craziest” he had “seen in a long time.”And the political arm of the House Republican caucus seized the moment to fund-raise, sending texts that described Ms. Spears as “a victim of toxic gov’t overreach & censorship.”Advocates are embracing the increased attention from members of Congress, saying that the case raises issues of civil liberties as well as the potential for such legal mechanisms to be abused, including by forcing the use of birth control, as Ms. Spears has contended. But they are also urging lawmakers to enact legislative change that could help those trapped in exploitative arrangements.“It’s always attractive for lawmakers to send out tweets,” said Cassandra Dumas, a founder of Free Britney America, which is based in Washington. “But my call to our lawmakers is, actions speak louder than words.”Ms. Dumas said that while members of her group initially united over Ms. Spears’s case, they were eager to push for changes that would help others in similar situations but who do not have access to the same resources.Another challenge is understanding how pervasive any abuse might be, advocates said.“We don’t even know how many people are in conservatorships and guardianships,” said Zoe Brennan-Krohn, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union’s disability rights program. “We don’t know how long they’ve been there in them. We don’t know whether they want to be there. We don’t know why they’re there. We don’t know whether they have their own lawyers.”Free Britney America has worked with members of Congress in recent weeks, including Representative Charlie Crist, Democrat of Florida, whose office said he would soon introduce bipartisan legislation pressing for more rights and more transparency under such legal agreements.Senator Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts, and Senator Bob Casey, Democrat of Pennsylvania, for their part, have homed in on the lack of data about the prevalence of guardianships and conservatorships. In a letter, they urged the Department of Health and Human Services and the Justice Department to work on closing that gap.In her testimony last month, Ms. Spears revealed that her father, who is her conservator, prevented her from having her IUD removed although she wanted to have more children. The disclosure prompted support from across the political sphere, including leaders at Planned Parenthood and Representative Nancy Mace, Republican of South Carolina.“It’s insane you can force a woman to basically sterilize herself under the guise of protection,” Ms. Mace tweeted. “If this is happening to Britney Spears, how many other women across the country are silently suffering?” More

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      Jimmy Kimmel and Ted Cruz Rekindle an Old Feud

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      Kimmel wouldn’t let Senator Cruz call the military “woke” and “emasculated,” so the Texas Republican reminded the comedian of his loss in their 2018 basketball game.Welcome to Best of Late Night, a rundown of the previous night’s highlights that lets you sleep — and lets us get paid to watch comedy. We’re all stuck at home at the moment, so here are the 50 best movies on Netflix right now.Kimmel vs. Cruz, the RematchJimmy Kimmel on Tuesday rehashed the details of a new feud with Senator Ted Cruz. It began, Kimmel explained, when the Texas Republican posted a tweet in which he referred to the U.S. military as “woke” and “emasculated.”“Which I pointed out fairly, I thought, is funny coming from a guy who let Donald Trump use his testicles on the driving range,” Kimmel said. “I mean, look, he was Trump’s Theon Greyjoy,” he said in reference to the character from “Game of Thrones,” who was castrated.Cruz responded by tweeting about his winning a one-on-one basketball game with the comedian in 2018.“He’s right. It’s true. I do have to live with that forever. You have to live with being Ted Cruz forever, which is so much worse.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“After you won the game, do you remember what I did? I said, ‘Good game, thanks’ and I shook your disgusting hand. I didn’t complain that it was rigged. I didn’t ask for a recount on the referee. I didn’t start a conspiracy theory about the basketball having a microchip in it. I accepted it. I brought shame on my family and I embraced it, as I always do. And, I mean, listen, it was a terrible day. I lost a basketball game to a man who ate one of his own boogers during a presidential debate.” — JIMMY KIMMELThe Punchiest Punchlines (Biden and Putin, Together Again Edition)“Well guys, today, the White House announced that President Biden will have his first one-on-one meeting with Vladimir Putin on June 16. Yeah, it’s a nice reminder that after a year in quarantine, you’re going to have to see some people you don’t like.” — JIMMY FALLON“I can’t wait to see how these two guys try to out-macho each other during the summit. It’s like, [imitating Biden] ‘I don’t need a bathroom break, do you?’ [imitating Putin] ‘No, in fact let’s take off our shirts and have a pec-flexing contest.’” — JIMMY FALLON“Yep, this will be their first in-person meeting since Biden told Putin, ‘I don’t think you have a soul.’ It’s going to be fun when Putin tells Biden, ‘Say once more so I can use for outgoing voice mail.’” — JIMMY FALLON“They just hope it does not come down to a staring contest, because both of those guys have had a lot of Botox. Could be a long one.” — SETH MEYERS“According to the White House, Biden and Putin will discuss a full range of pressing issues from Ukraine to government hacking to whether or not they’ve guessed the killer on ‘Mare of Easttown.’” — JAMES CORDENThe Bits Worth WatchingThe singer Richard Marx surprised Stephen Colbert by stopping by “The Late Show” to confront rumors that he’s inciting violence against Senator Rand Paul.What We’re Excited About on Wednesday NightAndrew Rannells, the star of “Girls5Eva,” will appear on “A Little Late With Lilly Singh.”Also, Check This OutJon Kopaloff/Getty ImagesThe newly minted action star Tig Notaro is a fan of classic rock and vintage motorcycles. More

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      On ‘S.N.L.’, Fictional Britney Spears Seeks Apologies From Cruz, Cuomo and Carano

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }What to WatchBest Movies on NetflixBest of Disney PlusBest of Amazon PrimeBest Netflix DocumentariesNew on NetflixAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyOn ‘S.N.L.’, Fictional Britney Spears Seeks Apologies From Cruz, Cuomo and Carano“Saturday Night Live” gave several famous people the chance to say sorry on an episode hosted by Regé-Jean Page of “Bridgerton.”In the opening sketch of “S.N.L.,” Pete Davidson and Aidy Bryant played Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, each of whom had some explaining to do after the week’s events.Credit…NBC Universal, via YouTubeFeb. 21, 2021It has been a memorable week or so for public figures committing misdeeds, and “Saturday Night Live” gave a few of them a forum to apologize on a fictional talk show called “Oops, You Did It Again,” hosted by the relatively blameless Britney Spears.This week’s broadcast, hosted by the “Bridgerton” star Regé-Jean Page and featuring the musical guest Bad Bunny, began as the cast member Chloe Fineman, playing Spears, reminded viewers that they knew her “from my upbeat Instagram videos and the word ‘conservatorship.’”She added that she now had a show in which “people could come on and apologize for things they’ve done wrong, because after the ‘Free Britney’ documentary came out, I’m receiving hundreds of apologies a day.”[embedded content]Her first guest was Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, played by Aidy Bryant in braided hair, bluejeans and a Cancún family vacation T-shirt. Holding up a frothy beverage, Bryant unconvincingly explained that she wasn’t actually tan — “I just cried myself red over my fellow Texans, and that’s why I drink in their honor,” she said.Bryant added that she was “in a little bit of hot water, which I’m told is a thing no one in Texas has.” If her apology was falling short, she said, “I’m sorry, I’m pretty bad at human stuff.”The show’s next guest was Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York, played by Pete Davidson. Davidson first asked the audience if it had welcomed him “because indoor dining is back in New York,” then sheepishly acknowledged: “All right, I know. It’s because of the nursing home stuff.”Asked to elaborate, Davidson added: “Some of the people who died in the nursing homes were not counted as nursing home deaths, they were counted as hospital deaths. Which is basically what happens at Disney World, OK? People die and they move the bodies. They say, ‘Oh, I guess Brenda died in the parking lot, not on the teacups.’”Told that Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York thought he should be investigated, Davidson lashed out: “I will bury him in the tallest grave this city has ever seen,” he said.The third and final guest was Gina Carano, the former “Mandalorian” star who was fired by Disney, played in the sketch by Cecily Strong.Though Strong denied that she had done anything wrong, Fineman reminded her that she had shared an Instagram post that compared American politics to Nazi Germany.“I never would have made that Nazi comparison if I’d known everybody was going to be such a Nazi about it,” Strong said.When Bryant’s Cruz tried to sympathize with her, Strong brushed her off: “I am strong and you are a pile of soup,” she said.Cultural barometer of the week“S.N.L.” was generous this week when it came to acknowledging actors who are new to the pop-cultural firmament, including its host, Page (whose period romance “Bridgerton” was satirized in this somewhat bawdy sketch that aired late in the night). Earlier in the evening, in a sendup of actors’ round tables hosted by Ego Nwodim, Page appeared as the actor Kingsley Ben-Adir, who plays Malcolm X in “One Night in Miami.” Chris Redd played the “Judas and the Black Messiah” star Daniel Kaluuya.The recreations of those actors and their award-grabbing movies were pretty spotless. The jokes, however, were mostly about having Nwodim’s character fawn over the actors’ British accents (and about Kenan Thompson as Ice Cube, whose