John Kerry

Morning Joe Crew Rips Hillary Apology: 'Hostage Video...Lie...Freakish'
By Mark Finkelstein | September 9, 2015 | 8:09 AM EDT

My mother had a saying about heeding warnings from others: "if one person tells you you're drunk, ignore him.  If two people tell you you're drunk, lie down."  So what should Hillary Clinton do when the entire Morning Joe panel tells her that her supposed apology on ABC last night was a total bust?

From Joe Scarborough saying it looked like a "hostage video," to John Heilemann saying her apology proved that everything she had said about no one caring about the issue was a "lie," to Mika Brzezinski speaking of the "freakish" control exercised by the Clinton camp, to Willie Geist flatly contradicting Hillary's assertion that her actions were "allowed," the panning of Hillary's performance was unanimous.  

Networks Cheer ‘Unstoppable’ Iran Deal Despite Public Opposition; ‘a Done Deal’
By Curtis Houck | September 2, 2015 | 10:11 PM EDT

On the heels of President Obama and Senate Democrats achieving the minimum threshold on Wednesday to preserve the Iran nuclear deal, the “big three” networks of ABC, CBS, and NBC applauded during their evening newscasts the “unstoppable” “done deal” that had Secretary of State John Kerry taking “a victory lap.”

NY Times Finds Dem Who Thinks Hillary's Email Scandal is GOP's 'Swift Boat Issue of 2015'
By Tom Blumer | August 24, 2015 | 4:01 PM EDT

You can tell that the left is getting nervous about a scandal when they invoke the successful Swift Boat Veterans for the Truth campaign of 2004 against John Kerry.

As I noted on Saturday, Maria L. La Ganga at the Los Angeles Times did that as she described Planned Parenthood's attempts to fight back against the Center For Medical Progress's exposure of their baby body parts business. On Friday at the New York Times, in a story about how Hillary Clinton was "interrupting" her Martha's Vineyard vacation, Amy Chozick found a Clinton contributor who characterized her email and private server scandal as "somewhat of a tempest in a teapot," and also described it as "their (Republicans') Swift boat issue of 2015."

Scarborough Accuses Kerry State Department of Hillary 'Cover-up'
By Mark Finkelstein | August 24, 2015 | 7:51 AM EDT

At what point will members of the Obama administration, from the president himself to John Kerry and other senior officials, down to the workaday folks of the West Wing, decide that Hillary's email scandal is doing intolerable damage to whatever's left of their legacy, and decide to pull the plug?

A significant line was crossed on today's Morning Joe, when Joe Scarborough flatly and repeatedly accused John Kerry's State Department of engaging in a "cover-up"  on Hillary's behalf.  How much longer will Kerry be willing to sacrifice his reputation on the altar of Hillary's presidential ambitions?

LA Times Reporter: CMP's Anti-Planned Parenthood Vids Are Like 'Discredited' Swiftvets 'Smear'
By Tom Blumer | August 22, 2015 | 1:11 PM EDT

Well, this was inevitable. On the same day that the Center for Medical Progress exposed the CEO of former Planned Parenthood partner StemExpress laughing "about shipping whole baby heads," a reporter at the Los Angeles Times, in what I have beeen told is a front-page story, has compared CMP's video campaign exposing the commerce in baby body parts to the 2004 Swift Boat Veterans for the Truth's campaign. The Swift Boat Vets' effort successfully exposed Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry's serial lies about his service in Vietnam and his smearing of Vietnam veterans as war criminals after he returned.

Times reporter Maria L. La Ganga joined the paper in 1981, and "has served as San Francisco bureau chief, edited in the Business section and pitched in on five presidential elections." Even if one of those five elections wasn't 2004, and even if she didn't dig into conflicting claims over whether Kerry truly earned the Vietnam War medals he received, it's virtually inconceivable that she doesn't know about his frequently stated "Christmas in Cambodia" lie.

