On Sunday's NBC Today, co-host Lester Holt wondered if Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius had "successfully separated herself now from this trouble" with the ObamaCare website failure. He further asked: "Is her job safer than it was maybe a week ago?" [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump]
A somewhat puzzled David Gregory, moderator of Meet the Press, replied: "Well, I think her job may be okay for the moment. But I don't think she's separated herself from it....all of these problems really do undercut the potential effectiveness of ObamaCare, whether it can be affordable to insure more and more people. If they don't achieve that, there are enormous problems....enormous problems for how it works for years to come."
David Gregory
NBC chief White House correspondent Chuck Todd made a strong statement Sunday about the administration needing "a fall person" if the ObamaCare website continues to fail.
Appearing on Meet the Press, Todd said, "Kathleen Sebelius is very nervous about her standing with the president" (video follows with transcript and commentary):
How many times in the past five years have you heard a liberal media member declare the Tea Party dead?
It happened again on NBC's Meet the Press Sunday with Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne claiming, "I think that the era of the far right and the era of the Tea Party is over" (video follows with transcript and commentary):
In an incident ignored by the media, race-baiter extraordinaire Andrea Mitchell and other big-name journalists candidly exposed their bigotry and racial prejudices at a friendly forum in the nation's capital last year.
In an unusually candid conversation, mainstream media stars Mitchell, David Gregory, and Dana Milbank let loose in an orgy of Caucasian self-flagellation during a panel discussion titled, "Media: Race & Politics -- The Impact of Race in Politics 2012," at the National Action Network's conference in Washington, D.C. The left-wing street thug group is headed by none other than Jew-hating Obama ally Al Sharpton.
On Monday morning, Time/MSNBC political analyst Mark Halperin explained an obvious political reality to his fellow Morning Joe panelists: “The White House does not have much incentive” to negotiate on the government shutdown, because Democrats expect the liberal news media to hand them a public relations victory. As Halperin put it: “The press is largely sympathetic to their arguments that it’s the House Republicans’ fault.”
In fact, as a new Media Research Center analysis of broadcast network evening news coverage shows, ABC, CBS and NBC spent the two weeks prior to the shutdown almost universally pinning the blame on congressional Republicans, especially conservative/Tea Party House Republicans. By the time the shutdown actually took place on October 1, news audiences had been repeatedly instructed to think about it as a GOP-generated crisis.
Chris Matthews has a new book out about his former boss the late Speaker of the House Tip O'Neill.
Despite this, the MSNBC host was made a fool of on Sunday's Meet the Press by Tea Party Congressman Raul Labrador (R-Id.) concerning how many times the government was shut down when O'Neill ruled the House (video follows with transcript and commentary):
Appearing on Thursday's NBC Today, Meet the Press moderator David Gregory was already predicting the GOP would get the blame for a government shutdown: "Washington loves to engage in the same kind of destructive behavior every couple years, whether it needs to or not....There's a universal feeling that the party that's more divided, that's Republicans, will feel most of the heat on this from the public..." [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump]
Referring to the fast-approaching debt ceiling, co-host Savannah Guthrie fretted: "...we now have a date on the real doomsday...we will reach the borrowing limit in this country no later than October 17." Gregory warned: "Well, I think it is a real crisis point because we know the kind of economic shock that the world, and certainly the U.S. economy, could feel if they were to take that step. That's why nobody messes with this and they always end up raising the debt ceiling, whether they want to or not."
During Wayne LaPierre's appearance on the Sunday morning edition of NBC's Meet the Press, the executive vice president of the National Rifle Association told host David Gregory that the tragic shooting at the Navy Yards on Monday, September 16, actually reinforced his pro-gun stance. He stated: “When the good guys with guns got there, [the shooting] stopped.”
On Monday morning, Carol Costello -- anchor of the weekday CNN Newsroom program -- referred to the NRA representative's remarks by asserting: “We’ve seen this sad movie before, with Mr. LaPierre;” and grumbled: “At the end of the day, nothing will change.”
On NBC's Meet the Press Sunday, PBS host Tavis Smiley spouted the tired media meme that the only reason Republicans are opposed to ObamaCare is because they hate the President.
Fortunately for viewers, The Weekly Standard's Bill Kristol was there to say, "If Nancy Pelosi or John Kerry were president, Republicans would have voted against Kerrycare or Pelosicare. It's not personal to President Obama" (video follows with transcript and commentary):
Talking to NBC's chief White House correspondent Chuck Todd on Sunday's Meet the Press, moderator David Gregory noted "Benghazi back as a political focus this week" following the one-year anniversary of the terrorist attack, prompting Todd to observe: "It is. The House Republicans have not dropped this as an issue." [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump]
Todd continued: "They didn't talk about it last week during the one-year anniversary of the Benghazi attack. But this week, on Thursday alone, three different hearings are going to be taking place on the same day on Capitol Hill. House Republicans, they don't want to drop this."
Have you witnessed Republicans “using extortion and blackmail?”
The Washington Post’s Bob Woodward apparently has, and claimed on NBC’s Meet the Press Sunday that some House GOPers are using such methods to defund ObamaCare (video follows with transcript and commentary):
Congressman Peter King (R-N.Y.) said on NBC’s Meet the Press Sunday, “I wish [President Obama] was more of a Commander-in-Chief than a community organizer.”
This seemed to shock host David Gregory who shot back, “Why do you say that? I mean, that's like a campaign line. What does that mean?” (video follows with transcript and commentary):