On Wednesday, all three network morning shows eagerly seized on the latest Donald Trump controversy to boost Hillary Clinton’s 2016 chances. On NBC’s Today, correspondent Peter Alexander proclaimed: “For the Grand Old Party, an urgent dilemma, fail to stand up to Trump and risk long-term damage to the party or confront Trump and risk his running as an independent....A Trump third-party bid would likely gift wrap the White House for Hillary Clinton.”
Peter Alexander
On Friday, NBC’s Today lambasted Republicans for daring to oppose President Obama on the process of accepting Syrian refugees into the U.S. Co-host Savannah Guthrie proclaimed: “Defying the President, the House on Thursday voted overwhelmingly to impose stringent new screening rules.”
On Thursday, nearly 48 hours after Secretary of State John Kerry suggested that there was a “legitimacy” or a “rationale” behind the January terrorist attack on French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, NBC’s Today finally noticed the highly controversial remarks. ABC and CBS continued to ignore Kerry’s offensive comments.
All three network morning shows on Wednesday hyped Barack Obama’s “outrage” at Republican governors and presidential candidates, “slamming” them for opposition to Syrian refugees coming to America. On Good Morning America, Jon Karl parroted, “Overnight in Manila, President Obama expressed outrage at Republican calls to keep Syrian refugees out of the United States.”
On Thursday night and Friday morning, NBC News tried their best to go after Republican presidential candidate Dr. Ben Carson by attempting to make a mountain out of a molehill of his relationship with a man who was convicted nearly a decade ago of insurance fraud while ignoring the ongoing investigation of Hillary Clinton over her private e-mail server.
On Wednesday’s NBC Today, correspondent Peter Alexander actually attempted to discredit Marco Rubio’s rhetorical observation that “Welders make more money than philosophers.” Taking the comment literally, Alexander asserted: “That was one of the most memorable lines of the night, but it's also not true. Government statistics show that philosophers, philosophy teachers in this country, make on average almost twice as much as welders.”
On Tuesday, all three network morning shows happily touted President Obama attacking Republicans at a Democratic fundraiser Monday night over GOP presidential candidates objecting to CNBC’s biased debate. At the top of NBC’s Today, co-host Savannah Guthrie proclaimed: “The Republican candidates, briefly unified, splinter again over their debate demands as President Obama takes a swipe, mocking the Republican field's beef with debate moderators.”
On Friday, NBC’s Today tried to spin Republicans objecting to CNBC’s disastrous debate moderators as a problem for the GOP. Co-host Matt Lauer declared: “Grand old problems. Republican candidates reportedly planning to meet about changing how future debates are organized...”
In the second of three segments on Thursday reporting on the fallout from Wednesday’s CNBC Republican presidential debate, NBC Nightly News touted an editorial by The New York Times calling on Governor Chris Christie (N.J.) to drop out of the 2016 field.
Hours before Wednesday’s Republican presidential debate, NBC’s Today and ABC’s Good Morning America both seized on a hit piece in Florida’s Sun Sentinel newspaper demanding that Marco Rubio resign his Senate seat. At the top of Today, co-host Matt Lauer proclaimed: “Florida Senator Marco Rubio gets dealt a tough blow from one of his state's newspapers.”
Filling in for Jose Diaz-Balart during MSNBC’s 10 a.m. ET hour on Tuesday, NBC national correspondent Peter Alexander interrogated Republican Congresswoman Susan Brooks about the House Benghazi Committee: “So if Jeb Bush's campaign insists that his brother, George W. Bush, bears no responsibility for the 9/11 attacks – which of course were carried out by Al Qaeda, but he was president at the time – why then do Hillary Clinton and President Barack Obama bear responsibility for what happened in Benghazi?”
On Thursday, while interviewing Israeli Ambassador Ron Dermer on MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell Reports about the wave of Palestinian terrorist attacks plaguing Jerusalem, fill-in host Peter Alexander cited Obama administration fears of Israeli police being too hard on the knife-wielding killers: “State Department spokesperson John Kirby said that the U.S. was, in his words, ‘concerned about reports that could indicate the potential use of excessive force.’ Is this excessive force?”
