Campaigns & Elections

In an interview with Mitt Romney in London on Wednesday, NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams grilled the Republican candidate about releasing more tax returns: "People hear he's not going to release the rest of his returns and they wonder why. They wonder, is there a year there where he paid no taxes? They wonder about expensive horses and houses....what is it that is preventing you from…

During an interview of Obama senior campaign adviser David Axelrod on Wednesday's CBS This Morning, Charlie Rose and Erica Hill bewailed the negative tone of the presidential campaign, hinting that it might turn off voters. However, the anchors let Axelrod rip Mitt Romney's recent foreign policy speech to the VFW without challenge, and failed to ask the adviser about the President's own speech…

MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell has joined the list of his colleagues deciding to disgustingly politicize the tragic Colorado shooting.  On Tuesday night, O’Donnell felt the need to attack Wayne LaPierre of the NRA and Republican Senator Ron Johnson (Wis.) for their support of the Second Amendment. O'Donnell started off his "Rewrite" segment claiming LaPierre was a "blood-drenched lobbyist" who…

Liberal actor Zach Galifianakis appeared on Good Morning America, Wednesday, to whine about the "gross amount of money being spent" on American elections. While promoting The Campaign, his new movie, the comic derided the Citizens United Supreme Court ruling and lamented, "Something's wrong." Galifianakis first insisted that The Campaign, which showcases two southerners fighting for a…

Debuting the latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll on Tuesday's NBC Nightly News, political director Chuck Todd concluded that campaign "hits seem to be taking a greater toll on Romney" and proclaimed: "Call it a likeability gap. 46% of voters told us they didn't like Romney personally. That compares to just 31% who said the same about the President." [Listen to the audio or watch the video…

In a speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars, Mitt Romney declared “I am an unapologetic believer in the greatness of this country...I am not ashamed of American power.” To Washington Post reporters Scott Wilson and Nia-Malika Henderson, this rhetoric sounded outdated and unrealistic:

Minutes after Mitt Romney addressed the Veterans of Foreign Wars on Tuesday, NBC chief foreign affairs correspondent Andrea Mitchell appeared on MSNBC to downplay the GOP candidate's positive reception: "...this is a conservative group....This is a very conservative foreign policy group and there's no question that they would be predisposed, I think, more towards being in the Republican camp…

On her 1 p.m. et hour show on MSNBC on Tuesday, host and NBC chief foreign affairs correspondent Andrea Mitchell decried Mitt Romney labeling President Obama's big-government philosophy "foreign" to American capitalism: "...he is still using the term 'foreign' and I'm telling you, this is happening every day, it is a dog whistle." [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump] Chief…

The family of late billionaire Sidney Harman announced on Monday that it will no longer invest in the ailing Newsweek magazine and the online Daily Beast website, leaving the joint company under the control of Barry Diller's IAC/InterActiveCorp. According to a Reuters article by Peter Lauria, IAC said it will continue to subsidize Newsweek Daily Beast's operations, and as a result, its…

In an article for NBCNews.com's First Read on Monday, Domenico Montanaro eagerly proclaimed to readers: "Mitt Romney has criticized President Obama for his 'you didn't build that' line, when it came to businesses....But in 2002, during his speech at the Opening Ceremonies at the Winter Olympics....Romney made a similar argument about Olympians." Romney simply told the Olympic athletes – many…

ABC on Tuesday dropped any pretense of objectivity and defended the President over his "you didn't build that" attack on business. In an online article, ABCNews.com writers Amy Walter, Elizabeth Hartfield and Chris Good dropped this spin into a supposedly straight news report: "Republicans have seized on the line 'you didn't build that' to falsely claim that Obama was speaking directly to…

While it's nice that the 2000 election cycle made a fool out of Al Gore for his outrageous claim that "I took the initiative in creating the Internet" -- which was in due course shortened by critics to a claim that he invented the Internet -- it's more than a little annoying that an accompanying myth emerged and has long persisted that the Internet was created by the government. President…

In an unintentionally hilarious variation on the some-of-my-best-friends-are line employed by people defending themselves against accusations of prejudice, Elizabeth Warren—lefty Dem candidate for Senate from Massachusetts—has claimed that various people close to her have started small businesses. Warren let loose her laugh line on Al Sharpton's MSNBC show this evening, responding to an ad…

Gosh, if Apple would only send the money it has parked overseas back to the United States and pay income taxes on it, the federal government's situation would be so much better, the budget would would balance, and ... no, not really. According to Peter Svensson at the Associated Press, the company has $74 billion in cash parked overseas, meaning that it would owe federal income taxes of about $…