Alex Christy
Latest from Alex Christy
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has a series of demands in the form of four witnesses he would like to see testify at the Senate's impeachment and the media are doing everything in their power to pressure Republicans into accepting them. MSNBC Live host Hallie Jackson confronted Vice President Pence's chief of staff Marc Short on Tuesday about Schumer's list in a contentious interview.
MSNBC Live co-hosts Stephanie Ruhle and Ali Velshi took a brief break from talking about impeachment Monday afternoon to agonize over another way in which President Trump and congressional Republicans are a threat to the republic: judicial appointments. Together with liberal legal eagle Danielle McLaughlin, they lamented Trump's high number of judicial appointments, the lack of a Democratic strategy in response, and the way Mitch McConnell handled the nomination of Merrick Garland.
Throughout the entire impeachment drama our self-appointed moral betters in the media have dutifully repeated the Democrats' talking points that this about much more than a mere policy difference. But as the theory that President's Trump's actions could best and solely be explained as a desire for him to get the Ukrainians to investigate Joe Biden succumbed to a lack of provable facts that idea became less and less believable. On Friday's special coverage of the Judiciary Committee vote on the articles of impeachment, Nicolle Wallace and Andrea Mitchell let the cat out of the bag that this really is about a policy difference.
Of all the biased hot takes to come from the media during the impeachment process, none lacked any sense of self-awareness more than the panel discussion that took place Thursday morning on CNN. Responding to former Attorney General Eric Holder's anti-William Barr op-ed in the Washington Post, the panel eagerly agreed with Holder, while conveniently ignoring Holder's own history and how he would have been treated if their own standards applied to him.
CNN Newsroom co-hosts Jim Sciutto and Poppy Harlow like to think of themselves as being on the front lines in President Trump's war against the truth. Trump's Tuesday rally in Pennsylvania in the aftermath of Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz's report on the FBI's handling of Crossfire Hurricane provided the duo another chance to put on their fact-checking hats for their Wednesday show, but once again it was they who were the ones spreading misinformation.
The case for impeachment, said the cast of Tuesday's MSNBC Live, is such a slam dunk that the only way that the Senate could acquit President Trump is if they are too stupid to "understand the story." At least they wouldn't be Russian stooges. MSNBC contributor and former U.S. Attorney Chuck Rosenberg, responding to host Stephanie Ruhle's inquiries about why Democrats included certain articles of impeachment, but not others, declared the number of articles to be irrelevant, because all they have to do is" adequately tell the story."
The media just cannot bring themselves to admit that just because Russia interfered in the 2016 election, does not mean that Ukraine did not, even if on a smaller scale. The latest media personality to have this trouble was CNN's Wolf Blitzer as he interviewed Judiciary Committee member Tom McClintock of California before Monday's impeachment hearings.
MSNBC seems to operate under the belief that one should “never let a tragedy go unexploited.” After Friday morning’s shooting at Naval Air Station Pensacola, the hosts and guests on the cable network turned the discussion to gun laws and how the U.S. contrasts to regulations in Britain. Host Stephanie Ruhle highlighted the terror attack in London last week as a comparison.
CNN -- the network that portrays itself as the bulwark for freedom of the press -- explicitly took the side of a politician railing against a journalist. Because the politician was liberal, and the journalist works for a conservative-owned set of TV stations. The words "Jim Acosta" never crossed their lips.
Former failed Democratic nominee for president and Secretary of State John Kerry took his initiative to declare war on climate change to CNN Newsroom on Tuesday where he found an agreeable audience in co-hosts Jim Sciutto and Poppy Harlow. Throughout the segment they could be heard adding the approval to Kerry's long list of contradictions, non-sequiturs, and belief that history began in 2017 when Donald Trump became president.
With impeachment frenzy moves from the House Intelligence Committee to the Judiciary Committee, the media has a whole new list of Republicans they can attack in ways that they would never attack a Democrat. On CNN's Monday edition of Inside Politics Ranking Member Doug Collins was the latest Republican to find himself under attack, this time from Dana Bash who called him "rabid."
It has been a constant theme in the media for many years that Republicans need to do a better job of recruiting female candidates and on Wednesday's MSNBC Live, Chris Jansing highlighted the efforts of some Republican women to address that concers. While the segment started off dealing with practical concerns such as the lack of political connections and fundraising abilities, it ended with the suggestion that if Republicans really want to do a better job of recruiting women to run for office, thus enhancing their appeal to female voters, they need to drop their "litmus tests" on things like abortion.
Surprise presidential visits to war zones to spend time with the troops during Thanksgiving or other holidays have become a bipartisan tradition that everyone can support. While most view such visits as a way to honor the troops and express amazement at the amount of planning and secrecy that goes into such trips, MSNBC Live host Stephanie Ruhle took Friday to call Trump's Thanksgiving visit to Afghanistan a "photo-op" and wonder that if he will plan more foreign visits as part of a strategy to counter impeachment.
With the public testimony portion of the House impeachment proceedings concluded, Democrats have discovered they have a problem: the public hearings did nothing to increase support for impeachment. On Tuesday's CNN Newsroom, CNN politics reporter Chris Cillizza joined co-host Jim Sciutto to ponder why this is and concluded that it isn't because the lack of overwhelming evidence, but rather due to the fact that the holiday season is upon us.
CNN Newsroom co-host Jim Sciutto took the opportunity on Monday to diagnose Republicans with reality-denying "psychosis" and hype his book Shadow War in the process. Sciutto was particularly incensed at Republicans for questioning Russian interference in the 2016 election, instead offering up the CrowdStrike conspiracy theory that says it was Ukraine that interfered in 2016.
MSNBC contributor and Politico national security correspondent Natasha Bertrand twisted herself into a rhetorical pretzel on Friday where she declared that Vladmir Putin interfered in the 2016 election in order to see Donald Trump elected president. This assertion occurred less than a minute after MSNBC Live host Stephanie Ruhle played a clip of Dr. Fiona Hill's Thursday testimony saying that such talk is "is exactly what the Russian government was hoping for."
CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin continued the media's recent history of poor impeachment predictions on Thursday when he said predicted that Dr. Fiona Hill would testify that Russia interfered in the 2016 election for the purposes of electing Donald Trump.
As impeachment frenzy sweeps the nation it has become clear that both sides are cite the transcript of the July 25 phone call between President Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as their key piece of evidence to make their respective arguments. MSNBC's Joe Scarborough and Mike Barnicle naturally did the same on Tuesday before the day's events on Capitol Hill got underway, citing the transcript as proof that Trump is a lying liar who lies all the time, but it was they who were the ones spreading misinformation.
Before Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland gave testimony before the House Intel Committee 's Wednesday impeachment hearing, those occupying the desk on MSNBC's pre-game show could hardly contain their excitement. They eagerly awaited the downfall of the Trump Administration and the schadenfreude that would inevitably come with seeing "Trumpists" react to Sondland's testimony.
Former Watergate investigative journalist Carl Bernstein joined CNN's Brooke Baldwin on Monday's CNN Newsroom to discuss the latest speculations surrounding impeachment and President Trump's use of Twitter. During the segment, Bernstein suggested that the Trump could be impeached for witness intimidation.