In a welcome change of pace for MSNBC programming on Tuesday night, liberal primetime host Rachel Maddow was given the night off in favor of NBC News chief foreign correspondent Richard Engel, who anchored the network’s 9:00 p.m. Eastern coverage of the Paris Islamic terror attacks and closed with a brief but astute commentary on how it’s doubtful that Paris will change the global ISIS strategy.
In a combative exchange that aired on the Tuesday edition of ABC’s World News Tonight, chief White House correspondent Jonathan Karl hinted to Republican Senator Ted Cruz (Tex.) that he was “un-American” for suggesting that only Syrian refugees who are Christian should be admitted the United States while a moratorium would be placed on those that are Muslim.
On Tuesday night, the “big three” networks of ABC, CBS, and NBC saw no reason to inform their viewers of Secretary of State John Kerry’s assertion that he could recognize there having been a “rationale” and “particularized focus” for Islamic terrorists to carry out the January attacks in Paris on the offices of Charlie Hebdo but not for the “indiscriminate” attacks that occurred in the very same city on Friday.
Reporting from inside the spin room following Saturday’s Democratic presidential debate, CNN’s senior political correspondent Brianna Keilar minced no works in describing Hillary Clinton’s comments on 9/11 and her coming of age in the 1960's to two moments that “certainly didn’t go over well” with aides frantically working to “clean-up” after her.
On multiple occasions throughout CNN’s post-Democratic debate analysis late Saturday night, liberal CNN commentator and Atlantic writer Peter Beinart dared to step out and criticize Hillary Clinton for her debate performance on foreign policy and the Democratic Party as a whole for being “very vague” and “nonspecific” on an issue where “polls show people trust Republicans.”
After being pushed by The Des Moines Register’s Kathie Obradovich during Saturday’s Democratic debate about his flip-flopping on Hillary Clinton’s e-mail scandal, socialist Bernie Sanders denied the idea that he had backtracked from his “damn e-mails” comment in the October 13 debate. Instead, Sanders attacked the notion as “media stuff” and emphasized that he’s “still sick and tired of Hillary Clinton's e-mails.”
Nearly a half-hour into Saturday’s Democratic presidential debate on CBS, Salon writer Joan Walsh and former Democratic Vermont Governor Howard Dean took to Twitter to blast moderator John Dickerson for merely asking legitimate questions of the candidates on foreign policy and whether or not the United States (and by extension, the West) is at war with “radical Islam.”
A special Saturday edition of Fox News Channel’s Special Report aired due to the terror attacks 24 hours earlier in Paris with a panel of The Weekly Standard’s Steve Hayes, U.S. News & World Report’s David Catanese, and syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer. Collectively, the panel had a variety of takes, ranging from slamming the Democratic presidential candidates for seeming “very small” after the attacks to observing that the U.S. has not “done whatever it takes” to stop ISIS.
Opining on HBO’s Real Time on Friday’s Islamic terror attacks in Paris, former MSNBC host and liberal activist Dylan Ratigan explained that the reason Islamist extremists despise the United States and Western Civilization (and thus carry out attacks) is due to U.S. “financ[ing] the capital flow into Saudi Arabia” that cause poor Muslims to commit such atrocities against innocent people in the West.
According to Politico’s Hadas Gold and Annie Karni, Saturday night’s Democratic presidential moderator John Dickerson of CBS News met privately with each of the three campaigns for separate, private meetings to preview the debate and tried to innocently be billed as “informational in nature.”
Speaking on MSNBC’s All In Thursday night about the ongoing protests on college campuses over race, Salon writer and Rutgers University professor Brittney Cooper asserted that the real focus of the discussion should about how black students supposedly feel “physically and emotionally unsafe on these campuses” and those raising concerns about “the threat to freedom of speech” really just want to assert their “white privilege.”
On Thursday night and Friday morning, NBC News tried their best to go after Republican presidential candidate Dr. Ben Carson by attempting to make a mountain out of a molehill of his relationship with a man who was convicted nearly a decade ago of insurance fraud while ignoring the ongoing investigation of Hillary Clinton over her private e-mail server.
In promoting the upcoming Democratic presidential debate Saturday night on CBS with moderator John Dickerson, Stephen Colbert lamented during Thursday’s Late Show that Republicans have a reputation of “roughing up the referee in these debates, like the CNBC guys got slapped around a little bit by the Republican candidates” and wondered if he “expect[ed] the Democrats to do the same?”
Syndicated columnist and Fox News contributor Charles Krauthammer made his almost-daily appearance on the “All Star Panel” during Thursday’s Special Report and compared Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton to businesswoman-turned-convict Martha Stewart in light of her e-mail server and Clinton Foundation scandals. “Look, right now, what it looks like is she's got a Martha Stewart problem, which is the false information, misleading or her aides or pressuring somebody, that's a pretty big category,” explained Krauthammer.
After uttering a slew of jokes about Tuesday’s Republican presidential debate, Tonight Show host Jimmy Fallon made sure to play the role of equal opportunity offender during Wednesday’s monologue by teaming with comedian Billy Crystal to mock Democratic candidates Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders for being “so old” (in borrowing a bit often employed in the Jay Leno days).
Giving his thoughts about Tuesday’s Republican presidential debate on Wednesday’s AC360, former Bill Clinton administration staffer Paul Begala offered a strange comparison and unintentional irony when he declared that the GOP candidates are merely “creepy” “junior high schoolboys” who are playing the role of Hillary Clinton’s stalkers.
On Wednesday night, NBC Nightly News neglected to inform its viewers of a new report concerning the scandal-ridden Department of Veterans Affairs and the $142 million it paid out in bonuses to employees (including some who were facing discipline and/or recently fired). Compiled by the House Veterans Affairs Committee, the report stated that some of those who received bonuses still got them despite the fact that “several of them were under investigation or accused of mismanagement.”
The Wednesday editions of ABC’s World News Tonight and NBC Nightly News each provided their own wrap-ups of the Fox Business Network Republican presidential debate from the night before, but the theme was predictably similar as both networks spun the event as illustrating “fierce opposition” and “dramatic divisions” within the GOP on apparently every issue.
Filling in for Scott Pelley on Wednesday’s CBS Evening News, Charlie Rose provided a wrap-up of Tuesday’s Fox Business Networks Republican presidential debate and seemed exasperated when he wondered to Face the Nation anchor John Dickerson “why” did the GOP candidates level “a lot of attacks on Hillary Clinton.”
Without a hint of irony, the most superficial network news show in ABC’s Nightline mocked Tuesday’s Fox Business Network Republican debate on their early Wednesday morning installment as nothing more than a “reality show” along the lines of The Bachelor and Survivor “where the stakes couldn’t be higher.”

