NPR’s Steve Inskeep continued his media tour on Monday promoting his fawning sit-down interview with President by appearing with CNN Tonight host Don Lemon and, when asked about the President attacking the media for supposedly overhyping threats posed by ISIS, Inskeep stood up for the President by suggesting that it was “not a very outlandish idea that he's putting out there.”
President Barack Obama
Both of the media-centered programs on CNN and FNC covered on Sunday the move by the New York Times from Friday to delete a line from an article about President Obama not fully realizing “the anxiety” of Americans following terror attacks due to his lack of exposure to cable news. Other than NPR TV critic Eric Geggans rushing to Obama’s defense on CNN’s Reliable Sources, the other panelists both denounced the Times for what they described as “outrageous,” “perplexing,” and “potentially damning.”
Appearing exclusively on Sunday’s Meet the Press, Chuck Todd repeatedly pressed Speaker Paul Ryan to denounce conservative radio talk show hosts Laura Ingraham and Mark Levin over their criticism of the recently-passed omnibus bill and Todd demanded to know how he’ll work with President Obama to “lay the groundwork” to end political polarization. Todd asked, of the talk show hosts, whether their “rhetoric is inappropriate” or “[o]ut of line?”
Commenting on how The New York Times removed a phrase from a Friday article explaining how President Obama told a group of columnists that he hadn’t consumed enough cable news to fully understand the anxieties of Americans over terror attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, Fox News Sunday panelist Brit Hume lambasted the President for his “snark” and frame of mind that makes him “impatient with the American people.”
The major broadcast networks on Friday morning and evening showed no interest in reporting to viewers that The New York Times had scrubbed from an article on its website that contained a quote from President Obama telling columnists that he did not watch enough news coverage of the Paris and San Bernardino terror attacks to truly grasp the anxiety of the American people.
While a panelist on Monday night's edition of the Special Report program, syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer criticized President Barack Obama for “trying to convince us that we are actually prevailing, winning, pushing in on ISIS (the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria).”
The regular contributor to the Fox News Channel program said that the Democratic occupant of the White House is wrong because the terrorist organization -- which is also known as ISIL, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant -- is actually “expanding” its territory.
The “big three” of ABC, CBS, and NBC all prominently touted on Monday night President Barack Obama’s visit to the Pentagon to discuss the fight against ISIS, but skimped on reporting any criticism of the administration’s strategy but instead lamenting that he’s had to try once “again to reassure an anxious nation” despite polls showing Americans are concerned about the growing threat of terrorism.
Discussing a focus group of Trump supporters convened by Frank Luntz that aired on Sunday’s Face the Nation, CBS News political analyst Jamelle Bouie promptly trashed them as representing the belief among social scientists (i.e. fellow liberals) that there’s been “a distinct rise in racial resentment and anti-black attitudes” in America resulting as a fact of the Obama presidency.
The December edition of the CBS News/New York Times poll came out on Thursday and, naturally, the results were covered on the CBS Evening News but, as per the liberal media’s usual pattern, it left out a slew of poll results in which voters gave President Obama poor marks on terrorism, the fight against ISIS, and how the country remains on the wrong track. Instead, CBS chose to devote all of its coverage (two and a half minutes) concerning its own poll to the results pertaining to the 2016 Republican field.
In the middle segment of Wednesday’s CBS Evening News, the newscast promoted a new Pew Research Study that illustrated the decline of the middle class in the years since the Great Recession to the point that, as anchor Scott Pelley highlighted, “[t]he middle class is no longer the majority in America.” Of course, as the liberal media naturally does, they neglected to include any placement of blame on why the erosion has taken place and placed no blame on the Obama administration and its policies (including ObamaCare).
In the latest analogy put forth by a member of the liberal media to praise President Obama, CNN’s Fareed Zakaria opined on Monday’s CNN Tonight that the President used his speech to the nation on Sunday to come across as the “cool” “fireman” who will “douse” the “flames” started by Donald Trump. Additionally, Zakaria hailed the speech as “vintage Obama” as he conducted “an adult conversation” with the American people about ISIS and forced them to accept his ISIS strategy since “not a lot of people have come up with an alternative.”
Following President Obama’s Sunday night address, the always large post-event panel on CNN had plenty to say, but it was quite the disconnect as many of their political commentators hailed the “straightforward” speech by the President while two of their foreign policy analysts panned the President’s “self-congratulation” and having “his head...in the clouds if he thinks this current strategy is going to succeed.”
