Campaigns & Elections

Hillary Clinton has now learned what some of Donald Trump's GOP rivals have discovered about him: You won't attack him with impunity, and you'd better not be vulnerable on the very same issue. Trump used colorful language to describe Barack Obama's trouncing of Clinton in 2008 and also disparagingly referred to her prolonged bathroom break during the most recent Democratic presidential debate.

Reviewing the new drag queen-centered Broadway show Kinky Boots in Monday’s New York Times, critic Ben Brantley chose to dedicate a few paragraphs to the bizarre suggestion that the show should make one think “that maybe all those grumpy guys who populate the Republican debates might be a lot looser if they traded in their navy suits for rainbow-colored ball gowns.”

While the establishment press lies in wait for Republican and conservative candidates to make some kind of off-color or foolish statement — or one that can be twisted to become one, even if it originally wasn't — it consistently ignores howlers made by leftists and liberals. The list of President Barack Obama's gaffes alone, all totally or almost completely ignored by the press when they were…

What's more sexist: Donald Trump saying "schlonged" to describe the way Hillary Clinton lost in 2008, or Hillary herself orchestrating a campaign to discredit and destroy women, including Monica Lewinsky, whose "bimbo eruptions" threatened Bill and Hillary's hold on power?  According to Al Sharpton on today's Morning Joe, Trump's offense is the graver. Sharpton suggests that Hillary's attack on…

One of the more tiresome cliches of political coverage is the “secret weapon.” Twenty years ago, Hillary Clinton was promoted as her husband’s “secret weapon.” Now it’s the reverse. Peter Nicholas of  The Wall Street Journal wrote a story aping the Clinton spin, headlined “Hillary Clinton’s ‘Secret Weapon’ Could Escalate Campaign Rhetoric.” Bill has been described by reporters as a secret weapon…

As Bush Derangement Syndrome (BDS) gradually fades among liberals after its decade-long stint atop their stack of pathologies, a newly diagnosed condition known as Completely Unhinged over Citizens United (CUCU)  is supplanting it. Even though BDS is unlikely to wholly depart from the liberal psyche, which appears to draw sustenance from its presence despite the obvious toll on left-wingers'…

The MRC’s Tim Graham joined Newsmax TV on Tuesday night with host Steve Malzberg to elaborate on the MRC’s Notable Quotables Worst of the Worst 2015 winners, including overall winner Melissa Harris-Perry of MSNBC declaring on October 25 that the term “hard worker” has racist connotations.

Making his television debut on the December 18 edition of One American News Network’s Tipping Point, NewsBusters managing editor Ken Shepherd promoted the 2015 winners of the Notable Quotable’s Worst of the Worst and the overall winner of MSNBC’s Melissa Harris-Perry scolding guest Alfonso Aguilar on October 25 for using the term “hard worker” because it’s racist.

By the late summer of 1977, Jimmy Carter had been president for only a few months, but if you knew which way the cultural and political winds were blowing, he seemed unlikely to win a second term. That’s because on May 25 of that year, Star Wars had opened, and its colossal success both foreshadowed and helped to revive a mindset that carried Ronald Reagan to the White House. That’s the word from…

About the last person you'd expect to have a Vulcan mind meld with Donald Trump is Chris Cuomo. But at a time when the focus is Star Wars, Cuomo went Star Trek today, sounding much like Trump in his description of Hillary Clinton. Trump of course made the phrase "low-energy" famous as he repeatedly battered Jeb Bush with it. Recently, Trump took a similar tack with Hillary, saying she lacked the…

On Monday, I posted on the virtually complete lack of establishment press interest in the story of Trevor FitzGibbon, the former owner of far-left PR firm FitzGibbon Media. Fitzgibbon folded on Thursday after allegations of serial sexual harassment and sexual assault were reported in the Huffington Post. From there, the establishment press did virtually nothing with the story. It will surprise…

After the Wednesday editions of CBS This Morning and NBC’s Today attempted to excuse the Washington Post cartoon depicting Ted Cruz’s daughters as moneys, various hosts and guests throughout the day on CNN and MSNBC followed suit by chiding the “weird” and “controversial” Cruz for sending out fundraising e-mails related to the smear and “not reacting kindly” to cartoonist Ann Telnaes’s latest…

The morning after Washington Post cartoonist Ann Telnaes published (then unpublished) an illustration depicting Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz’s daughters as toy monkeys, calling them “fair game” since they appeared in a campaign ad, ABC’s Good Morning America ignored the story completely while CBS This Morning and NBC’s Today excused it as merely a “feud” and part of “increased…

There was surprising consensus on today's Morning Joe concerning the Washington Post cartoon that depicted Ted Cruz as an organ grinder and his youngs girls as monkeys. From Mika Brzezinski to Joe Scarborough to Harold Ford, Jr., there was universal condemnation of Ann Telnaes' foul image.  Willie Geist said it best: "people look for moments of bias in the media. Here's one right here. You can't…