Following the lead of Tuesday’s Today show, NBC Nightly News continued its offensive against 2016 Republican presidential candidate Marco Rubio for his attendance record in the U.S. Senate (despite previous precedent) and warned that his rise in the polls could result in Rubio suffering the same fate as failed candidate Scott Walker.
Congress
Vox’s Matthew Yglesias: Hillary Does ‘What She Can Get Away With,’ and That’s the Kind of President Democrats Need
By Tom Johnson | October 6, 2015 | 9:28 PM EDT The antics of the former major-league baseball player Manny Ramirez were frequently described as “just Manny being Manny.” Yglesias suggests that Hillary Clinton’s ill-advised use of a private email server was just Hillary being Hillary, and that that’s a good thing.
In a Tuesday article, Yglesias wrote that “from her adventures in cattle trading to chairing a policymaking committee in her husband's White House to running for Senate in a state she'd never lived in…to her email servers, Clinton is clearly more comfortable than the average person with violating norms and operating in legal gray areas.” That modus operandi, he argued, is what liberals will need in the post-Obama years: “Democrats have almost no chance of securing a majority in the US Senate and even worse odds of securing a majority in the House. So if there is a future for making progressive policy, that future is executive action."
By Brad Wilmouth | October 6, 2015 | 6:28 PM EDT
Appearing as a guest on Monday's The Nightly Show on Comedy Central, during a discussion of recent mass shootings, CNN host Ashleigh Banfield declared that it is "amazing" that, although "those who support gun ownership and gun rights" treat the Second Amendment as "unassailable," they wish to "tear apart the Fourth Amendment" to fight terrorism.
Near the end of the show, after The Nightly Show contributor Andy Yard cracked that he was surprised that no gun laws were passed after the Sandy Hook attack because "little white kids got shot," since "anytime something happens to little white kids, 'Oh, [bleep].'" Banfield moments later took aim at those who oppose more gun laws:
By Kyle Drennen | October 6, 2015 | 3:30 PM EDT
On MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell Reports on Tuesday, Washington Post reporter Karen Tumulty proclaimed that House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s comments about the Benghazi investigation had granted Hillary Clinton immunity from scandal: “...the Kevin McCarthy thing has been not only a political gift but it has been sort of a ‘get out of jail free’ card for her to sort of abandon the kind of semi-contrite position she had been taking before, and to come out on offense.”
By Brad Wilmouth | October 6, 2015 | 2:39 PM EDT
On Monday's All In on MSNBC, host Chris Hayes repeated the discredited claim that originated with a liberal blogger that House Majority Whip Steve Scalise spoke at a convention for the European-American Unity and Rights Organization -- founded by white supremacist David Duke -- in the congressman's home state of Louisiana in 2002.
By Kyle Drennen | October 6, 2015 | 11:52 AM EDT
One day after treating Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton to a fawning one-hour town hall with her biggest fans, on Tuesday, NBC’s Today took a more hardball approach with Republican contender Marco Rubio. Co-host Matt Lauer pressed the Florida Senator on his attendance record: “29% of the time over the last year you not in attendance when votes were taken in the Senate....Are you placing your own personal ambitions above your responsibilities to your constituents down in Florida?”
By Brad Wilmouth | October 3, 2015 | 5:04 PM EDT
In the aftermath of the Umpqua Community College mass shootings in Oregon, CNN Newsroom with Carol Costello on Friday hosted gun control activist Andy Parker, father of murder victim Alison Parker, to bash the National Rifle Association and Republicans for their opposition to more gun laws.
After being asked about an op-ed he published in USA Today in which he suggested that the NRA and Republicans are on the side of "evil," Parker went on in the interview to accuse the NRA of "terrorizing this country." A bit earlier, he also accused Texas GOP Rep. Michael McCaul of having "blood on his hands."
By Curtis Houck | October 2, 2015 | 1:53 PM EDT
On the Thursday edition of MSNBC’s All In, liberal host Chris Hayes trumpeted the need for gun control measures after the deadly community college shooting in Roseburg, Oregon by comparing the impediment to enact such policies to the “scale of the response” the world deployed during the 2014 outbreak of the Ebola virus.
CBS Airs Fawning Retrospective of Obama’s ‘Evolving Anger’ on Gun Control; ‘Finds Little’ ‘Hope and Change’
By Curtis Houck | October 2, 2015 | 1:04 PM EDT Friday’s CBS This Morning offered extensive coverage of the deadly shooting on Thursday at a community college in Roseburg, Oregon, but one of the segments took a broader, sappy look at pushing gun control through the lens of President Obama’s “evolving anger” on the inability to pass gun control measures through Congress where he’s found “little” of any “hope and change.”
Wolf Blitzer: Obama ‘Was Embarrassed of the United States in Front of the World’ after Oregon Shooting
By Curtis Houck | October 1, 2015 | 10:49 PM EDT As part of CNN’s live coverage Thursday night of the deadly community college shooting in Oregon, fill-in AC360 host Wolf Blitzer declared that President Barack Obama “was embarrassed of the United States in front of the world” when he commented on the tragedy and urged Americans to “politicize” mass shootings. Prior to Blitzer’s observation, Zeleny fretted the presidential campaigns like that of Hillary Clinton will be unable “to bring any sense to this” shooting with the President encountering “not a bipartisan spirit to do anything.”
By Curtis Houck | October 1, 2015 | 8:40 PM EDT
Following President Barack Obama’s angry reaction Thursday night to the deadly community college shooting in Oregon and pleas to “politicize” mass shootings, the CBS Evening News did just that with a full story lamenting the lack of gun control by laying blame at the feet of the GOP-led Senate and the National Rifle Association (NRA) for their support of candidates in favor of gun rights.
By Matthew Balan | October 1, 2015 | 1:17 PM EDT
CNN's Wolf Blitzer hounded Rep. Jason Chaffetz on Wednesday's Situation Room over his hearing on Planned Parenthood's federal funding, and carried water for the abortion giant. Blitzer quibbled over a chart that was used at the hearing that showed the increase in abortions that Planned Parenthood did, and a concurrent decrease in the number of cancer screenings and other preventive services it does. He then touted a chart from the left-wing Vox site that supposedly "gives a more accurate reflection of what was going on."