Former President Donald Trump blasted mask mandates, vowing “We won’t go back!” after the CDC performed a u-turn in recommending face coverings for indoor settings and K-12 schools regardless of vaccination status.
On Tuesday, CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said that children and teachers should all be wearing face coverings when they return to school in the fall.
Whether they’re vaccinated or not, all Americans living in locations where coronavirus transmission is either “substantial” or “high” should wear masks in indoor settings, according to Walensky. That currently applies to about 63.45 percent of US counties.
The u-turn was made despite data from other countries such as the UK showing the delta variant to cause a brief rise in cases before quickly falling without the need for more draconian mask mandates.
Donald Trump savaged the reintroduction of mask mandates and and basically urged Americans to ignore them.
“We won’t go back. We won’t mask our children. Joe Biden and his Administration learned nothing from the last year,” said Trump.
“Brave Americans learned how to safely and responsibly live and fight back. Don’t surrender to COVID. Don’t go back! Why do Democrats distrust the science? Don’t let this happen to our children or our Country,” he added.
At this point we have to consider whether Fauci is actually a disinformation agent on behalf of the Chinese Communist Party. Sure seems to like spreading nonsense that hurts Americans. pic.twitter.com/lyPOEZaovi
A bipartisan group of senators reached a final agreement on a roughly $1 trillion infrastructure package Wednesday, although it remains to be seen if there are enough votes to overcome a Republican filibuster.
Sen. Rob Portman, an Ohio Republican at the forefront of the negotiations, announced the deal shortly after Democratic Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer said a vote to begin debate on the package could be held by the end of the day.
“We now have an agreement on the major issues,” said Mr. Portman, who met with White House staffers to finalize the deal late Tuesday.
While final details have yet to be released, the package will run upwards of $1.2 trillion, with more than $579 billion coming from new revenue.Mr. Portman said the group was able to account for the new funding without raising taxes, a key metric for GOP support.
It remains to be seen whether the deal will garner sufficient support from Republicans to overcome a likely filibuster. To succeed, at least 10 GOP senators need to vote for the measure with all 50 Democrats in the evenly split Senate.
Complicating the passage of an infrastructure deal is Democrats’ preparations for another $3.5 trillion bill for a host of new and expanded social welfare programs, including health care, climate change and anti-poverty initiatives.
Mr. Schumer, New York Democrat, said he was teeing up the vote, which would be the second time the chamber attempted to take up the infrastructure package.
“Members should be prepared to vote again on cloture on the motion to proceed to the bipartisan infrastructure bill as early as tonight,” he said. Last week, Mr. Schumer’s attempt to force a vote to start debate on the still unfinished package was defeated by a Republican filibuster. GOP negotiators, like Mr. Romney, voted against it because there wasn’t a solid agreement on what would be in the bill.
The suburban DC megachurch’s recent scuffle over race and politics is symptomatic of a broader evangelical rift.
The Washington-area megachurch led by best-selling author David Platt has affirmed three new elders—but only after a public tussle over politics, race, and alleged liberal drift, plus a lawsuit filed by dissenters.
The conflict at McLean Bible Church is significant not only because of the congregation’s size and influence—with several thousand attendees and a prominent place in the DC church landscape—but also because the incident marks the latest salvo in an ongoing clash within American evangelicalism.
After new elder nominees failed to be elected for the first time in the church’s history, Platt told the congregation in a sermon in early July that “a small group of people inside and outside this church coordinated a divisive effort to use disinformation in order to persuade others to vote these men down as part of a broader effort to take control of this church.”
At a June 30 meeting, nominees Chuck Hollingsworth, Jim Burris, and Ken Tucker had failed to receive a clear 75 percent majority, the margin required for elder election. The total was either just above or just below 75 percent, depending on whether provisional ballots were counted, so a second vote was held July 18, at which all three nominees received at least 78 percent of the vote.
The weeks between the two votes were tumultuous. Platt said in his July 4 sermon that people told voting members, in person and by email, that the elders up for nomination would have sold the church’s Tysons location to build a mosque, with proceeds going to the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC).
Online posts on blogs, Facebook, and email charged Platt with pushing critical race theory, revising biblical teaching on sexuality, and aligning with the SBC despite McLean’s constitutional prohibition of affiliating with any denomination.
Opponents of McLean’s current leadership wrote in a blog posted by the right-wing Capstone Report that Platt—who became pastor of the DC church full time in 2018—was attempting to “purge conservative members.”
