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This is a rush transcript from "MediaBuzz," June 6, 2021. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

HOWARD KURTZ, FOX NEWS HOST (on camera): What drives me crazy about the media is that when they totally blow it, an all-out, no doubt deep-rooted red-faced botching of a major story, they barely acknowledge it before moving on.

You read the coverage now of the circumstantial evidence of the Wuhan lab as the original source of the COVID scourge and there's this flat, neutral tone. Oh, the scientific consensus is shifting, the Biden administration is exploring, blah, blah, blah, without admitting the absolutely crucial role that most has played in mocking and minimizing the supposedly fringe theory, this nutty idea promoted by Donald Trump and the right.

There are serious lessons here to go well beyond the virus and we'll dive into that today with Glenn Greenwald. And Anthony Fauci, the face of the pandemic response, finding himself at the center of a fierce media storm over the release of thousands of e-mails. Which of those questions are legitimate? He's not saying, Anthony, after all, and which are fueled by growing opposition from conservative commentators.

I'm Howard Kurtz and this is MEDIABUZZ.

Ahead, the Naomi Osaka mellow drama. Why I say, while acknowledging her struggle with depression, the highest paid female athlete on the planet shouldn't be able to blow-off the press.

As the coronavirus is finally starting to fade here in America, The Washington Post and BuzzFeed obtained thousands of Dr. Fauci's government e-mails, including praise from an environmental group that funneled federal money to the Wuhan lab.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

There are some of your critics who say this shows you have too cozy of a relationship with the people behind the Wuhan lab research. What do you say to that?

ANTHONY FAUCI, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ALLERGY AND INFECTIOUS DISEASES: That's nonsense. I don't even see how they get that from that e- mail.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KURTZ (on camera): The journalistic climate shifted pretty sharply with reporters shouting questions at President Biden about whether he still has confidence in Fauci.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNKNOWN: You mentioned Dr. Fauci again. Can you imagine any circumstance where President Biden would ever fire him?

JEN PSAKI, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: No.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KURTZ (on camera): Fauci defended himself on the e-mails in a series of MSNBC interviews, including this one with Rachel Maddow.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

FAUCI: I've become the object of extraordinary, I believe, completely inappropriate, distorted, misleading and misrepresented attacks which, you know, it is what it is, buddy. It's happening and that's unfortunate.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KURTZ (on camera): Joining us now to analyze the coverage in New York, Will Cain, co-host of "Fox & Friends Weekend," and Harold Ford, the former Democratic congressman and Fox News contributor.

Will, Politico in a sympathetic piece says the attacks on Fauci have grown more intense, personal and conspiratorial, and basically pins this on media and political conservatives.

WILL CAIN, FOX NEWS HOST: Well, look, at this point, when someone is accusing you of being conspiratorial, you're probably beginning to hover over the truth. I think that's increasingly an accusation that I should take pride in. you're being conspiratorial. Oh, I might be getting close. That's what I've learned from the Wuhan lab controversy, which I know you're getting into a little bit later.

Look, here's what we know about Dr. Anthony Fauci. I don't think this is a partisan attack, Howard. We know he's been wrong on numerous occasions. He was wrong on masks. He was treating them as theater. He was not telling the truth on masks, almost (INAUDIBLE), not telling the truth on multiple occasions.

He has been wrong in my estimation, importantly, on not speaking up against absurd CDC guidance about outdoor transmission in children. He was wrong about the origins of the Wuhan virus. Why was he wrong so many times, Howard? The charitable explanation is that he's incompetent, that he has made a mistake over and over and over again, that he just keeps getting it wrong. That's the charitable explanation.

The more interesting and the journalistic question to be asking is whether or not he is compromised. And by compromised, I mean conflict of interest. We know, for example, Peter Daszak at the EcoHealth Alliance lab here, was in charge of investigating the Wuhan lab after funding it. So he was compromised. He had a conflict of interest. Fauci has a relationship with Daszak and the Wuhan lab.

KURTZ: All right.

CAIN: We need to ask, does he have a conflict of interest?

KURTZ: Let me get Harold in here.

CAIN: He has been compromised.

KURTZ: Look, Fauci he had some missteps, positions have evolved. Of course, journalists should call hold him accountable. He talked about crazy people in the world in a very friendly exchange with a Chinese scientist. But what in these e-mails, Harold, justifies some in the media turning Tony Fauci into public health enemy number one?

HAROLD FORD, JR., FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR, FORMER TENNESSEE CONGRESSMAN: First off, happy Sunday morning. I find what Will said interesting but I have a slightly different point of view. I think Dr. Fauci, like all of us, is human. Like all of us, he makes mistakes. I'm thankful that he's come forward now, not even come forward but acknowledged that he might have been wrong, particularly with regard to this theory about the origins of COVID, that he could be dead wrong about it.

