tuesday night. and that's it for today, have a great week and we will see you next fox news sunday. howard: on our buzz meter this sunday, president trump blames cable news and democrats for politicizing the threat from coronavirus while the mainstream media say he lacks the credibility to lead in this crisis. >> this is sort of a reckoning for a president who has a difficult relationship with the truth and has exaggerated facts when they help him and downplayed them when they haven't. >> the crisis is going to get much worse for donald trump. the his mental health, which is weak on his best day, can only get much worse every day of this crisis. >> watch the democrats, watch the media. you start to feel like they're rooting for coronavirus to spread. and i don't say that flippantly. until president is lashing out

at the media, accusing them of fanning the flames, and by doing so, he is ultimately confessing to his own weakness. >> stoking a national coronavirus panic. >> the end is near, the apocalypse is imminent, and you're going to all die, all of you, in the next 48 hours, and it's all president trump's fault. or at least that's what the media mob and the democratic extreme radical socialist party would like you to think. howard: the stock market plunging, is the press writing disparaging the white house response or just adding to a sense of fear and polarization? the trump camp sues "the new york times" over an opinion piece on russia. does the campaign have a case, or is this mainly a political statement? the media suddenly hailing joe biden for a huge south carolina victory last night. this after a cbs debate that journalists called a train wreck, a shipwreck and a dumpster fire.

>> i'm not out of time. you spoke over time, and i'm going to talk. here's the deal -- [cheers and applause] >> really messy, two hours? kind of a slug fest that spun wildly out of control. it was really hard to eneven hear anyone talking. >> the moderators just gave up. chaos descended on the debate stage. howard: now the pundits say biden has upended the race heading into super tuesday, but haven't they been wrong all year? i'm howard kurtz, and this is "mediabuzz". ♪ ♪ howard: we'll get to our political calls, the resurrection of joe biden after his huge south carolina win in a few moments. as the coronavirus spread around the globe, president trump insisted it was not much of a threat here in america and singled out two networks.

the president played down the threat of a virus at a news conference saying he doesn't think a major impact here is inevitable. when a reporter asked about nancy employees i's are criticism that the administration if's response was too late and anemic. >> i think speaker pelosi's incompetent. she's trying to create a panic, and there's no reason to panic because we have done so good. howard: and he later returned to criticizing the coverage. >> we have a situation with the virus, we've done a great job. the press won't give us credit for it. howard: joining us now to analyze the coverage, gayle trotter, or host of right in d.c.: the gayle trotter show, susan ferrechio with the washington examiner, and joe joe trippi, the veteran democratic strategist. gayle, what's your reaction to news coverage saying the president is undermined by past credibility problems and is deliberately downplaying the

magnitude of this threat? >> he was initially criticizing for blocking travel from china, and now there was criticism of him jumping in, and now there's criticism of him underplague it. of course the coronavirus is a serious matter, but we're seeing the convergence of two things with the media. the one is the media's tendency to hype any sort of danger, and the second tendency is the very left-leaning media's effort to pin all blame on the trump administration. howard: susan, any president, obviously, has to strike a balance when there's a threat and not scaring people. trump says that nancy pelosi's trying to start a panic, there's been a lot of aha, he's politicizing this. in truth, aren't both sides doing that? >> it's hard to say who started the politicization of this. i know pelosi and the democrats on capitol hill immediately took to criticizing the president and not being competent, as not

approaching this in an even-handed way that's going to keep the public safe. i feel like it began on capitol hill, and the president -- as he often does -- punches back twice as hard, and now you have the back and forth -- >> can we go to the way back machine of wednesday when the president in a press conference said that the reason the market had fallen 2,000 points at that point was because of a bad debate the night -- democratic debate the night before. howard: concern that a democrat, meaning bernie, would win the white house. >> that's why it fell 2,000 points. i'm not sure it calmed the markets, and it didn't address what the press conference was about, and it definitely politicized this crisis. howard: well -- >> that's your interpretation of it though. you don't know why the market crashed. he's saying why he thinks it did, and that debate was terrible. i mean, the field was uninspiring, and the coverage was not senate enough to say -- >> this is actually kind of