efforts to pass himself off as British didn’t go quite so smoothly).Music video of the weekNwodim returned for some well-deserved screen time in this slickly produced music video, playing a nightclub patron whose fantasy that she is hitting it off with a handsome fellow reveler (Page) gives way to the reality that she has, in fact, spent the last year living under lockdown in her apartment and gradually lost her mind. (Hence the song title, “Loco.”)As Nwodim raps in the video: “I’m loco, as in my brain done broke-o / But hey, you either laugh or you cry like ‘Coco.’” Her few acquaintances include Davidson (who has gone so crazy in his own quarantine that he understands the movie “Tenet”) and Bad Bunny (as a singing houseplant).Weekend Update jokes of the weekOver at the Weekend Update desk, the anchors Colin Jost and Michael Che continued to riff on Cruz’s canceled Cancún vacation and the winter weather crisis in Texas.Jost began:Well, if you hate Ted Cruz, this was a pretty fun week. And if you like Ted Cruz, then you’re Ted Cruz. Senator Cruz, whose face is slowly being reclaimed by nature, said that his decision to go on a family vacation to Cancun during Texas’s weather emergency was obviously a mistake. As was the tattoo he got there. [At that moment, a satirical photo appeared behind Jost of a lower-back tattoo of a leaping dolphin.]Jost continued:Cruz initially released a statement saying he only went on vacation because his daughters made him go. And if you think it was bad to throw his daughters under the bus, Cruz would like you to know that that statement was his wife’s idea. I just love that after he abandoned Texas, he came back in a Texas flag mask like nothing happened. That’s like Jared and Ivanka walking down Fifth Avenue in “I Love New York” shirts.Che picked up on the riff, adding:Cruz would have returned from Mexico even sooner but it took him, like, 40 minutes to get out of a hammock. This week’s massive winter storm caused millions of Texans to lose power. It was the most snow seen in Texas since Michael Irvin’s Super Bowl party. Many Texans are without heat and clean water after pipes froze in the extreme cold. “Boy, this kind of thing would never happen in New York,” said people who have never lived in the projects.Weekend Update deskside bit of the weekDavidson returned to the Weekend Update desk for the latest in his series of personal monologues, this one about the impact of having spent Valentine’s Day in lockdown. As Davidson explained, it was “the first time being alone wasn’t my fault.” And, he said, after watching the “Saving Britney” documentary with his mother, he had to move out of the house that they share in Staten Island.With mock chagrin, Davidson said: “My mom has way more of a case to take over my finances than Britney’s dad ever did. I was like: ‘Wait, she can do that? And she hasn’t? Doesn’t she love me?’ All Britney did was shave her head. I got a life size tattoo of the Tootsie Pop owl.”Davidson added: “My mom is a lot like this show. No matter what I do, I’m never asked to leave. Also, they’re both really old and noticeably fatigued.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Jimmy Kimmel: Texas in Crisis, Ted Cruz Says, ‘Adios, Amigos’

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }Winter StormsliveLatest UpdatesMapping the ImpactTexans DesperateConnection to Global WarmingHow to HelpAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyBest of Late NightJimmy Kimmel: Texas in Crisis, Ted Cruz Says, ‘Adios, Amigos’“Snake on a plane, right there!” Kimmel joked. “Headed, ironically, to the very place he tried to build the wall around.”“And on a day when the most newsworthy landing should have been the NASA Rover successfully touching down on Mars, instead, it was a senator from Texas touching down on Cancún,” Jimmy Kimmel said on Thursday.Credit…ABCFeb. 19, 2021, 1:04 a.m. ETWelcome to Best of Late Night, a rundown of the previous night’s highlights that lets you sleep — and lets us get paid to watch comedy. We’re all stuck at home at the moment, so here are the 50 best movies on Netflix right now.Feeling the HeatLate-night hosts couldn’t resist coming down on Senator Ted Cruz for taking a trip to Mexico after a winter storm left millions without power and water in his home state, Texas.“Snake on a plane, right there!” Jimmy Kimmel joked on Thursday. “Headed, ironically, to the very place he tried to build the wall around.”“Hundreds of thousands of Texans are still without power. And on a day when the most newsworthy landing should have been the NASA Rover successfully touching down on Mars, instead, it was a senator from Texas touching down on Cancún.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“While his fellow Texans are freezing with the power out, Ted Cruz did what any great leader would do when his state needs leadership most — he booked a flight to Mexico and said, ‘Adios, amigos!’” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Ted Cruz! No, man, you got to be [expletive] me, dude! Your people are literally eating snow right now, and you’re jetting off to Cancún? I’m not even mad that you were selfish — I’m mad that you were so stupid. How can you be in politics for 10 years and still have no idea how bad this would make you look. What were you thinking?” — TREVOR NOAH“I mean, seeing Ted Cruz skip town for the beach has been very frustrating for the people in Texas. But on the other hand, it has been really exciting for the people in Cancún who got to meet him on the street: ‘Wow, bro, I didn’t know that Señor Frog was a real guy. That was awesome.’” — TREVOR NOAH“I mean, look, I get that Ted Cruz is tired. The man deserves a break after trying so hard to overthrow the government, but this is not the time, Ted!” — TREVOR NOAH“When your constituents said they need clean water, they didn’t mean go find a wet T-shirt contest in Cancún.” — TREVOR NOAHThe Punchiest Punchlines (Total Ted Cruz Edition)“And what is even worse is that when he got caught, instead of owning up to it and apologizing, he acted like a total Ted Cruz.” — TREVOR NOAH“Seriously, Ted Cruz blaming his daughters for this is just gross. Being a good father means putting them on a bus, not throwing them under one.” — TREVOR NOAH“Oh, I see — we all got this thing wrong. Ted Cruz wasn’t going on vacation, people; he was just chaperoning his girls on the flight to Cancún. So, in some way, this was like a reverse ‘Taken’: [imitating Ted Cruz as Liam Neeson] ‘I want you to know that I am a man with absolutely no skills whatsoever, and I’m going to safely accompany my daughters on this trip.’” — TREVOR NOAH“He booked his return ticket at 6 a.m. this morning, after he got busted. But I guess we were supposed to believe he was just chaperoning his wife and kids to Mexico and was planning to come back the next day all along, with a carry-on bag stuffed like a piñata.” — JIMMY KIMMELThe Bits Worth WatchingDesus and Mero weighed in on “The Bachelor” host Chris Harrison stepping away from the show after recent controversy.Also, Check This OutCredit…The New York TimesThere’s something for everyone in the essential works of Toni Morrison in celebration of what would have been her 90th birthday.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      How the Trump Era Broke the Sunday-Morning News Show

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyHow the Trump Era Broke the Sunday-Morning News ShowAny number of hallowed political and media institutions fell apart. So why should the most hallowed political-media institution of them all escape unscathed? Credit…Photo illustration by Mike McQuadeFeb. 11, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ETOn the Sunday after Joe Biden’s inauguration, Rand Paul appeared on ABC’s “This Week With George Stephanopoulos” to make baseless claims of election fraud and to lecture the host on how to do his job. “Hey, George, George, George!” the Republican senator from Kentucky sputtered at Stephanopoulos, who had repeatedly tried — and failed — to get Paul to acknowledge that Biden had not “stolen” November’s election. “Where you make a mistake,” Paul continued, “is that people coming from the liberal side like you, you immediately say everything’s a lie instead of saying there are two sides to everything. Historically what would happen is if I said that I thought that there was fraud, you would interview someone else who said there wasn’t. But now you insert yourself in the middle and say that the absolute fact is that everything that I’m saying is a lie.”Paul was not necessarily wrong in his criticism. Ever since Tim Russert became the host of NBC’s “Meet the Press” in 1991 and began subjecting Democrats and Republicans to his “tough but fair” questions, the contemporary Sunday-​morning public-affairs show anchors have cast themselves as facilitators of a point-counterpoint format. “It’s not my job to express my opinions,” Stephanopoulos told The Hartford Courant upon being handed the reins of “This Week” in 2002. “It’s my job to ask the right questions, to make sure that people learn something from the program, to present all sides of the story and let people make up their own minds.”But nearly two decades later, Stephanopoulos’s approach was untenable. “Senator Paul, let me begin with a threshold question for you,” he said at the interview’s outset. “This election was not stolen, do you accept that fact?” Paul dodged the question to claim that there were “people who voted twice” and “dead people who voted” and “illegal aliens who voted.” Stephanopoulos repeated, “Can’t you just say the words ‘The election was not stolen’?” Paul could not; instead he gave Stephanopoulos his history lesson about Sunday shows. “You’re forgetting who you are as a journalist if you think there’s only one side,” Paul taunted.The interview was barely an hour old before Paul posted a link on Twitter. “Partisan Democrats in the media think they can get away with just calling Republicans liars because they don’t agree with us,” he wrote. “Watch me stand up to one here.” Three days later, The Federalist ran a story headlined: “Rand Paul’s Cage Match With George Stephanopoulos Is a Pattern Everyone on the Right Should Follow.”The Donald Trump years have broken any number of hallowed political and media institutions, so why should the