At the beginning of a pandemic when we knew very little and the science was evolving and changing, I might add we get new scientific guidance on everything from how much red meat to eat to how much not to eat to what you can drink, what you cannot drink year after year because the data and the science and frankly, our bodies change.

I think Dr. Fauci, President Trump, Mark Meadows, all acknowledge that mistakes were made throughout this process. They got more right than they got wrong. I think if we're going to devote this amount of time to Dr. Fauci and to this pandemic, it ought to be on how do we prevent going forward that we don't face these kind of challenges.

KURTZ: Right. Let me come back to Will because in these early e-mails, Fauci said that he believes, based on the evidence, the most likely explanation was that COVID came from an animal and not from the Wuhan lab, but he says he didn't rule it out. He says the same thing today and he says he is keeping an open mind. Now, maybe he's flat wrong, but some on the right are accusing him of parroting Chinese communist propaganda. Is that fair?

CAIN: Yes, it is fair. It is fair at the very least to be exploring with a very open mind. Now, listen. Harold could be right. This could all be just a series of mistakes. It could be, as I said, that he's simply incompetent and he keeps making mistakes. That could be the truth.

But Dr. Anthony Fauci isn't your neighborhood family physician. This is the man in charge of the highest levels of medicine not just in the United States but the world. This is a man who understands something about gain on function research, who understands something about viral and virus experiments going on around the world. And this was also a man who those e- mails reveal, Howard, was getting warnings and information about the fact that it could come from a lab as early as February of 2020.

So if we are going to say this is simply a mistake, I'm here to tell you we are being very charitable. That is the point. Maybe we should not be so charitable. Maybe we should be a little more inquisitive.

KURTZ: Harold, it's no secret that Republicans are having a hard time demonizing Joe Biden, especially on the pandemic with cases now down 90 percent and about 60 percent of the country having received -- eligible people having received at least one dose of the vaccine.

So, do you think there is conservative media scapegoating going on of this 80-year-old doctor? Will certainly is very critical of his record.

CAIN: I don't know. What I do know about Dr. Fauci is that the progress we've made in fighting AIDS up to this point has a lot to do with his research and hard work. I know the country is probably safer -- not probably, we are safer because of his collaboration with President Trump and his team when the pandemic started.

Again, I just take a different view. I just don't think he's intentionally un-American and intentionally unpatriotic or for that matter even compromised. I think mistakes were made. We all make them. I don't know if there is some conservative conspiratorial piece. I think Will said something interesting about conspiracy getting closer to the truth.

I don't know what the motivation is. I do know that Dr. Fauci's credibility is two times that of President Trump's, according to polling. I do know his approval rating is higher than Joe Biden's. Maybe there is something (INAUDIBLE).

CAIN: I would suggest either President Trump might have been more accurate than Dr. Fauci, mini-steps the way. And all I'm pushing back on, Howard, to be clear, and even, Howard, bringing up what happened with the HIV development in 1980s. Dr. Fauci has been mythologized. He was then.

By the way, from many in the gay community, Dr. Fauci was way too conservative in approving therapeutics when it came to AIDS prevention in the 80s. And the point is he has been mythologized, like on the cover of in-style magazine, and maybe we need to stop, as you pointed out, Howard, calling him an 80-year-old physician. Maybe he is actually somebody who we can't just keep acting like, oh, he's our neighborhood friendly guy who is looking out for us.

KURTZ: I get your point.

CAIN: Maybe he's the most powerful man in the world that needs some serious questions asked right now.

KURTZ (on camera): All right. Well, it was obviously President Biden's decision to make him his chief medicals advisor. I only bring up his age because he's been doing this since the Reagan administration. But since you brought up Donald Trump, he held a rally last night in North Carolina. One of the targets, not surprisingly, was Anthony Fauci. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: Not a great doctor but he's a hell of a promoter.

(LAUGHTER)

TRUMP: He likes television more than any other politician in this room.

(LAUGHTER)

TRUMP: And they like television. But he's been wrong on almost every issue. He was wrong on Wuhan and the lab.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KURTZ (on camera): That rally, by the way, not taken live by any cable news network, including Fox. Well, just to continue on this, is this the roots of people on the right being unhappy with Fauci that he was in the position of trying to diplomatically correct or disagree with President Trump whether it was the hydroxychloroquine or the virus or other things and that made him seemed anti-Trump and perhaps now more pro-Biden?

CAIN: Which you point out hydroxychloroquine. How about the development of the vaccine? Whether or not it would happen by November, Anthony Fauci said 18 months, President Trump was right on that. Anthony Fauci was not right on that.

I don't think this is all based upon President Trump versus Anthony Fauci. I think Americans have been through something over the past 12 months that disrupted their lives greater than anything in at least half a century, and they look at the guidance and the advice that they got and they're right to ask of Dr. Anthony Fauci, were you on the up and up every step of the way as we lost our jobs and kept our kids at home?

KURTZ: All right. We are a little short on time, so short answers from both of you. Let me go to Harold. New York Times says that the Trump Justice Department obtained phone records of Michael Schmidt and three other reporters in a leaked investigation. This is now the (INAUDIBLE). Same thing happened with reporters with The Washington Post and CNN. This one involved James Comey and Hillary and other investigations in 2016. Would you agree this sort of thing has a chilling effect on the press?

FORD: Totally. I think that the only time that you should be able to try to reveal those sources is if our national security is at stake. I don't know. It might have been our political -- the president's political security was jeopardized, but the national security of the nation was not at risk here.

KURTZ: All right. And the Biden Justice Department says it is changing that policy as far as the press. Will, some in the media jumping on Mike Pence for saying in a speech that he and Donald Trump are never going to see eye-to-eye on what happened on January 6 when the vice president's life was in danger during the Capitol riot. Does he deserve criticism for this little bit of distancing as he perhaps is interested in 2024?

CAIN: I want Mike Pence to tell the truth about what he feels. I want him to tell the truth about how he experienced that day or what his thoughts are. I want President Trump to tell his unvarnished truth as well. I don't want anybody parroting the line. So, I want to hear exactly what Mike Pence has to say.

KURTZ: Well, like you, guys, it is giving me the unvarnished version as well. So let me get a break. Ahead, Glenn Greenwald on the media's mishandling of the origins of COVID-19. When we come back, a heated media debate over Joe Biden's attack on republican voting laws.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KURTZ (on camera): Voting rights rocketed to the top of the media's agenda as President Biden is making his most aggressive push to pass the sweeping democratic bill now mired in the Senate.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: This sacred right is under assault with incredible intensity like I've never seen. It's simply un-American.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KURTZ (on camera): That speech in Tulsa sparking a much broader debate over race in this country and which party is really on the side of Black Americans.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: The part of Trump intensifying its efforts to strip people of color of their rights to vote, the boldest attempt since the era of Jim Crow.

JESSE WATTERS, FOX NEWS HOST: They keep playing the race card because that keeps victimizing Black America and that keeps the Democrats in power. And that's never going to change.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KURTZ (on camera): Well, it seems like there's two different media conversations going on here. You have liberals who want to focus on the big congressional bill and what they view as restrictive state laws like the one in Georgia, the one almost passed in Texas. And then you have conservatives as we just heard accusing Biden and Democrats overall of playing the so-called race card.

CAIN: Yes, and I happen to think the conservatives are correct on this. This probably comes as no surprise.

KURTZ: Elaborate.

CAIN: Here is what I think is going on. Here is what I think an accurate framing of the story is. Twenty-twenty saw the greatest changes in voting and the way we vote in really, I don't know, decades, right?

We made exceptions and we changed the rules because of a worldwide pandemic. What we did is we allowed massive mail-in balloting, absentee balloting, push balloting, you didn't have to ask for it at many states, it was sent to you, mail-in drop boxes all over the place. We made it as easy as possible for someone to stay home and vote.

Now, Republicans are saying the pandemic is over, we need to go back to quote, unquote normal, we need to have the protections in place that ensure voter integrity such as the very widely accepted concept of voter ID. Democrats don't like that. They want to keep the way 2020 worked into eternity. They think it worked in their favor and they're calling any attempt to scale back to what was normal, voter suppression, and they're calling that racist.

KURTZ: That sets up my next question. Harold, are liberal pundits somewhat over-the-top and saying this is an attack on democracy, bringing back the era of Jim Crow, and let me have you respond to what Will said about the use of the charge racist.

FORD: I think oftentimes politicians in both parties are too quick to (INAUDIBLE) things. Here's where I differ with Will. There's an assumption in what was said that somehow there was something that was not full of integrity about last year's voting outcomes or for that matter even the number of people voting.

I think we should all be interested in having as many people vote and making it as easy as possible. You should win elections based on the power, strength and vision of your ideas, not trying to pick the voters who can vote.

I would agree we need voter ID laws. I don't object to that at all. What I'm curious about is, if you have evaluated an election, about how many people voted and how fair the election was, you would have to give 2020 an "A." You may not like the outcome but the actual integrity of the vote and the number of people voting was outstanding. That is what we should all be striving for.

KURTZ: All right. Let me get you both to focus on the coverage. So Will first. A lot of people in the mainstream media are saying that Donald Trump is pushing his unproven claims of widespread fraud in the 2020 election, they call that the big lie, and therefore any Republican who objects to any voting rights bill or pushes a different kind of bill than they like is adopting the big lie. That's the media --

CAIN: That's right. It's constant motive indictment. You are either trying to promote the big lie or you are engaging in racist voter suppression if you push any attempt for voter integrity.