making my whole point here, is the fact of the matter is this was a press conference on the coronavirus -- >> oh, and they never asked questions completely unrelated to what the press conference -- >> and then you have the secretary of dhs show up at a hearing and not know the difference what the rates are between flu and coronavirus -- howard: okay, let me -- >> reports that too. these are all accurate facts. if you wanted -- howard: if you wanted to have one image of the new yorker cover, i think that about coffers it. -- covers it. gayle, does the president open himself up to media criticism when he offers a rosier view of this than his own federal health experts including saying the virus will probably be gone in the united states by spring? >> president trump is not getting coverage for saying it's a serious matter. he's taking action, his administration is restricting travel from iran which has been very seriously hit. there's not coverage of that. instead, we have dana milbank, a

syndicated columnist e at "the washington post" who said remember this moment, trump just called the coronavirus a hoax. they have not taken that tweet down -- howard: i've heard this from many people, and it is true. the president said that the criticism or the democratic response was a hoax. you can criticize him for that, but i do think that was misconstrued. what about him going after the cable news networks? i read the tweet, he said about cnn a very disreputable network, doing everything they can to instill fear. i don't see any evidence that the other cable news networks have covered this story more than fox, and on substance, i think the press has been relatively restrained. >> well, it's true about the media hyping up the latest, you know, if it bleeds, it leads. that's basically the policy we all follow. and in this age of social media, you're reading little bits and pieces on twitter, and you're not getting a full picture of what this is about. the fact is it's almost impossible in the way news is

delivered right now to fully understand what the threat actually is. i would recommend everybody realize anthony fauci and other epidemiologists have an editorial this weekend that really outlines where they are on this. they're talking about a less than 1% mortality rate. no one is talking about that. and the numbers are actually interesting. you can't deliver that on cable news sound bites, and that's part of the problem. >> this is another sign of sort of three years of pummeling the press as the fake news and, you know, the lame stream media, the whole thing. when you call the press the enemy of the people for three years and now, right now you have a bunch of people in the country who don't trust anything the administration says or that trump says and a whole other group that doesn't trust anything the press says -- howard: let me -- >> now you get -- [inaudible conversations] >> when "the washington post" has an updated article on 16,000

lives that president trump has said that may lose their objectivity, and they can't trust -- howard: for the sake of discussion, both sides have been pummeling each other. it even goes back to the campaign. but the question on whether the press is being restrainedded or hyping, it is hard to be restrained when every day there's a flood of new developments. international meetings being can eled -- canceled, school closings, and, of course, the dow's worst week since the 2008 financial crisis. i do have the impression -- this was a serious news conference by the president. you can criticize what he said, a minute later slamming him and now they have a new target, the coronavirus. >> look, there's going to be people on both sides of this bringing the president, you know, and attacking partisans attacking. we only have one president. the one that has to be above all this. he has been, like yesterday he was. come on. he clearly time and again in the

last week, over the last week said and did things, his son has, other people, it's been covered -- howard: all right. >> the altercation with democratic congressmen saying if donjr.'s with him. howard: i want to get to these questions. trump media allies downplay coronavirus. fox is being close to irresponsible because they're defending the president. telling viewers they have nothing to worry about. now, we can debate the magnitude of the threat. i haven't seen anybody who works for fox news saying there's nothing to worry about. >> no, of course not. and last night i think it was on the judge's show had the surgeon general and he was giving good medical information. let's stop going to pundits, and fox is interviewing people who have actual medical information. howard: i am just depressed and troubled and there's a potentially serious situation, and we're all involved -- and i include the president front and

center -- the same partisan sniping. susan, mick mulvaney, acting white house chief of staff, had this to say at the cpac conference. >> the reason you're seeing so much attention to it today is that they think this is going to be what brings down the president. that's what this is all about. >> but it's also a virus that is now in 60 countries. >> he's right. he is partly right. i think there is the sentiment amongst people who don't like trump that perhaps this is an opportunity to lower his standing in the public eye as we head into a critical election period. but on the other hand, look, i covered the ebola virus through the trump administration very closely, and the handling of that and the handling of what, of this coronavirus, president trump, they're not doing anything very differently from each other. it's very methodical. there's a lot of uncertainty. they are appointing people to oversee things in the same manner, they're taking the same

precaution -- howard: that's true. >> the coverage is a lot different can, but ebola spread more slowly and had a or mortality rate of up to 90 percent. howard: another story, trump has a penchant for creating can chaos and confusion and saying this could be trump's katrina. is that fair to bring in hurricane katrina on the part of journalists? >> well, i think -- howard: is it early? >> it's early, but it could be. i don't mean -- and i'm not talking about, you know, the question is when you, if this does become a pandemic and in the united states starts to really move, and if they don't start moving kits out there, testing kits faster, i mean, it could turn out that this wasn't handled -- howard: well, it could turn out, it also would be a difficult crisis for any president to handle, unexpected as it is.

