During his opening monologue on Thursday’s Tonight Show, host Jimmy Fallon made a few jests toward Vice President Joe Biden and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and each of their chances of winning the 2016 presidential election. Fallon began the gag by playing a clip of Clinton speaking to the abortion group EMILY’s List on Tuesday night and asking if they “someday want to see a woman president of the United States of America” to which “the crowd,” Fallon said, “went crazy.”
Chris Christie
By Tim Graham | February 21, 2015 | 9:58 AM EST
Anyone who thinks the PBS NewsHour is a calm, rather nonpartisan forum on politics where no one does any trash-talking hasn’t seen Mark Shields on Fridays.
On Friday, Shields trashed Jeb Bush as a bumbler, and then just insulted governors Scott Walker and Chris Christie as “total novices” on foreign policy, like he’s a standup comedian. But eight years ago, Shields said only "serious candidates" were running.
By Tom Blumer | February 14, 2015 | 2:05 AM EST
Late Friday afternoon, roughly two hours ("shortly after noon" Pacific Time) after the press release announcing Oregon Democratic Governor John Kitzhaber's resignation effective next Wednesday, Philip Bump at the Washington Post's "The Fix" blog tried to explain away the national press's nearly complete failure to cover Kitzhaber's mounting ethical and now potentially criminal problems for nearly four months. This is the same bunch which obsessed over Republican Governor Chris Christie's "Bridgegate" non-scandal for months on end.
Bump specifically linked to and quoted — and, predictably mischaracterized — yours truly's related Thursday afternoon post at NewsBusters. The short answer to Bump's whining is simply that Kitzhaber's problems were self-evidently very serious from the get-go in October, and grew by degrees with virtually each passing week, while Bridgegate, which was beaten like a drum for months on end, never progressed beyond the status of a pathetically weak hatchet job.
By Tom Blumer | February 12, 2015 | 1:27 PM EST
The establishment press has obsessed over Republican Governor Chris Christie's non-scandals in New Jersey for 18 months. Anything appearing to be problematic during the past four years for Wisconsin GOP Governor Scott Walker, including a "John Doe" fishing expedition driven by a power-abusing Democratic prosecutor, has been national news.
Meanwhile, the press appears to have lost interest in Democratic New York Governor Andrew Cuomo's possible connections with arrested State Speaker Sheldon Silver. In a far more glaring omission, the vast majority of the country outside of the Pacific Northwest, even those who closely follow the news, barely recognize the name of John Kitzhaber, Oregon's Democratic Governor. Kitzhaber is embroiled in an ethics scandal so serious that he was apparently on the verge of resigning on Tuesday before he changed his mind.
By Mark Finkelstein | February 11, 2015 | 8:21 PM EST
Imagine a Fox News host making an unflattering remark about some aspect of Hillary Clinton's appearance. Now imagine the MSM going into 24/7 outrage mode.
But on tonight's Hardball, Chris Matthews casually referred to Chris Christie as "the fat guy from New Jersey." And in walking back the crack, Matthews actually compounded his mistake. Rather than acknowledging that it's simply wrong to insult someone for his obesity, Matthews instead observed that he shouldn't call Christie a fat guy, because "he's losing weight." So fat cracks are fine if the target is actually fat?
By Matthew Balan | February 4, 2015 | 5:46 PM EST
CNN's Chris Cuomo forwarded the latest liberal attack on conservatives/Republicans on Wednesday's New Day as he interviewed potential GOP presidential candidate, Dr. Ben Carson. Cuomo hounded the neurosurgeon on the ongoing measles outbreak, and asserted that "this has been politicized now. You see a couple of your potential opponents coming out – and it seems as though the Republican Party has a problem with science – that they're always pushing back against science."
By Tim Graham | February 4, 2015 | 12:16 PM EST
The New York Times demonstrated their ardor to take Chris Christie down a peg again in the Tuesday front page story headlined “In Christie’s Career, Fondness for Luxe Benefits.” Reporters Kate Zernike and Michael Barbaro did a “deep dive” into Christie’s fondness for private planes and luxury hotels.
So try a Nexis search over the last year for “Hillary Clinton” and “private planes” or “private jets.” No news story. “Hillary Clinton” and “luxury”? No news story. Zernike and Barbaro know they could do this kind of a news story, as they admit in their Christie story:
By Ken Shepherd | February 2, 2015 | 9:22 PM EST
MSNBC host Chris Matthews took Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Gov. Chris Christie (R-N.J.) to task on his February 2 Hardball program for statements which he argued gave succor to so-called anti-vaxxers, parents who refuse to vaccinate their children out of unfounded or overblown safety concerns, often related to the development of autism. Matthews suggested both politicians were cynically angling for anti-vaxxer votes in the 2016 primaries at the cost of public health. But left out of his segment was any acknowledgement that in 2008, then-Sen. Barack Obama stated at a campaign event that the science on a vaccine link to autism was inconclusive.
By Tom Johnson | January 31, 2015 | 3:42 PM EST
Hunter contends that right-wingers feel that the left is “out to get” them, and that they “consider…breaking the law itself to be a noble thing, when done in service to conservatism, which is why the various Fox News talking heads spoke of armed standoffs at the Bundy Ranch in approving tones and with references to the Founding Fathers.”
By Mark Finkelstein | January 22, 2015 | 9:12 AM EST
Jim VandeHei sees dead people. On today's Morning Joe, the Politico honcho agreed with Joe Scarborough's suggestion that Chris Christie is like Bruce Willis in The Sixth Sense: [politically] dead but doesn't know it.
Ironically, Scarborough distanced himself from his own suggestion, twice saying that he didn't believe it. But when he asked his guest if the characterization was fair, Vandehei replied "I think it is. At best he's a live man stumbling."
By Jeffrey Meyer | January 11, 2015 | 10:10 AM EST
On Sunday, Governor Chris Christie (R-N.J.) will attend the Green Bay Packers/Dallas Cowboys playoff game with Cowboys owner Jerry Jones. Christie’s decision has drawn the ire of many football fans in New Jersey for not supporting either the Philadelphia Eagles or New York Giants, both of which have large fan bases in New Jersey. During their Sunday morning broadcasts, ABC’s Good Morning America and NBC’s Today did their best to play up the alleged football controversy, giving the story nearly six minutes of coverage. NBC’s Kristen Welker went so far as to insist despite Christie’s long support for the Cowboys “fans in the New Jersey region are crying foul. Some even saying the presidential contender has lost their vote.”
By Curtis Houck | December 31, 2014 | 11:33 AM EST
Each of the network morning shows devoted some time on Wednesday to looking back at the biggest news stories of year and, while they certainly could not have included every story in the allotted time, they all failed to spend even a few seconds on topics such as Jonathan Gruber, pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong, President Obama’s unpopularity, and the Hobby Lobby case to name a few.
In addition, the “big three” of ABC, CBS, and NBC each mentioned the midterm elections and how Republicans were able to win control of the Senate (in addition to the House), they devoted a scant 21 seconds to the topic over the course of their roundups, which totaled 42 minutes and 50 seconds.