Campaigns & Elections

MSNBC's Mark Halperin trumpeted the apparent power of the media on Monday's Morning Joe during a discussion about Donald Trump attacking the morning show: "The only way a Republican can win for president, I believe, is if the press favors them in coverage." Halperin then oddly claimed that Trump "had a chance to have better press coverage than Hillary Clinton. He's missing that chance. He's…

On Monday’s NBC Today, correspondent Peter Alexander framed Donald Trump’s adoption of various liberal policy positions as evidence of his “flexibility” as a candidate: “Trump showing plenty of flexibility on the issues, now open to a minimum wage increase after opposing it during the primaries. Shifting positions on taxes, too. His plan calls for cuts for everybody, which he contradicted last…

All three networks on Monday appeared excited about the possibility of Hillary Clinton scoring Republican voters against Donald Trump, cheering the potential of “Clinton crossovers.” Former Democratic operative turned Good Morning America co-host George Stephanopoulos hailed the effort to “take advantage of that split in Republican ranks.” 

In an utterance that could only be described as outrageous and irresponsible, MSNBC hosts Tamron Hall and Thomas Roberts went unchallenged by their combined four guests Monday morning and afternoon as they claimed that Bill Clinton’s voluminous instances of marital infidelity were just “alleged affairs” or “alleged misconduct” in context of Donald Trump invoking them over the weekend.

In a sympathetic interview with MSNBC's Rachel Maddow that aired on Friday night, socialist presidential contender Bernie Sanders insisted the American people are "a little bit tired of corporate media" and "we have got to think about ways that the Democratic Party, for a start, starts funding the equivalent of Fox television." Even The Huffington Post thought that sounded a little funny: "Of…

In a Tuesday post, New York magazine’s Chait suggested that conservatism is driven not by an elite but by its riff-raff. Chait asserted, “Whatever [the] abstract arguments for conservative policy…on the ground, Republican politics boils down to ethno-nationalistic passions ungoverned by reason,” and remarked that Donald Trump’s supporters “have revealed things about the nature of the party that…

In two different articles over the last six months, former CNN and NBC anchor Campbell Brown offered a fair representation of some of the media handwringing about their responsibility for Donald Trump. They charged Trump is over-covered. But wait: did anyone see Campbell Brown complaining that the media gave too much attention to Barack Obama in 2008? I haven't been able to find any complaints.

We made it a point to tune into Joy Reid's debut this morning in the MSNBC slot formerly occupied by Melissa Harris-Perry. For anyone who imagined Reid might be more fair-and-balanced than MH-P: fuggedaboutit. After an all-liberal opening panel blamed Bernie Sanders for failing to adequately address the concerns of African-Americans, the remainder of the show was one, long, hate-Trump fest. Mac…

Remember how Hollywood rallied around Barack Obama not once but twice to help him become president. That was nothing. A warm up. A practice run. Call it a dress rehearsal if you must. Sometime soon, maybe even over the next 24 hours, the entertainment community will unofficially declare war on presumptive GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump.

By the end of this campaign, someone might come up with a more disgusting metaphor for Donald Trump, but for now Chris Hayes has the early clubbhouse lead. On his MSNBC show this evening, Hayes called Trump "a hot wet rag applied to an infected wound." Imagine the outrage if a conservative described Hillary Clinton with a similar simile. Hayes was interviewing the MSM's favorite kind of…

Some on the left claim that Donald Trump is an ideological descendant of Ronald Reagan, never mind that Reagan was Mr. Conservative and Trump is Mr. Opportunist. Paul Campos, from the University of Colorado, makes a different Trump-as-heir-to-Reagan argument. In a Thursday Salon article, Campos opined that the Reagan revolution was less about right-wing views than “stupidity, celebrity, and…

During a White House press conference in the 12 p.m. ET hour on Friday, President Obama was treated to a series of softball questions from reporters, who repeatedly teed him up to bash Republicans and promote his liberal agenda. Reuters correspondent Jeff Mason got the first question: “Mr. President, what's your reaction to Donald Trump becoming the presumptive nominee of the Republican Party…

On Wednesday night, NBC Nightly News anchor Lester Holt anchored the newscast from Trump Tower, which seems kind of silly since it’s four minutes away from NBC’s studios at Rockefeller Center. No one should mistake this for some kind of scandalous act of deference. Holt whacked Trump with tough question after tough question. For scandalous deference, we take you back to Holt on January 29 with…

After largely ignoring Donald Trump’s liberal past throughout the presidential campaign, on Friday, with Trump poised to become the Republican Party’s 2016 nominee, NBC’s Today finally noticed “the once friendly relationship between the Trumps and the Clintons." Co-host Savannah Guthrie teased the segment: “Plus, the Clintons and the Trumps, from friends to political enemies. How the race for the…