I heard you, Harold. I heard what you said that 2020 was an "A," one of the most secure elections, but you would have to admit this, that in 2020, we adopted many voting measures that most advanced societies across this world do not accept as integral integrity filled pure methods of voting. They don't do it, right? They don't allow the way we vote in 2020. They don't allow that in their elections.

So the point is I'm glad you embraced voter ID. Let's just take out the parts that we all agree are the most vulnerable and then we might actually have something where both parties can agree here.

KURTZ (on camera): All right. Let me play a sound bite for you, Harold. This is, of course, Biden in that speech said the reason he hasn't passed voting rights is that he has a 50/50 Senate. There were two Democrats who vote more with my Republican friends, just to clear that is not accurate. Obviously he was talking about Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema. Here's how Jen Psaki, former CNN contributor, handled the question.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PSAKI: I hear all the folks on TV saying -- as a former TV pundit myself, I can tell you that sometimes these conversations can be over-simplified. So, I don't think he was intending to convey anything other than a little bit of commentary on TV punditry.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KURTZ (on camera): Harold, do you buy that the president was talking about TV pundits and not about the two Democratic senators?

FORD: I do. Senator Manchin's wife works in this administration. There's a camaraderie and friendship. Like with every friendship, there are sometimes differences in the friendship. I'm certain that President Biden would love for every senator, including Mitch McConnell who has made it clear that he wants to defeat Joe Biden in four years -- Joe Biden would love Mitch McConnell's support as well as Joe Manchin's.

Is there a little commentary, a little back and forth? Sure. But, Howie, let me just say, I'm for voter ID. I am for also as many people voting.

KURTZ: Got it.

FORD: We should want to be the most advanced.

KURTZ: We are out of time. I'm going to disagree and say that Biden was clearly talking about the two senators and not --

CAIN: I'm with you on that, Howard.

KURTZ: All right. Will, Harold, thank you so much. Up next, Facebook extends its ban on Donald Trump and Chris Matthews is back on the air, talking about his messy departure from MSNBC.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KURTZ (on camera): Chris Matthews returned to MSNBC for the first time since losing his show last year in the wake of multiple problems, including a column by a female guest who said he praised her looks while she was being made as he made the rounds. That subject came up on "The View."

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNKNOWN: Was it your decision to leave and what were the lessons learned in retrospect?

CHRIS MATTHEWS, FORMER MSNBC HOST: Well, the lesson is you're not supposed to comment about a person's appearance in the workplace. I made a couple comments, what we might have called the old days compliments, but are not taken as compliments today by any means. I owned up to it. I took ownership of it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KURTZ (on camera): Joining us now from Dallas, Steve Krakauer, who writes The Fourth Watch newsletter on the media. Steve, I'm glad Chris Matthews is owning up to what he did. He said he left MSNBC voluntarily. But it wasn't solely because this one woman wrote a column for GQ. He had been accused of making inappropriate comments about women's looks for years.

STEVE KRAKAUER, FOURTH WATCH EDITOR AND HOST: Right. I think that the media industry is sort of unique in the sense that the reason a person maybe abruptly retires like Chris Matthews did or if they're suddenly fired --

KURTZ: Mm-hmm.

KRAKAUER: -- or they immediately resign, it's not usually the specific reason. There's a lot more to the story there. As you point out, no, a few inappropriate comments in the makeup room one time is not the reason Chris Matthews left MSNBC last year. We don't really have a playbook for a way back necessarily. In a lot of people's minds, that was sort of a way to stop the floodgates from opening to other stories that may come out.

Now, he is back not just on "The View" but on MSNBC on Joy Reid's show, on "Morning Joe." We will see. Is there now going to be more stories about the entirety of Chris Matthews's legacy? Well, I don't know, but that was interesting to see, that now a year later, he's back in the spotlight.

KURTZ: Yeah. He's also been making mistakes on the air such as comparing a Bernie Sanders caucus victory to the Nazi invasion of France. Look, the way he shoots off his mouth is part of his charm but also got him in trouble.

Let me turn now to Facebook which had indefinitely banned Donald Trump. Now, it is going to last for two years. But then Trump can reapply for reinstatement and Mark Zuckerberg's (INAUDIBLE) will decide whether -- here is the quote -- "whether the risk to public safety has receded." It is like a foreign government deciding whether to lift sanctions on another country. Your take?

KRAKAUER: Yeah. I am not 100 percent surprised that a bunch of progressive tech executives in San Francisco have decided to keep Donald Trump off of Facebook and Instagram for a couple years. Obviously, there's hypocrisy there. You look around the other world leaders in Russia, China, Iran, Syria, you name it, who can easily post to Facebook right now and without any ban in place.

So I think that's odd. But honestly, it's not as surprising to me or as alarming to me. As the anti-speech activists, we see now in the media who are cheering or are cheerleaders of this tech censorship. They used to be about the First Amendment. This is not a legal First Amendment issue. I don't think that Facebook should be sued to get Donald Trump on there. I don't think that the government intervention is the answer.