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♪ ♪ howard: joe biden is vaulting to life, "the new york times" says this morning, after winning over 48% of the vote in south carolina, clobbering bernie sanders with just under 20%. this after most journalists had virtually written him off. >> just days ago the press and the pundits had declared this candidacy dead. howard: the press has made two major miscalculations, not taking bernie sanders seriousesly enough and predicting doom for joe biden and virtually burying him after iowa and new hampshire.

so, gayle, are journalists now scrambling to write the comeback story? >> yeah. we're seeing a little whiplash on this. as you said, they had buried biden, and now they see him resurrected. now, there's some validity in that. he had such a strong showing in south carolina, but i think -- i hate to say this, but i think james carville is right, it's either bernie or a brokeredded convention, and either way it's a disaster for the democrats. howard: joe. biden got clobbered in the first two states, but they're small predominantly white states. south carolina is the most diverse state to vote so far. what does it say about political punditry that so many people said biden is toast? >> i think part of the coverage is always the media wants to create a race, and they want to narrow it to two fast. howard: why, because it's a better storyline? >> easier and cheaper to cover that. howard: right. >> so what happens is when the front-runner starts to evaporate and you have 24 people out there, you start even -- they're

creating races within lanes, right? and so that's what happened. i think people lost focus and just -- there is such a thing as gravity and laws of physics in politics too, and one of them is and what should have been obvious for anybody who's covered this for a while is that joe biden's going to do very well with african-americans unless somebody ate into that. howard: there's a history of these kinds of comebacks when we write people off too early. now, susan, could it be that the press wanted kamala harris, elizabeth warren, then it was mike bloomberg, but now they're warming because they see him, as gayle suggested, as maybe the only one who can stop bernie sanders and what they would view as a likely trump victory? >> i think that's exactly what happened. i kept writing biden comeback stories, and kept telling me i was wrong. you have to look at the long game here, and he is able to get the prague mat ec wing, older

voters, african-american voters. however, he still is not in position to go into the convention with enough pledged delegates to be the nominee. it could be a brokeredded convention. so it's absolutely true -- howard: let's not get ahead of ourselves, but with super tuesday two days away, even conservatives who don't like president trump is are coming out strongly against bernie sanders and saying he could be unstoppable if he has a big day on tuesday. so some on the left and some on the right basically mobilizing as bernie, and that makes him attack the establishment and the media. >> that's right. and there's certainly been a lot of effort at groundswell level to have people vote in primaries where -- republicans vote in favor of bernie because they'd rather see him with the contest with president trump rather than biden. but, you know, given all of the guffaws and prattfalls that biden has had in a lot of the speeches they have, i think

there's energy having him contest president trump too. >> two things that have been in the coverage just from being on the other side of it from a political campaign, what i said, horse race, get it down to bernie and biden and that's where we're going and the only other possible coverage is more fantasizing or hope, hoping about a brokered convention. howard: right. biden making his first appearance on fox news in this campaign, but, susan, moments after it was clear he was going to win big, i heard pundits say, you know what? buttigieg should drop out, why is bloomberg sticking in this. who elected the press to decide who should drop out and give that kind of advice? >> that's not a good look. it's like they're trying to pick a favorite. >> oh, you think? [laughter] >> take down bernie, then he can beat trump. you can't help but see the pattern. but that is what the press, the press also tends to kind of

become the campaign advisers too while they're doing the reporting. they're trying to figure out who's going to win, they're trying to strategize and figure out what the outcome is going to be. and you see a lot of that. and in this instance, i think it's a good idea for the press to just stand back and do some neutral coverage -- howard: many political analysts are frustrated campaign advisers. joe trippi, susan ferrechio, gayle trotter, thanks for being here. up next, an a apology from chris matthews, and should abc have suspended a top correspondent who was secretly caugugugugug

