MARK HALPERIN (CO-HOST): Everyone has their own opinion -- conservatives have been trying to discredit Machado by digging up stories from her past in Venezuela involving a boyfriend, a shooting, and claims that she threatened a judge. Rush Limbaugh today called her a porn-star alluding to a report that she may have appeared in an adult film. The drive-by media, as Limbaugh calls our ilk, have for the most part been giving this story plenty of airtime for the last forty-eight hours. Fox News however, is a different story. They don't report on this one so you can't really decide. Yes, the fair and balanced network this story last night, but today, they couldn't seem to find the time even as other TV outlets led with it. Fox did somehow find time to cover these important stories.
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HALPERIN: Alright there were a few rare instances in which Machado did come up on Fox today, but it was quickly smothered. Watch for instance what happened on Fox & Friends when a focus group with five mothers talking about Monday's debate. The host, Ainsley Earhardt, did not bring up Machado, but when a woman in the focus group did she was immediately cut off.
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JOHN HEILEMANN: One of the things that is true about a lot of Republican politicians, in particular Republican presidential nominees, is that eventually, they start, as the campaign gets longer and longer, for a variety of reasons they get sucked into the conservative media cocoon and they stop talking to anybody outside that cocoon. It is understandable. You want the praise, you do not the criticism. You want the easy questions, not the hard questions. But it is not to your political benefit to do that. And in this case, I think if Donald Trump is just looking at Fox News and reading Breitbart, and looking at conservative blogs he does not understand what kind of resonance this story is having out in the real world and it may be lulling him into thinking, "Hey, this is no big deal,” when it's a big deal.