But the principle of the First Amendment is freedom of speech and the idea that journalists not only are cheering this two-year ban but are hoping that it was longer is truly alarming, and it's a sad state of so many in the media that drifted not just on the fringe but in CNN, Washington Post, New York Times, people who are cheering the sort of censorship of anyone, let alone, you know, a person who is the president of the United States.

KURTZ: Well, if anyone, they disagree with. Facebook says they're changing the rules and politicians will be exempted. They break the rules. Trump said this is an insult that he's still being censored. He used that word.

Look, the idea that he's a private citizen and somehow he can still cause great damage to public safety seems to me to be a stretch and this left leaning Silicon Valley giants just can't stand him. Just briefly.

KRAKAUER: Right. Look, absolutely. The tech executives can't stand him and the media can't stand him. So there's a bit of collusion there in what happens. Look, we've seen now, Facebook, the way that they have at one time only about a few months ago were making it so any story about the Wuhan lab was censored on their platform as misinformation, now, you can certainly post about that because the information has changed.

KURTZ: Because the media --

KRAKAUER: That's a red flag for all.

KURTZ: Conventional wisdom is changing. You've set me up for the next segment. Thanks, Steve. Next on MEDIABUZZ, do the media's mistakes on the Wuhan lab reflect a growing impulse to tell people what to think? Glenn Greenwald is standing by with that.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KURTZ (on camera): The Washington Post ran a correction the other day on a story about COVID-19 that ran back in February, I've talked about this headline before, published after Republican senators said we should investigate when the virus came from the Wuhan lab.

Tom Cotton keeps repeating a coronavirus conspiracy theory that was already debunked. That was inaccurate, the paper says right now. The term debunked and the Post use of conspiracy theory have been removed. Because then, as now there was no determination about the origins of the virus. So why aren't major media organizations trying to figure out where they went wrong in this debacle.

Joining us now from Brazil, Glenn Greenwald, a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist who writes at Substack, and is author of the new book "Securing Democracy: My fight For Press Freedom and Justice in Bolsonaro's Brazil."

Glenn, how do you explain this historic failure really on the part of the media not to crack the case but at least to take the Wuhan theory more seriously and then everyone just kind of moves on without much attempted self-examination.

GLENN GREENWALD, CO-FOUNDER, THE INTERCEPT: I think this is an extraordinary media debacle, probably one of the worst aside from Russia gate over the last say, five or six years. Obviously, if it were the case that the scientific data showed one particular point, mainly that it was overwhelmingly likely that this virus was zoonotic that it jumped from animal to humans and there was evidence showing that it was unlikely that it leaked from the lab, then you would say OK, well sometimes in science things change and so the media was reflecting the reality at the time and nobody could have known any different.

That's absolutely not the case here. You can go back to February, and March and April of 2020 and find smart people on Twitter, journalists, scientists saying that there is no certainty warranted about whether it came from animals or whether it came from a lab that they're both highly plausible.

And yet, the media treated it as though there was certainty involved, that if you deny that it was zoonotic that you suggested it may have come from a lab you were a crazy conspiracy theorist to a point where you were kicked off of social media, and people were kicked off from social media.

And nothing has changed other than the fact that Donald Trump is no longer president and that's the point --

KURTZ: Right.

GREENWALD: -- as journalists so often judge things not by what is true or not true, but by what is politically beneficial to the partisan audience that they're serving and that's exactly what happened here over an extremely important question.

KURTZ: Well, one exception is Washington Post columnist Josh Rogan who tweeted that members -- most of the mainstream media actively crapped all over this theory for years, pretending to be objective about a mixed of source bias, the scientist sources lied to them, group think, Trump derangement syndrome and general incompetence, not many are saying that.

GREENWALD: yes. Yes, I mean, you know, Howie, I think we've talked about it before that you are -- when you were at the Washington Post, one of the first media reporters to examine how the U.S. media got so wrong the question of Iraqi WMDs and talked about the insidious waste --

KURTZ: There were a lot of (Inaudible).

GREENWALD: -- that media outlets can promote the theory that they want. Yes, that was a long time ago, it was in 2004 but I hope the people go read it. Because it's exactly what still takes place which is media outlets like the New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, MSNBC have decided that their profit model depends on telling American liberals what they want to hear, regardless of whether or not it's true.

And American liberals didn't want to hear that maybe Trump was right about the origins of the virus and so they just pretended that they had scientific knowledge that that theory was a conspiracy theory. There were a few lonely voices that Josh Rogan which proves that if you wanted to find the truth, you could you have.

