Dana Milbank

Milbank Slams Obama on James Rosen Probe: 'As Flagrant an Assault on Civil Liberties' As Anything Bush Did
By Tim Graham | May 22, 2013 | 8:05 AM EDT

Up until now, the funniest thing Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank has said in the Obama years is “I think the media would love to have an Obama scandal to cover.” Well, Milbank has finally found a scandal that upsets him: the leak investigation of Fox News reporter James Rosen.

“The Rosen affair is as flagrant an assault on civil liberties as anything done by George W. Bush’s administration, and it uses technology to silence critics in a way Richard Nixon could only have dreamed of.” It’s shaking Milbank’s confidence that the other Obama scandals aren’t scandals:

WashPost's Milbank: GOP Should 'Waste' Time So 'They'll Be of Less Harm to the Country'
By Brad Wilmouth | May 17, 2013 | 6:22 PM EDT

Appearing as a guest on Thursday's PoliticsNation show on MSNBC, Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank mocked House Republicans for repeatedly holding unsuccessful votes to repeal ObamaCare as he suggested they should continue to "waste" time so "they'll be less of a harm to the country" because that way "they're not cutting food stamps." Milbank:

Mark Sanford Wins, Washington Post 'He's Toast' Bias Loses
By Tim Graham | May 8, 2013 | 8:53 AM EDT

The Washington Post reported Mark Sanford’s “easy victory” in a special-election vote for Congress to replace now-Sen. Tim Scott. This had to be disappointing for columnist Dana Milbank, who predicted just last Thursday that “South Carolinians, asked to cross the line with Sanford on Tuesday, are likely to tell him to take a hike.”

The Post tried to paint Sanford as a goner. The only time his race made the front page in the last month was a Karen Tumulty story on April 18 headlined “Trespassing case, GOP's pullout rattle Sanford's bid.” You could smell the morning toast:

Media Chorus to Silence Ted Cruz Growing Louder
By Matthew Sheffield | April 20, 2013 | 7:10 PM EDT

That pesky Ted Cruz just won’t go away. What is wrong with him?

Welcome to the new refrain in Washington as liberal journalists like the Washington Post’s Dana Milbank are stepping up their smear campaign demonize the junior Republican senator from Texas. Milbank, long known for his acid tongue and fealty to conventional liberal opinion did his part by asking on Thursday: “Is there nobody who can tell Ted Cruz to shut up?

Wash Post Falsely Claims Only ‘Few Dozen’ People Show Up In Defense Of Traditional Marriage
By Jeffrey Meyer | March 27, 2013 | 5:26 PM EDT

One of the more interesting things regarding the coverage of the Supreme Court hearing two cases regarding gay marriage has been the lack of reporting on the thousands of individuals who marched on Tuesday in support of traditional marriage.

If you only got your news from the Washington Post, you'd have no clue that the march happened at all, as in two separate pieces both authors ignore the significance of the march, which attracted thousands of traditional marriage supporters.

Live at CPAC: MRC 'Don't Believe the Liberal Media' Button Highlighted on...MSNBC?
By NB Staff | March 14, 2013 | 5:02 PM EDT

Liberal Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank appeared on MSNBC, Thursday, to report on the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). Milbank's lapel prominently displayed a Media Research Center "Don't believe the liberal media" button. To the MSNBC crew, the idea of a left-wing press was a big joke. Martin Bashir could barely keep a straight face as he wondered, "Dana, I understand you're wearing a somewhat impressive badge today...Don't believe the liberal media." 

Although Milbank insisted, "I picked it out myself," he likely got it from the MRC booth at CPAC. Over the years, Milbank and other journalists have visited the MRC presence at CPAC, seemingly amused at the concept of media bias. The Washington Post journalist joked, "I'm undercover here as you can see at CPAC."

CNN Panel Scoffs at Press Getting 'Manipulated' by White House, But CNN Was 'Manipulated' Too
By Matt Hadro | March 11, 2013 | 6:17 PM EDT

On Sunday's Reliable Sources, the CNN panel scoffed at the media for getting "manipulated" by the White House last week into hyping Obama's meetings with the GOP as a "charm offensive." CNN's own reporting shows that it played right into those talking points.

"I love how easily the press corps is manipulated," remarked The Washington Post's Dana Milbank. "So, the President takes a few senators out to dinner at the Jefferson Hotel and has lunch with Paul Ryan, and suddenly, he's reaching out and there's all these efforts to have kumbaya. He's had two meals."