♪ ♪ howard: i went on the air and called for chris matthews to apologize to bernie sanders. this after the hardball host likened the senator's victory in nevada to the nazi takeover of

france in 1940. matthews has now done just that, and to his credit, at the top of his msnbc show. >> i was wrong to refer to an event from the last days or actually the first days of world war ii. senator sanders, i'm sorry for comparing anything from that tragic era in which so many suffered, especially the jewish people, to an electoral or result. i will strive to do a better job myself of elevating the political discussion. howard: look, i just want everyone left and right to stay away from nazi analogies, and that includes when the target is president trump. matthews has in the past said that trump's rhetoric is reminiscent of hitler. it's all just way out of bounds. abc has suspended david wright after he was secretly recorded by james o'keefe's group. the network said any action that damages our reputation for fairness and impartiality or gives the appearance of compromising it harms abc news and will be pulled off political

coverage when he returns. but most of what wright said wasn't troubling at all. yes, he describes himself as a socialist, but he also said this of president trump: howard: that's fair and balanced. wright said that commercial imperative is incompatible with a pretty champion criticism -- common criticism. perhaps what rankleed them was the shot at the company. howard: well, not all self-promotional, but there are certainly disney tie-ins, and that doesn't just happen at abc. i think the network really overreacted, and the punishment for what he thought were private opinions too harsh. ahead, bernie sanders doubles down on his praise for fidel castro. is the press going easy on him on that?

but first, chris stirewalt weighs in. ♪ ♪

♪ ♪ howard: donald trump and his least favorite white house correspondent went at it again when jim with acosta from cnn, following up on other questions, asked asked the president about media reports that russia is intervening on his behalf in this election. >> can you pledge to the american people that you will not accept any foreign assistance in the upcoming election? >> i want no help from any country, and i haven't been given help from any country. and if you see what cnn, your wonderful network, said -- [laughter] i guess they apologized, in a way, for -- didn't they apologize for the fact that they said certain things that weren't true? tell me, what was their apology yesterday? what did they say? >> mr. president, i think our record on delivering the truth a

lot better than yours sometimes, if you don't mind me saying. >> let me tell you about your record. your record is so bad, you ought to be ashamed of yourself -- >> i'm not ashamed of anything. howard: joining us now from new york is chris stirewalt, fox news politics editor. chris, jim acosta could have defended his network by saying, look, we ran a follow-up piece saying that the intelligence is murkier on whether russia is now trying to intervene or not. instead, what do you think of the way he took on the president? >> or just not. you could just not. you could just ask questions. look, it's a difficult job, i'm not saying it's not, and i'm not here to say that everybody gets it right all of the time. but let's face it, this has been probably good for both trump and jim acosta. i don't know how his colleagues certainly at the other networks or even at cnn feels about it, but in terms of elevating each other, certainly it's been helpful. acosta signing autographs after

being taunted the at trump rallies and stuff like that, so maybe this is on brand and works for him, but i don't think it's helping us more and be better informed. howard: let's turn to joe biden's huge victory in south carolina. isn't in the same guy who many in the press, many of the pundits, many of the journalists utterly wrote off after he got clobbered in iowa and new hampshire? enter oh, i did. joe biden was dead. there was no way that this was going to happen for him. and then really an amazing thing happened for joe biden. two great things in the span of, one span of time. number one, michael bloomberg was forced to debate, and when he did, the aspect, the wizard of oz became real. and if as soon as that happened, that was good news for biden. but then the next great thing was that bernie got real, and democrats and a lot of people in the political press like to pat bernie sanders on the head and say you're an adorable old

socialist, aren't you cute. but the reality, when democrats start thinking about, oh, my gosh, this could really happen, that's -- that makes them rethink their vote. there was a flight from bernie, both of those things added up to really good news for joe biden. and because he had invested so heavily in south carolina, he was there to pick up on it. howard: campaigns always have twists and turn, so looking back so do you think therapy perhaps a little hasty -- that you were perhaps a little hasty? the. >> all of those tapes have been burned. there is no record of any -- [laughter] of the things that i said. you know, look, you always have -- and here's the thing that people forget in political analysis. there are no straight-line projections. you can't say the way it is today is how it's going to be in november. people talk about these head-to-head polls between sanders and trump and or trump and whoever, that's all garbage because the world will look different when you get there. howard: and we shouldn't