MSNBC Gushes Over John Kerry Using Ted Kennedy’s Cane to Walk at U.S. Embassy in Cuba
By Curtis Houck | August 14, 2015 | 5:03 PM EDT

In the midst of the covering the U.S. Embassy’s reopening in Havana, Cuba on Friday morning, MSNBC’s The Rundown couldn’t help but repeatedly ooze over the fact that Secretary of State John Kerry attended the ceremony using a walking cane that belonged to former President John F. Kennedy’s brother and former fellow Massachusetts Democratic Senator Ted Kennedy. Gushing that it’s “a fascinating backstory,” NBC's Andrea Mitchell made the first mention just after 9:00 a.m. Eastern about Kerry using “Teddy Kennedy’s cane.”

MSNBC.com Article on U.S. Embassy Fails to Mention Controversy Over Dissidents
By Ken Shepherd | August 13, 2015 | 9:14 PM EDT

Cuban dissidents will not take part in Friday's formal ceremony opening the U.S. Embassy in Havana tomorrow, something that Secretary of State John Kerry is chalking up to a matter of respecting diplomatic protocol and a lack of space at the venue. But the controversy over the matter was omitted entirely from an NBC News article at MSNBC.com on Thursday evening.

Kristol: Odds 'Better Than 50/50' Big Dem Jumps in Against 'Extraordinarily Weak' Hillary
By Mark Finkelstein | July 27, 2015 | 8:51 PM EDT

Is Hillary hearing donkey hoofbeats? On his Weekly Standard podcast today, Bill Kristol put the odds at "better than 50/50" that one or more of Elizabeth Warren, Joe Biden or John Kerry would jump into the race against a Hillary Clinton whom he described as "extraordinarily weak."

Kristol made an undeniable point, to wit, that "if someone came down and gave you the poll numbers on Hillary Clinton, from the last two, three, four public polls, you would look at that and say, whoah: this is a very weak and very vulnerable frontrunner."

NYT's Egan Finds Trump Inevitable 'Monster' of Racist, Vet-Smearing, Birther GOP
By Clay Waters | July 26, 2015 | 1:43 PM EDT

Timothy Egan, who wrote liberal screeds for the New York Times as a reporter before finding a more fitting habitat as one of the paper's stable of left-wing anti-Republican columnists, piled on the GOP's current presidential front-runner in "Trump Is the Poison His Party Concocted," in the paper's Sunday Review. Egan suggested Trump is only the inevitable end result of toxic GOP racism and attacks on war heroes like....John Kerry?

Matt Lauer Grills Kerry on Iran, But Ignores False Claims
By Kyle Drennen | July 24, 2015 | 4:49 PM EDT

While Matt Lauer pressed Secretary of State John Kerry on the Iran nuclear deal during an interview on Friday’s NBC Today, the co-host did allow Kerry to continue to make false claims about the policy without challenge.

English, Spanish Networks Fail to Note Kerry Misstatements in Iran Deal Hearing; FNC Covers
By Curtis Houck | July 23, 2015 | 9:36 PM EDT

While English-networks ABC and NBC combined with Spanish-language networks MundoFox, Telemundo, and Univision on Thursday night to skip testimony from Secretary of State John Kerry in a Senate hearing on the Iran deal, CBS covered it in a news brief, but only summarized it and ignored false statements by Kerry as he faced criticism from both sides of the aisle. In contrast, the FNC's Special Report not only had a full segment on the hearing, but a takedown of three claims by Kerry.

Sen. Tom Cotton: 'Kerry Acted Like Pontius Pilate' In Iran Negotiations
By Mark Finkelstein | July 23, 2015 | 8:39 AM EDT

Ouch: this one's going to leave a mark.  Arkansas Republican Senator Tom Cotton has said that "John Kerry acted like Pontius Pilate, he washed his hands" on crucial issues in the Iran deal and left it to the IAEA to negotiate secret side deals with Iran on them.

Cotton made his remarks on today's Morning Joe.  It might be a mark of the regard, or lack thereof, in which Kerry is held that no one on the panel rose to his defense.  Harold Ford, Jr. was given the floor immediately after Cotton spoke, and blithely inquired only if Kerry would be asked about these issues in his Senate testimony. A bit later in the show, Dem Sen. Tim Kaine appeared.  Kaine presumably either watched or was briefed on Cotton's statement, but made not a peep to push back on the Pontius Pilate analogy.