This Week

Salon: MSM Debate Moderators Allow GOPers to Blast ‘Stealth Liberal Agenda’ As Audiences ‘Hoot and Holler’ Approvingly
By Tom Johnson | May 17, 2015 | 5:22 PM EDT

In the wake of the furor over his gifts to the Clinton Foundation, George Stephanopoulos has taken himself out of the running to moderate a Republican presidential debate set to air on ABC next February. That development gave Salon’s Jim Newell a peg for his Friday argument that GOPers are off-base in their recent push for conservatives (or at least non-liberals) to moderate their party’s debates.

“The mainstream media moderator serves a useful function in Republican presidential debates,” wrote Newell. “If [he or she] asks a difficult or uncomfortable question, the Republican candidate can simply badger the moderator for pursuing a stealth liberal agenda. Whenever the candidate is on the verge of embarrassing him or herself, he or she can lash out at the moderator for trying to embarrass the cause of conservatism as a whole. All of the Republican voters in the audience are conditioned to hoot and holler with approval whenever this happens.” Newell added that if the moderator is a bona fide righty, however, “it eliminates [the candidates’] escape hatch. It’s much harder to yell at a Fox News host or a Hugh Hewitt about how they’re protecting Democrats.”

George Stephanopoulos Again Apologizes for Clinton Foundation Donations
By Jeffrey Meyer | May 17, 2015 | 11:35 AM EDT

On Sunday’s This Week, ABC’s George Stephanopoulos made a second on-air apology for failing to disclose that he donated $75,000 to the Clinton Foundation from 2012-2014. 

Ten Times George Stephanopoulos Sucked Up to the Clintons on ABC News
By Geoffrey Dickens | May 15, 2015 | 1:43 PM EDT

George Stephanopoulos may be in trouble right now for donating cash to the Clintons but for years he’s been giving in-kind contributions, in the form of on-air praise and suck-up questions to them in his time as anchor of Good Morning America and host of This Week.

Blogger: In Donation Flap, Stephanopoulos Victim of Clintons’ Bungling and ‘Right-Wing Suspicion of the Liberal Media’
By Tom Johnson | May 15, 2015 | 10:38 AM EDT

In the uproar over George Stephanopoulos’s hefty, long-undisclosed contributions to the Clinton Foundation, New York magazine blogger Jonathan Chait casts himself in a role similar to that of the child in the tale “The Emperor’s New Clothes” who, after so many have admired their ruler’s supposedly magnificent outfit, points out that the monarch actually is wearing nothing at all.

“Everybody agrees this is terrible,” wrote Chait in a Thursday post. “But…why? [Rand] Paul accuses Stephanopoulos of harboring a ‘conflict of interest.’ But donating money to a charitable foundation is not an interest…It’s true that some donors have an incentive to use the Foundation to get close to the Clintons in a way that might benefit their business interests…But none of those problems reflects poorly on Stephanopoulos.”

The Clinton Foundation, Chait remarked, “is, after all, a charity. It used to have non-partisan overtones…Stephanopoulos’s defense — that he just wanted to donate to the Foundation’s work on AIDS prevention and deforestation — seems 100 percent persuasive. He is the victim of the ethical taint of the Clintons’ poorly handled business dealings, combined with an underlying right-wing suspicion of the liberal media, but what his critics have yet to produce is a coherent case against him.”

Hillary Clinton Campaign Manager Robby Mook Interned for Stephanopoulos; Thanked in Book
By Curtis Houck | May 14, 2015 | 5:35 PM EDT

As uncovered by the Washington Free Beacon Thursday afternoon, Hillary Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook interned for ABC News chief anchor and former Bill Clinton aide George Stephanopoulos during his tenure at Columbia University and even thanked Mook in his 1999 book All Too Human. In addition to praising Mook in his book, Stephanopoulos had some rather kind words for Mook on the April 12 edition of ABC’s This Week, gushing that he was "laying down in the law" in wanting to prevent infighting within the Clinton camp.

