Willie Geist

NBC, CBS Cover Obama Spelling Flub; ABC Out to Lunch
By Matthew Balan | March 8, 2014 | 2:46 PM EST

Viewers of ABC's morning and evening newscasts on Friday would have been left unaware of President Obama's gaffe of elementary proportions during a White House concert on Thursday evening. Both Good Morning America and World News omitted how the Democrat left out the first "E" in the title of Aretha Franklin's most famous song: "When Aretha first told us what R-S-P-E-C-T meant to her."

By contrast, the network's competitors at CBS and NBC covered the President's trip-up on their morning shows and evening news broadcasts. NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams even mentioned a infamous spelling flub by a former Republican vice president: [MP3 audio available here; video below the jump]

Networks Tout Obama's Planned Summit With 'Very Similar' Pope; Ignore Dispute Over Religious Liberty
By Matthew Balan | January 21, 2014 | 1:10 PM EST

On Tuesday, ABC, CBS, and NBC's morning newscasts all hyped the White House's announcement that President Obama's would meet with Pope Francis in March, and emphasized their apparent agreement on economic issues. On CBS This Morning, Bill Plante touted the "chance for him [Obama] to align himself with the agenda of the very popular new pope, at a time when the President's own popularity here at home is at a low point."

ABC's Robin Roberts even asserted on Good Morning America that the two world leaders are "very similar." However, none of these morning shows reported that just a week earlier, the Pope's secretary of state "expressed [his] concern...for the healthcare reforms in relation to the guarantee of religious freedom and conscientious objection" during a meeting with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry. [MP3 audio available here; video clips below the jump]

ABC Touts ObamaCare's Popularity, While NBC Reports Website Problems
By Matt Hadro | December 24, 2013 | 12:03 PM EST

For the second straight morning, ABC's Jonathan Karl was merely a White House stenographer when reporting on ObamaCare's year-end deadline, touting enrollment numbers and parroting White House talking points.

Tuesday's Good Morning America framed the latest ObamaCare delay as a result of the law's popularity, as opposed to NBC reporting that it was, at least in part, due to website issues. "A crush of visitors to the website yesterday caused the White House to expand this year's deadline for signing up through the end of today," co-host George Stephanopoulos reported.

NBC's Roker Wants To Give Himself As Christmas Gift To Biden
By Jeffrey Meyer | December 13, 2013 | 2:30 PM EST

Al Roker’s man crush on Vice President Biden took a new and unusual turn on Friday’s Today.

Speaking with co-hosts Natalie Morales and Willie Geist, the NBC weatherman (jokingly?) expressed his desire to, “make the pitch [for Biden to co-host Today] wrapped in a box. I'm going to deliver myself on the front steps. Big bow in a box. He's going to open it. Mr. Vice president.” [See video after jump.] 

Networks Hype 'Interesting' Moment With Liberal 'Heckler'; Obama Handled It 'Well'
By Scott Whitlock | November 26, 2013 | 12:46 PM EST

 All three networks on Tuesday hyped an "interesting" exchange between Barack Obama and a liberal heckler. ABC, CBS and ABC declined, however, to specifically note that the man's concern was that the President simply wasn't liberal enough on the issue of immigration reform. On NBC's Today, Natalie Morales praised, "You know, I think that the President handled it well by engaging." [See video below. MP3 audio here.]

Co-host Willie Geist defended the President's insistence that he needs Congress to pass legislation. Geist sympathetically noted, "The President's argument was 'I can't wave the magic wand and make this go away.' But he did do that for some of the younger dreamers." The younger dreamers? Quite the loaded term.

NBC Sympathizes: 'Humble President' Was 'Strikingly Contrite' About ObamaCare Failures
By Kyle Drennen | November 15, 2013 | 4:45 PM EST

On Friday, NBC's Today tried to cast President Obama's Thursday press conference about the ObamaCare disaster in the most sympathetic light possible, with co-host Savannah leading off the show by proclaiming: "The humble president....President Obama does damage control on the botched health care rollout with his legacy hanging in the balance." [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump]

Introducing the segment moments later, Guthrie claimed the President was "falling on the sword over this health care rollout disaster." In the report that followed, White House correspondent Peter Alexander emphasized Obama's supposedly humility: "The President the first to admit that he has a lot of work ahead of him to regain the confidence of the American people....[he] was strikingly contrite."

