For viewers of the “big three” networks on Monday and Tuesday, coverage of the latest Hillary Clinton e-mail dump was all but non-existent as ABC has censored it from both their morning and evening newscasts while CBS and NBC have only given abbreviated nods in their morning shows. All told, the three news cycles combined for a measly one-minute-and-45-seconds of airtime with one minute and 24 seconds coming from a segment on the Clinton campaign on Tuesday’s Today.
Benghazi
Liberal actor Ted Danson used his appearance on the early Friday morning edition of Tavis Smiley’s PBS program to profess his love for Bill and Hillary Clinton “with every fiber of my being” and praised Hillary Clinton’s performance at the Benghazi Committee hearing as a showcase of someone who would be a “thoughtful, big hearted, incredibly bright president.”
Roughly a minute after the 11-hour Benghazi Committee hearing with Hillary Clinton concluded on Thursday night, CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360 turned to political commentator Carl Bernstein, who drooled over Clinton’s performance while comparing Republicans to Joseph McCarthy and his House Un-American Committee for concocting an “abusive” hearing.In the next hour on CNN Tonight, Bernstein trotted out the same comparison against “a group of demagogues” while Hillary “did great” in using “the facts at her command.”
Suddenly worried about government spending, the Thursday edition of ABC’s World News Tonight featured anchor David Muir complaining on three separate occasions about the cost of the House Select Committee on Benghazi while chief White House correspondent Jonathan Karl observed that Republicans “really didn’t succeed” in “draw[ing] blood” from Hillary Clinton.
Analyzing Hillary Clinton’s performance before the House Benghazi Committee, CBS News political director John Dickerson stated on Thursday’s CBS Evening News that Clinton “avoid[ed]” falling into any “pitfalls” as those questioning her fought “like cats and dogs.”
Offering no surprises, Thursday’s NBC Nightly News aired glowing remarks for Hillary Clinton’s performance during the House Select Committee on Benghazi hearing with conclusions that she “stood her ground” as it “dissolved into bickering” while she “stayed above the fray” and removing Benghazi from being an issue in the 2016 campaign.
Reacting to the first round of questioning in Thursday’s Benghazi hearing, CNN hosts and panelists couldn’t help but trip over themselves in gushing over how Hillary Clinton was “very confidence” in “keeping her cool” while answering “utterly baffling” questions about confidante Sidney Blumenthal that the American people supposedly do not “really care about” and see as “a waste.”
Using clips from the 1973 Watergate hearings, MSNBC’s Last Word host Lawrence O’Donnell went off on Wednesday at the House Select Committee on Benghazi for failing to exhibit the Watergate committee’s professionalism and instead being “oblivious and uninhibited” in creating a hearing that he promises will “waste enormous amounts of time on irrelevant questions.”
Previewing Hillary Clinton’s testimony Thursday morning before the House Select Committee on Benghazi, CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360 did their best on Wednesday to paint the most flattering picture possible of Clinton being “battle tested” with “steady nerves” despite “withering attacks” and the ability to turn “even a hot seat, if not comfortable, at least cooler.”
Filling in for Jose Diaz-Balart during MSNBC’s 10 a.m. ET hour on Tuesday, NBC national correspondent Peter Alexander interrogated Republican Congresswoman Susan Brooks about the House Benghazi Committee: “So if Jeb Bush's campaign insists that his brother, George W. Bush, bears no responsibility for the 9/11 attacks – which of course were carried out by Al Qaeda, but he was president at the time – why then do Hillary Clinton and President Barack Obama bear responsibility for what happened in Benghazi?”
Finally getting his chance to interview Hillary Clinton on Friday’s The Lead, CNN anchor Jake Tapper didn’t exactly measure up as while he did what other reporters failed to do in asking Clinton about her relationship with Sidney Blumenthal, he cozied up to her on the recent marking of her and Bill’s 40th wedding anniversary plus sarcastically asking he could “get your e-mail address.”
On Monday, the CBS Evening News and NBC Nightly News prominently touted the claims by a fired staffer on the House Select Committee on Benghazi that the panel’s sole aim is to takedown former Secretary of State and 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton in a move that gives her “a potential lifeline” in “another blow” to the committee.
