On Thursday, CBS This Morning interviewed Colin Powell, former Secretary of State and supporter of President Obama, to discuss whether or not the president made the right call in normalizing relations between the United States and Cuba. Despite Powell being an open supporter of Obama, CBS ignored his close ties to the president. Instead, co-host Charlie Rose introduced him by noting how “President George W. Bush supported the economic embargo on Cuba, so did the Secretary of State during his first term, Colin Powell. The retired Army General is with us from Washington.”
Cuba
By Mark Finkelstein | December 18, 2014 | 8:52 AM EST
It's good that we live in a country where citizens feel free to criticize elected officials to their face. Just wondering, though: when was the last time that freedom was exercised on MSNBC to tell a Dem official that something he said was "inane?"
On today's Morning Joe, Donny Deutsch angrily asked Republican Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart of Miami "why do you say an inane thing like that?" Deutsch's diss came in the context of a heated exchange in which Diaz-Balart told Donny that his notion that the Cuba deal was "liberating" for the Cuban people was "naive" and that Deutsch was living "in la-la land." Deutsch later retaliated, calling Diaz-Balart naive.
By Curtis Houck | December 18, 2014 | 2:21 AM EST
In the lead editorial for Thursday’s paper, The Washington Post blasted President Barack Obama’s decision to move toward normalized relations with the communist regime in Cuba as “naive” in awarding “an undeserved bailout” and “new lease on life” to “a 50-year-old failed regime.”
Charles Pierce: New U.S. Approach to Cuba a ‘No-Lose Proposition’ as Policy and ‘Brilliant’ as Politics
By Tom Johnson | December 18, 2014 | 1:03 AM EST The Esquire blogger is pleased that with Obama’s executive action on immigration and the shift on Cuba, “the Republicans now have two major freak-outs in their base that will do nothing except inflame the implacable Right, and thereby cripple the party's ability to reach out to the new Hispanic voters it claims it wants to attract.”
By Curtis Houck | December 17, 2014 | 11:58 PM EST
Following the trend set when news broke early Wednesday, the major broadcast networks continued their praising of the move by President Obama to seek normalized relations with Cuba on their Wednesday night newscasts.
Between the “big three” of ABC, CBS, and NBC, they made only a few, brief mentions over the course of their 30-minute programs that Cuba was both a communist country and brutal in the treatment of its own people (especially dissenters).
By Curtis Houck | December 17, 2014 | 9:20 PM EST
During Wednesday’s NBC Nightly News, correspondent Mark Potter reported from Havana, Cuba on the news that President Obama was altering U.S. relations with the communist state and parroted a long-standing liberal argument as to why Cuba’s economy has struggled for over half a century.
Speaking about the regime of Fidel and Raul Castro, Potter chose not to blame the policies of the Castros, but those of the United States in why the island nation has suffered economically: “His revolution is showing its age too and Havana, known for its charm and vintage cars, is on life support, its economy crippled by the long-standing U.S. Embargo. People here now hope that will change.”
By Matthew Balan | December 17, 2014 | 7:20 PM EST
Ed Schultz one-upped colleague Chuck Todd on his MSNBC program on Wednesday. Hours after Todd likened President Obama's policy announcement on Cuba to the fall of the Berlin Wall, Schultz compared the Democrat's address to a famous 1987 speech given at the Wall by his predecessor, Ronald Reagan: "Isn't this Barack Obama's 'tear down this wall, Mr. Castro' – that kind of a moment? I mean, if change can take place with the Soviet Union, why can't it take place with the Cuban people here?"
By Ken Shepherd | December 17, 2014 | 5:56 PM EST
In the rush to heap praise on President Obama's move to normalize diplomatic relations with the totalitarian Castro regime in Cuba, Daily Beast headline writer effused, "Obama Smarter Than 10 Presidents on Cuba."
By Kyle Drennen | December 17, 2014 | 5:45 PM EST
During an NBC News Special Report on Wednesday, Nightly News anchor Brian Williams could barely contain his excitement over President Obama announcing the reopening of diplomatic relations with Cuba: "A momentous day, especially for those Americans old enough to remember the Cold War. The curtain came down between Cuba and the United States in January of 1961 and in just a moment diplomatic relations, at least the first steps to which, will be reestablished....It is a day of momentous change, fast-moving change..."
By Matthew Balan | December 17, 2014 | 3:05 PM EST
In a Wednesday post on Twitter, NBC's Chuck Todd bizarrely compared President Obama's announcement changing the U.S. government's stance towards the communist regime in Cuba to the liberation of Eastern Europe in 1989.
By Jeffrey Meyer | December 17, 2014 | 2:55 PM EST
On Wednesday morning, American Alan Gross was released from a five year imprisonment in Cuba in exchange for the release of 3 Cuban spies convicted in the United States. In response to the release, Senators Marco Rubio (R-Fl.) and Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) spoke out strongly against the prisoner swap. Despite the bipartisan disapproval surrounding President Obama’s actions, during her NewsNation program MSNBC host Tamron Hall repeatedly brought on liberal guests to slam Republican Senator Marco Rubio’s comments without acknowledging the Democratic opposition to the prisoner exchange.
By Matthew Balan | August 5, 2014 | 5:16 PM EDT
As of Tuesday morning, ABC's morning and evening newscasts have yet to cover the Associated Press report that revealed the Obama administration's covert program in Cuba that attempted "recruit young Cubans to anti-government activism" on the communist-dominated island. The AP outlined that "over at least two years, the U.S. Agency for International Development...sent nearly a dozen neophytes from Venezuela, Costa Rica and Peru to gin up opposition in Cuba."
By contrast, both CBS This Morning and NBC's Today set aside air time to the scoop. NBC's Natalie Morales gave a 32-second news brief on the clandestine program: [MP3 audio available here; video below the jump]