most hallowed political-media institution of them all, the Sunday show, escape unscathed? Yes, those self-important shows with their self-important anchors have never been as crucial to our constitutional system as they like to imagine. But they have at least provided a refuge from the soft-focused fecklessness of the networks’ evening news and the shrieking of the prime-time carnival barkers on cable. That changed during Trump’s presidency. In some instances, the shows were less about educating the viewing audience than flattering an audience of one. “The reality is that the president is a political genius,” Stephen Miller told Jake Tapper on CNN’s “State of the Union” during a contentious interview in 2018. “I’m sure he’s watching and is happy you said that,” Tapper told Miller. (Trump soon tweeted a link to the segment, praising Miller.)Even worse, the shows became platforms for disinformation. In October 2019, Chuck Todd invited Ron Johnson, a Republican senator from Wisconsin, on “Meet the Press” to discuss the revelation that Trump had withheld military aid to Ukraine unless the country’s president agreed to investigate the business dealings of Hunter Biden. Johnson previously told The Wall Street Journal that he “winced” when he learned those two issues were connected. But when Todd asked about that report — “What made you wince?” — Johnson launched into a conspiracy theory about the origins of Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation. “I have no idea why we’re going here,” Todd complained. Two months later, Ted Cruz, a Republican senator from Texas, reached out to “Meet the Press” to discuss the Ukraine scandal. As Todd later told Rolling Stone, he assumed that Cruz, an avowed Russia hawk, wanted to push back against a Russian disinformation campaign. But when Todd asked Cruz whether he thought Ukraine tried to sway the 2016 elections, Cruz replied, “I do.” “You do?” Todd asked in disbelief. “Here’s the game the media is playing,” Cruz said. “Because Russia interfered, the media pretends nobody else did.” Looking back on the interview, Todd told Rolling Stone: “He wants to use this for some sort of appeasement of the right. I didn’t know what else to think.”Todd appears to have done a good deal of thinking about the plight of the Sunday show. In 2018, he wrote a cri de coeur for The Atlantic about “a nearly 50-year campaign to delegitimize the press,” imploring his colleagues to fight back: “It means not allowing ourselves to be spun, and not giving guests or sources a platform to spin our readers and viewers, even if that angers them.” A few months later, Todd hosted an episode of “Meet the Press” dedicated to climate change and made a point of not inviting any climate-change deniers. But should climate denialism be the only verboten point of view on Sunday shows? Last month, more than three dozen progressive groups wrote an open letter to members of the media calling on them to interview only those elected officials who “publicly concede that the 2020 presidential election was free and fair, and that claims to the contrary are false.” In other words, the groups wanted journalists to give Republicans who lie about election fraud the same treatment Twitter and Facebook gave Trump: deplatforming them. It’s hard to imagine, however, the Sunday shows ever taking such a step. There are, of course, the financial incentives: The trade associations and defense contractors that sponsor the Sunday shows presumably expect bipartisan bang for their advertising bucks. But the bigger impediment is the shows’ self-conception. If “This Week” and “Meet the Press” were to deplatform Republicans who won’t acknowledge, without caveats, that Biden won, then their guests would consist almost entirely of Democrats — and the Sunday shows would resemble prime-time programs on MSNBC and CNN. No self-respecting Sunday show wants that. In January, Todd beseeched what he called “sober-minded” Republicans to appear on his show. “Stop helping to reinforce the incorrect notion that the mainstream news media isn’t interested in your side of the debate,” he wrote in Politico.In the meantime, the Sunday shows are making do with those Republicans who will show up. Earlier that same month, Todd again hosted Ron Johnson, who again used the opportunity to spew nonsense, boasting about a recent hearing he had held to look into allegations of voter fraud. “The fact of the matter is that we have an unsustainable state of affairs in this country where we have tens of millions of people that do not view this election result as legitimate,” Johnson said at one point.“Then why don’t you hold hearings about the 9/11 truthers?” Todd asked. “How about the moon landing? Are you going to hold hearings on that?” It was a good line, and Todd seemed pleased with himself. It did not occur to Todd, however, that the same question could be asked of him. If “Meet the Press” is going to have guests like Johnson, why doesn’t it host 9/11 truthers and moon-landing conspiracists as well?Source photographs by Joshua Roberts/Getty Images; Andrew Toth/FilmMagic, via Getty Images. AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More