A visibly annoyed Shepard Smith on Monday decried the "sour grapes" and "slimy motives" of a group of defeated House Democrats who are circulating a letter in opposition of Nancy Pelosi staying on as a leader of the new Democratic minority. The host even appeared to depart from his teleprompter to defend Pelosi.

Introducing reporter James Rosen, the Fox News host complained, "Could it be anything more than sour grapes, really, here?" Smith questioned the journalist about the origins of the letter. After being told that Rosen couldn't identify those involved, the Studio B anchor ranted, "To circulate that thing out there without even putting a name on it. Kind of slimy, it seems to me. I guess that's how politics works though. Sometimes it's a slimy business."

Rosen can be seen visibly baffled by Smith's outburst. Perhaps thinking he was off camera, the reporter frowned and sighed deeply. In another instance during the same segment, Smith seemed to find his own prompter too right-wing and inserted some liberal commentary.

Video after the break.
 

Why do Republicans want to throw this thing out and start over, senator? Why do they want to do that? Nobody buys that!

[...]

Can't we just say, "Look, we [sic] got to do something in this country. This is going to bankrupt us!" And you people up there who are supposed to be representing us are making it perfectly clear, you are going to sit in your corners with your own talking points and we're going to lose! We're going to get nothing. And it's clear we're not.

So when this is over, the president will be able to say, "I tried, we couldn't get anything done, here comes reconciliation." Fifty-one votes, and away we go. Then we got a real mess on our hands, and everybody is just mad at everybody else as the country falls apart. It just doesn't seem fair!

Thune calmly retorted, without missing a beat:

It's no secret the Bush administration used fear tactics to push the $700-billion Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) through Congress last fall. Both members of the House and the Senate have come out after the fact and disclosed the details.

However, the method the Treasury Department employed to get banks to go along with the TARP bailout breached legal boundaries to the point of "extortion," according to Fox News Senior Judicial Analyst Andrew Napolitano, a former Superior Court Judge for the state of New Jersey.

Napolitano told viewers on FNC's April 1 "Studio B" that he had a conversation with a head of $250-billion bank that explained the federal government, under the threat of an audit, forced him to accept TARP funds.

(h/t Allahpundit of Hot Air)

Sounding more like ABC's Sam Champion or Al Gore than a "fair and balanced" news anchor, Fox's Shepard Smith slammed Americans in general and his studio audience in particular in a recent "Studio B" interview with a British man who swam at the North Pole as a global warming-related publicity stunt.