overreact, because biden's got a problem on super tuesday, he doesn't have that much money. but on the other hand, he now has what the press describes as momentum, and i think a lot of journalists are kind of rooting for joe because it's basically going to be him or bernie, most likely. >> but it's great copy. my goodness, the joe biden stories are just like -- you have to check them to make sure they're not the onion sometimes. [laughter] howard: all right. i want to get you in on the cbs debacle of a debate, because you're involved in most of the fox debates. you know what it takes to put these total. it's not easy to control candidates. let's take a look at some of the lowlights from that debate. >> mr. steyer, mr. steyer -- >> i think we're done -- [inaudible conversations] >> first of all -- >> let me talk. >> tom, i think she was talking about my plan, not yours. >> i think we were talking about math, and it doesn't take two hours to do the math. [inaudible conversations] >> let's talk about -- >> i'm not out of time. the here he spoke over time, and

i'm going to talk. here's the deal -- [cheers and applause] howard: so enlightening. [laughter] how did the cbs moderators let this get so out of control? >> look, it's really hard to do. this is really hard work. they had -- they were hugely disadvantaged by the democratic national committee's rules and policies relating to debates. cbs tried to do a good job. i think margaret brennan did an excellent job of trying to hold, hold it down and keep these guys in line. but the job of the network, the whole purpose of us in this setting is to create a fair game in which people get their rules applied to them. cbs lost control of the situation. they need a buzzer. i hate it, but it's true for everybody, and bret baier always says in our debates it does upset the dogs when we ring the bell, but you've got to have means to keep this stuff fair, and they lost control. i know they were trying hard,

but they lost control. howard: yeah. in fact, they didn't mean to, but they rewarded the candidates who kept interrupting even while other candidates were talking. and this was the debate where now suddenly bernie was the front -- was the front-runner, and he was going to be held accountable, and they did ask some good questions, but didn't all that get blunted? it was just so hard to follow at some points. >> and what it also does is incentivizes malarkey, as joe biden would say, right? so you can talk about the rules instead of the questions, you can talk about the process instead of what you're going to do. that helped sanders, it insulated him at several points because instead of the real focus being on him and his record and tough questions, the focus was on the process itself. and if you're the front-runner, you don't want to talk about you, you want to talk about anything but you, and bernie sanders was helped by that. howard: it's just two days now to super tuesday. what is more important once that

voting is done, the number of delegates accumulated by bernie, biden and the others or the press pronouncements on who had a good day, who came back, who appears to be winning, who took the key states? >> so there's -- think about it in two different scenarios. scenario a in which bernie sanders gets so many delegates, more than 300 delegates in california, he does surprisingly well in texas, he wins massachusetts and he gets so many delegates that the wind starts to go out of the sails of the bernie resistance. people say, oh, we're not going to be able to catch him. in that case, it doesn't matter who finishes second. but on the other hand if it's muddled, if it's close, then the narrative starts to really count, and then the pressure's on bloomberg or biden, whoever had the less good day to get out -- howard: right. my point is, just briefly, how important is the press in shaping that narrative? >> well, look -- [laughter] i mean, if it's a muddle, then the press will say grace over whoever is second place and call

it a two-man race. howard: all right. chris stirewalt, great to see you. thanks so much. >> you bet. howard: next on "mediabuzz," a cuban-american journalist on why she's outraged by bernieed sanders' comments on castro. and later, is the trump campaign planning more lawsuits the press? ♪

♪ ♪ howard: it when bernie sanders

told "60 minutes" that fidel castro had done some good things as cuba's dictator. >> came into office, you know what he did? he had a massive literacy program. is that a bad thing? even though fidel cats troh did it? howard: and the vermont senator didn't back off during the cbs debate. >> you also have a track record of exes pressing sympathy for socialist governments in cuba and nicaragua. >> of course you have a dictatorship in cuba. what i said is what barack obama said in terms of cuba, that cuba made progress on education. yes, i think -- >> [inaudible] >> really? really? [inaudible conversations] howard: joining us now from florida, cathy areu, publisher of catalina whose family is from cuba, and since your parents did grow up there, what's your reaction to bernie sanders saying nice things about fidel castro throwing in it's an authoritarian regime and then

refusing to soften his remarks? >> i can't believe he said it, first of all, on "60 minutes." i thought the next day he was going to make an apology, but he did not. he continued. and if you fact check, it's completely incorrect. because in cuba you had free health care and free education before the castro regime. castro actually shut down the university after he took over. so the facts aren't even right. and i don't know how you can compliment a dictator and a communist. this wasn't socialism, this was communism. people died, people are still in jail, were in jail, people lost their houses, my family lost everything, and he's saying that something good came out of a revolution that broughting a dictator onto an island that was fine before the dictator? howard: right. >> yeah. howard: this is, obviously, very personal for you. but could younger voters look at this differently? for example, castro, obviously, has been dead for four years, the cold war is long over, and the u.s. has diplomatic relations with havana.