Dana Milbank: Future Scholars Will Be Shocked By Number of F-bombs Dropped By This White House
By Noel Sheppard | March 10, 2013 | 1:45 PM EDT

UPDATE AT END OF POST: Ari Fleischer responds to accusation Milbank made about him in this segment.

The Washington Post's Dana Milbank made an interesting observation Sunday about the vulgarity prominent in the current presidential administration.

Appearing on CNN's Reliable Sources, Milbank said, "The number of F-bombs being dropped by this White House, scholars are going to look in the national archives in 20 or 30 years and they're going to be shocked by the language that was coming out of this place" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Milbank on Obama's First Term: 'Messiah Never Came'
By Noel Sheppard | January 20, 2013 | 9:38 AM EST

As NewsBusters reported Friday, Newsweek magazine's newest cover touts Barack Obama's upcoming inauguration as "The Second Coming."

Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank apparently doesn't agree, and wrote about the President's first term Friday the "messiah never came."

Jansing & Co. Presents Slanted & Misinformed Take on Michigan's Right to Work Legislation
By Ryan Robertson | December 10, 2012 | 6:25 PM EST

Michigan may very well become the 24th state to adopt right-to-work legislation on Tuesday, and liberal media outlets have given its opponents ample opportunity to state their case. While proponents have not been allowed to defend the law at all, MSNBC's Chris Jansing was more than happy to briefly play "devil's advocate" with her guest on Monday -- newly elected state representative Tim Greimel who called right-to-work "too divisive and too extreme for the state."

Following his lengthy diatribe on the subject, in which he also called right-to-work the "surest path to poverty that anybody could pursue here in Michigan," Jansing invited  the Washington Post's Dana Milbank and Jackie Kucinich -- daughter of retiring liberal Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) -- of USA Today back on the program to reinforce the argument Greimel made. Hardly a balanced analysis of legislation designed to safeguard an individual's right not be coerced into a union or into financially supporting a union in which he/she is not a member [ video and transcript below ]

MSNBC's Matthews Obsesses Over 25% of Republicans Favoring Secession; Omits That 29% of Young Voters, 27% of Hispanics Do Too
By Ken Shepherd | December 5, 2012 | 4:56 PM EST

Chris Matthews is not one to let a pesky thing like facts get in the way of a favored liberal narrative. That's why, for example, on the Oct. 22 edition of Hardball he insisted the 9/11 assault on the Benghazi compound was "all about" the YouTube video "Innocence of Muslims," when by that time it was most clearly established that it was a premeditated terrorist strike.

Well, yesterday, Matthews's obsession with painting a significant minority of Republicans as loony secessionists colored his cherry-picking of a Public Policy Polling survey. The Hardball host glommed onto a statistic in a December 4-released PPP poll that found some 25 percent of Republican respondents said they favored their state seceding in light of President Obama's reelection. "What do you want to bet these are the same people who say that President Obama is a Muslim?" huffed Matthews in a tease for a segment entitled "If at First You Don't Secede." But a look at the cross tabs in the poll shows that 27 percent of Hispanics, 29 percent of voters aged 18-29, and even 12 percent of African-Americans favor secession. Those demographics, of course, are all ones which the president handily won. At no point in his segment on the poll, however, did any of these facts come up. [MP3 audio excerpts here; video follows page break]

WashPost's Gearan Treats Hearing on Benghazi Debacle As Partisan While Milbank Suggests GOP Blew CIA Cover
By Ken Shepherd | October 11, 2012 | 3:54 PM EDT

Updated at bottom of post | Bit by bit, slowly but surely, the Obama administration's initial story about what transpired in the deadly September 11 terrorist attack unraveled over the past few weeks. At the same time, we learned, no thanks to broadcast network newscasts that largely ignored the story -- that the consulate was poorly secured, that security personnel had been reduced in the weeks preceding 9/11, and that Amb. Chris Stevens feared for his life.

So how did the Washington Post cover yesterday's House Oversight Committee hearing into "The Security Failures of Benghazi"? According to Post staffer Anne Gearan, it was a "highly charged" partisan exercise that "produced few new revelations about the attack" although it "underscored the administration's political vulnerability over the Benghazi episode four weeks before the presidential election."