On Sunday’s Meet the Press, moderator Chuck Todd took House Speaker John Boehner to task for inviting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to speak to Congress without notifying the White House ahead of time. During an interview with Congressman Paul Ryan (R-WI), Todd accused Boehner of trying to “antagonize the relationship between the two sides" and wondered "is that worth doing?”
John Boehner
By Curtis Houck | January 28, 2015 | 6:10 PM EST
Filling in for John Heilemann on the Monday edition of Bloomberg’s With All Due Respect, Campbell Brown took a shot at House Speaker John Boehner and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell for “whining about President Obama” in an interview that aired Sunday on CBS’s 60 Minutes.
Following a clip from the interview, Brown first credited Boehner for “holding a very diverse, you know, House together,” but she then quickly reversed course and made this swipe at Boehner and McConnell: “[I]n terms of being messengers for the party right now, it sounds a lot like whining.”
By Curtis Houck | January 27, 2015 | 9:19 PM EST
In a reversal of a key proposal from his State of the Union address, President Barack Obama moved on Tuesday to drop the plan to tax 529 college-savings accounts after outcry from members of both parties and a direct appeal on Air Force One from House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).
When it came to the networks covering this backtracking by the President on this deeply unpopular idea that even ultra liberals like Pelosi and Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) opposed, the “big three” of ABC, CBS, and NBC made no mention of it during their Tuesday evening newscasts.
By Jeffrey Meyer | January 26, 2015 | 11:48 AM EST
Following President Obama’s State of the Union address on January 20, Speaker of the House John Boehner and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell sat down with Scott Pelley, CBS Evening News anchor, for an exclusive interview that aired on Sunday’s 60 Minutes. Throughout the interview, the CBS anchor peppered his GOP guests with several liberal questions and even questioned Speaker Boehner’s facial expressions during the State of the Union. Pelley asked the Speaker “it must be a hell of a thing to sit behind the president knowing that 30 million Americans are watching you for an hour. Do you practice that scowl?”
NBC’s Chris Jansing Gushes Over ‘an Energized, Combative President’; Scolds Boehner for Inviting Netanyahu
By Curtis Houck | January 22, 2015 | 7:28 AM EST NBC News senior White House correspondent Chris Jansing did her best to provide some White House spin during Wednesday’s NBC Nightly News, hailing President Obama as “an energized, combative President” whose policies made for a “carefully choreographed, populist message with the details generally panned by Republicans.”
Also within her report, Jansing found time to chide House Speaker John Boehner for “an unprecedented breach in protocol” in inviting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to speak before Congress without White House consultation.
By Tom Blumer | January 14, 2015 | 2:12 PM EST
Victor Paul Alvarez's LinkedIn profile says that he's an "Associate Editor - Boston.com at The Boston Globe," with previous stints at East Bay Newspapers and the Baltimore Sun. He was a copy boy at the Sun in 1994 while he was also a student at Towson University, which would likely make him a bit over 40 years old now.
It is beyond comprehension that someone with Alvarez's decades of experience could have tried to find humor Tuesday evening in a Cincinnati-area man's plan to assassinate House Speaker John Boehner. But he did. It's more incredible that the folks at Boston.com apparently think Alvarez's report is now perfectly fine after removing just one offensive sentence. Here's the full entry, including that now-deleted sentence, which was captured earlier today at Hot Air (in italics; links are in original; numbered tags are mine; bolds are mine throughout this post):
By Tom Blumer | January 6, 2015 | 3:58 PM EST
Longtime journalist Tim Russert, who among many other things hosted NBC's Meet the Press for over 17 years, passed away suddenly in June 2008.
His son Luke now works for NBC, and among other things is a Meet the Press panelist. Based on some of his more recent output, Luke is perhaps better described not a journalist, but as the network's desginated childish, mean-spirited namecaller. After House Speaker John Boehner survived a fairly strong challenge from Republicans frustrated with his leadership, particularly the "cromnibus" legislation passed late last year on his watch, Luke took to Twitter and hauled out an insulting, ethnically charged epithet to describe those who opposed the Speaker's reelection (HT Twitchy):
By Curtis Houck | November 7, 2014 | 12:47 AM EST
On Thursday night, NBC Nightly News played up the current political state of affairs in Washington as both Republicans and Democrats having “dug in” to their policy preferences, but focused only on how Republicans want to repeal “the President’s signature accomplishment” and are angered that he will go through with an executive order on illegal immigration.
Anchor Brian Williams first teased the upcoming segment by NBC News senior White House correspondent Chris Jansing by wondering “how's that cooperation going that everybody promised after the election results.”
By Curtis Houck | November 6, 2014 | 9:18 PM EST
During Thursday’s CBS Evening News with Scott Pelley, Nancy Cordes continued to disparage conservatives, as she referred to some of the newly elected House of Representatives members as being to Speaker John Boehner’s “far right flank” and joining returning Representatives who stifled “Boehner’s own attempts” to address illegal immigration (that President Obama will now act upon in an expected executive order).
Her choice of words regarding conservatives comes after she badgered Boehner at his weekly press conference earlier in the day, during which she asked him how he will “deal with” this “new crop of conservatives” that she portrayed as having said “among other things, that women need to submit to the authority of their husbands, that Hillary Clinton is the anti-Christ” and “don’t think you’re conservative enough.”
By Ken Shepherd | August 6, 2014 | 10:00 PM EDT
He just won't let it go. MSNBC's Chris Matthews returned once again to his hare-brained idea that the president should sue Congress, joined tonight by another dynamic duo of hard-core lefties in cheering on the idea: the perpetually sanctimoniously smug comedian John Fugelsang and MSNBC daytime anchor Joy Reid. The Hardball host is ostensibly unafraid of conflict, but thus far he has failed to bring on a conservative sparring partner in his "sue Congress" segments.
But not only is Matthews stubbornly surrounding himself with those who share his absurd opinion, he's throwing out statements that are either patently false or grossly misleading. For example, in opening Matthews charged:
By Ken Shepherd | August 5, 2014 | 9:35 PM EDT
Monday's "Let Me Finish" tirade was no once-off exercise in spitballing for Chris Matthews. The host of MSNBC's Hardball picked up Tuesday night where he left off, his calling on President Obama to sue Congress for "failure to provide services." And, once again, Matthews made a few factual errors, such as suggesting that the Senate had not confirmed Obama's pick for ambassador to the Russian Federation.
This time around he was joined by liberal scribes Joan Walsh of Salon and Jonathan Capehart of the Washington Post who promptly checked their intellectual honesty at the door and seized on the opportunity as an excuse to bash congressional Republicans for obstructionism. Below the page break you'll find the relevant transcript (emphasis mine; MP3 audio here; video follows page break):
By Ken Shepherd | August 4, 2014 | 9:40 PM EDT
For Barack Obama's 53rd birthday, Chris Matthews gave the gift of an incredibly stupid idea. In his closing "Let Me Finish" commentary for August 4, the MSNBC Hardball host urged the president to "get yourself a bright lawyer" and work up a lawsuit against Congress for "failure to provide services."
Yes, "normally that would strike me or you as absurd, but now that we're in the suing season, it deserves a tad of consideration," Matthews insisted, likening Congress to a DMV clerk who straight up refuses to do his job and grant you your license renewal after you've waited in line forever. You can read the transcript in full below the page break, followed by my analysis (MP3 audio here; video follows page break):