Platt also described one email circulating that claimed “MBC is no longer McLean Bible Church, that it’s now Melanin Bible Church.”
“I know it’s so ugly and painful to even hear, but I want to point out the approach that’s being used by people giving leadership to this group in these meetings,” he told the congregation, calling the claims made about him and the incoming elders “unquestionably untrue and in many cases completely unreasonable.”
Platt, the author of Radical, is known for his passionate call to evangelism, missions, and Scripture. What opponents claim as being Platt’s “liberal” or “woke” politics, supporters see as the 42-year-old preacher’s commitment to Christ above all.
“We will not apologize for our increasing diversity or our commitment to humbly address racial issues from God’s Word as we unite together on a glorious mission to proclaim this good Word and our great God in a city where five million-plus men, women, boys, and girls are on a road that leads to an eternal hell and need the good news of God’s love for them,” he said.
While Platt raised concerns that the opposing group deceived members at the Tysons location into voting against the new elders, a lawsuit filed July 15 alleges that church leaders at McLean illegally barred some of their opponents from voting in the follow-up elder election. The suit is pending despite the announced vote outcome. “The heart of the complaint really comes down to truth, transparency, and a free, open, and uncoerced process,” plaintiff’s attorney Rick Boyer told RNS.
Sarah Merkle, an attorney and professional parliamentarian, said the incident highlights the importance in any church of establishing and following sound voting procedures. She added that she is not familiar with the specific policies and procedures at McLean.
“When you don’t follow the rules and it has an effect on a consequential vote, you have now created a huge distraction from your mission,” Merkle said. “If you’re the Red Cross, that’s problematic. If you’re the church of Jesus Christ, that’s really problematic.”
Under founding pastor Lon Solomon, McLean launched a church planting partnership with the SBC’s North American Mission Board in 2016 while remaining nondenominational. As Solomon transitioned from leadership following a 37-year pastorate, McLean made major budget changes, scaling back the percentage of income spent on personnel and incentivizing staff departures. Both moves raised questions for some members.
“Over the last several years, we’ve watched David take the church—the church we built, the church we love, the church we’ve poured are hearts and souls and lives into—and turned it into a political, stripped-down version of what it used to be,” wrote former elder Mark Gottlieb, who is encouraging members of a group called Save McLean Bible Church to “admit defeat and walk away” after the July 18 vote.
Under Solomon, the congregation had been known as “a holy destination for GOP senators and Bush aides.” Tensions ramped up the past two years amid political turmoil in the DC area and nationwide.
In June 2019, then-President Donald Trump showed up at a worship service and Platt prayed for him from the stage, an action that drew criticism from some in the church. A year later, Platt and African American McLean pastor Mike Kelsey participated in a Christian march following the death of George Floyd, which was construed by some as support for the Black Lives Matter organization. McLean stated in a Q&A on its websitethat Kelsey’s son held a poster that read, “Black Lives Matter to God.”
Platt’s 2020 book Before You Vote also drew criticism from some church members as being soft on traditional evangelical issues like abortion and sexuality.
Allegations that leaders were seeking to join the SBC in violation of the church’s constitution led McLean to suspend all contributions to SBC causes this month.
In its Q&A, McLean states that it is not Southern Baptist and links to an undated letter from SBC Executive Committee employee Ashley Clayton stating, “The SBC Executive Committee recognizes that McLean Bible Church is an independent, nondenominational Bible church, and they are not affiliated denominationally with the SBC.”
However, Baptist Press, the SBC’s news service, stated in a July 21 article, “McLean Bible Church is a cooperating church with the Southern Baptist Convention, yet like all Southern Baptist churches, remains independent and autonomous in its functionality and governance.”
To some observers, McLean’s conflict seems like a replay of other recent episodes from American evangelicalism, where leaders who appeal to Scripture to address social issues are accused of theological liberalism or secular influence even if they continue to hold traditional Christian views. The level of suspicion around such leaders appears to have grown during the Trump administration and during the reckoning over racism following George Floyd’s death last year.
Far more people were dying from COVID-19 months ago as we were winding down restrictions than are dying today as some call to reinstate them.
If you judged the US’s current COVID-19 situation only by the headlines, you’d come away thinking that we’re spiraling back into pandemic disaster. Localities like Los Angeles County and St. Louis have reimposed mask mandates on their citizens, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention just revised its “guidance” to say that, actually, fully vaccinated individuals should still wear masks in certain situations. Meanwhile, mainstream media coverage of the rise of the “Delta variant” is soaked in alarmism.