'Today' Hosts Mock ObamaCare Ads That 'A Lot of People Are Offended By'
By Kyle Drennen | November 13, 2013 | 2:39 PM EST

Early in the 9 a.m. ET hour on Wednesday's NBC Today, co-hosts Willie Geist, Natalie Morales, and Al Roker mocked a series of new ads designed to promote ObamaCare, even with Geist reading one of them while doing his best impression of Anchorman's Ron Burgundy: "Let's get physical. OMG, he's hot. Let's hope he's as easy to get as this birth control. My health insurance covers the pill, which means all I have to worry about is getting it between the covers." [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump]

'Very, Very Major' Social Media Site Co-Founder: Obamacare Technology 'Sucks'
By Mark Finkelstein | October 23, 2013 | 9:30 AM EDT

Don't take it from conservatives.  The co-founder of a "very, very major social-media site" has said the criticism of the Obamacare website is fair because the "technology sucks."

So reported Willie Geist on today's Morning Joe, telling panelists that the person he interviewed was co-founder of a site so major that they would all know it and might have it open on their computers as he spoke. View the video after the jump.

 

Twenty-five Years Later, Sharpton Still Defending Role in Brawley Rape Hoax
By Paul Bremmer | October 8, 2013 | 5:26 PM EDT

It’s been 25 years since a grand jury concluded that young Tawana Brawley falsely accused a group of white men of raping her, but the Rev. Al Sharpton still believes he did the right thing by supporting Brawley back then. Sharpton was on MSNBC’s Morning Joe on Tuesday to talk about his new book when co-host Mika Brzezinski brought up the infamous Brawley rape case, in which Sharpton played a major advisory role to the 15-year-old. The Politics Nation host claimed that the case had taught him to conduct himself in a more dignified manner when representing alleged victims of discrimination so the public would be more sympathetic to his cause.

However, Sharpton did not express any particular regret that Brawley’s claims were ruled false, so Willie Geist prodded him on the matter: “Do you regret at all, Rev, what you put some of the men through in that case, though, the guys who turned out to be innocent?” Sharpton was unapologetic: [See video below.]

NBC Delighted By SNL Mocking GOP Over Government Shutdown
By Kyle Drennen | October 7, 2013 | 3:53 PM EDT

On Monday, the hosts of NBC's Today eagerly played clips of Saturday Night Live bashing Republicans over the government shutdown. In the morning show's 7 a.m. ET half hour, fill-in co-host Tamron Hall played a clip of SNL host Miley Cyrus doing a parody music video blaming the GOP for the shutdown and gushed: "I think she [Cyrus] might become a member of the five-timers club. You know, the group of hosts who've hosted five times." [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump]

At the top of the 9 a.m. ET hour, co-host Willie Geist touted: "7th day now of the shutdown. Let's look at the bright side, the SNL side, how they handled it....Weekend Update...had an interesting take on the shutdown's winners and losers." A clip played of SNL cast member Seth Myers ranting: "Loser, John Boehner. I feel sorry for you buddy. It's exhausting watching you trying to maintain your dignity while wrangling those Tea Party maniacs. You're like Seinfeld if they're were 30 Kramers."

Ted Cruz As Lord Voldemort: He Who Must Not Be Named By 'Morning Joe'
By Mark Finkelstein | October 2, 2013 | 8:13 AM EDT

Move over, Lord Voldemort.  Ted Cruz has taken your place as the man so evil he must not be named .  .  .

Today's Morning Joe featured a strange trope in which Cruz was being unmistakably referred to by various members of the panel, but, at least in the first hour, never mentioned by name.  Instead, Joe Scarborough, Mike Barnicle and Willie Geist variously alluded to Cruz as "one Republican senator specifically" or as one of "a couple of Republican senators" or "certain members of the Senate."  Why the aversion to calling Ted Cruz by name?  Were the Morning Joers trying to deprive Cruz of publicity?  View the video after the jump.

Scarborough Defends Conservative Republicans, Schools Liberal Panel In Process
By Andrew Lautz | July 25, 2013 | 2:07 PM EDT

MSNBC host Joe Scarborough has been making some fairly conservative arguments on his program as of late. On Thursday’s Morning Joe, for instance, he took his liberal guests to task, blasting Politico’s Jim VandeHei and The New York Time’s Steve Rattner for characterizing the House GOP as a do-nothing, radical conference.

Scarborough insisted that Republicans have stood for the same principles “for 100 years,” while dismantling the relentless claim from liberals that the current House of Representatives is the most extreme in American history: