Conservatives & Republicans

Earlier this week, Baltimore Orioles executive vice president and chief operating officer John Angelos said that he wouldn't want President Donald Trump to throw out the first pitch at his team's Camden Yards home opener until Trump "retract(s) all these outrageous things that have been said and simply apologize(s)." Most coverage of this story has failed to report that Angelos's father Peter is…

Almost fifteen years ago, South Park paid tribute to a trailblazing animated TV series by calling an episode “The Simpsons Already Did It.” According to Columbia Journalism Review columnist Joel Simon, regardless of the current hubbub over President Trump’s media-bashing, several “Latin American populist” heads of state, including the late Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez, already did it, or…

During a report for Friday’s NBC Today, rural Wisconsin Trump supporters repeatedly frustrated attempts by political analyst Nicolle Wallace to get them to criticize President Trump. The flummoxed journalist noted: “On this farm, the President gets plenty of pasture, even for the controversial travel ban.”

Appearing as a guest on Thursday's The Last Word on MSNBC, Daily Beast foreign editor and MSNBC political commentator Christopher Dickey aimed snide name-calling at White House advisor Steve Bannon. After calling him a "snob," the liberal commentator also remarked that he looks like a "slob" and a "dirty old man," as he went along with host Lawrence O'Donnell's suggestion that the Donald Trump…

NATIONAL HARBOR, MD — Speaking to a boisterous, full-capacity crowd at the 2017 edition of the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), President Donald Trump delivered all-encompassing remarks that included blistering attacks on the “fake news media,” incorrect polling, anonymous sources, and “the Clinton News Network” of CNN.

After White House chief strategist Steve Bannon and chief of staff Reince Priebus offered strongly-worded statements on Thursday afternoon at CPAC condemning the media as “the opposition party” to the Trump team, Vice President Mike Pence offered an evening address to a boisterous audience. Of course, he lobbed some jabs at the media of his own.

On Tuesday morning's MSNBC Live, Louise Mensch, though she claims to be a conservative, put forth what I suspect will be the left's core economic argument if the economy improves under Donald Trump. That argument: The economy is "fantastic" already, and Trump will have had nothing to do with whatever economic improvements over what is already "fantastic" we might see.

MSNBC’s Hardball host Chris Matthews compared White House chief strategist Steve Bannon on Thursday to Star Wars villain Darth Vader, even though “he’s a good speaker” albeit “a little strong but, you know, that’s part of the deal he’s got.”

Thursday on Morning Joe, the discussion became heated very early. During a conversation about a clip of Stephen Miller speaking on Fox News, the topic of conservatives on college campuses arose because host Joe Scarborough tried making a connection between how Miller was likely treated versus who Miller is today. Chief legal correspondent Ari Melber spoke in a clip played in the beginning of the…

Among the highlights for the first day of CPAC 2017, White House chief strategist Steve Bannon and chief of staff Reince Priebus doubled down on their attacks against the media as the former referred to them as “the opposition party” having been “dead wrong” about the election to the point that life will “get worse every day” as the administration implements their agenda.

CPAC, currently going on just outside the Beltway in National Harbor, Maryland, has changed along with the conservative movement, believes Matthew Yglesias. Old-school CPAC, Yglesias contended in a Wednesday piece, was philosophically driven, populated by the sort of activists who “helped [Ronald] Reagan mount a primary challenge to incumbent President Gerald Ford.” In the past fifteen-plus years…

On Thursday’s NBC Today, co-host Matt Lauer accused Donald Trump of reversing an Obama administration school transgender policy just to appease conservative activists gathering at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference: “Or is the timing more tied to the fact that CPAC starts today? Conservatives around the country coming for a victory party and he wants to fire up that base.”

The traditional media have decided not to take President Trump's insults lying down. After what may be the strongest -- and to his supporters -- most thrilling takedown of journalists by any president, Editor and Publisher magazine featured this headline: "Newspapers Aim to Ride 'Trump Bump' to Reach Readers, Advertisers."  

It was Nobel laureate economist Milton Friedman who made famous the adage, "There's no such thing as a free lunch." Professor Friedman could have added that there is a difference between something's being free and something's having a zero price. For example, people say that there's free public education and there are free libraries, but public education and libraries cost money. Proof that they…