Chris Christie just laid an egg

| 2:35 pm EDT May 1, 2022
Dear Palmer Report readers, we all understand the difficult era we're heading into. Major media outlets are caving to Trump already. Even the internet itself and publishing platforms may be at risk. But Palmer Report is nonetheless going to lead the fight. We're funding our 2025 operating expenses now, so we can keep publishing no matter what happens. I'm asking you to contribute if you can, because the stakes are just so high. You can donate here.

Chris Christie is trending on Twitter this morning for having disingenuously tried to defend Kevin McCarthy’s duplicitous actions. This is nothing new; Christie always embarrasses himself when he appears on ABC News. Sometimes another person on ABC News puts Christie in his place, sometimes not. But then that’s part of the game, isn’t it?

The ugly truth is that ABC News now puts Chris Christie on the air every Sunday for the sole purpose of having him say stupid and false things that go viral for being stupid and false, so people will hear about it and want to hate-watch him. ABC knew this is what it would get from Christie when it hired him, and it’s what it wants from him.

The Sunday morning talk shows stopped being about political news a long time ago, and are now just reality shows, nothing more. And like most reality shows, they have very little to do with reality. Most Sunday morning hosts are perfectly willing to let a Republican guest tell lies that go largely unchecked. Yet in the name of appearing unbiased, those same Sunday morning hosts will try to falsely scandalize any Democratic Party guest, which is why the Democrats largely don’t bother to go on the Sunday show.

You can largely thank Chuck Todd for that, of course. When he transformed Meet The Press from a legitimate news show into a “both sides are the same” reality show, he managed to get higher ratings than competing Sunday morning shows. So the other networks shifted their Sunday morning shows in the direction of Todd’s detestable format.

There are a handful of exceptions. Jonathan Capehart does a good job on MSNBC on Sunday mornings. For that matter Tiffany Cross does a good job on MSNBC on Saturday mornings. Credit where it’s due. But most of the Sunday morning talk show circuit is just Chris Christie telling Republican lies, Chuck Todd letting guests tell Republican lies, or some other bottom rung reality show schlock. It’s time for that to change. The networks won’t change it until we, the viewers, change our viewing patterns.