The rhetoric on MSNBC has gotten so over the top in recent weeks it’s almost unbelievable.
On Tuesday’s The Cycle, co-host Krystal Ball said that Republicans are asking young people to not buy health insurance thereby supposedly risking "agonizing and unnecessary death" in order to hurt President Obama (video follows with transcript and commentary):
MSNBC’s Krystal Ball slammed the Republican Party in a tongue-in-cheek monologue at the end of Tuesday’s The Cycle, declaring that the GOP is the new Jim Crow. But in the process, she also drew attention to the problem of complacency among Democratic voters, seemingly resorting to an offensive stereotype that they are generally lazy, disinterested in public policy, and need to be driven by fear.
Much of Ball’s rant was focused on how new Republican-imposed voter ID laws in many states have increased the desire to vote among traditional Democratic constituencies. She concluded by blasting the GOP as the new purveyors of Jim Crow laws:
Appearing on Thursday's PoliticsNation, MSNBC's Krystal Ball accused conservative talk radio host Rush Limbaugh of "racism" and "sexism" and charged that "He is offensive in every way you can be offensive."
Host Al Sharpton had introduced the segment by marking the 25th anniversary of Limbaugh's nationally syndicated radio show, and, after offering congratulations, then launched into complaints:
Although he should have a little bit of latitude as a news columnist for the Washington Post over, say, an ostensibly objective staff reporter, Dana Milbank made abundantly clear on the Thursday edition if PoliticsNation that he has a complete disregard for any sense of fairness or objectivity.
Milbank blasted Republican senators Marco Rubio, Rand Paul, Ted Cruz, and other as “children,” telling MSNBC host Al Sharpton he should just accept the need to “be patient” with them, sounding like someone counseling an exasperated mother trying to discipline her toddler.
In a way you have to hand it to Krystal Ball. The former Democratic congressional candidate-turned-MSNBC co-host is always hard at work spinning for the Obama administration, come what may. Appearing on Thursday's Politics Nation, the co-host of MSNBC’s The Cycle raved about President Obama’s May 23 national security speech, claiming the president is “reining in his own power,” a “remarkable and incredibly unusual” move.
Ball fawned over the president’s speech to host Al Sharpton, claiming he “put the steps in place” to close the Guantanamo Bay detention facility, before offering this proclamation about Obama’s executive power:
MSNBC’s blatant promotion of gay marriage appears to have taken a bizarre and sad turn. Krystal Ball, co-host of The Cycle, has taken to using her four-year-old daughter Ella as a prop in a pro-same-sex marriage video.
In the 3-minute video, Ball asks her young daughter a series of questions about who she is allowed to marry, eventually asking her what happens if she loves another girl. Ball’s daughter, who is clearly taking cues from her mom, says that because she lives in New York she can marry another girl if she loves her. [See video after jump.]
Ten years ago, then-Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) held together a Democratic filibuster of President Bush's nomination of Miguel Estrada to the Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. Tom Curry of NBCNews.com notes that Republicans tried to end debate and proceed to an up-or-down vote seven times before eventually giving up. Frustrated with Daschle's obstructionism, President Bush called for filibuster reform, which Daschle dismissed out of hand, insisting,"The Senate is always going to be the Senate."
Fast forward to February 19, 2013. Appearing on MSNBC's The Cycle in part to promote his new book about the U.S. Senate, co-host Krystal Ball dutifully read back to Daschle a line from his new tome about the filibuster being abused. At no point, however, did Ball or anyone else on the panel, including token conservative S.E. Cupp, point out the Center for American Progress fellow’s hypocrisy.
Discussing the legacy of Pope Benedict XVI on the February 11 edition of MSNBC's "The Cycle," co-host Krystal Ball praised the retiring pontiff for being a "real advocate for addressing climate change" and for joining Twitter, but lamented that he was "outspoken in keeping women from being ordained" and "went after the largest group of nuns in America for basically spending too much time focused on the poor and not enough on abortion and gay marriage."
But as we at NewsBusters have noted time and again, the nuns who were corrected by the Vatican were NOT attacked for their good social work and most certainly were not denounced for being too busy caring for the poor to deal with the politics of abortion or gay marriage. No, the Vatican's rebuke -- which was tenderly-worded and pastoral in nature, by the way -- was largely centered on questions of Catholic doctrine and ecclesiology, as my colleague Paul Wilson explained in an April 2012 post addressing a similar gripe by the Washington Post's Melinda Henneberger (emphases mine):
To give you an idea of how much you have to be in the tank for President Obama in order to be the typical host on an MSNBC program, on Tuesday, Krystal Ball and Toure Neblett - two far, far-left commentators! - actually came out in support of the just-released Justice Department memo that made the legal case for drone strikes against Americans.
Be sure to strap yourselves in tightly before you enter the bumpy ride in this bizarre parallel universe (video follows with transcript and commentary):
Barbara Walters is known for asking ridiculous questions during her famous interviews, but this time it appears she has gone too far, annoying even the liberal co-hosts of MSNBC’s The Cycle.
The day after Barbara Walters’ annual Most Fascinating People Special Wednesday night, the cast of The Cycle, most notably co-host Toure, savaged Ms. Walters for her “embarrassing, dereliction of duty” interviews with Hillary Clinton and Chris Christie. [See video below page break. MP3 audio here.]
When your network milked the "war on women" for all its worth, it's a little much to condescend to a conservative woman in a segment dealing with gun control and domestic violence, but Steve Kornacki turned up the volume on his boiler plate anti-gun talking points in a segment on the Dec. 3 edition of MSNBC's The Cycle that discussed Jovan Belcher's murder-suicide and the resulting exploitation by sports journalists like Jason Whitlock and Bob Costas.
The panel's lone conservative, columnist S.E. Cupp reasoned that blaming an inanimate object for violence is a dangerous and misguided assumption, but co-host and Salon contributor Steve Kornacki could not have disagreed more. [ video & transcript below ]
How can someone who garnered nearly 60 million votes in a recent presidential election not be considered the least bit influential? As inexplicable as it sounds, that's what GQ Magazine declared when it selected Mitt Romney to headline its annual list of the 25 most uninspiring and insignificant people of the year. According to the author however, they were ranked in no particular order, "because all zeros are created equal."
Seeing a perfect opportunity to have a little fun at the expense of others, the hosts of MSNBC's The Cycle compiled their own list on Thursday. Token conservative S.E. Cupp appeared to have taken the assignment literally with a clip that introduced the world to a mild-mannered man from Indiana. Krystal Ball and Touré Neblett followed, and having some inkling of where their heads were at -- Cupp pleaded with them not to pick her. Instead they chose Karl Rove and Rush Limbaugh respectively, gloating about how wrong they both were about Romney's legitimate chance to emerge victorious.