Joe Biden appeared on all three morning shows, Wednesday, to tout the President's call for new taxes. ABC and CBS both quizzed the Vice President on the process of getting new laws passed, but didn't offer much analysis on the tax hikes. Instead, CBS This Morning co-host Gayle King found time to wonder about football.
State of the Union
By Curtis Houck | January 21, 2015 | 7:07 AM EST
While NBC News was up to its usual business in praising and defending President Obama both before and after his State of the Union speech, chief foreign correspondent Richard Engel emerged as a rare voice that instead took to the liberal network’s airwaves to condemn the President’s rhetoric on foreign policy as both unrealistic and, in many cases, simply not true.
After being asked by anchor Brian Williams for his thoughts, Engel began dissecting the President’s perceived world outlook: “Well, it sounded like the President was outlining a world that he wishes we were all living in but which is very different than the world that you just described with terror raids taking place across Europe, ISIS very much on the move.”
By Curtis Houck | January 21, 2015 | 2:12 AM EST
During NBC’s coverage of President Obama’s seventh State of the Union speech, anchor Brian Williams remarked how there’s been “change in tone and tenor and ambiance” inside the House chamber from over the past few years and chose to link it to Republican Congressman Joe Wilson (S.C.) telling the President “you lie” during a 2009 speech before a joint session of Congress.
After saying how “some now believe the State of the Union is an opportunity for call and response,” Williams suggested an origin for the change in mood at this annual event: “It may have started this – this era may have started with the 'you lie' comment that was yelled at this President.”
By Curtis Houck | January 21, 2015 | 1:04 AM EST
At the conclusion of President Barack Obama’s 2015 State of the Union speech, CBS News chief Washington correspondent and Face the Nation host Bob Schieffer offered plenty of praise for the President’s address by proclaiming it as “the best speech he’s made in awhile” with “soaring rhetoric” and being “uplifting at the end.”
In the moments right after the speech, Schieffer declared that the President’s seventh State of the Union was “the best speech he’s made in a while” and diagnosed him as being “more relaxed and at ease than I can recall in a long time.”
Andrea Mitchell Gushes: Obama’s ‘Economic Message’ Is ‘So Politically in Tune With’ the American People
By Curtis Houck | January 20, 2015 | 11:00 PM EST Following President Obama’s State of the Union address, NBC News chief foreign affairs correspondent Andrea Mitchell fawned over the President’s liberal economic proposals of tax increases as “so politically in tune with” most Americans.
“[T]he economic message, also, is so politically in tune with where the broad specter of the American people are,” Mitchell proclaimed.
By Scott Whitlock | January 20, 2015 | 10:38 PM EST
During ABC’s preview of the State of the Union, former Democratic operative turned journalist George Stephanopoulos, Jon Karl and Matt Dowd pre-hyped a “triumphant” Obama and his “I told you so attitude” towards Republicans.
By Curtis Houck | January 20, 2015 | 8:29 PM EST
While previewing President Obama’s State of the Union address on Tuesday night, NBC Nightly News had on Meet the Press moderator Chuck Todd, who told viewers that the President will set out to “do a little victory lap about the state of the economy” and opined how Obama “got the post-election honeymoon, not the Republicans” thanks to his moves on illegal immigration and Cuba.
Following the move of fellow networks ABC and CBS, Todd touted the positive numbers for Obama in the latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll after having largely ignored the negative ones in the lead up to the 2014 midterm elections.
By Kyle Drennen | January 20, 2015 | 1:01 PM EST
On Tuesday's NBC Today, co-host Matt Lauer actually grilled White House chief of staff Denis McDonough on President Obama's tax hike proposal: "During the President's last press conference of 2014, he was asked how he might be able to work with the new incoming Republican-controlled Congress and he said, quote, 'The tax area is one area where we can get things done.' And now he's proposing a middle class tax cut paid for with a tax hike on the wealthiest Americans that just about everyone says cannot pass this congress. So why is he going this route?"
ABC, NBC Cheer Obama’s Liberal Proposals in SOTU Previews; ‘Going to Play a Little Robin Hood’ With Tax Hikes
By Curtis Houck | January 19, 2015 | 9:58 PM EST Ahead of President Obama’s State of the Union address on Tuesday, the networks offered previews of his speech during their Monday evening newscasts with ABC and NBC working particularly hard to paint a rosy picture for Obama with rising poll numbers and having “redefined” the “model of how to sell the State of the Union.”
By Kyle Drennen | January 19, 2015 | 4:51 PM EST
At the top of NBC's Meet the Press on Sunday, moderator Chuck Todd wondered if a Republican rising star could overcome a major obstacle that has occurred "year after year" for the GOP: "Can Iowa's Joni Ernst avoid becoming the latest victim of the curse of the State of the Union response?"
By Kyle Drennen | January 19, 2015 | 12:53 PM EST
On Sunday's NBC Nightly News, anchor Lester Holt touted how President Obama's plan to "propose tax hikes for wealthiest Americans" during Tuesday's State of the Union address would be "potentially putting Congress in the position of appearing to defend the highest income earners over the middle class."
By Jeffrey Meyer | February 2, 2014 | 12:41 PM EST
George Stephanopoulos must be spending too much of his free time watching MSNBC as he used their talking points to attack Congressman Paul Ryan (R-WI) during an interview on This Week on February 2.
The Republican congressman appeared with the ABC host and former Press Secretary for President Bill Clinton on Sunday morning and was immediately hit with a barrage of attacks over his opposition to President Obama’s use of executive orders to his views on poverty. Stephanopoulos went so far as to suggest that Pope Francis would reject Paul’s conservative philosophy and claimed that, “You don't think he'd endorse your budget, do you?”