Yet at the same time that all this alarm is mounting, the actual number of COVID-19 deaths is at a nadir. Harvard Medical School Professor Martin Kulldorff pointed this out on Twitter, writing that “In [the] USA, COVID mortality is now the lowest since the start of the pandemic in March 2020.”
He shared this graph from OurWorldInData which clearly shows how COVID deaths per million are at, relatively speaking, extreme lows. Far morepeople were dying from COVID-19 months ago as we were winding down restrictions than are dying today as some call to reinstate them.
Now, some would cite rising COVID-19 case counts or hospitalizations in certain parts of the country as evidence that the pandemic is indeed once again spiraling out of control. But many COVID-19 cases recorded as positive are either asymptomatic or come with very mild symptoms—especially the cases confirmed among vaccinated individuals—so high case counts are not necessarily proof of a serious problem. Hospitalizations are concerning, yes, but primarily insofar as they lead to high numbers of deaths, which, thankfully, is not the case so far with the Delta variant.
Others would say that deaths are a “lagging indicator” that come in several weeks after the increased spread of the disease. But the Delta variant has been spreading in the US for months now, and deaths have remained relatively flat, in part due to widespread vaccination.
“It is striking that COVID mortality is at such low levels despite the fact that we are seeing an increase in cases of late,” Stanford Professor of Medicine Dr. Jay Bhattacharya tells FEE. “By immunizing the elderly and many other vulnerable people, we have provided them with excellent protection against severe disease in case they get infected. Also contributing is widespread natural immunity from recovered COVID patients. Though cases may rise, deaths will no longer follow in proportion. We have effectively defanged the disease with our successful vaccination rollout.”
According to federal data, the average American’s wage is on the decline due to inflation.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics found that “average hourly earnings” in the United States rose from $29.35 in June 2020 to $30.40 in June 2021 — a 3.6% increase. However, when factoring in inflation — specifically through the Consumer Price Index, which has risen by 5.3% since June 2020 — “real average hourly earnings” have diminished by 1.7% over the past year, despite a robust economic recovery during the same period.
For an American earning $50,000 per year, the agency’s findings imply the equivalent of an $850 cut in yearly wages.
The decline in real wages has been worsening for most of 2021. As of December, real average hourly earnings had risen year-over-year by 4.2%. In January, February, March, April, and May, the year-over-year rates declined to 3.8%, 3.4%, 1.6%, -1.7%, and -2.6% respectively, before improving to -1.7% in June.
Between January and June, the year-over-year inflation rate nearly quadrupled from 1.4% to 5.3%. As Moody’s Investors Service vice president William Foster explained to CNBC: “Inflation is a tax. That’s the best way to think about it.”
Inflation — the erosion of a currency’s purchasing power over time — is particularly noticeable for members of the working class, who hold a greater percentage of their assets in the form of cash rather than land, securities, and other investments that are largely immune to the effects of rising price levels.
Although the DoJ and FBI are actively chasing Donald Trump’s supporters, they have never demonstrated a similar hardball approach when it came to the Clintons and other establishment politicians, says Wall Street analyst Charles Ortel, who has investigated the Clinton Foundation’s alleged fraud for several years.
On 20 July, Thomas J. Barrack, a billionaire businessman and longtime friend to former president Donald Trump, was arrested in Los Angeles being charged with illegal lobbying for the United Arab Emirates (UAE) between April 2016 and April 2018. The indictment also charged Barrack with “obstruction of justice and making multiple false statements during a 20 June 2019 interview with federal law enforcement agents.” The businessman pleaded not guilty on 26 July.
Barrack is the second Trump ally to be arrested this month. Previously, the Trump Organisation and CFO Allen Weisselberg were charged with 15 counts relating to an alleged tax fraud scheme on 1 July. Like Barrack, Weisselberg pleaded not guilty.
Anti-Trump Resistance Continues
The recent arrests show that the anti-Trump “resistance” campaign launched in 2015 never ended, according to Charles Ortel, a Wall Street analyst and investigative journalist. The DoJ and FBI were quick to indict and detain many of the former president’s loyalists; however, when it came to prominent establishment figures, like the Clintons or their associates, the US justice machine appeared to be completely out of whack, he believes.
“My working theory is that globalists have had an excellent thing going ever since 1989,” Ortel says. “Multilateral aid organisations and false-front, ‘leaky’ charities are not regulated, so they serve as prime conduits to pay off corrupt national government officials, to pad operating budgets of clandestine agencies, to launder dirty money and to subsidise champagne and caviar lifestyles that co-conspirators could never afford from legitimately earned income.”
Ortel, who has been investigating the Clinton Foundation’s alleged fraud for several years, presumes that Trump and his allies “pose existential threats to globalists who are pulling strings at crooked foundations” as Team Trump may, potentially, return to the helm of the country and strip the establishment of many powers.
‘Overspending’ $23 Million
The Wall Street analyst referred to an episode involving the Clinton Foundation, which remains largely unnoticed in the media and was reported by Australian investigative journalist Michael Smith in November 2016. In his op-ed, Smith referred to an email sent by Erskine Bowles, an American businessman who served as Bill Clinton’s chief of staff, to his former boss on 17 February 2015. The email discusses documents related to the Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI) and allegedly “lost” $23 million of restricted grants.
In his letter Bowles writes that Bill Clinton’s longtime aide Ira Magaziner does not “acknowledge the role played by [Bill] and the CF [Clinton Foundation] in bringing the CHAI Foundation back from the edge of disaster created by ‘CHAI overspending $23 million’ … ‘of grant funds from restricted grants to fund other CHAI programmes’… nor does he give any credence to the enormous role [Bill Clinton has] played and continue[s] to play in directly and indirectly raising funds for CHAI.”
According to Smith, the “CHAI overspending” rings alarm bells: he wonders how the non-profit and tax-exempt organisation “lost” $23 million of restricted grant money so that it had to be “bailed out.” The Australian journalist did not rule out that the aforementioned funds were “misused.”
“What controls were in place? How were the controls so ineffective? Where were the auditors?” Smith asked, highlighting that the Australian government sent considerable sums of taxpayer money to the Clintons’ charities.
The investigative reporter forwarded his detailed concerns about the Clinton Foundation and CHAI financial management issues to the FBI and to Australian authorities, but, apparently, to no avail at that time.
First and foremost, “the William J. Clinton Presidential Foundation never legitimately secured authority to expand the scope of its geographic focus beyond a small park in Little Rock, Arkansas – the legal entity was formed solely to house records created or received during the Clinton presidency, and to allow scholars and other visitors to study these Presidential Records,” the Wall Street analyst explains.
However, starting in 2001, “Bill Clinton opened one office in New York City that did not register validly with local authorities and embarked upon an expansive mission to fight, in theory, global challenges including HIV/AIDS and ‘climate change.'”
“Clinton and political allies including Ira Magaziner incurred millions of dollars in expenses and also raised hundreds of millions in grants, including government grants from Australia and many other nations for which there never has been required accounting,” Ortel says. “Moreover, Bill Clinton never held formal legal authority to conduct these activities or to bind the Presidential Foundation to legal commitments, yet he did so again and again. Over time, many hundreds of millions of dollars supposedly donated towards the ‘Clinton Foundation’ has gone missing, a fact easily gleaned from public records of the Foundation itself and in reports made by many donors.”
In a desperate bid to alleviate their plight, Trump supporters who are still being tormented in prison for participating in the January 6 Capitol incursion are identifying as Cubans in the hope Republican lawmakers will finally care about them.
Had 43-year-old flooring contractor Dominic Pezzola broken the window of an American small business last summer to let in looters, he might have received a token charge or even been heralded as a crusader for racial justice. Instead, the New Yorker broke a window at the U.S. Capitol. Even thought the New Yorker did nothing else other than smoke a cigar, he has spent six months in 23-hours-a-day solitary confinement. Pezzola has been denied bail twice, has been kept away from his 16-year-old daughter, and is unable to support his family, for which he was previously the sole breadwinner.
But despite being a de facto political prisoner of America’s own government, Pezzola’s case wasn’t attracting much interest from Congressional Republicans. Despite Marco Rubio tweeting over and over about political prisoners in Venezuelaand Cuba, a letter to Senator Marco Rubio’s office was returned unopened, with flecks of foam still visible on it.
That was when Pezzola had a brilliant idea.
“I have finally decided to embrace who I truly am on the inside,” he told Revolver. “I am now Domingo Sanchez, proud Cuban dissident.”
Pezzola/Sanchez’s new identity quickly generated newfound interest from Senator Rubio.
“Domingo is the exact kind of prisoner whose rights America must care the most about,” said Rubio. “And by that, I mean he’s not an American prisoner.”
Rubio suggested that the federal government impose an embargo on Washington D.C. until Sanchez is released.
