Nicholas Fondacaro
Latest from Nicholas Fondacaro
On Monday afternoon, news broke that Virginia’s Democratic Governor Terry McAuliffe was being investigated by the FBI for illegal campaign contributions. “We know that this investigation dates back at least into last year and this is looking into donations to McAuliffe's 2013 campaign for governor,” reported CNN’s Evan Perez on The Lead with Jake Tapper. It’s not every day that a sitting state governor gets investigated for illegal contributions, yet none of the big three news networks decided to report it in there evening broadcasts.
Late Monday afternoon a news story broke that left many furious, the head of the Veteran’s Administration was caught on video saying he doesn’t think the wait times for medical care matter. “Days to an appointment is really not what we should be measuring,” said Secretary Bob McDonald heartlessly, “When you go to Disney, do they measure the number of hours you wait in line...What's important is, what is your satisfaction with the experience?” And of the big three networks, NBC was the only one who did not give the story any time at all during their evening news broadcast.
Hillary Clinton unveiled her new campaign slogan, “stronger together,” on Meet the Press Sunday and most the panelists at the roundtable weren’t too enthusiastic about it. Many felt the slogan was too defensive and provided no drive for supporters, but New York Times Correspondent Helene Cooper had nothing but praise for it. “I want to put some love in for Hillary's new slogan,” she stated, “[It] goes back to kind of what we saw in 2008 and when president Obama was talking about “yes we can.”
Host Brian Stelter raised a very important question on Sunday’s Reliable Sources, “Is media to blame for political polarization?” The popular opinion on the panel was yes, the media does deserve blame for the “hyper-partisan” nature of modern politics. But Journalist Carl Bernstein went farther with a scathing condemnation of how reporting is conducted by the media today. “It's been an abdication of responsibility,” he exclaimed, showing his disgust with modern journalism.
No matter how hard she tries Hillary Clinton cannot seem to be able to put Bernie Sanders away once and for all, and the liberal media is not happy about it. On his Sunday show This Week, Clinton Foundation donor and former aide to President Bill Clinton, George Stephanopoulos badgered Senator Sanders about his steep chances of winning and how he’s hurting the Democratic Party’s ability to win in November. “Can you lay out a credible path to stopping her,” the host asked of Sanders.
On Wednesday’s edition of Hannity, Donald Trump dropped the big one on the Hillary Clinton campaign, openly accusing former President Bill Clinton of Rape. Trump’s new line of attack has been telegraphed for months. And the liberal media reacted in the most predictable way, by claiming it has no basis in fact. “The rape accusation is decades-old and discredited,” ABC’s Tom Llamas stated, misleading the audience during Thursday’s World News Tonight.
While most people would evaluate a Supreme Court pick by their history as a lawyer and/or judge, ABC and Telemundo evaluated Donald Trump’s SCOTUS picks by the color of their skin. “Donald Trump revealed the names of 11 judges that he’s considering to fill the vacancy in the Supreme Court, if he makes it to the White House,” reported Telemundo’s Maria Celeste Wednesday evening, “What stands out is that no Hispanics were included.” ABC’s Tom Llamas expressed a similar concern during World News Tonight.
In a rather surprising move, both ABC’s World News Tonight and NBC’s Nightly News reported on Hillary and Bill Clinton’s astronomical speaking fees Wednesday. Unfortunately, both dedicated less than 20 seconds to the topic during each of their respective reports. “A total of almost $1.5 million in just three months,” reported NBC’s Andrea Mitchell, a known Clinton fan.
Major conservative leaders convened at Facebook headquarters Wednesday to discuss the recent scandal of suppressing conservative trending topics. But you would never know it if you were watching ABC’s World News Tonight or NBC Nightly News. Kudos to CBS’s Evening News for not only mentioning the highly anticipated meeting, but giving it a full segment to boot! “Facebook held a summit of conservative leaders today to address allegations that the world’s leading social media website has a tendency to face left,” stated Anthony Mason kicking off their minutes long briefing.
It took most of the networks three days to finally cover the controversial Nevada Democrat Convention, where Sanders supporters tried to stand up to the Clinton election machine. But instead of documenting the arguably shady actions of the state party officials, the networks chose to smear Hillary Clinton’s rival. “Penchant for actual violence,” read both CBS and NBC reporters from a Democrat Party document about Bernie Sanders supporters, on their evening broadcasts Tuesday.
