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Johnson: Putin Did What Gorbachev Couldn’t with 'Coup' of U.S. Gov't
Appearing as a guest on Wednesday’s Hardball, The Root political editor Jason Johnson told his fellow MSNBC panelists that Russian President Vladimir Putin was the biggest winner of 2016 because he succeeded where Mikhail Gorbachev and the late Fidel Castro couldn’t in “[taking] over the United States” via a “coup” through “Manchurian candidate” Donald Trump.
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NBC Fears Trump Security in NYC ‘Bankrupting’ Local Businesses
Teasing an upcoming report on Thursday’s NBC Today, co-host Matt Lauer hyped fears that security measures in New York City for Donald Trump were driving local shops and restaurants out of business: “Up next, is increased security for the President-elect around Trump Tower bankrupting nearby businesses?”
Not Satire: Dan Rather Mocks 'Reality Deniers'
Dan Rather, the longtime news anchor whose own “fake news” story got him ousted from CBS News now feels like it is his new role to fact-check others. In a Facebook post Wednesday evening, Rather lectured conservative climate change skeptics as “reality deniers” on the issue of global warming.
Pundit: Republicans Love Putin’s ‘Iron Hand,’ Disdain For Democracy
The affinity of some American conservatives for Vladimir Putin was a minor phenomenon well before Donald Trump ran for president, and for obvious reasons it’s still grist for the mill of punditry. Liberal blogger and columnist Waldman delved into the topic in a Monday piece for The American Prospect. Waldman mused that maybe Republicans “are just now realizing that Putin is a leader after their…
AP Map Falsely Claims Electoral College Unfairness to Dems
In a separate post critiquing Associated Press reporter Stephen Ohlemacher's Monday evening and Tuesday morning dispatches on President-Elect Donald Trump's Electoral College victory, I noted that Ohlemacher gave undue ink and bandwidth to no more than 1,500 to 2,100 protesters in states Trump won who urged Republican electors not to carry out their Constitutional duty. Ohlemacher believed that…
Dubious AP Claim: 'Thousands' of Protesters Tried to Sway GOP Electors
As one would expect, there is plenty to criticize in Stephen Ohlemacher's Monday evening coverage of Donald Trump's achievement of an Electoral College majority earlier in the day.
This post will concentrate on Ohlemacher's questionable counting of "protesters." A separate post looks at a very revealing failure in the wire service story's photo collection, in a graphic showing how the…
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CBS Promotes Bernie Sanders's Slam of 'Reactionary' Trump Cabinet
Wednesday's CBS This Morning deemed a Facebook post from Senator Bernie Sanders worthy of a 55-second short report. Norah O'Donnell noted how the left-wing politician "criticized some of the Cabinet picks" from President-Elect Donald Trump. She quoted from Sanders, who asserted that "the American people are going to have to organize and fight back against this reactionary movement toward…
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CNN's Keilar Frets Trump Too Quick to Call 'Radical Islamic Terrorism'
On Tuesday's The Situation Room on CNN, substitute anchor Brianna Keilar not only worried that President-elect Donald Trump was "jumping the gun" by calling the attacks in Turkey and Germany "radical Islamic terrorism" too soon "before any information was out there," but she also fretted that Trump was "dangerously close to making this look like a religious war."
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Bozell, Panel Decimate Media Pushing ‘Twisted' Electoral College Story
On the Tuesday edition of the Fox News Channel’s Special Report, Media Research Center president Brent Bozell and the show’s “All Star Panel” collaborated for a thorough trashing of the news media for their “sick, twisted,” and “ridiculous” narrative that the Electoral College could stop Donald Trump from becoming president.
Pundit: Trump Fits Right In With Crazy, Dumb Conservative Activists
Donald Trump is a visceral and emotional conservative, not a philosophical conservative, but that’s good enough for government work, suggests New York blogger Chait. The main aim of Chait’s Thursday post was to slap down the argument from some righty pundits that candidate Trump was, as Chait paraphrased it, “a non-ideological figure, or even a progressive…who chose the Republican Party for no…
Substantial Numbers of Non-Citizens Vote Illegally in U.S. Elections
The issue of voter fraud was one of the most heated sources of controversy during the 2016 presidential election, and it continues to be so. After Hillary Clinton’s campaign announced that it was supporting recounts in several states won by Donald Trump, Trump responded with a series of Twitter posts accusing Clinton of hypocrisy for refusing to accept the results of the election after she…
Hope and Humility
Former Sen. Alan Simpson (R-WY) once said that, "Those who travel the high road of humility will not be troubled by heavy traffic." That descriptive and funny line came to mind after I heard what first lady Michelle Obama told Oprah Winfrey last week in a TV interview. Because of Donald Trump's election, she told the former talk show host, "We are feeling what not having hope feels like."
CNN's Beinart Frets: Trump Calling Berlin Terror Victims 'Christians'
Some liberals can find the strangest things to worry over in the aftermath of a deadly terrorist attack. Appearing as a guest on Monday's CNN Tonight, liberal CNN political commentator Peter Beinart bristled at President-elect Donald Trump referring to the Berlin terror attack victims as "Christians," as the liberal analyst worried that the way Trump, Michael Flynn, and Steve Bannon "view this…
KC Star Pretends There's Only One Rumor of Elector Death Threats
News travels slowly into the Kansas City metropolitan area — or at least into the newsroom at the Kansas City Star.
On Friday, the paper's Dave Helling produced a 950-word writeup on Monday's Electoral College voting. With all of the widely published news about Republican electors receiving death threats, all Helling had to report was a rumor: "One spouse of a Missouri elector claimed to know of…
