Real estate is always about “location, location, location.” So is media – as a Huffington Post Live interview with conservative talker Hugh Hewitt just proved.
Although Hewitt came onto the show to talk about his new book, The Queen, interviewer Josh Zepps was far more interested in throwing paper darts at conservative media. Every time Hewitt tried to get at the truth of a given topic, Zepps shifted the conversation.
On Sunday’s Meet the Press, conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt provided some much needed balance to the show’s political panel when he pressed Bill Daley, President Obama’s former Chief of Staff, over Hillary Clinton’s use of a private e-mail server.
On Sunday, NBC’s Meet the Press spent considerable time analyzing Hillary Clinton’s soon-to-be presidential announcement but Chuck Todd found time to ask if the GOP spends too much time trying to defeat the Clintons. Speaking to conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt, Todd wondered “I look at sort of an obsession on the right of beating Obama and beating Clinton, Bill Clinton, over the years and I think, they're zero for four. Is there a point where you do this too much?”
Something tells me Zach Carter won't be making many media appearances in the months to come, at least not while still employed by Huffington Post.
HuffPo's "senior political economy reporter" -- quite possibly the only time you'll see that job title -- made a mess of things during a recent appearance on Hugh Hewitt's radio show by demonstrating that his opposition to the Iraq war is a mile wide and knowledge of events leading to it an inch deep. (Audio clips after the jump)
CNN’s Jake Tapper had some strong words for White House press secretary Jay Carney on Thursday. Appearing on The Hugh Hewitt Show, Tapper accused Carney of making “dissembling, obfuscating,” and “insulting” comments regarding the September 2012 Benghazi attacks.
Hewitt came right out and called Carney a liar, but Tapper was not willing to go quite that far. He remarked, “[C]alling somebody a liar is – it’s not normally the kind of language I use. But I think that the comments that are being made are dissembling, obfuscating, and often, you know, insulting.” [Listen to MP3 audio here.]
CNN anchor Jake Tapper went on Hugh Hewitt’s radio show Tuesday, and naturally the 2016 presidential race came up as a discussion topic. Referring to the battle for the Republican nomination, Tapper proclaimed, “[I]t is a wide-open field, and there is no one, literally no one I would discount.”
The veteran political journalist then rattled off a few GOP hopefuls he would not discount – Gov. Rick Perry, Sen. Rand Paul, Sen. Rob Portman. He wouldn’t even discount New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, in spite of the current bridge controversy. But then Hewitt’s co-host, Jamie Weinstein of The Daily Caller, asked, “What about Joe Scarborough 2016?” [YouTube video embedded below the break.]
Appearing on Hugh Hewitt’s radio show on Monday, MSNBC host Joy Reid repeatedly refused to characterize either Russian president Vladimir Putin or Syrian president Bashar al-Assad as “evil.” During a contentious debate over Russia’s invasion of eastern Ukraine, Hewitt asked his guest point-blank, “Do you agree that what Russia is doing is evil?”
Reid hedged on her answer, replying:
Famous Hollywood filmmaker David Mamet on Monday dared to oppose liberal orthodoxy, slamming Barack Obama as a "tyrant." Appearing on the Hugh Hewitt Show, the writer/director (The Untouchables, Wag the Dog, Ronin) decried the President's deal with Iran over nuclear production.
Mamet assailed, "He's a tyrant. And I give him great credit. He's always said that his idea was to reform the United States." [See video below. MP3 audio here.] He added, "And, you know, like many tyrants, like Wilson and like Franklin Delano Roosevelt, he believes that his way is the right way and that he's going to implement his vision of the world." (In addition to attacking Obama, you don't see too many directors going after FDR.)
MSNBC analyst Joy Reid is one of those liberal media figures who still refuses to say that President Obama lied about Americans’ ability to keep their insurance plans under ObamaCare. On Tuesday night, Reid made a guest appearance on Hugh Hewitt’s radio show to discuss the health care law. Hewitt confronted Reid with a clip of Obama’s recent whitewashing: “If you have or had one of these plans before the Affordable Care Act came into law, and you really like that plan, what we said was you could keep it if it hasn’t changed since the law was passed.”
Rather than confess that Obama lied, Reid undertook a defense of the president using as an analogy DDT, a popular pesticide that was banned in 1972. She explained, “Now had the government in 1972 said, ‘Listen, if you love your pesticide, you can keep it,’ it would have been wrong because the truth is if your pesticide contained DDT, it was now illegal. But you’d have to buy a totally different pesticide and use that on your garden.”
Yesterday, I reported that MSNBC host Joe Scarborough and his Morning Joe guests refused to come out and explicitly state that President Obama lied when he repeatedly insisted that those who like their health insurance can keep it under ObamaCare. Well, on Hugh Hewitt’s radio show Tuesday night, Scarborough finally allowed the L-word to escape his lips.
The conservative radio host played a clip of The Chicago Tribune’s Clarence Page saying Obama “probably” lied about his health care law. He then asked Scarborough, “Are you surprised that people like Clarence Page are admitting the president just out-and-out lied?” [Listen to the audio here.]
There may be no more misleading newspaper sentence in the Virginia governor’s race than this one from reporter Carol Morello in the October 26 Washington Post: “The two major-party candidates running for governor of Virginia are both practicing Catholics.”
The Post did not ask McAuliffe where near his home in Fairfax County he attends church every Sunday and holy day of obligation, which is part of the definition of a “practicing Catholic.” When radio show host Hugh Hewitt pressed him in 2007 about his church attendance after McAuliffe repeatedly cited his “Irish Catholic” bona fides in his autobiography “What a Party,” McAuliffe shot back “I don’t pretend to be a priest, and I don’t pretend to be citing…I don’t cite the Bible once in the book.”
The exceedlingly pompous Washington Post columnist Ezra Klein got a much-needed scolding from conservative talk radio host Hugh Hewitt Sunday.
After Klein complained that he couldn't "remember a time when House/Senate/WH sources were as pessimistic... as in these last 3 weeks,” Hewitt smartly shot back, "Ezra, you are 28!"