During their Tuesday evening newscasts, all of the “big three” networks ignored explosive new details about former President Bill Clinton’s relationship with convicted pedophile Jeffery Epstein. “It’s no secret that former President Bill Clinton had a relationship with Jeffrey Epstein,” reported Fox News’ Shannon Bream on Special Report, “A prominent businessman who went to jail as part of a plea deal he reached while being investigated amid allegations that he was a pedophile, who had sex with scores of underage girls and used his staff to procure the victims.”
In one of her most hateful and vulgarity laced monologues yet, Samantha Bee unleashed on evangelicals claiming their roots and current political motivations are bigoted. “It wasn't abortion that birthed the religious right,” the host proudly proclaimed during Monday night's episode of Full Frontal, “it was good old white nativism and antigovernment anger when the IRS challenged evangelicals’ god given right to go to school without black people.”
In the Sunday edition of The New York Times the paper ran a cover story about Donald Trump that is now being called a “hit piece” by one of the women interviewed. Rowanne Brewer Lane claims the Times twisted her story in order paint Trump negatively. During their evening newscasts both CBS and NBC ignored the story and instead chose to cover other topics such as the opioid epidemic America and TSA incompetence. In contrast ABC decided to dive on into the story and give it more airtime.
For the past few weeks now the media has been putting pressure on Bernie Sanders to bow out of the race for the Democratic nomination. Shockingly, some have even taken to vetting his policies to aid in this endeavor. So, it may not come as a surprise when ABC’s and NBC’s Sunday shows failed to report about a controversial Democratic state convention in Nevada, which ending with Sanders supporters crying foul over the alleged misconduct by party insiders.
With Donald Trump as the presumptive nominee of the GOP the liberal media has finally decided to do what they neglected to do during the nomination process, vet his past. With the release of the so called “Trump Tapes,” audio recordings that purport to show Trump pretending to be his own publicist, it’s clear the media has taken a much greater interest in his dealings than those of Hillary Clinton. On Fox News Sunday pundit Brit Hume scolded the media for their bias.
MSNBC’s always tolerant Lawrence O’Donnell trotted out the tired liberal narrative that all Republicans are idiots on the issues and governance on Thursday afternoon. Donald Trump and House Speaker Paul Ryan met Thursday to discuss how the Republican Party can unify and move forward following a contentious primary. O’Donnell claimed to know exactly what happened during the meeting. “That's what the meeting was about, Paul Ryan taking the imbecile candidate to school, the school of governing,” he proclaimed.
Thursday evening saw the failure of all three of the network news outlets to report on the massive legal blow to ObamaCare. In her decision, U.S. District Judge Rosemary Collyer ruled that the Obama administration’s unilateral funding of $175 billion to insurance subsidies was unconstitutional. The ruling was a major win for House Republicans, a victory that was a long time coming. With a lack of funding through the subsidies, and large insurance companies fleeing the exchanges, ObamaCare might be on its last leg.
“Suppression of conservative speech, yeah,” sung a joyful voice leading into Larry Wilmore’s coverage of the suppression of speech by Facebook on Wednesday’s Nightly Show. Wilmore was quick to mock the offence saying, “That’s awful. I mean, I thought the only thing Facebook suppressed was any sense of self-control.” Wilmore barely took the issue seriously and ridiculed the Senate inquiry before twisting it to bash them for the crisis in Flint.
During CNN’s Tuesday night primary coverage of Nebraska and West Virginia Van Jones pondered why “there's a pouncing I don’t see with others,” when it comes to Hillary Clinton. “We can sometimes get used to this and forget, but we've never had a woman do this,” stated Jones using the classic ‘it’s because she’s a woman’ argument. And what example did Jones use to back up his claim? A conversation he once had with a cab driver.
On Monday, all of the network evening newscasts could not wait to join in on US Attorney General Loretta Lynch’s beat down of North Carolina. Only the tornado outbreak in Oklahoma could keep them from jumping in immediately. “In her view, this is the new Jim Crow,” reporter Steve Osunsami said on ABC's World News Tonight of Lynch’s reasoning for taking the state to court. On NBC Nightly News, Pete Williams echoed Osunsami conjuring the specter of southern segregation of public spaces like fountains and bathrooms.