UPDATE: ABC's Stephanopoulos Admits Donating $75K to Clinton Foundation
By Matthew Balan | May 14, 2015 | 2:53 PM EDT

ABC's George Stephanopoulos acknowledged his tens of thousands of dollars of donations to the Clinton Foundation in a Thursday interview with Politico's Dylan Byers. Byers reported that "Stephanopoulos...said that, contrary to earlier reports, he has given a total of $75,000 to the Clinton Foundation." The Good Morning America anchor also announced that "he will not moderate the ABC News-sponsored Republican primary debate in February after failing to disclose those contributions."

Stephanopoulos Worries a Bernie Sanders Campaign Could ‘Weaken’ Hillary
By Jeffrey Meyer | May 3, 2015 | 11:37 AM EDT

On Sunday, self-described Democratic Socialist Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) sat down with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos to discuss his newly formed presidential campaign and the This Week moderator fretted that his guest’s campaign could cause trouble for Hillary Clinton. Stephanopoulos claimed that “[m]ost people don’t believe you can actually become President of the United States. Are you worried at all that your race might weaken Hillary Clinton without helping yourself?”

Stephanopoulos Aggressively Questions Peter Schweizer Over ‘Clinton Cash’
By Jeffrey Meyer | April 26, 2015 | 1:19 PM EDT

On Sunday’s This Week, ABC’s George Stephanopoulos interviewed Peter Schweizer, author of Clinton Cash, and repeatedly badgered his guest about the accuracy of his book and chose to focus on Democratic attacks against the author. During the heated discussion, Stephanopoulos hyped how Democrats accuse Schweizer of having a “partisan interest. They say you used to work for President Bush as a speech writer. You are funded by the Koch brothers.” Stephanopoulos never appeared interested in the actual substance of Schweizer’s book.

CNN's LZ Granderson on ABC: 2016 GOP Candidates Look Like An ‘Intolerant Field’
By Jeffrey Meyer | April 19, 2015 | 2:06 PM EDT

On Sunday’s This Week, several members of the show’s political panel took some cheap shots at the GOP and CNN contributor LZ Granderson argued that the 2016 GOP presidenttal contenders look like an “intolerant field.” The anti-GOP discussion started with political commentator Cokie Roberts proclaiming that the GOP may have 19 potential presidential candidates, but they “don’t appeal to diverse America.”

Limbaugh: Stephanopoulos Again Triggers Culture War Attack on GOP
By Jack Coleman | April 2, 2015 | 12:20 PM EDT

Where have I seen this before, Rush Limbaugh asked his radio listeners while talking about the left's manufactured flash-mob anger over Indiana's religious freedom law?

Come to think of it, Limbaugh said, this last happened in the previous presidential campaign when the same Democrat operative/ pretend journalist played gotcha with another GOP politician to kick-start liberals' bogus war-on-women meme?

George Stephanopoulos Badgers Indiana Gov. Over Religious Freedom Bill
By Jeffrey Meyer | March 29, 2015 | 2:10 PM EDT

On Sunday, This Week moderator George Stephanopoulos interviewed Indiana Governor Mike Pence and repeatedly pressed him for defending his state's religious freedom bill, and touted the argument that it was an anti-gay law. Throughout the combative interview, the liberal ABC anchor repeatedly wondered “if a florist in Indiana refuses to serve a gay couple at their wedding, is that legal now in Indiana?” 

Carville 'Suspects' Hillary's Private Server Intended to Dodge Congressional Scrutiny
By Tom Blumer | March 16, 2015 | 10:06 AM EDT

After his appearance yesterday on ABC's "This Week," Hillary Clinton may be wondering whose side James Carville is on.

Never mind Carville's frequent and rude interruptions of other guests, his seemingly calculated incoherence, and his false claims about the Clintons' past record of corruption. Even though that behavior doesn't represent the Clintons well, they have to know that's part of the package when they use Carville as a defender. What wasn't expected is that Mr. Mary Matalin would admit that Mrs. Clinton may have set up her private server at her home in Chappaqua, New York specifically to hamper any future efforts by congress to carry out its consitutionally assigned oversight functions. But he did, as will be seen after the jump.