Nicholas Fondacaro
Latest from Nicholas Fondacaro
“I’m starting to hate that moment when Olympic runners helped each other to the finish line,” declared Slate writer Justin Peters in a headline on Wednesday. The moment in question occurred during a 5,000 meter heat in Rio on Tuesday. Nikki Hamblin of New Zealand fell and took out American Abbey D’Agostino with her. D’Agostino help Hamlin to her feet, while Hamblin cheered on D’Agostino when she showed signs of a knee injury, and both finished roughly two minutes behind first place.
In what many on Tuesday called “an extremely rare step,” the FBI handed over their notes and other documents pertaining to their investigation of Secretary Hillary Clinton’s private e-mail server to Congress. Also on Tuesday, rumors swirled that Donald Trump was seeking debate advice from the former Chair of Fox News Rodger Ailes. While CBS and NBC dedicated almost equal time to both stories, the superficial ABC dedicated more than twice the time to Trump’s debate prep.
After failing to find time to report the corruption conviction of Democratic Party “rising star” Kathleen Kane during their hours long morning shows Tuesday, the “Big Three” networks ABC, CBS,and NBC still couldn’t find the time to inform the public that same evening. “Pennsylvania's embattled attorney general announced Tuesday that she will resign by the end of Wednesday after she was convicted this week of leaking secret criminal files and then lying about it,” reported the Associated Press.
During a discussion on Bloomberg’s With All Due Respect about concerns that the Republican Party would abandon Donald Trump, guest Donny Deutsch shared his own fantasy that would spell bad news for the GOP. “I actually believe something else is going to start to happen in the next few weeks if things don't turn around,” Deutsch warned, “I can actually see Trump bailing.” According to Deutsch this isn’t the first time the thought has crossed his mind.
Vice President Joe Biden was on the campaign trail with Hillary Clinton in Scranton, Pennsylvania on Monday and the “Big Three” networks seem to be all about it on their news programs that evening. “It is Biden's first time of the campaign trail, side by side with the woman he publicly pondered running against,” reported ABC’s Cecilia Vega on World News Tonight, “The two now united in their fight against Trump, and their friendship.”
Conservative strategist Lisa Boothe appeared on Fox News Channel’s MediaBuzz and called out liberal media for their bias in favor of defending Hillary Clinton. “The problem is the media should be adept enough to be able cover [Donald Trump], while simultaneously covering the stuff Hillary Clinton has,” argued Boothe, “You should be able to walk and chew gum at the same time.” And throughout all of her bashing of the liberal media she backed it up with studies conducted by the Media Research Center.
The Libertarian Party candidate for president, Gary Johnson, joined Al Sharpton on MSNBC’s PoliticsNation Sunday to discuss the prospects of a third party’s chances of success in 2016. But Sharpton’s real goal seemed to be to defend Hillary Clinton and discredit Libertarians by asking Johnson, “Do you ever have any slight fear even that you may be taking votes from Hillary Clinton and helping to elect Donald Trump?”
On Saturday, CBS Weekend News ran a report on one of American’s greatest traditions, naturalization ceremonies of new US citizens. But in their report, which covered the previous Thursday’s ceremony in Los Angeles, California, CBS spotlighted those looking to vote against Donald Trump. “As Carter Evans reports, there's actually been a surge in citizenship applications this year, partially driven by the desire to vote,” stated anchor Reena Ninan.
All the networks in the “Big Three” decided it was time to move on from Hillary Clinton’s latest E-Mail controversy on Thursday evening. And for ABC who only gave the story 38 seconds the previous evening? They were in awe of her campaign’s “Olympics strategy” for attacking Donald Trump. “Her campaign saying Donald Trump has, quote, “an aversion to the truth,” after he labeled the president the founder of ISIS,” stated anchor David Muir on World News Tonight with the on-screen headline reading, “Going for Gold.”
While the liberal “Big Three” networks were up in arms Wednesday evening over the a comment Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump made about “second amendment people” in reference to stopping Hillary Clinton, they were strangely silent then when a Democratic Senate candidate from Ohio was caught celebrated the death of Justice Antonin Scalia.
The liberal “Big Three” networks seemed to try everything in their power to not mention Hillary Clinton’s latest e-mail controversy Wednesday. Throughout all of their news programs, both morning and evening, they gave the e-mails a total of 6 minutes 59 seconds. In stark contrast, they dragged out Trump’s “Second Amendment people” comment with a whopping 25 minutes, 54 seconds of coverage.
On Monday, Hillary Clinton held a rally in Orlando, Florida and in attendance was Seddique Mateen, the father of the Orlando nightclub terrorist, while on Tuesday, Trump used innuendo to suggest that 2nd Amendment supporters would somehow stop Clinton. In all, the nets dedicated over four times the coverage to Trump, rather than Clinton, during their Tuesday evening broadcasts.
With the 2016 Olympic Games in full swing Larry Wilmore and the cast of The Nightly Show decided to mock Americans with the unoriginal “ignorant American” trope Monday night. “I'll tell you what, alright, our athletes are making America great again by beating the hell out of other countries,” exclaimed “typical American” Tank Mancusso, played by Rory Albanese, “This is like the Vietnam War all over again! We just come here and friggen’ dominate, baby!”
During Monday’s edition on Bloomberg’s With All Due Respect, co-host Mark Halperin and guest Donny Deutsch tackled one of the day’s hard hitting questions, “Okay Mark, when it comes to the publishing industry, why is this counterintuitive in certain ways, why are Clinton bashing books out there versus zero Trump?” Deutsch was curious about it because, “At this moment, the top three nonfiction books on the New York Times Best Seller list are all [about Hillary Clinton].” And neither one of them could figure it out.
In a similar performance from the previous weekend MSNBC’s Joy Reid took to the camera Sunday to play down the seriousness of Hillary Clinton’s E-Mail scandal. As opposed to going on her show— AM Joy – and shouting down a panelist for states damaging facts, this time she went on NBC’s Meet the Press and insulted the public claiming they were too stupid to understand the issue. “The curse for her is that trying to explain it, her answers are so detailed and complicated, that when you explain you're losing,” she explained to the panel.
The panel featured during ABC’s This Week’s “Powerhouse Roundtable!” seemed have been picking up some radio interference Sunday, because they kept insisting they were hearing sexist “code” coming from Donald Trump. “The emphasis on unhinged and she doesn’t look presidential is totally code for “we shouldn’t elect a woman,”” spat commentator Cokie Roberts, “That is exactly what that is.” Sexist dog whistles have become a common complaint of hers for the Trump campaign.
Following the recent revelations from the Wall Street Journal, that the US payed Iran a large sum of money at the same time as they released American hostages, has led many to believe to US payed a ransom for their release. But that couldn’t possibly be the case according to CNN Commentator Peter Beinart who ridiculously declared, on Anderson Cooper 360 Thursday, “It's not ransom if you are giving people their own money, which is what we were doing here.”
In a rather candid report on CBS Evening News Wednesday evening, reporter Nancy Cordes admitted that Donald Trump gives the media every excuse not to report on the controversies of Hillary Clinton. “Charlie, ordinarily this would have been a challenging week for the Clinton campaign,” she started off saying, “You had several DNC officials resign, more fallout from the hacking controversy, and Clinton's honesty over her e-mails was called into question yet again after an interview she did with Fox.”
When it comes to deciding between covering the many controversies of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and the Obama administration’s secret $400 million cash payment to Iran, all of the “big three” networks devoted vastly more total time to the former, Wednesday evening. Between ABC, CBS, and NBC they contributed a whopping 13 minutes and 46 seconds to Trump, while only giving the lump sum payment to Iran 5 minutes and 12 seconds of airtime.
Major news broke Tuesday regarding high ranking Democratic National Committee personnel losing their jobs, but you would never know it if you watched NBC Nightly News. Even though ABC and CBS spent minimal time on the story, NBC was the only network in the “big three” to avoid the topic all together. “And there is one more developing headline in the race for president before we move on here, and this one spells trouble for the Democrats tonight,” hyped ABC anchor David Muir on World News Tonight.