Sanchez’s success inspired his fellow 1/6 long-term prisoner, Edward Lang. For months, Lang has struggled to get Republicans to care about being locked up all day and forced to eat off the floor, among other indignities. But as soon as Edward announced his name change to Eduardo and changed his hometown from Newburgh, New York to Havana, Cuba, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz took an intense interest in his case.
“Martin Luther King Jr. once wrote that injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere,” said Cruz. “But he wasn’t quite right. It’s only injustice outside America that matters.”
January 6 prisoners aren’t the only ones who have realized the usefulness of transracialism in pandering to Republicans. In a desperate bid to alleviate the racial hatred directed at them every day, white Americans are identifying as Uyghurs.
For years, the former Thomas Schmidt of South Carolina had tried to get Republicans interested in his plight. As a software engineer for a local tech company, Schmidt was forced to attend lengthy multi-hour propaganda seminars where he was told that basic positive traits like “rugged individualism,” “hard work,” and “striving towards success” were products of “white male culture” and “devastating” toward oppressed women and non-whites. Later, Schmidt tried to start his own tech business, but as a white male, he faced explicit discrimination in his ability to win contracts.
Schmidt’s daughter Alice, meanwhile, not only faced relentless anti-white propaganda at her public school, but when she complained about a homeless man who exposed himself to her as she walked home, she was given a lecture about how white tears have been paid for in black blood since time immemorial.
Schmidt wrote to Senator Lindsey Graham seeking help for his plight. But Graham was unimpressed.
“Who the hell is this paste-face peasant from Charleston?” said Graham. “Call me when we get a letter from somewhere we can bomb, or at least sanction.”
A member of Graham’s staff was seen folding Schmidt’s letter into a paper airplane, then pretending to bomb an Iranian orphanage with it.
But Schmidt wasn’t ready to give up. After a quick trip to a costume store, he reemerged with a tacky fake beard and a new identity as Hazrat Sabir, proud Uyghur and proud Sunni Muslim.
“It’s perfect,” Schmidt/Sabir said. “Before, I was being demographically replaced, bombarded with race hatred, and crushed with systematic economic and social discrimination. Now, all of those things are still happening, but I’m not white, so the GOP will give a sh*t.”
Joe Biden went to speak to the intelligence community at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence yesterday. He spoke before about 120 employees and senior officials, according to Stars and Stripes.
During his public remarks, he was asked whether they would be mandating that federal employees be vaccinated. In response, Biden insulted Americans who weren’t vaccinated, saying they weren’t as smart as he thought they were if they didn’t get vaccinated.
Biden also suggested that we could get involved in a “real shooting war” as a consequence of a cyber attack.
BIDEN: "If we end up in a war, a real shooting war, with a major power, it's going to be as a consequence of a cyber breach." pic.twitter.com/wsCvmMLU1N
“I think it’s more likely we’re going to end up—if we end up in a war, a real shooting war, with a major power—it’s going to be as a consequence of a cyber breach of great consequence,” Biden said.
But he hasn’t really done much to stop the breaches apart from giving Vladimir Putin a list of 16 areas that he was trying to warn them off cyber hitting (translation in Putin’s mind: targets). His cyber border is as lacking as his southern border. So he vacillates from doing nothing to now talking that it can lead to a “shooting war”? If there’s anything that would be more concerning than what we have with Biden right now, it would be having a war with Biden in charge. So is he really suggesting that’s where we’re going? It’s not a normal jump, at least not in my mind, to go from saying that we need to do something about cyber breaches to “Oh, here’s a shooting war.”
The CDC wants all American children to suffocate under masks and college students to get experimental injections, but the same government is allowing hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens to waltz into the country — no questions asked.
Every other country has implemented strict travel bans during the pandemic, but this administration decided to wave in more than 1 million illegal aliens in the middle of a pandemic that it is using to suppress its own people. According to Border Report, busloads of illegal aliens are being distributed across Texas border towns, even though migrants have recently had a 10% COVID infection rate.
On Tuesday morning, Border Report witnessed two buses full of dozens of migrants being dropped off at the Humanitarian Respite Center. They were first sent across the street for coronavirus testing by a non-governmental organization hired by Catholic Charities and paid by the City of McAllen.
The city has spent more than $97,000 in coronavirus testing of migrants, Rodriguez said Tuesday, adding that the city hopes to get federally reimbursed. But he said it’s more important now to spend the money and to ensure that no infected migrants get released in McAllen.
Pimentel told Border Report that on Monday afternoon there were 1,100 migrants at the Respite Center when it closed its doors to new arrivals. She said there are about 1,000 migrants who are currently isolated in eight to 10 area hotels within a 40-mile distance in the Rio Grande Valley and include locations in Weslaco, Edinburg, Mission and La Joya.
