Dana Milbank of The Washington Post was one of the many liberals in the media who were elated that House Republicans caved in to President Obama’s demand to increase the debt limit with no offsetting spending cuts or concessions on ObamaCare. Milbank was so gleeful, in fact, that he brought a blueberry pie onto the set of Tuesday’s PoliticsNation on MSNBC to celebrate with host Al Sharpton.
But Milbank warned the reverend not to get too excited, explaining:
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February 12, 2014, 5:47 PM EST
February 11, 2014, 5:03 PM EST
You had hoped it was just a fluke when she received so much national attention back in 2012, but sadly, no: Sandra Fluke has crystallized into a national icon, not just for birth control advocates, but for liberals in general. On Tuesday’s NewsNation on MSNBC, host Craig Melvin put Fluke in front of the cameras and helped to boost her fledgling campaign for the California Senate.
In setting up the interview, Melvin reminded his audience of how those mean House Republicans stopped Fluke from testifying at a hearing about ObamaCare’s contraception mandate in February 2012. He then dialed up the hype: “She later testified before a Democratic House panel about birth control coverage and the rest is history.”
February 11, 2014, 12:20 PM EST
On her Monday afternoon MSNBC program, Andrea Mitchell brought on RNC chairman Reince Priebus and beat him over the head on his party’s supposed need to sign on to a generous immigration reform which sets millions of illegal immigrants on the proverbial path to citizenship. Feigning concern for the GOP, Mitchell set up the interview by asking her audience a rhetorical question: “[D]oesn’t the Republican Party need to do something about immigration just for its own future?”
With an introduction like that, it was no surprise what came next. When Priebus appeared onscreen, Mitchell immediately pressed him on the matter, asking:
February 7, 2014, 5:15 PM EST
To the liberal media, there is nothing sweeter than a Republican who attacks other Republicans. And ever since he left the George W. Bush administration, former Secretary of State Colin Powell has been willing to do just that, loudly and publicly.
Powell appeared on Friday’s Andrea Mitchell Reports on MSNBC to discuss education, but Mitchell eventually steered the conversation in a juicier direction. She asked about Powell’s past criticism of his own party: “You've been quoted -- you said that there's a dark vein of intolerance in your Republican Party.” Powell took that as an opportunity to rip the GOP as racist and xenophobic:
February 6, 2014, 5:39 PM EST
On Wednesday, Mayor John Tkazyik explained in the Poughkeepsie [N.Y.] Journal that he and almost 50 other mayors have dropped out of former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg’s group Mayors Against Illegal Guns (MAIG).
The reason they left? They all felt Bloomberg was using the organization to trample on the Second Amendment rather than to push for the stricter enforcement of existing laws. Tkazyik complained that:
February 6, 2014, 4:35 PM EST
No matter how bleak things get for ObamaCare, no matter how bad the law looks to the public, you can rest assured that someone at MSNBC will always be ready and willing to make excuses for the law, even speaking of necessary "sacrifices" to be made as a "nation" for the greater good of "universal health care."
On Thursday’s Morning Joe, Mark Halperin of Time magazine assumed the role of ObamaCare spinmeister.
February 4, 2014, 5:45 PM EST
MSNBC’s Melissa Harris-Perry devoted her entire program to football on Super Bowl Sunday, and over the course of two hours she proved that she is a big fan of brash Seattle Seahawks cornerback Richard Sherman. During a roundtable discussion about head injuries in the NFL, Harris-Perry singled out Sherman’s noggin as especially worthy of protection.
“I just want to run up and put my hands around his head and say, ‘Don't let anyone hit it, you’re so brilliant,’” the Tulane professor pronounced. And just why, exactly, does Harris-Perry find Sherman so brilliant?
February 3, 2014, 6:00 PM EST
How do MSNBC hosts feel about the war in Afghanistan? Well, it may depend on who’s in the White House at the moment.
On Saturday morning’s Weekends with Alex Witt, Ms. Witt talked to fellow MSNBC host Rachel Maddow about President Obama’s tribute to Army Ranger Sgt. 1st Class Cory Remsburg at last Tuesday’s State of the Union address. Maddow, who is certainly no fan of our wars in Afghanistan or Iraq, nonetheless reflected on the moment in a mostly positive way. Referring to the extended applause for Sgt. Remsburg, Maddow said:
January 31, 2014, 2:32 PM EST
On Thursday’s PBS NewsHour, anchor Gwen Ifill fed the tired old stereotype that the Tea Party ruins everything.
During a discussion about the nation’s political outlook for the coming year, Ifill posed this question to The Washington Post’s Michael Gerson:
January 30, 2014, 6:00 PM EST
For some liberals in the media, working to ensure equality of opportunity just isn’t enough. They want to see every American achieve an equal outcome and government have an active role in redistribution of wealth.
Matthew Yglesias, business and economics correspondent at Slate, made such a contention in a Thursday article titled “Sorry, Equal Opportunity Isn’t Good Enough.”
January 28, 2014, 4:11 PM EST
In the minds of MSNBC personalities, the so-called Republican “War on Women” is fought on many fronts – even in the amount of GOP responses to this year’s State of the Union address.
