As part of NBC Nightly News’s five segments on Tuesday obsessing over Donald Trump’s proposed ban on all Muslims entering the United States, the program turned to former anchor Tom Brokaw to end the show with a commentary comparing Trump to Nazism, McCarthyism, and opposition to the Civil Rights Movement. In the three teases proceeding Brokaw’s editorial, current anchor Lester Holt promised that Brokaw would discuss “the politics of fear” and the “harsh,” “ugly lessons about fear and marginalizing groups of people.”
Joe McCarthy
By Curtis Houck | December 8, 2015 | 10:16 PM EST
Acting as though the latest news the war against ISIS, new developments in the Hillary Clinton scandal or any other story barely existed, the “big three” networks of ABC, CBS, and NBC devoted a whopping 24 minutes and three seconds of their Tuesday evening newscasts to obsessing over Donald Trump’s proposed ban on Muslims entering the United States. Not surprisingly, NBC Nightly News led the way by spending nearly half its newscast on Trump with five segments adding up to 12 minutes and 34 seconds.
By Clay Waters | December 7, 2015 | 11:55 AM EST
Reporters Patrick Healy and Maggie Haberman made Sunday's New York Times front page with a deep and deeply fear-mongering analysis of “demagogue” Donald Trump’s stump speeches: "95,000 Words, Many of Them Ominous, From Trump’s Tongue." But things that two Times reporters find “ominous” may not scare a more moderate reader, such as pointing out that ISIS chops off the heads of their victims.
By Curtis Houck | October 23, 2015 | 1:40 AM EDT
Roughly a minute after the 11-hour Benghazi Committee hearing with Hillary Clinton concluded on Thursday night, CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360 turned to political commentator Carl Bernstein, who drooled over Clinton’s performance while comparing Republicans to Joseph McCarthy and his House Un-American Committee for concocting an “abusive” hearing.In the next hour on CNN Tonight, Bernstein trotted out the same comparison against “a group of demagogues” while Hillary “did great” in using “the facts at her command.”
By Curtis Houck | September 9, 2015 | 7:45 AM EDT
While appearing on the Tuesday installment of MSNBC’s All In, former Chief of Staff to Colin Powell and retired Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson compared former Vice President Dick Cheney to Joseph McCarthy and suggested that he “cannot recognize reality” due to him either being “shocked” on 9/11 or suffering from a “physiological” or “biological” problem.
On Day Cruz Announces for President, Hardball's Matthews Spends Much of Program Blasting Him As Latter-Day 'McCarthy'
By Ken Shepherd | March 23, 2015 | 9:50 PM EDT Chris Matthews was back at the helm of Hardball today after a week's vacation, and, fortuitously for him, the very same day his bête noire, Ted Cruz, announced for president before a supportive crowd at Liberty University. From start to finish Matthews did not disappoint his audience, spewing out hateful invective about the junior senator from Texas.
By Connor Williams | July 25, 2014 | 11:20 AM EDT
In his never-ending obsession with Ted Cruz, Hardball’s Chris Matthews devoted the start and close of his program to rants against the supposed "McCarthyism" of the Texas Senator. Matthews objected to Cruz’s belief that the FAA’s short lived ban on air travel to Israel was political in nature.
On the July 24 edition of Matthews’ program, the host wondered if Cruz was “trying to mimic the headline grabbing of the bad old days, or is he just so ignorant of what those tactics have done to this country that he's not aware of what he’s committing: the horror of McCarthyism all over again.” The former Tip O’Neill staffer was far from finished with the junior Senator from Texas, however. Matthews continued: [MP3 audio here; video below]
By Paul Bremmer | October 2, 2013 | 5:29 PM EDT
Veteran journalist Carl Bernstein unleashed a tirade against House Majority Leader Eric Cantor and “his Republicans” on Wednesday’s Morning Joe. After co-host Mika Brzezinski read a passage from Thomas Friedman’s scathing indictment of Tea Party Republicans in The New York Times, Bernstein promised, “I’ll go farther than Friedman.” He certainly did: “Eric Cantor and his Republican Party are the most dangerous demagogic force in American politics since Joe McCarthy.”
Wow. That’s a serious accusation by the well-known investigative reporter. But there was more. According to Bernstein, President Obama’s new purpose is to protect the country from these demagogues:
By Paul Bremmer | May 1, 2013 | 12:24 PM EDT
The craziness keeps gushing from Chris Matthews’ mouth like a waterfall. On Tuesday morning, Matthews was anchoring MSNBC’s coverage of President Obama’s third news conference of the year. (Why they didn’t get a real journalist to anchor the coverage, I don’t know.) While waiting for the news conference to begin, Matthews and an array of panelists were discussing the gun control battle that they recently lost. The exasperated analysts seemed to agree that the background check bill failed in the Senate because gun rights advocates were more intense and single-minded than gun control advocates.
Matthews, picking up on this idea, attempted to glorify the gun control crowd: “Let's keep reminding ourselves that a lot of people who are for gun safety also are for world peace, also for jobs, also for the environment. People who are for guns are for guns.”
By Clay Waters | February 18, 2013 | 6:09 PM EST
Newly minted Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, a Tea Party politician, is "raising bipartisan hackles" and otherwise being a "bad boy" in the previously collegial U.S. Senate, opined political reporter Jonathan Weisman on the front page of Saturday's New York Times: "Texas Senator Goes on Attack And Raises Bipartisan Hackles."
Clearly disturbed about Cruz's treatment of Obama's nominee for defense secretary Chuck Hagel, reporter Weisman even put a mike in front of not one but two liberal Democratic senators who likened Cruz to notorious Sen. Joe McCarthy. Well, at least Cruz is liked by what Weisman called "ardent conservatives."
By Ann Coulter | August 9, 2012 | 11:43 PM EDT
Fifty years from now, everyone will agree that Karl Rove committed treason by revealing the identity of CIA "spy" Valerie Plame, tea partiers shouted the N-word at a black congressman and Duke lacrosse players gang-raped a stripper. Liberals tell whopping lies, and most conservatives can't be bothered to learn history.
In the last few days, we've heard both George Will and Charles Krauthammer, otherwise intelligent people, repeating bogus Democratic talking points about how Joe McCarthy allegedly smeared innocents with false allegations.
By Noel Sheppard | August 23, 2011 | 10:41 AM EDT
The media must really believe Rick Perry can defeat their beloved President Obama for they are coming at the Texas governor with guns blazing.
On Tuesday, Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen likened Perry to the late Sen. Joe McCarthy because of his disbelief in manmade global warming: