On Monday's NBC Today, fill-in co-host Tamron Hall asked incoming Meet the Press moderator Chuck Todd if all the criticism of President Obama's vacation in Martha's Vineyard amid numerous crises was "just politics as usual." Todd replied: "Yes, it's politics as usual, but in this case, this is optics, this was stuff they should have seen coming. This is not new to them." [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump]
Todd noted "backtracking" from former Obama adviser David Axelrod: "You know what? Maybe Democrats are too hard on President Bush when they used to beat him up for his vacations in Crawford." Todd concluded that Obama "wanted his downtime" and "guards his downtime," "But, you know what? It's something they should have been more aware of."
Tamron Hall
On Tuesday's NBC Today, co-host Savannah Guthrie touted "such a bizarre story" of a doctor legally carrying a gun into a Phoenix airport. In the two-minute report that followed, correspondent Tamron Hall explained that Dr. Peter Steinmetz, a neurological researcher, "was arrested after he pointed the gun at a woman and her young daughter." Hall declared: "Police think he may have just wanted to make a statement about the right to bear arms." [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump]
Another armed doctor who recently made news was Dr. Lee Silverman, who heroically stopped a shooter at a Pennsylvania hospital on Thursday. Friday's Today offered a mere 33-second news brief on that story.
On the July 28 edition of NewsNation, anchor Tamron Hall did her part to push the alarmist liberal narrative about how radical Republicans are itching to impeach President Obama. The news hook for this was how “the new incoming House GOP whip, Tea Party backed Louisiana congressman Steve Scalise will not rule out impeaching the president over his use of executive orders.” This despite the fact there’s much “unfinished business” and “that urgent do list” of “the border crisis” and “funding for the nation’s highway and infrastructure project” on Congress’s plate.
The Today show co-anchor aired a clip from Fox News Sunday of host Chris Wallace repeatedly asking the Louisiana Republican if he would “consider impeaching the president.” Wallace responded that “it might be the first White House in history that is trying to start the narrative of impeaching their own president.” Of course, nowhere in the clip did the Louisiana representative insinuate that he was angling for impeachment. Instead Scalise called out the White House for stressing impeachment talks in an attempt “to fundraise off of that” and “change the topic away from the president's failed agenda.” [See video below. Click here for MP3 audio]
Ever since the border patrol began sending hundreds of illegal immigrants from Texas to the town of Murrieta, California, despite opposition from local residents, the folks at NBC News have repeatedly failed to use the term “illegal immigrant” to describe the confrontation between the two sides.
On Thursday, July 3, NBC’s Today continued to omit the term “illegal immigrant” from its lexicon. In fact, it has been the only one of the "big three" networks to not use the term when reporting on the situation in Murrieta. Instead, its reporters continue to refer to them as “undocumented immigrants.” [See video below.]
On the June 19 edition of NewsNation With Tamron Hall, the MSNBCer and Today news desk anchor interviewed Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-N.Y.) on American intervention in Iraq. When Hall asked the congressman what he believed would be the consequences if Maliki refused to meet American demands for reform, Meeks’s answer morphed into a rant against former Vice President Dick Cheney. Meeks snarled, “how dare he come and even raise his ugly head at this time.”
Violent rhetoric is not new for the Democrat facing multiple allegations of fraud and corruption. Just this past March, Meeks displayed a similar lack of tact towards the former veep, stating “Dick Cheney should just keep his mouth shut and stay at home.” These sentiments were mirrored later in Hall’s interview when he snapped “the guy should just go stay retired, take care of his health and just keep his mouth shut.” [See video below. Click here for MP3 audio]
As city after city in northern Iraq falls to deadly Islamist extremist militias pressing onward to Baghdad, questions are now being raised about the wisdom of the United States’ swift exit from the Middle East nation just a couple of years ago at the direction of President Obama. But leave it to MSNBC to preemptively shut down any criticism of the White House.
On the June 12 edition of NewsNation, host Tamron Hall had several foreign policy experts on to analyze the chaos in Iraq specifically and the Middle East more generally. Towards the end of the conversation, Hall felt the need to defend attacks against Obama from the right [MP3 audio here; video below]:
On Tuesday morning a high school student in Oregon open fire in a high school killing another student before taking his own life. Following the tragedy, all three morning network news shows played up President Obama’s reaction and promoted his call for action.
While ABC, CBS, and NBC all promoted Obama’s statement, NBC’s Today was the most enthusiastic with Savannah Guthrie noting the president “had some pretty strong words” and hyping “pretty extraordinary moment” following the shooting. [See video below.]
At the top of the 9 a.m. ET hour on Friday's NBC Today, co-hosts Al Roker, Tamron Hall, and Natalie Morales came up with an odd imaging of a 2008 meeting between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama following the bruising Democratic primary. Roker joked: "Well, during that date, they did play Kenny G. That really helped." Hall added: "No, no, they played Kenny G. Bill Clinton came in with the sax as Kenny G." [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump]
Hall confessed: "We fantasize a lot around here." Roker remarked: "We're just in our little world." Morales chimed in: "And they drank bottles and bottles of Chardonnay and then everything was okay."
The journalists at CBS This Morning on Thursday skeptically examined a new law in Tennessee that allows criminal charges for pregnant women who abuse drugs. Co-anchor Norah O'Donnell warned, "...The ACLU says this law is dangerous. It could prevent women from getting necessary prenatal care."
Talking to CBS legal analyst Rikki Klieman, co-anchor Gayle King fretted, "But doesn't it raise a question if the state is trying to get involved in what a woman can and cannot do with her body?" [See video below. MP3 audio here.] Of course, the fact that drug use is already illegal didn't seem to cross King's mind. She continued, "Doesn't that raise a whole other set of issues that no one wants to get involved with?" Among the networks, CBS alone has covered the newly signed law, while ABC and NBC ignored it.
A day after the liberal website Think Progress wrote a piece complaining “There’s Even A Gender Gap In Children’s Allowances” the folks over at NBC rushed to tie the issue to the “pay gap” between men and women.
On Thursday, April 24, Today show co-host Matt Lauer hyped “We all know about a pay gap that exists for adult men and women in the work world, but there are surprising new numbers this morning revealing that that gap actually begins during childhood with the allowances we pay our kids. In a new survey, 70% of boys say they get an allowance. That’s compared to just 60% of girls.” [See video below.]
Tuesday's World News on ABC stood out as the only Big Three network evening newscast to cover a new "watchdog report" that found that the IRS "handed out more than $1 million in bonuses to employees who were delinquent on their federal taxes." Jeff Zeleny also pointed out how "more than 1,000 IRS workers, who didn't pay their taxes, received not only cash bonuses, but extra time off." [MP3 audio available here; video below the jump]
By contrast, NBC Nightly News and CBS Evening News on Tuesday both devoted air time to the 50th anniversary of the 1964 World's Fair in New York City. NBC's Brian Williams also gave a 28-second news brief on Prince William and Princess Kate's visit to Ayers Rock in Australia, where they posed at the same spot as the prince's parents during the 1980s:
At the top of the 9 a.m. ET hour on Thursday's NBC Today, co-host Natalie Morales seized on Chelsea Clinton answering a question she "gets asked all the time, just about every other day": "In a new interview she is saying she is now perhaps is opening that window that she may possibly think about running for public office." [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump]
After Morales touted Clinton's comments to Fast Company magazine on the subject, fellow co-host Willie Geist proclaimed: "She is a very, very impressive woman." Morales agreed: "She is." Geist continued: "And she'll do whatever she wants to do in life."