KURTZ: Yes, I was just saying that I'd spent a lot of time reporting on the WMD fiasco. Let me ask you about a New York Times columnist Ross Douthat, we'll put it up on the screen. He says that since the Trump years there has been in the media the impulse to tell the reader exactly what to think, lest by leaving anything ambiguous you gave an inch to right-wing demagoguery. It was not enough to simply report Republican politician x said conspiratorial sounding thing y.

You have to describe it as false or debunked. I know that matches some of what you've been complaining about.

GREENWALD: Yes, I think the key point here is we've lost the ability, the media has, at least to distinguish between ideological questions on the one hand or evidentiary questions on the other. They're completely different and yet this distinction has been lost. Ideological questions are debates where you expect where your ideology to determine where you fall on the spectrum. So, you debate abortion, you debate tax cuts, whether you're on the right or the left, naturally we'll show you where you fall.

But evidentiary questions, is there evidence proving that Trump colluded with the Kremlin, did the lab -- did the virus come from a lab or from -- these are not ideological questions and yet the media is treating them as such and that's why if you're on the left you automatically say, yes, I believe Trump colluded with Russia. If you're on the left in the media you say it came from animals even though there's no evidence for it. And this conflation of evidentiary and ideological questions is for me the number one cause of how journalism is being corrupted.

KURTZ: Yes. To me, it's a different strain, journalists, analysts, commentators saying I think this is B.S. and this is such B.S. that we're not -- we're going to ignore it, we're not going to talk about it, we don't think it deserves in the public -- to be debated in the public square.

Meanwhile, the Daily beast has a headline the other day, is Glenn Greenwald the new master of right-wing media? And part of the indictment is that you've appeared a number of times on Fox News including previous appearances on this program. I mean, I ask you questions, you respond. And that makes you a crazy conservative?

GREENWALD: I think it shows how the liberal media really does think, the liberal sector of the media. Obviously, the purpose of that article was a hit piece. And they thought what can we say about Glenn Greenwald that would be the most, say, you know, incriminating thing we could possibly think of. And it's like, let's link him to right wing media and say that he goes on Fox News.

Of course, I go on Fox News. Why would I not want to as a journalist speak to the millions of people who watch the network, it's the most watched network in the world. But they can only see the world even as journalists to the prism of left versus right.

I go on other shows like Joe Rogan that's in the media, I talk to left-wing podcasters and YouTubers with huge audiences all the time. But they see the world as left versus right and even as journalists they believe that their only role is to serve the interest of one side of the political spectrum.

So, for them, my going on Fox News makes me some kind of a traitor as opposed to a journalist who just wants to communicate with as many people as possible.

KURTZ: Right. Well, when you were doing your groundbreaking reporting on Bush, Cheney and the Iraq war or during the Obama administration you were seen as a wild eyed liberal, now you're a crazy conservative. You know, these labels I think are not necessarily useful. Let's deal with the substance of what you have to say as you do on Twitter every day. And I've got to leave it at that.

Glenn Greenwald, great to see you. Thanks very much for joining us.

GREENWALD: Good to be with you, Howie. Thanks for having me.

KURTZ: After the break, tennis superstar Naomi Osaka reveals her struggles with depression and how that affects the debate over whether she and other pro-athletes should have to talk to the press.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KURTZ (on camera): I was pretty rough on Naomi Osaka for refusing to do press conferences at the French Open, initially saying it wasn't good for her mental health. The tennis czar has fined her $15,000 to boot her from Grand Slam tournaments, and then with a stunning Instagram post Osaka pulled out of the French Open.

Since upsetting the favored Serena Williams in the U.S. Open three years ago, the young star confessed the truth is I have long suffered from -- the truth is I've suffered from long bouts of depression. I've had a really hard time coping with that. Serena Williams who had a meltdown when Osaka upset her in that final is among the players who call press conferences part of the job.

SERENA WILLIAMS, U.S. TENNIS PLAYER: I feel like I wish I could give her a hug because I know what it's like. Not everyone is the same. I'm thick. You know. Other people are thin.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KURTZ (on camera): Rafael Nadal says that without the media to boost the game --

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RAFAEL NADAL, SPANISH TENNIS PLAYER: We don't want to have the recognition that we have around the world, and we will not be that popular.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KURTZ (on camera): Joining us now from New York, Kat Timpf of the Gutfeld show and host at Fox Nation.

Kat, it must have been difficult for this 23-year-old woman to talk about something as ex -- excruciatingly personal as depression. Can you relate to that? And how much is it changing the conversation about sports, media and the high stakes pressure?

KAT TIMPF, FOX NEWS CO-HOST: Right. Absolutely. I mean, I've struggled with depression and anxiety for years myself. And it's something that I've been open with and talking about because there is still a lot of shame surrounding that, that especially if you're an athlete that's struggling with something like this is a kind of weakness of sorts.

I think that this is a conversation where a lot of things could be true at once. I think that there's one side saying hey, this is her job. But I think that the other side is also not saying no, it's not, they're saying OK, but why is it.

