Somehow, Schmidt Returned

I am struggling to remain in Jim Acosta's corner, but the man is making it difficult.  For example, this is what he pooped into my email inbox yesterday.

Steve Schmidt?  

Really?  

The guy who had torched his own career and stabbed his supporters in the back often enough that even I once thought he had finally, irrevocably used up the last of his Rolodex friends and cast himself out of The Club?    Burned enough bridges so that such as this could never happen again?  From Steve Schmidt: The Only Surprise Is That Anyone Is Surprised

...So how does Schmidt do it?  Continue to be trusted as a credible ally despite practically screaming that he isn't?

Because, to slightly misquote Ned Beatty in Network, "He's on television dummy."  

In case you hadn't noticed, MSNBC has built an entire industry out of rehabilitating the reputations of Republican scoundrels, and all it takes for Schmidt to win his way back into the hearts of credulous Liberals is for Chris Hayes to officially welcome him back, or Joe Scarborough to put him back in the lineup, or Nicole Wallace to put her arm around her old pal Steve and reintroduce him to the audience as one of the good guys. 

Which is exactly what I predicted would happen during Schmidt's first fuck-my-principles cash grab back in February of 2019.

Thank you your Honor, and ladies and gentlemen of the jury.  I would say that I await your swift and just verdict, but I think we all know exactly what that verdict will be.  After taking Howard Schultz for every nickel he can, sooner rather than later Mr, Schmidt will be welcomed back into the loving and lucrative bosom of the Insider's Club.

Because, as I may have mentioned once or twice, the Insider's Club has only two rules:

There's a Club.

You are not in it.

And, right on time, it is exactly what happened eight months later.  

WATCH: Steve Schmidt returns to MSNBC https://t.co/auvb7C6zKz #inners

— All In with Chris Hayes (@allinwithchris) October 19, 2019

...

But of course, I was wrong.  Because the Legacy Media Insider Club is a house of many doors.  Many windows.  Many chimneys down which one can shimmy.   And many adjacent bungalows where marginal Club member can live and work until the are fully rehabilitated.

You and I aren't in the Club and never shall be because... we're not in it.  Seems like a tautology, right?  But it's the straight dope:  to be in the Club you have to have been in the Club.  

And although his membership card is torn and tarnished, I shall never again doubt that Schmidt is in the fucking Club.  Like the song says:

When you’re a Schmidt

You’re the top cat in town

You’re the gold-medal kid

With the heavyweight crown!

When you’re a Schmidt

You’re the swingin’est thing

Little boy, you’re a man;

Little man, you’re a king!

So, when given the chance to absorb some of Jim Acosta's rapidly fading Good Guy Ally glow, no surprise Schmidt took it.  

But wait!  There's more!

I don't know if you're aware, but now that Chuck Todd is free of the need to pretend he's not a complete tool by means of the rote recitation of the Both Sides Do It mantra every Sunday on Meet the Press, he is now venting his spleen with abandon to anyone who will listen.  

How curdled and bitter has Todd become?  So curdled and bitter that he scored himself this Fox News headline.  From March 3, 2025

Chuck Todd says the 'mythology' of Joe Biden as a family man is 'all bulls---' 

 

'What he really was, was a craven political animal that was desperate,' Chuck Todd said of 46th president

Former NBC "Meet the Press" anchor Chuck Todd delivered a brutal opinion about former President Biden, calling him a "craven political animal" who was more concerned about his political career than his own family.

But wait!  There's more!

As you know, Todd quit his NBC gig earlier this year, ending his time there as America's most famous Guy Sticking His Head In The Sand and America's leading Both Sides Do It propagandist, and leaving behind this hilariously clueless headline at Entertainment Weekly:

Chuck Todd exits NBC News, shares dissatisfaction with industry: 'The media has a lot of work to do'

"It's a bottom line here: we can't stick our heads in the sand and we can't be propagandists."

Stop laughing.  It's not polite.

So, no longer encumbered by his NBC contract, what toilet did Todd choose at which to take his vicious little shit on Joe Biden?

If you guessed the Steve Schmidt podcast, award yourself 10 points!

Here now, a more complete snip from the Fox News story, with emphasis added:

Former NBC "Meet the Press" anchor Chuck Todd delivered a brutal opinion about former President Biden, calling him a "craven political animal" who was more concerned about his political career than his own family.

During an appearance Sunday on Lincoln Project co-founder Steve Schmidt's "The Warning" podcast, Todd delved into why the Democrats lost the 2024 election and what he perceives as the media's relationship with the second Trump administration.

Acosta lending Schmidt his own, rapidly evaporating credibility.

Todd using Schmidt to take cheap shots at Biden, and scoring them both a feature at Fox News.

No one should be surprised that rehabilitation of Steve Schmidt is, once again, well underway. 

Because like road work on the Dan Ryan expressway, it never really stops.  

I Am The Liberal Media