A week after he cut the mic of conservative guest Kurt Schlichter for bringing up Bill Clinton’s history of sexual misconduct, CNN host Don Lemon found himself trying to shut down another guest during Monday’s CNN Tonight when conservative radio host and CNN GOP debate co-moderator Hugh Hewitt argued that Donald Trump should use his Twitter account to educate millennials on the former President’s past.
During his latest phone-in interview Tuesday morning, Donald Trump appeared on NBC’s Today where co-host Savannah Guthrie attempted to convince Trump that former President Bill Clinton’s extramarital affairs (and specifically what occurred with Monica Lewinsky) were merely “alleged” and thus might not be fair to bring up in a campaign involving Hillary Clinton.
On Monday, the major network evening newscasts all alluded to Donald Trump criticizing Bill and Hillary Clinton by bringing up Clinton’s numerous bouts of sexual misconduct from the 1990's, but chose not to remind viewers of what those scandals actually were and instead deflected away from that by touting the Clintons going for a walk over the weekend with daughter Chelsea and granddaughter Charlotte.
Reviewing the new drag queen-centered Broadway show Kinky Boots in Monday’s New York Times, critic Ben Brantley chose to dedicate a few paragraphs to the bizarre suggestion that the show should make one think “that maybe all those grumpy guys who populate the Republican debates might be a lot looser if they traded in their navy suits for rainbow-colored ball gowns.”
READER WARNING: The following post contains spoilers pertaining to Star Wars: The Force Awakens.
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Writing in the December 24 print edition of The Washington Post, Style section columnist Lonnae O’Neal expressed her disdain for the hit film Star Wars: The Force Awakens due to how Daisy Ridley’s character Rey emerges as the lead heroine of the film who saves the day instead of black British actor John Boyeda’s Finn.
After the Wednesday editions of CBS This Morning and NBC’s Today attempted to excuse the Washington Post cartoon depicting Ted Cruz’s daughters as moneys, various hosts and guests throughout the day on CNN and MSNBC followed suit by chiding the “weird” and “controversial” Cruz for sending out fundraising e-mails related to the smear and “not reacting kindly” to cartoonist Ann Telnaes’s latest work.
The morning after Washington Post cartoonist Ann Telnaes published (then unpublished) an illustration depicting Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz’s daughters as toy monkeys, calling them “fair game” since they appeared in a campaign ad, ABC’s Good Morning America ignored the story completely while CBS This Morning and NBC’s Today excused it as merely a “feud” and part of “increased scrutiny” for Cruz as he ascends in the polls.
Just over two weeks after the major network evening newscasts spent 24 minutes obsessing on December 8 over Donald Trump’s proposed ban on Muslims entering the U.S., the three programs returned on Tuesday night to devote ten and a half minutes to Trump’s declaration that Hillary Clinton was “schlonged” in 2008 by losing to then-Senator Barack Obama.
Commenting on Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz’s daughters appearing in a campaign ad, Washington Post cartoonist Ann Telnaes created a GIF early Tuesday evening depicting Cruz’s young daughters as toy monkeys being played with and arguing that “[t]hey are fair game.” In attempting to explain her arguably racist GIF, Telnaes argued that because daughters Caroline and Catherine appeared in a humorous Christmas-themed ad, they have decided “to indulge in grown-up activities” and allowed their father to play them “as political props.”
The lead segment in the 3:00 p.m. Eastern hour of Tuesday’s CNN Newsroom featured quite the display of verbal fireworks as conservative writer Kurt Schlichter angered fill-in host Don Lemon when he invoked the Clinton sex scandals of the 1990's with former President Clinton turning “his intern into a humidor” while discussing vulgar comments made by Donald Trump.
NPR’s Steve Inskeep continued his media tour on Monday promoting his fawning sit-down interview with President by appearing with CNN Tonight host Don Lemon and, when asked about the President attacking the media for supposedly overhyping threats posed by ISIS, Inskeep stood up for the President by suggesting that it was “not a very outlandish idea that he's putting out there.”
Seeking to join in on the Star Wars: The Force Awakens hype, MSNBC’s Hardball kicked off Monday’s show with a spoof of the famous franchise’s opening credits that told of a “period of civil war within the Republican party” and “President Obama, Hillary Clinton, & the Republican establishment appear to have formed a coalition rejecting [Donald] Trump’s appeal to the DARK SIDE.”
Both of the media-centered programs on CNN and FNC covered on Sunday the move by the New York Times from Friday to delete a line from an article about President Obama not fully realizing “the anxiety” of Americans following terror attacks due to his lack of exposure to cable news. Other than NPR TV critic Eric Geggans rushing to Obama’s defense on CNN’s Reliable Sources, the other panelists both denounced the Times for what they described as “outrageous,” “perplexing,” and “potentially damning.”
Liberal historian and former Johnson administration staffer Doris Kearns Goodwin was on Sunday’s Meet the Press panel and to the shock of no one, sang the praises of Hillary Clinton by proclaiming how she projected an “amazing...internal confidence” in the debate and has become “a better candidate now than she was six months ago” and from 2008.
Appearing exclusively on Sunday’s Meet the Press, Chuck Todd repeatedly pressed Speaker Paul Ryan to denounce conservative radio talk show hosts Laura Ingraham and Mark Levin over their criticism of the recently-passed omnibus bill and Todd demanded to know how he’ll work with President Obama to “lay the groundwork” to end political polarization. Todd asked, of the talk show hosts, whether their “rhetoric is inappropriate” or “[o]ut of line?”
Commenting on how The New York Times removed a phrase from a Friday article explaining how President Obama told a group of columnists that he hadn’t consumed enough cable news to fully understand the anxieties of Americans over terror attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, Fox News Sunday panelist Brit Hume lambasted the President for his “snark” and frame of mind that makes him “impatient with the American people.”
Hours after praising socialist Senator Bernie Sanders prior to ABC’s Democratic presidential debate on Saturday night, ABC News political analyst Cokie Roberts completely reversed course on Sunday’s This Week and brushed off Sanders as unelectable and having shot at the nomination even if he wins both the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary in February 2016.
After airing an hour of coverage following the last Saturday night Democratic presidential debate on November 14, MSNBC skipped out on airing any post-debate analysis after Saturday’s third Democratic debate on ABC and instead played yet another episode of its weekend jail series Lockup.
In the final set of questions of Saturday’s Democratic presidential debate prior to the closing statements, ABC’s co-moderator Martha Raddatz served up a massive softball to frontrunner Hillary Clinton concerning how former President Bill Clinton would function as a member of the First Family if Hillary is elected president.
In one of the more awkward and bizarre happenings you’ll see in a debate, Saturday’s Democratic presidential debate on ABC restarted without frontrunner Hillary Clinton following a commercial break and continued for over a minute until she returned to the stage.