>> yeah, uh-uh know. what's -- i know. cuba is a strong republican group in the hispanic community, but cubans are 6% of all hispanics. they've usually been republican because they were upset about the bay of pigs which younger cubans don't remember, don't know about. but the younger ones are democrats. but bernie, by saying this, has helped all the cubans reeducate the new generations and explain the history. so i think he lost florida with this one, because there are cubans, one million in miami, they're in tampa, they're in orlando. it's all of florida. so he can cross florida off the list. howard: obviously a very big story in florida, as elsewhere. bernie has also been taking shots at the media. let me play you a clip of that. >> yeah. >> corporate media, to a large degree, is freaking out. as you're aware, some really horrific things have been said about me on at least one

television channel. howard: he's talking about msnbc. when bernie sanders says corporate media, is that his version of president trump's fake news? in other words, his cay of way -- his way of saying that the press can't be trusted because i'm a different type of candidate? >> isn't that funny that once the press starts fact checking and taking candidates seriously, they immediately say it's all fake news and you can't believe journalists? hillary clinton said fake news, actually. nixon started it, i think, with independent was it liberal media bias against him, and trump, of course, doesn't necessarily like journalists or says fake news all the time. and now bernie's saying it. howard: yeah. on the other hand, he does get kicked around. for example, cnn asking him the question this weekend can either the coronavirus or bernie sanders be stopped. but last question for you is, look, remarks about cuba, what he said about the sandinistas,

he honeymooned in moscow, this is all old news. do you think the press has done a good job of vetting bernie sanders as a serious candidate for president? >> now they are. now they are. before it was feel the bern, aoc, they're very soft on him with bernie sanders. he seems harmless and okay. but he's a chameleon. so this chameleon was an independent when you want him to be, a democrat when you want him to be, and now he's not a straight front-runner anymore. he's a little scary for the cubans. this is scary, a man who sides with a dictatorship? howard: all right. >> yeah, the press is fact checking, and they're doing a good job right now. howard: cathy areu, nice to see you. >> thank you. howard: the trump campaign suing "the new york times" over an opinion case on russia, how strong is the case? and later, the decidedly missed missed -- mixed verdict against harvey weinstein. ♪ ♪

♪ ♪ howard: the trump campaign has sued "the new york times" over an op-ed piece. former executive eder matt spanking wrote last year there was no need to show detailed electoral collusion, quote, because they had an overarching deal, the quid of helping the campaign of hillary clinton for the quo of a new pro-russian foreign policy. the campaign says that's 100% false and defamatory. the paper's response? the trump campaign has turned to the court for trying to punish an opinion writer. the president addressed the haut at a news conference. >> is it your opinion our contention that if people have an opinion contrary to yours, that they should be sued? >> well, when they get the opinion totally wrong as "the

new york times" did and, frankly, they did a bad thing, and thril be more coming. howard: joining us now from new york, mercedes colwin, an attorney and fox news legal analyst. so the trump campaign suing the times over an opinion piece saying the paper has extreme bias and animosity toward the president. does this lawsuit have a chance? >> hey, howard, great to be here. my maiden voyage, thank you so much for having me. howard: absolutely. >> this case is d.o.a., dead on arrival. why do i say that? when you have a libel case, especially against an op-ed editor, the very nature of an op-ed is that it's opinion. there's lots of well-settled law that says when you're expressing an opinion, you are devoid of making a defamatory statement. so, and even when the president said at that press conference that, well, he got the opinion wrong, bell, by his own -- well, by his own admission you're talking and criticizing an opinion? the case law is very clear. if you express an opinion, you're not actually making a

