With his "viral video" line about the liberal media being the Democrats' super PAC to his deft handling of Jeb Bush's attacks, Sen. Marco Rubio won the night, MSNBC analysts agreed in a special Hardball.
Marco Rubio
By Curtis Houck | October 28, 2015 | 9:56 PM EDT
During Wednesday's Republican presidential debate on CNBC, Senator Marco Rubio (Fl.) shellacked the news media as “the ultimate super PAC” for Democrats and Hillary Clinton. "Last week, Hillary Clinton...admitted she had sent e-mails to her family saying hey, this attack in Benghazi was caused by al-Qaeda-like elements. She spent over a week telling the families of those victims and the American people that it was because of a video and yet, the mainstream media is going around saying it was the greatest week in Hillary Clinton's campaign."
Rubio Lambasts FL Newspaper, Debate Moderators as ‘Evidence’ of ‘Bias that Exists in the American Media'
By Curtis Houck | October 28, 2015 | 9:19 PM EDT During Wednesday’s Republican presidential debate on CNBC, Senator Marco Rubio (Fl.) excoriated the Florida newspaper The Sun-Sentinel and debate co-moderator Carl Quintanilla for raising questions about his young age and calls for him to resign from the Senate due to missed votes as examples of “a double standard” and “bias that exists in the American media today.”
By Kyle Drennen | October 28, 2015 | 3:31 PM EDT
Hours before Wednesday’s Republican presidential debate, NBC’s Today and ABC’s Good Morning America both seized on a hit piece in Florida’s Sun Sentinel newspaper demanding that Marco Rubio resign his Senate seat. At the top of Today, co-host Matt Lauer proclaimed: “Florida Senator Marco Rubio gets dealt a tough blow from one of his state's newspapers.”
By Mark Finkelstein | October 28, 2015 | 8:32 AM EDT
Whatever Nicolle Wallace had for breakfast this morning, Jeb should down a double order . . . On today's Morning Joe, former Bush communications chief Wallace slammed a Politico story in which former McCain staffers rejected parallels between Jeb's campaign and that of McCain, who came back from the political wilderness to win the nomination in 2008.
Calling the story a "cheap shot," "low blow" and "irrelevant clackery of the clacking class," Wallace repeatedly pointed out that the sources for the story were McCain staffers now working for other candidates in the current GOP race. Such folks would obviously have a vested interest in scotching the notion of a Jeb comeback.
By Geoffrey Dickens | October 27, 2015 | 1:46 PM EDT
The RNC may regret its approval of John Harwood as lead moderator for Wednesday night’s GOP presidential debate on CNBC if recent history is any guide. The CNBC anchor and New York Times columnist admitted he and a producer helped make Rick Perry’s infamous “oops” moment even worse.
By Mark Finkelstein | October 26, 2015 | 9:12 PM EDT
Can you imagine if in 2007 some conservative had dared call Barack Obama the "Little Mister" of anything? The cries of racism would be ringing to this day.
But on his MSNBC show this evening, Chris Matthews didn't hesitate to denigrate Marco Rubio as "the little Mister Firecracker of the bombs-away set." For good measure, Matthews claimed that "Cruz hates as well as any Republican in modern history."
By Matthew Balan | October 26, 2015 | 6:53 PM EDT
CNN's Jamie Gangel hounded Republican presidential candidate Marco Rubio over his missed Senate votes on Monday's New Day. Gangel played up how Senator Rubio "said federal workers who don't show up should be fired." When the Florida politician countered that he had said that "federal workers that aren't doing their jobs — that are not performing at their jobs — should be able to be fired," the correspondent replied, "So someone might say you're not showing up. You're not doing your job by voting. You don't think you're in a glass house?"
By Rich Noyes | October 22, 2015 | 9:59 AM EDT
On Wednesday, Vice President Joe Biden ended his flirtation with a bid for the 2016 Democratic nomination, but only after an extended period in which the broadcast networks gave his non-candidacy more airtime than that of any declared Republican or Democratic candidate other than frontrunners Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. From August 1, when the networks began covering the possibility of a Biden candidacy, through October 20, the ABC, CBS and NBC evening news broadcasts devoted 98 minutes of airtime to the possibility of a Biden-for-President campaign.
By Mark Finkelstein | October 22, 2015 | 8:24 AM EDT
Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski were among the first in the media, going back months, to take Donald Trump seriously. In contrast, Bill Kristol had repeatedly declared that we had reached "peak Trump," only to find The Donald confoundingly continuing to climb in the polls.
Things boiled over on today's Morning Joe. Despite a fresh poll showing Trump with an astounding 48% of GOP voters in Massachusetts, Kristol blithely declared that Trump "is not going to be the nominee." That elicited sarcastic laughter from Scarborough, who shot back "we can show you clip after clip after clip after clip of your incorrect predictions about Donald Trump and his imminent collapse." Later, Kristol seized on a new poll from Iowa showing Ben Carson having overtaken Trump. Claiming that "you guys have been overestimating Trump and underestimating Carson," Kristol said he was "just trying to be helpful." An exasperated Scarborough exploded: "you're out of your mind. You're not trying to be helpful. You're trying to cover your a--. It won't work with us."
By Curtis Houck | October 19, 2015 | 6:07 PM EDT
During an interview that aired on Friday’s CBS Evening News, chief White House correspondent Major Garrett spoke with Republican presidential candidate Marco Rubio and wondered aloud if the situation in the House of Representatives concerning the search for the next Speaker of the House signaled the “important historical meltdown of the Republican Party.”
By Ken Shepherd | October 16, 2015 | 2:34 PM EDT
Chris Matthews was at it again last night on Hardball railing against the "Daddy Warbucks" influence in politics, insisting that wealthy super PAC donors like Sheldon Adelson were hoping to buy their preferred candidate in the GOP presidential primary. But an interesting thing happened during the segment when liberal guest Willie Brown, a former mayor of San Francisco, challenged Matthews's simplistic leftist lament about money in politics.