Chuck Todd, NBC News Chief White House Correspondent, political director, and host of The Daily Rundown on MSNBC is at it again minimizing the investigation into the terrorist attack in Benghazi.
Appearing on The Daily Rundown on Monday, May 12, Todd proclaimed that the recent scandal engulfing the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) “has legs and is very dangerous for the White House, much more so frankly than the partisanized Benghazi.” [See video below.]
During an interview with Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid on Thursday's MSNBC Daily Rundown, NBC political director Chuck Todd challenged Reid's suggestion that Republicans were solely to blame for legislation not getting through Congress: "You don't believe Democrats play any role in this? It feels like a tit-for-tat game....you don't belief there's any tit-for-tat going on here?" [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump]
Reid launched into a rant against supposedly unfair media coverage: "One of the problems that the press has in modern-day journalism is everything you do is a tit for tat. You won't call things the way they actually exist. What has happened here is the Republicans have stopped everything from happening....So, you can give me the tit for tat all you want, but the fact is we want to legislate. We want to legislate, we want to take votes."
Appearing on Monday's The Daily Rundown on MSNBC, Washington Post reporter Dan Balz touted Democratic spin that the ongoing Benghazi scandal could actually help Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign: "I talked to somebody over the weekend, a Democrat, who said, you know, this could actually be good for Clinton because the degree to which the right is really after her helps her with her left....if she's under attack by the right, the Democrats across the spectrum will be more forgiving of her." [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump]
Host and NBC political director Chuck Todd led off the exchange by wondering if the House GOP was just "playing politics" with the issue by announcing a select committee to investigate the 2012 terrorist attack. Balz declared: "I mean, I think the base of the Republican Party is very stirred up and continues to be very stirred up over Benghazi." Todd whined: "And they believe the worst in this conspiracy about the White House. And they believe it to the core."
In the first of a series of tweets sent out Tuesday morning, NBC senior political editor Mark Murray complained: "Why ObamaCare's (un)popularity is probably going to continue: ACA opponents have sole control over the airwaves." In a follow-up tweet, Murray cited the Campaign Media Analysis Group: "Per CMAG's Elizabeth Wilner, number of anti-Obamacare commericials since March 31: 32 Number of pro-Obamacare commercials: 0"
In a third tweet minutes later, Murray explained: "Political scientists believe TV ads have an impact on public opinion when one side has unilateral control over the airwaves." What the NBC journalist failed to acknowledge was the massive pro-ObamaCare push his network and others have engaged in over recent months.
Interviewing Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus on MSNBC's Daily Rundown on Wednesday, host and NBC political director Chuck Todd desperately tried to paint the GOP as anti-woman by ironically citing the top woman in the Texas Republican Party observing that men are better at negotiating higher salaries in the workplace. [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump]
Todd melodramatically proclaimed: "...you talked about figuring out better ways to talk to women....But here's the executive director of the Texas Republican Party....I know you're going to say you can't speak and defend everybody's comments, but this is somebody representing the Republican Party in the state of Texas. These things accumulate."
MSNBC's Chuck Todd on Friday eagerly promoted "rising star" Joaquin Castro, a liberal Congressman from Texas. On the same program that he suggested Republicans don't care about minorities, Todd speculated on a Democratic revival in the Lone Star State. He wondered, "Is 2014 the year that Texas Democrats finally elect someone, some member of their party, to a statewide office?" [See video below. MP3 audio here.]
Todd hyped a Texas Monthly Article on "Mr. Castro Goes to Washington." The Daily Rundown host sympathized with the difficulty of being a Democrat in the GOP-controlled House: "Compare the Texas legislature and being a member of the minority party there with being a member of the minority in Congress. What's worse?"
On MSNBC's Daily Rundown on Friday, NBC political director and host Chuck Todd used low attendance at a Conservative Political Action Conference panel discussion to take a cheap shot at Republicans: "For a party struggling to change its demographic destiny, this picture taken by a Brookings Institution fellow of an almost empty ballroom at a panel on Republican outreach into minority communities, should be a bit of a warning. You don't want to play into your party's stereotypes there." [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump]
On Thursday, Brookings fellow John Hudak tweeted during the 2 p.m. ET event: "Big problem for GOP. Most important #CPAC2014 panel. Topic: minority outreach. View: largely empty room." He included the picture Todd referenced, a shot from the back of the large main ballroom at CPAC showing rows of empty chairs.
At the top of MSNBC's Daily Rundown on Wednesday, host and NBC political director Chuck Todd triumphantly declared: "What a difference a shutdown makes. Picking their poison, Republican leaders retreat on the debt limit, handing President Obama a victory....Are we done with the days of the debt ceiling being wielded as a political weapon?" [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump]
Minutes later, Todd rhetorically wondered: "Does this mean the budget wars are over, or are we in at least a cease-fire, and who won?" He concluded: "...the President stuck to his guns on this. He stood firm and forced this scenario, making it much more difficult for Republicans to use the debt ceiling as a political weapon."
On Friday's The Daily Rundown on MSNBC, host and NBC political director Chuck Todd proclaimed that the Republican decision to put off immigration reform until after 2014 "is a long-term disaster for the GOP." He further declared: "If the House refuses to pass immigration after the Senate did so last year, it will become clear to the public, particularly viewers of Telemundo and Univision....that one party is standing in the way of reform, and it's the Republican Party." [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump]
Minutes earlier, after playing a sound bite of House Speaker John Boehner explaining that Republicans simply couldn't trust President Obama to properly implement a new immigration law, Todd sneered: "The argument to slow-walk legislation because the President can't be trusted to implement it, though, strains credibility. If you can't trust the President, then why pass any laws?"
Following White House talking points to the letter on Wednesday's The Daily Rundown on MSNBC, host Chuck Todd bemoaned how "Republicans immediately seized on" the Congressional Budget Office report on ObamaCare costing the economy over 2 million jobs "and spun it the way they want to spin it." He fretted that Democrats would have a tough time defending ObamaCare "in the world of sound bites and 30-second TV ads." [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump]
Talking to former CBO director Doug Holtz-Eakin minutes later, Todd complained: "On health care, a lot of your Republican friends are taking it [the CBO report] and calling it – it is an unfair statement to – they should not be saying this is costing 2 million jobs, is that right?"
Appearing on Wednesday's MSNBC Daily Rundown, NBC special correspondent Tom Brokaw warned his media colleagues about their excessive coverage of the Chris Christie bridge controversy: "I do think, across the country, however, when they're looking at long-term unemployment, and they're looking at the uncertainty of the ObamaCare, they're saying, 'You've got to move on, guys.'" [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump]
Brokaw continued: "You can only close those lanes for so long if you're in the national media. I do wonder if this had happened in Nevada, whether it would have gotten much attention."
In a taped interview with former Maryland Republican Governor Bob Ehrlich aired on Friday's MSNBC Daily Rundown, host Chuck Todd scolded the GOP for supposedly not making "any progress" in reaching out to minorities and women since the 2012 election, citing the party's defeat in the 2013 Virginia governor's race: "You lost because the Democrats were able to essentially win social issues – used social issues as a wedge." [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump]
Ehrlich hit back: "But that's a euphemism, let's just call it what it is. It was scaring young women." Todd dismissed the accusation: "What campaigns aren't about scaring some voters?" He then went after Republicans: "Attacking health care is scaring voters, too." Ehlrich replied: "Attacking a dysfunctional health care is not scaring anybody. ObamaCare is scaring enough people."