Gowdy Shreds Cawthorn in Hilarious Fashion. Cross Misses the Mark. PLUS: The Grammys. | Winners & Losers in Today’s Green Room

MEDIA WINNER: Trey Gowdy

Fox News host Trey Gowdy eviscerated Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-NC) on Sunday over his cocaine and sex party remarks, calling on the freshman representative to either name names or “admit what we suspect, which is that you made it up.”

And the former Congressman from the great state of South Carolina didn’t just bring the receipts to debunk Cawthorn’s preposterous claims, he did so in an entertaining and hilarious fashion.

Gowdy scoffed at Cawthorn’s attempts to compare Congress to the fictional characters on the Netflix series House of Cards, noting that the real-life congressional leaders had never pushed anyone in front of a train (as Kevin Spacey’s diabolical character so infamously did during the season 2 premiere).

Decent members of Congress never get much press attention, Gowdy lamented, rattling off a humorous list of his former colleagues’ foibles, including Sen. Tim Scott’s (R-SC) idea of a “wild time” meaning “ordering dessert” and former Rep. Joe Kennedy (D-MA) being nicknamed “Milk” because he was a teetotaler.

Either name names or admit you were lying, Gowdy openly challenged Cawthorn. He also smacked down Cawthorn’s cries of media bias, saying “you can’t blame the media for something that came out of your mouth.”

MEDIA LOSER: Tiffany Cross

On Saturday’s episode of The Cross Connection on MSNBC, host Tiffany Cross said to guest Elie Mystal that former President Donald Trump erased entries from the White House call logs on Jan. 6, 2021 and made them “disappear,” calling Trump a “ghetto president” and accusing him of acting like a criminal character on The Wire.

There was in fact a 7+ hour gap when no Trump calls went through the switchboard on that day during the riots, however — and this is a very significant “however” — CNN’s Jamie Gangel reported on Thursday that the call logs were not altered and were in fact “complete.”

This does still leave open the possibility that Trump made use of burner phones, had his surrogates make calls for him, or other efforts to conceal his communications on that fateful day in American history. But there just isn’t evidence that some sort of Watergate-style “missing 18 1/2 minutes” of tape occurred with these call logs.

There are many legitimate criticisms of Trump and his actions on Jan. 6. For Cross to push an accusation that was debunked days before was unfair and unprofessional.

Cross followed up that commentary with a confounding segment on Saturday suggesting that White people don’t understand Will Smith’s slap of Chris Rock and should stay out of any conversations about it.

Links We Like:

What Chinese media is saying about Russia’s Ukraine war
– Jen Kirby, Vox
Florida Sued by Activists, Students, Parents, and Teachers Over LGBT School Censorship Bill
– Scott Shackleford, Reason
David Perdue, Trump’s Sacrificial Lamb
– Amanda Carpenter, The Bulwark
The Reason for Zelensky’s Surprise Grammys Appearance
– Spencer Kornhaber, The Atlantic

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