Mark Finkelstein
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Could it be CNN's evaporating audience that has one of its hosts taking one of its infinite swipes at the Fox News behemoth that has so badly thrashed CNN in the ratings? On Friday's New Day, co-host John Berman quipped that the Fox Business Network might be "on the payroll" of President Trump, and might have prepared an edited mashup of Nancy Pelosi stammering her way through remarks during her weekly press conference on Thursday.
Reacting to yesterday's short-lived meeting with Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, the Morning Joe panel hurls a string of insults at President Trump: "stinks, complete idiot, pathetic."
Willie Geist asked Susan Del Percio what she would do about impeachment "if you were a Democrat?" MSNBC still passes Del Percio off as a "Republican" strategist. But it appears that the most recent person she strategized for was Andrew Cuomo, the liberal Democrat governor of New York.
On Morning Joe, Joe Scarborough calls on billionaire Tom Steyer to "get some lawyers" to work for the disbarment of Attorney General William Barr. Steyer has spent tens of millions of dollars on TV ads calling for the impeachment of President Trump.
Joe Scarborough claims that presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg is "mainstreaming" the Democrat party, ignoring his hard-left policy positions that include support for the Green New Deal, and proposals to abolish the Electoral College and pack the Supreme Court.
On CBS's Face the Nation, Senator and Democrat presidential candidate Kirsten Gillibrand, a hardcore abortion backer, calls abortion a "life and death" decision that women should have right to make. CBS host Margaret Brennan didn't blink.
On her MSNBC show, Joy Reid says that recently-adopted abortion laws are "send women back to the Dark Ages," and are essentially "turning all of America into Gilead from The Handmaid's Tale."
On Morning Joe, Donny Deutsch says that Elizabeth Warren doesn't have the "stuff" to beat President Trump. He suggests that Warren is too strident to be "digestible." Poor Donny was very clearly afraid of running afoul of Mika Brzezinski in particular and feminists and identity-politics fans in general. He knew the feminists think women are somehow punished by the liberal media, and lamented that this is where we still are in 2019.
On Morning Joe, MSNBC legal analyst Danny Cevallos says that Roe v. Wade is "ripe" to be overturned, noting that it is on "a weak foundational basis," and that even pro-choice people have to acknowledge that "the right to privacy [upon which Roe was based] does not exist either in the history or the text of the Constitution." Joe Scarborough mentions that his "very progressive" law school professor of constitutional law, while supporting Roe, admitted that "it was "a terribly written case, and its logic is baffling at times."
On this morning's New Day, Berman offered up a steaming serving of anti-Trump liberalism. The subject was Lindsey Graham's suggestion on Fox News yesterday that Don Jr. needn't comply with a Senate intel subpoena to provide additional testimony. Berman suggested to John Avlon, a CNN analyst and former editor-in-chief of the lefty Daily Beast, that Graham has gone "from wingman [to John McCain] to wingnut." Most telling was that Berman prefaced his quip by assuring Avlon, "you'll like this one." Berman was thus boastfully sucking up to a committed Trump critic.
On her MSNBC show, Joy Reid claims that during the Bush era, "we were . . . starving people in Guantanamo." MSNBC analyst Malcolm Nance then accuses President Trump of having pardoned a former Army officer, convicted of killing a suspected al Qaeda terrorist, for purposes of "greenlighting actual offenses by people who support their side."
Joe Scarborough proclaimed his opinion on the situation regarding the White House visit of the Boston Red Sox, celebrating their 2018 World Series victory. All the players of color, with the exception of one Cuban-American, have announced that they are not going. All of the white players are going. Scarborough says that under the circumstances, he wouldn't go, and he wishes that one white team leader would announce that although he would like to go, he will not, and would instead "stay back" with his teammates of color.
CNN host John Berman tried to goad congressional Democrats into taking action against the Trump administration. On New Day, Berman taunts Dems as "the boy who cried contempt," demands to know when "the rubber will meet the road," and frets that the Dems will "succumb to the delay tactics" of which he accused the White House. Washington Post reporter and CNN analyst Rachael Bade tried to cheer up poor John, assuring Berman, "you're going to see them go to court soon," although the Dems have to "look like" they're trying to work with the White House.
Joe Scarborough's white-hot hatred of Donald Trump apparently extends to members of the President's administration. On Morning Joe, Scarborough launched a nasty, personal attack on Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Scarborough's stream of insults about Pompeo included the following: "absolute fool; disgraceful; beneath contempt; should be ashamed of himself; bumbling, stupid act; unworthy to hold any public office for the rest of his life."
The Joy Reid show stokes fears that President Trump will refuse to leave office if he is defeated in the 2020 election, saying there is a "significant threat" of that happening, and drawing parallels to the Watergate era, asserting that President Nixon floated the notion of using military force to remain in power.
A New York Times story about gentrification in the historically black South Park neighborhood of Raleigh, North Carolina includes these lines: "A few new homes rise high above the modest, single-story properties around them. Those houses, some longtime residents lament, feel so large that they evoke plantation homes, complete with second-story porches an overseer might use to keep an eye on the black residents nearby."
On Joy Reid's MSNBC show, a hyperbolic Malcolm Nance goes on an agitated rant, warning among other things that the nation could end of President Trump wins re-election in 2020.
Poor Alisyn Camerota. She had so been hoping that the Mueller report would bring President Trump crashing down. And now that it seems very unlikely that will happen, Alisyn is deeply bummed. Or, as Camerota put it this morning "they've broken my spirit," adding that the lack of action against President Trump is "disheartening."
No one doubts that the liberal media sees itself as an active arm of the Democrat party. But MSNBC's Yasmin Vossoughian has now provided an absolutely brazen example of the phenomenon. Vossoughian subbed for Ari Melber on his MSNBC show The Beat. Interviewing ultraliberal Rep. Jamie Raskin, Vossoughian three times asked Raskin which was the best way that "we" should go after Attorney General Bill Barr and/or the Mueller report and testimony by Mueller.
On Morning Joe, after saying that he understands that it doesn't make "political sense" to impeach President Trump, Joe Scarborough calls for the impeachment of Attorney General William Barr, calling him Trump's "lackey" and "stooge."