Police in La Joya, TX, a Border town, announce a charity has rented an entire hotel here for COVID-positive migrants. They say they only found out when a family, showing symptoms and staying there, ate at a restaurant next door. A customer flagged down a police officer.
What other nation does this? Why are we responsible for the epidemiological curve of other countries as well as our own? Why are agents waving them in only to discover they have the virus, rather then turning them back right at the border, which in itself would disincentivize more crowding?
What has become clear is that human intervention does not change the trajectory of the virus, but if our government believes we are solely responsible for its spread, then cross-border migration is likely the worst thing we could be doing.
If a pandemic is enough to shut down the lives of Americans, how in the world can it not be sufficient to shut down illegal immigration and turn back the illegal aliens rather than welcoming them in with impunity?
“If you’re an American citizen who goes to one of these countries, you can’t even come back without a negative COVID test, yet these illegals can pour over from the very same countries and be dumped into our communities,” said Don Mclaughlin, mayor of Uvalde, Texas, in an interview with TheBlaze. He said that Uvalde is turning the CDC guidance back on DHS and is requiring a negative COVID test before any of the migrants can be dropped off in the city.
According to a recent ICE report, just 13% of the illegal aliens released have shown up for their court dates. The report claims 50,000 have been released, but given that over 1 million illegals have been apprehended (and hundreds of thousands more likely evaded detection) and less than 30,000 are in custody, that number is likely exponentially higher.
It’s uncanny how we’ve seen every clause of the Constitution violated under the guise of protecting us against the virus, yet not a finger will be lifted to stop people from coming from all over the world to our border. Texas gubernatorial candidate Don Huffines is entertaining the idea of having Texas officials remove the illegal aliens back across the border. Some might suggest that this would violate the federal dominion over immigration, but what is a state to do when the administration is refusing to enforce immigration laws? If states can become sanctuaries and thwart federal enforcement, why can’t states enforce the laws the feds themselves are violating?
Peacock Network’s costly event shed 49% of viewers from 2016 Rio Games.
NBC’s primetime coverage of the Tokyo Olympics continued to spiral downward on Monday, averaging 14.7 million viewers for a 49% drop compared to the equivalent night from the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Games.
Monday’s telecast also shed 53% of viewers from coverage of the first weeknight primetime during the 2012 London Olympics and declines were even larger among the advertiser-coveted demographic of adults aged 18-49.
Steinberg quoted a media buying executive who said the early viewership “clearly are not what NBC, our agency or our clients were looking for” from costly investment.
“This executive said early viewership trends were ‘disappointing,’” Steinberg wrote.
The opening ceremony, delayed a year because of the COVID-19 pandemic, drew 16.7 million viewers for NBC on Friday, the smallest audience for the network broadcast since the 1988 Seoul Games. NBC presumably hoped its multi-billion dollar investment would pick up as the Games proceeded, but primetime coverage on Saturday and Sunday also was disappointing.
NBC averaged 12.6 million viewers on Saturday night, a 39% drop compared to the first Saturday of the 2016 Olympics and a 56% drop compared to the 2012 London Games. Now that a weeknight has also shed significant viewership from recent Olympics, too, NBC could start to panic if things don’t pick up in a hurry.
“The size of the declines from the previous Rio Olympics have unnerved advertisers, who are believed to have invested more than $1.2 billion in the sports extravaganza,” Steinberg wrote. “Little surprise, then, that NBCU and several media agencies have entered into discussions for ‘make goods,’ or ad inventory that is given to sponsors when a program fails to meet its original viewership guarantees.”
“Fox News Primetime” host Tammy Bruce on Monday tore into the “woke” U.S. athletes who appear far more concerned about scoring political points with leftist ideologues than they do with their performance during this year’s Olympic Games in Tokyo.
“Failure, misery, resentment, victimhood, hatred for the country… that’s what fuels the left … and it’s penetrating nearly every corner of society,” Bruce said in her opening monologue.
“Ask yourself… could this shift in attitude and a shift away from national pride be present in team USA’s stumbling start at the Olympic Games?”
Bruce pointed to the poor performance of the U.S. women’s national soccer team, who were shut out in their opener with Sweden. Team USA’s men’s basketball team, headed up by “rabid America-bashing leftist Gregg Popovich,” got beaten by France, marking the first time in 16 years that they’ve lost their opener, Bruce said.
