As a member of the Group Chat on Monday's edition of CNN This Morning, Adam Harris, a podcast host at the adamantly anti-Trump The Atlantic, couldn't resist injecting politics — and doing so in remarkably tasteless fashion — into the discussion of the late Sen. Lindsey Graham's death and legacy. Harris began by recalling the "very sort of vicious campaign" of 2016, when Graham was running for president and trading barbs with Trump. The language was so harsh, Harris said, that if he used such language in a Group Chat, "I'm not necessarily coming back to the group chat after that." Moments later, the conversation turned to Trump's warm words for Graham. Trump had noted that the senator was "full of vim and vigor" and pushing hard for the Save America Act right up to the end. CNN host Audie Cornish pointed out: "I noticed the president still managed to mention his chief priority right now, the priority that is inadvertently holding up almost everything else." Harris pounced at that opportunity: "You know, it's interesting that the president mentioned him as, you know, a great politician. Because he [Trump] immediately starts playing politics as, Lindsey Graham -- before the body's even cold, necessarily, right?" 'The Atlantic' Host: Trump Played Politics on Graham 'Before Body Cold'@AdamHSays @CNNThisMorning pic.twitter.com/aZA0UUMpOr — Mark Finkelstein (@markfinkelstein) July 13, 2026 Harris's comment may not have been vicious, but, without a doubt, it was utterly tasteless.  We'll have to see whether, on that basis, he's barred from the Group Chat. Then again, it's precisely that kind of tasteless attack on Trump that might score Harris future CNN appearances. CNN This Morning 7/13/26 6:02 am EDT AUDIE CORNISH: Joining me now in the group chat, Eleanor Mueller, White House economy policy reporter at Semafor, Elena Schneider, national political reporter at Notus, and Adam Harris, co-host of Radio Atlantic. Thank you guys for being with me here on this Monday morning. And I have to say, I think it was a surprise and shock to everybody, because Lindsey Graham had very much been on the road. We're going to talk about his foreign policy approach in, later in the show. But first, I wanna talk about him as reflecting the arc of the Republican Party itself, going from anti-Trump to bear-hug Trump. Adam, can you talk about sort of how you were thinking about his legacy this morning? ADAM HARRIS: Yeah. You know, I, I, I -- when you think about the 2016 campaign, it was a very, sort of vicious campaign in terms of, of the language that they were, that they were using to describe each other -- CORNISH: When Graham was running for president -- HARRIS: -- for president, and, and he's, he's calling President Trump all sorts of names, things that, that, you know, if, if we're in a group chat, I'm not, I'm not necessarily coming back to the group chat after that. CORNISH: Yeah, exactly. . . .  Lastly, I wanna talk about the the president remembering him. Here was Trump on Sunday, talking to CNN, about what he'd like to see happen next, and his words for the late senator. [ DONALD TRUMP: He was pushing very, very hard, you probably know, he wanted to do the Save America Act, and he was talking about that. He was full of vim and vigor.  He was tired. He said, "I'm tired, because it's a long trip." But other than that, he was, he was fine. CORNISH: I noticed the president still managed to mention his chief priority right now, the priority that is inadvertently holding up almost everything else. HARRIS: You know, it's interesting that, that the president mentioned him as, you know, a great politician. Because [Trump] immediately starts playing politics as, as soon as, as, Lindsey Graham is -- before the body's even cold, necessarily, right?

The most obvious occasion for civility in Washington is the sudden death of a public official. It shouldn't be a time for score-settling and expressing glee. Lindsey Graham's death led to both of these. They first called it a "sudden illness," but it was later revealed as an aortic dissection, a collapse of a major artery. MRC Free Speech America Vice President Dan Schneider and NewsBusters nightly-news analyst Jorge Bonilla joined the show to discuss the reaction. Many Democrats paid heartfelt tributes to Sen. Graham, but several media figures couldn't resist putting an anti-Trump spin on the occasion. On MS NOW, Joe Scarborough made it all about himself by insisting he told the president the war in Iran wouldn't be as easy as Sen. Graham said it would be. On CNN, Jake Tapper baked the original recipe for CNN. Graham was once a "maverick" who supported liberal policy goals alongside Sen. John McCain, but then he ruined it all by "affixing" himself to the president, becoming a close Trump ally. Leftist magazines like The Atlantic recalled how the senator was "complicit" in Trump's evil. Then there were mean-spirited people like the actress Margaret Cho, who chirped that people died in threes, implying McConnell had died along with Graham, and hinting she hoped Trump would be next. It's amazing she plays someone else's therapist on the ABC drama Will Trent.  The Free Speech America watchdogs found Apple News and Google News suppressed negative stories on hard-left Graham Platner for months. They had no time for Nazi tattoos or Platner identifying himself as a communist. They also found the Big Four News Apps had next to zero interest in foreigners becoming delighted by America during their visit for World Cup soccer games.  In a possible move to dissociate himself from his endorsement of Platner, Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) jetted to Israel and became embroiled in a situation when his group crossed security lines in the West Bank. In an interview with the Israeli ambassador to the United States on “Face the Nation,”  CBS host Margaret Brennan tried to defend the Khanna. The ambassador pointed out that Khanna refused to involve the government in getting him a visa, that he booked the trip with groups opposed to Israel, and this controversy could have been avoided. In Washington, controversy swirled over the hospitalization of former Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. The senator issued a statement with a photograph, but Democrats insisted a video would be better proof that he's alive and well and talking weighty public policy issues. This raises the perennial and bipartisan problem that politicians (especially in the Senate) stay too long, not knowing when to quit.  Enjoy the podcast below. The audio can be found here. 

On Monday, MS NOW celebrated their 30th anniversary with a new ad that played at the end of Morning Joe. The 15-second advertisement celebrated the network’s so-called “journalism” that supposedly “strengthens our democracy.”  Notably, amid changes to the network programming, the promotion heavily featured the nighttime duo of Lawrence O’Donnell and Rachel Maddow, two hosts who have showcased some unhinged moments in the age of Trump and whose programming was anything but impartial. Broken up with short soundbites from O’Donnell and Maddow, the advertisement’s narrator read: Celebrating 30 years… Delivering journalism that informs, empowers, and strengthens our democracy.   MS NOW has a new ad celebrating its 30th anniversary: “Celebrating 30 years ... Delivering journalism that informs, empowers, and strengthens our democracy." pic.twitter.com/V3m8ptDFor — Nick (@nspin310) July 13, 2026   The 30th anniversary also came after their high-profile divorce from NBC and rebranding to MS NOW under new Versant management. But, without its old name of MSNBC, the cable channel still had not proven itself a top source of journalism that “strengthens our democracy” more than it was a place to hype many of the top liberal fears. Some of the hard-hitting journalism MS NOW would celebrate during this anniversary might come from The Last Word host Lawrence O’Donnell, who earlier this year said that the U.S. military under Trump was like Hitler’s army in World War II.  O’Donnell also had an obsession with Barron Trump at the start of the Iran War, as he implored Barron to enlist in the military or to traverse the Strait of Hormuz. More recently, O’Donnell said on air that he wanted a guest to “get personal” about Trump. The other main featured soundbite came from Maddow, who now only hosts a show on Monday nights, but still has enough time for “journalism” to constantly attack Trump and implore her viewers to attend protests, as she did just last month as she compared anti-Trump protestors to D-Day troops. Maddow has also feared, along with O’Donnell and many other MS NOW programs, a newfound, dubious stolen midterm election conspiracy. In the middle of June, during a Maddow-O’Donnell show handoff, the pair fearmongered “about Vance using ICE to rig the elections.” Other MS NOW hosts featured with brief images in the anniversary commercial have also not showcased the journalism they claimed to harbor. This was especially true with the featured hosts of Morning Joe, who spent last week with multiple defenses of Graham Platner, as Mika Brzezinski seemed unimpressed with a Politico report on rape allegations against Platner. If the network were dominated by the likes of partisans like O’Donnell, Maddow, and the Morning Joe crew as the ad suggested, their “journalism” might not strengthen democracy amid their partisan fearmongering. And that was just for the last year, not the 29 years of MSNBC prior.

With two days to go before the deadline to replace Graham Platner, Maine Democrats will meet to try to select another Senate candidate to fill in on the ballot for Platner, who withdrew from the race Friday amid a growing number of scandals. The Maine Democratic Party (MDP) has until July 27 to file paperwork replacing Platner on the ballot. The nominating convention to pick Platner’s replacement will be held on July 25 at the Bangor Cross Insurance Center, the MDP announced on Saturday. There, 601 delegates will vote to select the party’s new nominee. “Candidates will go through rounds of voting until one reaches a majority. The five candidates receiving the most votes in the first round will advance to the second round, and so on, until one candidate is chosen,” NBC affiliate 10 Boston reports. But first, each of Maine’s 16 counties will hold its own nominating meeting, on either July 18 or 19, to vote to select the county’s delegates to attend the July 27 convention. The date, time and location of those meetings, which can be virtual, must be announced by July 15 – which also serves as the deadline for registering to run for a delegate position. In a social media video post announcing the process, Maine Democratic Party Chair Charlie Dingman framed the battle for the Senate seat as an effort to combat “the tide of a billionaire-driven, corrupt and cruel national government.” Parroting a party talking point, Dingman twice called the bid to regain control of the Senate a fight against an “existential” danger. After declaring his party’s support for abortion, Dingman claimed that Democrats are engaged in in an “existential struggle for democracy, economic justice and a secure future.” He then evoked the specter of climate change by calling for a “strong and visionary response to the existential threat to our natural environment.”

Media Research Center caught Apple and Google red-handed, and now it seems Google is hoping a few quick dismissals and an ad hominem attack will erase its attempt to shield scandal-plagued Graham Platner from criticism. MRC’s Special Report found that from November 1, 2025 through May 30, 2026, Apple News and Google News ran zero stories among their top 20 morning editions featuring Platner’s many shocking scandals among their top morning feeds, including his Nazi symbol tattoo, sex scandals and racist Reddit posts. Neither Apple nor Google has refuted any of these findings. Rather than address any of the particulars, a Google spokesperson attempted to craftily sidestep the tech giant’s censorship practices without identifying a single specific claim in the MRC Special Report that it found unsupported by the facts. Instead, Google launched a baseless attack on MRC’s methodology. Without any evidence, the tech company’s spokesperson predictably parroted well-worn lines: “These claims are totally false and based on a completely flawed methodology.” Precisely which “claims” Google said “are totally false,” we cannot know. However, without denying that it suppressed at least 112 significant stories from right-leaning outlets, Google likewise did not point to a single piece of evidence proving the MRC Special Report wrong. "Google wants us to believe that checking their platform once a day missed the magic window where they actually allowed negative news about Graham Platner to exist. That is an insult to the intelligence of every consumer and investor.” — David Bozell, President, Media Research Center