By Mark Finkelstein | December 29, 2015 | 6:41 PM EST

Judging by Nicolle Wallace's performance on today's With All Due Respect, it looks like establishment Republicans are going full bore against Ted Cruz. Here was Wallace talking about her personal experience with Ted Cruz: "I worked with him on the [2000 Bush/Gore] recount in Florida, and the recount was sort of ground zero for the biggest egos in both parties in the whole country, and he rose to the top in terms of hubris and egomania."

Co-host John Heilemann was flabbergasted: "you're saying that among all of your colleagues in the recount effort, that he was the biggest ego?  Is that really what I heard you say? Wow! That is an incredible thing to say."

By Rich Noyes | December 27, 2015 | 9:47 AM EST

Since last week, NewsBusters has been presenting each category from the Media Research Center’s “Best Notable Quotables of 2015,” our annual awards for the year’s worst journalism. Today, the “Hopeless Haters Award,” for the worst quotes denigrating the conservative GOP presidential candidates. Winning the top slot: MSNBC Morning Joe regular Donny Deutsch, who on March 23 slammed just-declared GOP presidential candidate Ted Cruz as “scary,” “slimy” “dumb” “ignorant” and “dangerous.”

By Rich Noyes | December 25, 2015 | 10:10 AM EST

This week, NewsBusters is presenting the Media Research Center’s “Best Notable Quotables of 2015,” our annual awards for the year’s worst journalism. Today, the “Harsh to the Huddled Masses” award, for attacks on the GOP candidates for their supposed hostility to immigration. Winning the trophy: Yahoo! News anchor Katie Couric for suggesting to GOP presidential candidate Ted Cruz that he lacked “empathy” because he didn’t support Barack Obama’s unilateral executive action on amnesty.

By NB Staff | December 24, 2015 | 11:17 AM EST

Making his television debut on the December 18 edition of One American News Network’s Tipping Point, NewsBusters managing editor Ken Shepherd promoted the 2015 winners of the Notable Quotable’s Worst of the Worst and the overall winner of MSNBC’s Melissa Harris-Perry scolding guest Alfonso Aguilar on October 25 for using the term “hard worker” because it’s racist.

By Curtis Houck | December 23, 2015 | 4:16 PM EST

After the Wednesday editions of CBS This Morning and NBC’s Today attempted to excuse the Washington Post cartoon depicting Ted Cruz’s daughters as moneys, various hosts and guests throughout the day on CNN and MSNBC followed suit by chiding the “weird” and “controversial” Cruz for sending out fundraising e-mails related to the smear and “not reacting kindly” to cartoonist Ann Telnaes’s latest work.

By Clay Waters | December 23, 2015 | 2:25 PM EST

Liberal blinders fastened tight, the New York Times set up inflammatory race-baiter turned MSNBC host Al Sharpton as an arbiter of someone else’s racism on Tuesday’s front page. Maggie Haberman and Steve Eder’s report, “Trump’s Rise Divides the Black Celebrities He Calls His Friends,” is just the latest in a depressing series of Sharpton suckups from the New York Times. The Times has taken enormous pains over the years to ignore Rev. Al’s numerous racial controversies all the while calling him a civil rights “leader.

By Curtis Houck | December 23, 2015 | 12:31 PM EST

The morning after Washington Post cartoonist Ann Telnaes published (then unpublished) an illustration depicting Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz’s daughters as toy monkeys, calling them “fair game” since they appeared in a campaign ad, ABC’s Good Morning America ignored the story completely while CBS This Morning and NBC’s Today excused it as merely a “feud” and part of “increased scrutiny” for Cruz as he ascends in the polls.

By Mark Finkelstein | December 23, 2015 | 7:43 AM EST

There was surprising consensus on today's Morning Joe concerning the Washington Post cartoon that depicted Ted Cruz as an organ grinder and his youngs girls as monkeys. From Mika Brzezinski to Joe Scarborough to Harold Ford, Jr., there was universal condemnation of Ann Telnaes' foul image. 

Willie Geist said it best: "people look for moments of bias in the media. Here's one right here. You can't be selectively offended by cartoons. If that had been a Democrat, or God forbid the President of the United States, they would have lit the house on fire. There would have been wall-to-wall coverage on it."

By Tom Blumer | December 22, 2015 | 11:31 PM EST

As Curtis Houck at NewsBusters reported this evening, the Washington Post published "a disgusting GIF early Tuesday evening depicting (Ted) Cruz’s young daughters as toy monkeys being played with" accompanied by a pathetic two-paragraph justification by cartoonist Ann Telnaes as to why Cruz's daughters "were fair game."

The Post withdrew the cartoon and the justification within a few hours, but not before the leftists at the Politico played their mean-spirited, agenda-driven hand, going into predictable passive-aggressive "Republicans/conservatives attack" mode while making it appear as if Cruz was making much ado about nothing:

By Curtis Houck | December 22, 2015 | 7:55 PM EST

Commenting on Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz’s daughters appearing in a campaign ad, Washington Post cartoonist Ann Telnaes created a GIF early Tuesday evening depicting Cruz’s young daughters as toy monkeys being played with and arguing that “[t]hey are fair game.” In attempting to explain her arguably racist GIF, Telnaes argued that because daughters Caroline and Catherine appeared in a humorous Christmas-themed ad, they have decided “to indulge in grown-up activities” and allowed their father to play them “as political props.”

By Kyle Drennen | December 22, 2015 | 5:27 PM EST

Appearing in the 3 p.m. ET hour of MSNBC Live on Tuesday, Hardball host Chris Matthews revealed how terrified he is at the prospect of Texas Senator Ted Cruz becoming president: “...Cruz is scarier than Trump and that will be a frightening prospect to realize....if we weren't talking about Trump, we’d be talking about the horror of this country possibly being led by Cruz.”

By Mark Finkelstein | December 21, 2015 | 9:15 PM EST

Spine of Steele! Where has this feisty Michael Steele been? In this NewsBuster's view, the former RNC chairman has too often been the voice of the mushy Republican middle. 

But on MSNBC's All In this evening, Steele forcefully advanced the GOP cause. For starters, Steele shocked guest host Alex Wagner when he said Donald Trump would beat Hillary Clinton in a debate. Steele then took on Howard Dean, mocking the former DNC chairman when he claimed Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz "know nothing" about foreign policy. For good measure, Michael accused Dean of "shilling for Hillary." Say it, Steele!