One day after he pitched a softball to President Obama by asking him if criminal justice reform was “your defining moment” as the country’s first African-American President, NBC Nightly News anchor Lester Holt returned with part two on Tuesday’s newscast by touting Obama’s “pointed jabs” and “candid assessment” of the 2016 Republican field.
President Barack Obama
In his first interview with President Barack Obama since taking over as NBC Nightly News anchor, Lester Holt gave the President a friendly platform on Monday to promote criminal justice reform and his decision to send a small group of U.S. troops into Syria. Holt served up a fawning question to the President if he viewed it as “your defining moment” considering the fact that he’s the first African-American President with “[s]o many hopes and aspirations were placed on you.”
Continuing to come unhinged and flash his liberal colors in the first CNBC Republican presidential debate on Wednesday, co-moderator John Harwood pontificated that President Obama has made the United States economy “the strongest in the world.”
On Thursday, October 22, 2015, President Barack Obama signed a veto message of the National Defense Authorization Act. The NDAA establishes budgets and policies for the Defense Department, and in the last 53 years it has only been vetoed four times. Coverage of the veto signing and its significance has been rather dismal despite Obama summoning the White House press for a public signing. ABC and NBC aired nothing. Here are the brief mentions the other networks offered on the funding for our troops and their salaries, as well as benefits and training. CNN, PBS, and CBS provided brief statements on the NDAA and its planned veto by the President. Meanwhile, Fox News devoted a portion of time greater than the other networks combined.
While the “big three” of ABC, CBS, and NBC all prominently touted on Monday President Obama’s defense of Hillary Clinton on her e-mail scandal in a 60 Minutes interview, none of the three dared to report later in the week how the Obama administration largely walked it back by declaring that Obama believes Clinton’s private e-mail server “does not pose a threat to national security” “based on what has been made public” so far.
In a humorous and pithy takedown of President Obama for his performance on CBS’s 60 Minutes Sunday, Fox News Digital Politics Editor Chris Stirewalt appeared on Monday’s edition of The Kelly File to express his astonishment with how Obama’s reached “the point of utter incredulity, even with people who were once very admiring” like 60 Minutes correspondent Steve Kroft who Stirewalt described as “the sort of number one Obama-nuzzler in the whole stable of Obama-nuzzlers.”
Previewing President Obama’s latest interview on CBS’s 60 Minutes with Steve Kroft, the 60 Minutes correspondent and the co-hosts of Friday’s CBS This Morning fawned over the President’s performance as “feisty” and proof that he finds his final years in office “liberating” as he does not have to go before voters again.
Friday’s CBS This Morning offered extensive coverage of the deadly shooting on Thursday at a community college in Roseburg, Oregon, but one of the segments took a broader, sappy look at pushing gun control through the lens of President Obama’s “evolving anger” on the inability to pass gun control measures through Congress where he’s found “little” of any “hope and change.”
The always shameless uber-lefty blogger Charles Pierce of Esquire was a guest on the Thursday edition of MSNBC’s The Last Word and in the course of discussing the deadly community college shooting in Oregon earlier in the day, admitted that he’s “politicizing the hell out of this” shooting and “I don’t care.” The former Boston Globe writer declared that the Republican Party “is completely insane” and doesn’t apparently believe in regulations for mines, fixing roads, federal assistance after natural disasters or keeping people safe.
As part of CNN’s live coverage Thursday night of the deadly community college shooting in Oregon, fill-in AC360 host Wolf Blitzer declared that President Barack Obama “was embarrassed of the United States in front of the world” when he commented on the tragedy and urged Americans to “politicize” mass shootings. Prior to Blitzer’s observation, Zeleny fretted the presidential campaigns like that of Hillary Clinton will be unable “to bring any sense to this” shooting with the President encountering “not a bipartisan spirit to do anything.”
Following President Barack Obama’s angry reaction Thursday night to the deadly community college shooting in Oregon and pleas to “politicize” mass shootings, the CBS Evening News did just that with a full story lamenting the lack of gun control by laying blame at the feet of the GOP-led Senate and the National Rifle Association (NRA) for their support of candidates in favor of gun rights.
While the “big three” of ABC, CBS, and NBC all covered on Monday night the developments at the United Nations (U.N.) and the meeting between President Barack Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin, ABC’s World News Tonight and NBC Nightly News failed to go the distance and report that Obama’s disastrous rebel training initiative in Syria had been suspended. In contrast, the CBS Evening News not only covered the announcement from the Pentagon but led the newscast with the story.
