Conservatives & Republicans

Near the top of the Wednesday monologue of his eponymous TBS show, Conan O’Brien joked that Donald Trump reminded him of Italian fascist dictator Benito Mussolini in the way he sculpts his hair and interacts with crowds. Upon pretending to form his hair into more like Trump’s, O’Brien remarked: “I like that Mussolini thing he does. He looks out at the crowd. He's got this guy on his head.”

While interviewing Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz for the Wednesday edition of ABC’s World News Tonight, Republican campaign correspondent Tom Llamas demanded Cruz explain how he could “be a president and hate the Democrats and hate the culture of Washington so much and be effective.”

Give columnist Paul Waldman credit for coming up with a real grabber of a lead: “Get ready, America: we're about to take a long and unpleasant journey back down Bill Clinton's pants.” Less amusing is the rest of Waldman’s Monday American Prospect piece, which trashed Republicans for raising the 42nd president’s sexual behavior as an issue in the current campaign. Waldman jeered at GOPers for “…

On Wednesday night, the major network evening newscasts all failed to cover the first full, successful congressional vote to repeal of ObamaCare and defund of Planned Parenthood that will go to President Obama’s desk where he’ll likely veto the measures seeking to undo his health care law and strike federal funding from the nation’s largest provider of abortions. Providing a more balanced…

Don Lemon granted the heckler's veto to Igor Volsky of Think Progress on Tuesday's CNN Tonight. Volsky repeatedly interrupted conservative talk show host Ben Ferguson during a segment about President Obama's orders on gun control, and unleashed on the pro-gun lobby: "They want to silence any reasonable discussion about what can you do when a guy walks into a school and kills twenty first graders…

All three network morning shows on Wednesday were in awe of President Obama tearing up during his White House gun control address on Tuesday. On NBC’s Today, co-host Matt Lauer used the “rare display of emotion” to tee-up a four-minute segment on “The Politics of Tears” and Obama being the “Latest in Long Line of Emotional Politicians.”

In November and December, the New York Daily News characterized the NRA and its CEO Wayne LaPierre as a jihadists and terrorists. Now it has set its sights on Republican Party presidential candidates and leaders who are defending the plain, Supreme Court-upheld wording of the Constitution's Second Amendment and Congress's power to make laws over lawless presidential actions. Wednesday's NYDN…

In 1992, late-night TV host Arsenio Hall made a bad joke comparing the Pat Buchanan for President campaign to black-and-white Nazi footage. In 2016, the target is Ted Cruz. Alex Nazarayan, a writer for the shell of a publication branded as Newsweek, caused a Twitter frenzy when he compared Cruz to the Nazis, as captured by John Nolte at Breitbart: "Ted Cruz has a strong ground game in Iowa,"…

Appearing as a guest on Wednesday's New Day on CNN, Candy Carson -- wife of GOP presidential candidate Dr. Ben Carson -- complained about the tendency for the media to "attack people with untruths," asserting that "some of the media is unethical," when she was asked about the scrutiny her husband has received during the campaign.

After having spent seven and a half minutes on Tuesday trumpeting President Obama’s executive actions on gun control, CBS Evening News anchor Scott Pelley eventually turned his newscast to the 2016 election and invoked Ronald Reagan in lecturing Republicans that “he wouldn't recognize the melee just four weeks before Iowa.”

On Monday, the Institute for Supply Management's Manufacturing Index for December came in showing contraction for the second consecutive month, and with a slightly worse reading (48.2 percent, versus 48.6 percent in November; any reading below 50 percent signifiies contraction). These two results followed readings which just slipped over the expansion bar (50.2 and 50.1 percent, respectively) in…

Tuesday’s editions of ABC’s World News Tonight and NBC Nightly News aired nowhere near the exhaustive coverage of President Obama’s executive actions on gun control that the CBS Evening News did, but they were not short on fawning language for Obama’s “rallying cry...after years of anger and frustration” in what ABC hyped as “[t]he showdown after the President breaks down.”

The left often downplays or overlooks differences among Republicans. For instance, plenty of liberals assumed that John McCain chose Sarah Palin mostly in an effort to attract disgruntled Hillary Clinton supporters, rather than for the likelier reason that McCain needed to reassure his party’s righty base. Similarly, Penn State's Sophia McClennen lumps Fox News with Donald Trump, whose…

24 hours after heralding President Obama revealing specifics on his executive actions concerning gun control, the CBS Evening News offered a full-court press for the President on Tuesday following the announcement that saw the President shed tears that anchor Scott Pelley deemed were “more powerful than words” as “the most powerful man in the world” took “action to stop” gun violence.