The “big three” of ABC, CBS, and NBC all prominently touted on Monday night President Barack Obama’s visit to the Pentagon to discuss the fight against ISIS, but skimped on reporting any criticism of the administration’s strategy but instead lamenting that he’s had to try once “again to reassure an anxious nation” despite polls showing Americans are concerned about the growing threat of terrorism.
Campaigns & Elections
Daily Beast Pundit: GOP Could Become a ‘Neo-Fascist, White-Identity Party’ If Leadership Doesn’t Speak Out
By Tom Johnson | December 14, 2015 | 5:25 PM EST Several weeks ago, there was an Internet meme about whether it would have been ethical to kill the infant Adolf Hitler. Michael Tomasky poses a (somewhat) less-weighty back-in-time question: Could the Republican party’s current Donald Trump problem have been avoided?
Tomasky suggests that it could have been, but instead, during Bill Clinton’s first term in the White House, GOPers “played footsie with the then-burgeoning far-right militia movements in the run-up to the [Oklahoma City] bombing…Fringe elements never properly denounced then are now, under Trump, becoming an in-broad-daylight part of the Republican coalition.” In part because of that long-ago malignant neglect, Tomasky argues, “The Republican Party of Trump is becoming a white-identity party, like the far-right parties of Europe."
By Scott Rasmussen | December 14, 2015 | 4:41 PM EST
As Senator Ted Cruz has become a serious contender for the Republican presidential nominating contest, he's facing greater scrutiny and opposition. That's to be expected. Some of the opposition is fairly traditional. Iowa's governor just attacked Cruz for opposing ethanol subsidies. Cruz opposes the subsidies because he doesn't believe the federal government should be picking business winners and losers. Politically, that's a big deal in a state where corn is a major crop and those federal subsidies prop up the price of corn.
By Melissa Mullins | December 14, 2015 | 3:02 PM EST
Even though their ethics guide states, that “reporters and editors should refrain from commenting in a partisan way about candidates or policy issues,” cat-meme giant BuzzFeed is letting those ethical guidelines fall to the wayside when it comes to coverage of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.
By Kyle Drennen | December 14, 2015 | 12:41 PM EST
On Monday’s CBS This Morning, while covering Ted Cruz’s rise in the polls, correspondent Nancy Cordes noted the Republican presidential candidate’s “outspoken opposition to ObamaCare and his willingness to take on both sides of the Washington establishment resonates with Iowa conservatives,” but warned: “That approach has made Cruz deeply unpopular with leaders in his own party, who worry that he could be just as polarizing of a nominee as Trump.”
By Mark Finkelstein | December 14, 2015 | 7:58 AM EST
Joe Scarborough prefaced his remarks this morning by saying "this is the sort of thing that right-wing bloggers get very angry about." So let's oblige him . . .
On Morning Joe, Scarborough said "I am shocked by how many Republicans, that have always voted Republican, that have said they're going to vote for Hillary if it's Cruz or Trump running against Hillary. I'm talking Deep South, Southern Baptist. I asked people who I expect to say yes, Cruz, go "hell no. No. I will never vote for Ted Cruz or Donald Trump. I will vote for Hillary Clinton."
By Alexa Moutevelis Coombs | December 14, 2015 | 5:03 AM EST
Last night’s winter finale of the new ABC drama Quantico and was chockfull of unrealistic politics – and unintentional comedy! The present day storyline of the episode “Inside” had the Democratic National Convention starting in New York City the day after Grand Central Station was bombed and over 100 people were killed. Right, the DNC would TOTALLY take place as scheduled the day after a terrorist bombing in the same city!
By Curtis Houck | December 13, 2015 | 5:54 PM EST
On Sunday, ABC’s Good Morning America served as the latest example of shameless corporate synergy by touting in its lead 2016 report how actor Tony Goldwyn from the network’s lead drama Scandal spent Saturday giving Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton “a big boost” by campaigning for her Iowa.
By Curtis Houck | December 13, 2015 | 3:49 PM EST
Reporting on Sunday’s This Week about foreign reaction to Donald Trump’s candidacy and proposal to ban all Muslims from entering the U.S., ABC News chief foreign correspondent Terry Moran compared Trump to U.K. Independence Party (U.K.I.P.) leader Nigel Farage despite his firm denouncement of Trump. Moran cheered new leftist Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as providing “sharp relief” to Trump as he publicly “greeted a plane load Syrian refugees” on Friday.
By Mark Finkelstein | December 13, 2015 | 1:32 PM EST
Ain't that reassuring? . . . On today's Meet the Press, John Kerry told Chuck Todd that "for the most part" we know who's entering our country. Kerry's statement came after he boasted about the Obama admin's "huge process" for vetting visa applicants. Not huge enough to catch Tafsheen Malik. Knowing for "the most part" who is entering the US is dangerously insufficient, given the hundreds of thousands of "refugees" and other immigrants from Muslim lands that President Obama wants to admit.
Also troubling was Kerry's response to Todd's question, whether, given that Malik had posted her radical views online before being admitted, we will begin searching the social media of would-be immigrants,. Kerry said we are looking into "whether there are means and whether we should," examine social media. If Kerry can't give an emphatic "yes" to both questions, how can we continue to admit people who might be out to kill us?
By Curtis Houck | December 13, 2015 | 1:19 PM EST
Discussing a focus group of Trump supporters convened by Frank Luntz that aired on Sunday’s Face the Nation, CBS News political analyst Jamelle Bouie promptly trashed them as representing the belief among social scientists (i.e. fellow liberals) that there’s been “a distinct rise in racial resentment and anti-black attitudes” in America resulting as a fact of the Obama presidency.
By Jeffrey Lord | December 12, 2015 | 5:31 PM EST
In the middle of the furor over Donald Trump’s Muslim remarks, Hillary Clinton managed to get out an e-mail titled “A Word on Donald Trump.” There was nothing unexpected in one sense. She disagreed and was attacking him. Ho hum.
But then she bragged of how she defended women.