On Friday’s PBS NewsHour, New York Times columnist David Brooks and PBS commentator Mark Shields teamed up to praise President Obama’s controversial remarks about Christianity at the National Prayer Breakfast as well as to shame the GOP over two potential presidential candidates' recent vaccine gaffes. Speaking to co-host Judy Woodruff, Brooks slammed Senator Rand Paul and Governor Chris Christie as “kowtowing toward people who are suspicious of institutions and therefore suspicious of belief. And there has to be a leadership test for candidates.”
Mark Shields
By Tim Graham | November 29, 2014 | 4:11 PM EST
On Friday’s PBS NewsHour, the Shields and Brooks week-in-review segment began with mutual sensitivity about the Ferguson situation – the word or concept of riots never quite emerged.
But what was really surprising was liberal Mark Shields unloading on the Obama White House over the dumping of Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, which anchor Judy Woodruff tried to soft-pedal as Hagel “steps down.”
Liberal PBS Analyst Mark Shields Talks Trash: Boehner Lawsuit Is 'Bogus,' Darrell Issa Is 'Out of Control' on IRS
By Tim Graham | June 28, 2014 | 11:12 PM EDT In the Friday PBS NewsHour, anchor Judy Woodruff lamented the current impasse in Washington: "I don’t know what else to call it, war between congressional Republicans and the president."
She sounded shocked that Speaker John Boehner filed suit to protest the president's constant end-runs around Congress and legislating from the White House on Obamacare, immigration, and other issues. Shields called the suit "absolutely bogus" and compared it to impeaching Bill Clinton in 1998:
By Tim Graham | May 13, 2014 | 7:18 AM EDT
PBS NewsHour analyst Mark Shields started with an admission on Benghazi on Friday night: “Has the White House been transparent? Absolutely not.”
But he lamented that the House special committee hearings “will be a disaster. It won’t be good for the country.” It’s only being done for the Tea Party and Fox News. Apparently, hearings are only productive and wonderful when run by liberal Democrats like Henry Waxman:
PBS Analyst Mark Shields Says Sebelius 'Stepped Up Manfully' to Take Obamacare Blame; David Brooks Says She's No 'Dynamo'
By Tim Graham | April 12, 2014 | 9:13 AM EDT
While HHS secretary Kathleen Sebelius was getting a polite shove out the door, PBS NewsHour analyst Mark Shields offered a note of disclosure: “Well, first of all, let me just admit up front, Kathleen Sebelius has been a personal friend. For 46 years, I have known her.” He even oddly said she “stepped up manfully, to use a bad adverb” in taking the blame for Obamacare.
But Shields and his usual echo-chamber David Brooks disagreed. Brooks said she wasn’t a “dynamo” at HHS, which caused Shields to start touting her. Anchor Judy Woodruff had gently asked, like a good feminist, “What’s her legacy?”
David Brooks: Obama Would Have to 'Ride With Miley Cyrus On The Wrecking Ball' to Seem Unpresidential
By Tim Graham | March 22, 2014 | 10:44 PM EDT Barack Obama has taken a few soft-soap interviews on the PBS NewsHour, so anchor Judy Woodruff didn't want to say he was sell Obamacare in less than dignified forums -- like prank interviews with the schlub from "The Hangover" movies.
Pseudoconservative analyst David Brooks and liberal Mark Shields typically agreed that Obama has oodles of dignity and cannot be mocked. Brooks said only if Obama's riding "with Miley Cyrus on the wrecking ball" -- where she rode naked in a video -- would it be "going a little too far." That's hardly a visual you'd expect from PBS:
By Noel Sheppard | November 16, 2013 | 4:41 PM EST
On PBS’s Inside Washington Friday, the perilously liberal Mark Shields said of ObamaCare, “You can forget 2016 if this thing craters and crashes, the Republicans could run a laundry ticket in 2016 and win.”
Syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer marvelously responded, “I’m going to recommend to my colleagues on the right that we do exactly that. 2016 we’re going to run a laundry ticket and we’re going to win” (video follows with transcript and commentary):
PBS Staff RINO David Brooks Rants 2012 GOP Debates Were 'Looney Tunes,' Then Apologizes for Mild Dem Joke
By Tim Graham | November 9, 2013 | 2:36 PM EST New York Times columnist David Brooks always knows he's sitting on a liberal Democrat set at the PBS NewsHour. PBS viewers don't want a real conservative that makes conservative arguments. Only insults are welcome. So in praising Chris Christie on Friday's show, he said the 2012 GOP presidential debates were "Looney Tunes." He was dead serious.
But when the subject turned to liberal Democrats in New York City, he made a very mild crack about the "Democratic intelligentsia, such as it is," and immediately retracted and apologized:
By Noel Sheppard | October 26, 2013 | 6:01 PM EDT
Even before the disastrous ObamaCare launch, many conservative pundits have said the so-called “Affordable Care Act” was the first step toward a single-payer, universal healthcare system in America.
On PBS’s Inside Washington Friday, syndicated columnist Mark Shields and Politico’s Evan Thomas both advanced single-payer as the solution to all that ails us with host Gordon Peterson agreeing (video follows with transcribed highlights and commentary):
By Noel Sheppard | October 26, 2013 | 2:44 PM EDT
Is it ignorance that causes liberal media members to speak falsehoods when talking about either politics or the economy or is it a willful dishonesty?
Take the case of Mark Shields who on PBS's News Hour Friday actually said of Republicans, "They have had one major victory in the past 25 years" (video follows with transcript and commentary):
By Tim Graham | September 14, 2013 | 1:55 PM EDT
While media reporters have hailed the "new" PBS NewsHour for having two female anchors, the liberal-bias formula is exactly the same. PBS Republican-in-Name-Only David Brooks is assigned to trash the Republicans as extremist obstructionists, so that Democrat hack Mark Shields can agree, and add that they don't live in reality.
Meanwhile, Secretary of State John Kerry is already demonstrating "commitment and passion" by conducting a reality-denying negotiation with the Russians and Syrians to "destroy" Syria's stock of chemical weapons. Brooks and Shields teamed up to endorse and promote the suffocating inside-the-Beltway statist consensus:
By Noel Sheppard | September 14, 2013 | 12:52 PM EDT
On Inside Washington Friday, PBS’s Mark Shields and NPR’s Nina Totenberg predictably echoed the Administration’s claims that its threats of force in Syria led Russian President Vladimir Putin to broker a chemical weapons deal.
Fortunately for viewers, syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer was present to scold his fellow panelists for “spinning from the White House” (video follows with transcript and commentary):