And I saw a piece in the Boston Globe that I thought was very interesting. Because it actually presented some kind of middle ground which can be rare to see in conversations like this, saying I don't think that someone in this situation should have to do press interviews but let's not say no one should have to and let's look at a more case by case basis because everyone is different. And maybe she could have handled it a different way and even she herself did admit that.

KURTZ: Yes. Right. So, it seems to me that in a P.R. battle, Osaka is beating the press in a straight set. There is no question about that.

TIMPF: Yes.

KURTZ: But here's the argument. Naomi Osaka made $50 million in endorsements last year. I mean, she had Google, Nike, Louis Vuitton, Levi, and lots of others. This happened not just because she's a great athlete but because the media turned her into an international celebrity. So she has some obligation regardless of what's in the contract to answer press conferences -- press questions now and then. I don't see why that's so hard for people to understand.

TIMPF: Right. Absolutely. And I saw the finer points of that being debated as well. For example, there was a niece the New York Post saying hey, you're going to be wearing these logos on your uniform, you have to go out there and do press attention. Also pointing out that she did that one interview that she got paid for when she was on the court.

KURTZ: Yes.

TIMPF: But I thought a piece in Forbes that was pretty interesting as well, saying hey, this is the highest paid female athlete, she's made tens of millions of dollars, most of it was from sponsorships and from that media attention. But they also pointed out if she can come out of this and be a sort of comeback story, there's really nothing that sports like better than that.

KURTZ: She is going to be bigger than ever. Now Osaka did say in that extraordinary statement that the tennis press has always been kind to me. It's not like she's getting all kinds of rude and obnoxious questions. Not that journalists don't do that occasionally. And she apologizes especially to all the cool journalists who I may have hurt. I don't know who exactly is in that category.

TIMPF: Yes.

KURTZ: But here's the thing. You know, Osaka has not been shy about politics. Last year she pulled out of a semifinal match as part of the protest of police violence against blacks in the wake of the George Floyd killing. Here's what she had to say at a news conference then.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

NAOMI OSAKA, JAPANESE TENNIS PLAYER: I know you guys are like news and media but I feel like sometimes the news only shows one side of things.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KURTZ (on camera): And at that match she was wearing masks showing the names of the different victims including Jacob Blake. So, she was happy to talk to the press then when it suited her purposes, Kat.

TIMPF: Right. Absolutely. And that is something that people are pointing out. I think we can point all of these things out at once and wonder, you know, what has she done her own variation of a, you know, a Marshawn Lynch, when he said that I'm just here so I won't get fined. I don't even like football but I love him now for that.

But she did a version of that. I'm here so I don't get fined, this is really hard for me, I really would to go. I think that everybody would have respected that. I think that they really would have respected that and seen it as her being vulnerable but that would be different than her pulling out.

Which again, I think she acknowledged that her timing was bad but there could have been perhaps a way that she could have even -- that would have been even, maybe a greater more or even powerful moment, saying hey, I'm here because I have to be --

KURTZ: Yes.

TIMPF: -- I have to be here but I want you to know that this is so hard for me and really taking a toll on my mental health.

KURTZ: Right. It's a shame that she did have to pull out, you know, --

TIMPF: Yes.

KURTZ: -- as more and more -- and people must be sitting home and saying look, she's got all this money, she's fame and fortune. But it doesn't insulate you from the disease of depression. In fact, ESPN commentator Stephen Smith talked about his own struggle. Let's take a look.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

STEPHEN SMITH, COMMENTATOR, ESPN: I've been devastatingly depressed. And I was in therapy for three years, three years, because that's how devastated I had been and I'm just -- I'll never get over it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KURTZ (on camera): He was talking about his mother's death. So, could this lead to people -- more people in sports, more people in journalism being more open about their own struggles and take away some of the stigma?

TIMPF: Yes, I certainly hope so. I think regardless of what you think about the money aspect of things and that's a separate conversation or what you think about her specifically, I think in general these things can get even harder because they can be isolating. Because I know that I've been there. You don't want to admit, you know, you don't want to feel like you want to burden anybody, you don't want to feel embarrassed about talking about it.

But you know, I've been in and out of therapy for so many years now. And it's -- it is a struggle. And it is a constant thing you need to work on. And the more open you can be and not feel like it's shameful, then it doesn't compound on itself.

KURTZ: Right.

TIMPF: So, I think regardless of what you think about her, it's an important conversation.

KURTZ: Well, we appreciate your candor. It's always great to see you. Kat Timpf, thanks very much.

Up next, the media in a tizzy over reports that Donald Trump is telling people he'll be back in the White House by this summer.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KURTZ (on camera): It began when New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman tweeted that Donald Trump is telling a number of people he's in contact with that he'll be reinstated by August triggering instant denunciations by liberal pundits.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MAGGIE HABERMAN, WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT, THE NEW YORK TIMES: The difference between them saying it and Donald Trump saying it, is one, he's a former president, one is a possible future party nominee. This is the kind of thing that he is trying to flush into the conservative media ecosystem.