statement that's defamatory. howard: max may well be wrong, this was no evidence of a deal with russia, but why would the president want to open himself up to depositions and discovery on russia matters that's now, you know, old news? >> that's a great point. but i'm not even sure it's going to get to that point. first, i'm sure there's going to be a motion to dismiss by "the new york times" expressing exactly what i stated. when you're talking about opinion, it is not libel. now, there are, there are circumstances where there's, it's nuanced. so if your opinion is that person's a thief, well, the underlying opinion is stating that that individual has actually engaged in criminal behavior. that completely is separate and apart, something of that nature would be considered libel. but this is not what we're talking about. we're talking about an op-ed editor who simply said this is how i see it. frankly, you don't need to show any detailed collusion because

in my opinion, there was collusion to start because they wanted a pro-russian president in the white house. howard: right, this is the -- >> i'm not sure it's going to get to these depositions, but that's a great point, howard. if it does, that's a significant risk you're taking. howard: even the president has a right to sue, we'll see what the courts do, but when the president said more are coming, do you see this as him ratcheting up attacks on what he sees as the fake news in what happens to be an election year? >> great point. if you make these types of statements that i, as president of the united states, believe is wrong, you're going to be facing this type of action. you're going to be facing litigation wherever it is possibly venued. that's what's more so of a deterrent. but he's not going to stop anything. howard, he's the most powerful man in the free world. your going to be scrutinized. actions are going to be scrutinized -- howard: let me jump in because we're short on time. the president also went after two liberal supreme court justices.

the backdrop is sonia sotomayor had criticized the court in a dissenting opinion in a ruling that clears the way for the administration to be more restrictive in issuing green cards. ruth bader ginsburg saying that the president was a faker, the candidate was a faker. here's what the president had to say. >> i always thought that, frankly, that justice ginsburg should do it because she went wild during the campaign when i was running. and i just don't know how they cannot recuse themselves for anything having to do with trump or trump-related and what justice sotomayor said yesterday was really highly inappropriate. howard: we've got about half a minute. do you have any problem with the president going after of two justices by name? >> interesting because, frankly, i thought this was unprecedented, but there is actual precedent back in 2010. president obama did also criticize the u.s. supreme court for their opinions and their ruling, so that was back in 2010. so i was very surprised. i think, frankly, these are my

rock stars, the practicing lawyers look at the u.s. supreme court, and they have changed the course of history in very significant cases. in my opinion, they're pretty much off limits, but the president can express his opinion. but to say specifically that these two justices who have tremendous careers, tremendous opinions, have made some really -- howard: got that go. the president and does express his opinion. still to come, the harvey weinstein conviction and why it never would have happened without a few dogged there's a company that's talked to even more real people than me: jd power. 448,134 to be exact. they answered 410 questions in 8 categories about vehicle quality. and when they were done, chevy earned more j.d. power quality awards across cars, trucks and suvs than any other brand over the last four years. so on behalf of chevrolet, i want to say "thank you, real people." you're welcome. we're gonna need a bigger room.

howie: harvey weinstein was convicted this week and the case would not have been brought if not for a few journalists. even more was reveal by roland farrell, despite substantial evidence and published instead of new yorker, it's easy to forget how much pressure the well-connected weinstein brought

to bear including hiring private eyes an how difficult it was for the women to publicly accuse him especially on the record. >> we wondered if we'd ever be able to publish the initial allegations against him. if you had told us that 2 and a half years later we would watch harvey weinstein being the one sitting silently in court as these women took the stand to tell detail accounts what he had done to them, i wouldn't have believed it. howie: convicted of third-degree rape and sex act but acquitted on more serious charge. thanks to a handful of reporters harvey weinstein is a convicted rapist. we hope you like our facebook page, we post daily columns. we like hearing from you, good, bad, ugly. you can subscribe at apple

itunes, google play, we have a lot to tackle in the wake of south carolina and even more on super tuesday next sunday just a reminder that we will be back at 11:00 eastern and we will see heather: good morning to you. it is monday, march 2nd. happening right now at 4:00 a.m. on the east coast, a fox news alert for you, a second u.s. death from the coronavirus confirmed in washington state as the nursing home outbreak puts health officials on high alert. with cases across the globe skyrocketing, the trump administration is forced to crack down on airport screenings. we're live as the deadly virus takes ahold like never before. and pete buttigieg is out, the former mayor throwing in the towel on his presidential run and he says it's for the sake of the democratic party. >> our goal has always been to