Reporting a new poll out on the Iowa Senate race on this evening's program, Hardball host Chris Matthews seemed a bit befuddled that a Tea Party conservative who grew up on a farm, Joni Ernst, is actually leading a Democratic lawyer Rep. Bruce Braley (D-Iowa) who waded into a muck a few months ago with an elitist-sounding crack about Sen. Chuck Grassley (R) being a "farmer from Iowa who never went to law school."

Twice Matthews mentioned Ernst's memorable ads in which she mentioned how she castrated pigs when she was growing up on a farm and tied that in to her pledge to cut pork in Washington, D.C. Of course, Matthews failed to make that connection for his viewers and twice mentioned the hog castration as though it were some odd disqualifier in a state the chief industres of which are agriculture and food processing (particularly pork). [Watch the video and read the transcript below the page break]

On Friday's CNN Newsroom, Kyra Phillips boosted the latest musing of feminist blogger Amanda Marcotte, who deplored Pope Francis's recent advice to married couples to have children instead of going childless and owning pets instead. Phillips let the leftist writer assert that "the very notion that I'm anti-Catholic is completely ridiculous," but omitted the 2007 scandal where Marcotte had to leave John Edwards's campaign for a vulgar anti-Catholic screed.

The anchor also made it clear that she sympathized with her guest's pro-contraception, pro-population control column for The Daily Beast on Friday: [MP3 audio available here; video below the jump]

In a fit of partisan pique, national Republican leaders like RNC chairman Reince Priebus are whipping up a "lynch mob" against Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl that threatens the soldier's right to due process.

That's the latest Obama-shielding spin hitting the airwaves on MSNBC courtesy of NationalMemo.com editor-in-chief Joe Conason, who made such a charge on the June 5 edition of The Reid Report towards the conclusion of a segment with host Joy Reid and Salon.com's Joan Walsh. The relevant transcript appears below the page break [Listen to MP3 audio here; Watch the video below the page break]:

It's the latest viral video burning up the Internet, the talk of watercooler conversation all over the country today: President Obama looking positively goofy strenuously working out with a set of dumbbells. [I'll pause to let you write your own punchline]

It was video too good to ignore for both ABC's World News and CBS's Evening News, while NBC Nightly News decided to take a pass. Of course, both networks worked in a relatively positive spin for the president, with ABC worrying about and subsequently dismissing the notion of the video being a "security breach" while CBS's Maurice DuBois hailed the president as an disciplined athlete who sleepily hit the gym while on a grueling overseas trip. [See the relevant transcripts below the page break; Listen to MP3 audio here; Video follows page break]

It did not take long for MSNBC to begin blaming the right-wing “anti-Obama machine” for the backlash against the Bergdahl prisoner swap. Intent on ignoring their own poll in which 65%  of respondents didn’t support Obama’s decision to make the exchange, the June 3 edition of The Last Word With Lawrence O’Donnell went above and beyond in criticizing Republicans for “swiftboating” Bergdahl.         

After airing multiple clips from Fox News, host Ari Melber, filling in for O’Donnell, went so far as to claim that “many of the loudest voices here on the Right today remain utterly uninterested in any of the questions, and are instead obsessed with hurling any accusation that might, just might, stick to this particular president.” He accused Republican strategists of manipulating Bergdahl’s platoon members for testimony discrediting Bergdahl, an outrageous claim considering these veterans came forward of their own accord and even created a Facebook group labeling the Bergdahl as a deserter. [See video below. Click here for audio]