CHRIS HAYES, HOST, MSNBC: This is part of the dangerous delusional, almost sad, frankly, alternate reality that Donald Trump's foot soldiers are out peddling.

DON LEMON, HOST, CNN: That is complete and utter bull shiggity (Ph). It's complete garbage. There's absolutely no way Trump could just be reinstated. It doesn't work that way.

LARA TRUMP, FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR: As far as I know, there are no plans for Donald Trump to be in the White House in August. Maybe there's something I don't know.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KURTZ (on camera): Joining us now, Mike Emanuel, Fox's chief Washington correspondent. And since that Maggie Haberman report, Mike, there's been no he denial from the former president who's actually quite practiced at knocking down stories he believes are untrue.

MIKE EMANUEL, FOX NEWS CHIEF WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT: Well, Howie, you're absolutely right. Big picture I think what's happening here is there's an effort for President Trump to stay relevant with his base. If you look at past presidential elections, after a 2000 loss, Al Gore went away, 2004, John Kerry, see you later. John McCain, 2008, still remains a senator, but was done as a presidential candidate. Mitt Romney, Hillary Clinton.

And so bottom line, he wants to stay relevant and people close to him want his people engaged with him and not kicking the tires on Ron DeSantis, Kris Noem, Tim Scott, et cetera. So that's my sense of this, is that, basically, keep his name in the mix, keep him relevant, and then hope when he decides to run in 2024 that they're still there with him.

KURTZ: The National Review says it's confirmed the story which it calls a rejection of reality by Trump. The Washington Post says he may be getting these ideas from his former lawyer, Sidney Powell, from Mike Lindell, the My Pillow guy, from a host at OAN. Is it still an important story? Because it's impossible, it's legally impossible, it's constitutionally impossible for a former president to be reinstated but it may obviously rile up some members of his base.

EMANUEL: Well, I think in this business we've seen that former President Trump is typically good for business. A lot of our ratings all went up when we were talking about President Trump and so he has a knack for driving the story line. You saw a lot of those liberal hosts eager to talk about him. Their ratings took a major dip when President Trump left office.

And so, I think any headline they get that relates to Donald Trump and perhaps his political future they're eager to put in front and center because he's been good for the numbers.

KURTZ: Our ratings probably jumped just in the last two minutes maybe because of you, Mike.

EMANUEL: Thank you.

KURTZ: Speaking of this, The New York Times reporting that his former chief of staff, Mark Meadows in the final weeks pushed for the Justice Department to investigate some conspiracy theories about the election including that people in Italy were using military technology to tamper with the U.S. voting machines.

Now, Mike Flynn, the brief -- who served briefly as national security advisor was at a conference last week, not allowed to play the video but let's put it up. The video is all over the web. Somebody in the audience said I want to know. Why what happened in Myanmar can't happen here. And Flynn said no reason, I mean, it should happen here. No reason. Now Flynn says the media are manipulating his words. But people can go to the video and make up their own mind. How is that not a story?

EMANUEL: People take that seriously, particularly after January 6. And I would be curious to know if a lawyer called Mike Flynn and said, you better be careful with that because if a bunch of your supporters show up and start breaking in the building and start hurting people, you may be on the hook for it.

And so, you mentioned the former chief of staff Mark Meadows, look, when the president of the United States wants something, the chief of the staff serves at the pleasure of the president, and so maybe he called the Justice Department and said we need to look into this, we need to look into that. But the Mike Flynn thing after January 6 is no joking matter. I was there on the capitol grounds. When I saw our fellow Americans charging the building, not a joking matter at this point, Howie.

KURTZ: Yes. Well, the Justice Department declined to do it. And I think you make a good point. I mean, look, at the rally last night Trump didn't address this point. He said I'm going to have a decision soon. I think it will make people happy. They would, and suggest to me he's going to signal he's going to run again in 2024. But of course, that is a long way away. But you're right. When we talk about it, the numbers go up. We're doing it because it's news.

Mike Emanuel, thanks as always. I appreciate your stopping by here.

EMANUEL: Thanks so much, Howie.

KURTZ: All right. And that's it for this edition of MEDIABUZZ. I'm Howard Kurtz. We hope you like our Facebook page. I post my daily columns there. And you can come at me on Twitter. You don't really need much encouragement on that. Hey, check out my podcast Media Buzz Meter. We do top five buzziest stories every day, media, politics, sports. You name it. You can subscribe at Apple iTunes, Google podcast or on your Amazon device.

Once again, a lot of news to get in here today. We do our best in the 60 minutes we're allowed. We will see you here next Sunday 11 Eastern with the latest buzz.

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