On Tuesday’s Morning Joe, the panelists were discussing the three planned responses to Tuesday's State of the Union: Washington Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers’ official GOP response, Utah Sen. Mike Lee’s Tea Party response, and Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul’s personal response. Co-host Mika Brzezinski, upset at the idea of three separate responses, voiced her displeasure in terms of Rodgers’ gender: “Why not let the strong woman actually have a strong response for all Republicans?”
January 27, 2014, 6:03 PM EST
In a weird way, you have to love the blatant, in-your-face disingenuousness of MSNBC. On Saturday’s Weekends with Alex Witt, the program's host trotted out the newest liberal rallying cry – former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee’s (R) recent comments about the Democratic Party and women. As was the case on some other MSNBC programs last week, the network edited out all context from the former governor’s remarks, showing only the most embarrassing part.
After playing that edited, context-free clip of Huckabee, Witt remarked to Politico’s Juana Summers, “So Juana, Mike Huckabee has since said that the media distorted his comments. But why even open the door to that possibility?”
January 24, 2014, 5:19 PM EST
As if Weekends with Alex Witt weren’t bad enough, viewers were subjected to a weekday with Alex Witt as she guest-hosted the 11 a.m. hour of MSNBC Live on Friday. During a discussion with RNC communication director Sean Spicer, Witt brought up New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s recent insulting remarks about “extreme conservatives.” The weekend host played a clip of Cuomo’s comments and then tried to turn them into an indictment of the Tea Party.
Witt demanded of Spicer:
January 23, 2014, 1:20 PM EST
The annual March for Life took place yesterday in our nation’s capital, and MSNBC marked the occasion by inviting a slew of pro-choice guests onto its daytime programming to slime the pro-life movement without giving any pro-lifers a chance to respond. Between 6 a.m. and 5 p.m. on Wednesday, MSNBC featured six pro-choice guests and zero pro-life guests.
During the 11 a.m. hour of MSNBC Live, host Brian Shactman brought on Ilyse Hogue, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, to offer her predictable insight on the march and abortion rights in general. Shactman began by attempting to marginalize the march -- attended by tens of thousands of mostly young people -- asking, “I mean, what's the impact of the March for Life? Does it have one?”
January 21, 2014, 3:50 PM EST
David Remnick of The New Yorker showed up on PBS’s Charlie Rose Monday night to discuss his long, mostly sympathetic profile of Barack Obama from the January 27 issue of the magazine. Near the end of the interview, Rose focused in on the president’s reported desire to be “big.” The host wondered, “[W]hat's his definition of 'big,' and does he believe in his deep recesses of his own mind that the chance of that has slipped away?”
Remnick replied that no, Obama does not think his chance of being “big” has slipped away. The editor then rattled off a laundry list of Obama achievements that might be considered hallmarks of a “big” – meaning “great” – president. Among them were these two gems:
January 20, 2014, 3:33 PM EST
NBC has latched onto the Chris Christie bridge scandal like a leech, so it was no surprise to see a report on the controversy within the first ten minutes of Saturday’s Today show. What was surprising, and dismaying, was that NBC followed up its report with reaction from Debbie Wasserman Schultz. It would be hard to find a less impartial analyst on this matter than the chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee.
Reporter Kelly O’Donnell first mentioned DWS’s name at the tail end of her piece, announcing, “The chairman of the Democratic National Committee, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, she represents Florida in Congress, she'll be doing some of her own public events to try to counter Christie's message.”
January 17, 2014, 11:30 AM EST
TIME Magazine managing editor Nancy Gibbs is a well-established fan of Hillary Clinton, and on Thursday she brought her cheerleading act to MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell Reports. Gibbs was there to discuss this week’s cover of TIME, which asks, “Can Anyone Stop Hillary?”
Mitchell asked Gibbs how long Hillary can postpone making a decision about whether to run for president in 2016. Gibbs responded, “I think she can postpone it almost longer than anyone we have seen. It allows her to not have to answer every controversy that comes up, the latest obviously being the Benghazi report today.”
January 16, 2014, 11:52 AM EST
Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates has been facing criticism and scorn from some media members for having the audacity to mildly criticize President Obama and some administration officials while Obama is still in office. On Tuesday, Gates appeared on the PBS NewsHour to face another round of questioning about his newly released memoir.
Midway through the interview, anchor Judy Woodruff suggested that the former defense secretary could lower morale among troops on the ground overseas:
January 15, 2014, 1:20 PM EST
MSNBC personalities continue to do all they can to put a happy face on the rollout of ObamaCare. On Tuesday’s NOW with Alex Wagner, Ms. Wagner and MSNBC contributor Ezra Klein furiously spun the latest enrollment numbers of “young invincibles.” First off, Klein advised the MSNBC audience not to worry about the presently low enrollment among young people; things will probably get better!
Insisted Klein:
January 14, 2014, 4:48 PM EST
We at NewsBusters have demonstrated over the years that the liberal media are all too eager to flog Republican scandals to death while ignoring or downplaying Democratic scandals. MSNBC contributor Jonathan Alter provided a case study of that bias during an appearance on Sunday’s episode of Disrupt with Karen Finney.
While discussing Chris Christie’s bridge controversy, Alter brought up the Obama administration’s IRS scandal. Said Alter to the host, a former Democratic National Committee communications director: