Foreign Policy
Sparks flew and a temper flared during a heated argument between NBC political director Chuck Todd and Republican Senator Ted Cruz on Sunday’s Meet the Press. The former raged as the latter dismantled the combined narrative of congressional Democrats and the liberal media when it came to impeachment, media bias, and Ukraine. Here are the highlights.
On Tuesday's The Last Word, far-left MSNBC host Lawrence O'Donnell seized on President Donald Trump apparently misunderstanding a question from a reporter about whether the U.S. government supports Iranian protesters so that the MSNBC host could portray the President as "ignorant" and as mentally disturbed. Before bringing on a Harvard psychiatrist to agree with him that President Trump is mentally ill, O'Donnell gave a longwinded explanation of how un-intelligent or "deranged" he thinks the President is.
On Thursday, NBC and MSNBC eagerly touted a new ad from the Biden campaign that featured several liberal journalists attacking President Trump with hostile coverage of his overseas trip to the NATO summit. Despite playing the ad multiple times, none of the reporters acknowledged – or objected – to the fact that members of the press were being used to push a partisan political message.
On Wednesday, NBC became obsessed with the idea that “the cloud of impeachment is shadowing the President at the NATO summit,” so much so that the network repeatedly hyped seemingly innocuous comments from world leaders about President Trump running late to a meeting, citing it as evidence of “trash talk” and attempts to “mock” the U.S. leader.
Interviewed by Alisyn Camerota on CNN, former Trump communications director turned bitter antagonist Anthony "The Mooch" Scaramucci calls congressional Republicans opposing impeachment "Vichy Republicans," a reference to the French Nazi collaborators during World War II. Who calls this show New Day? It feels more like Groundhog Day.
Surprise presidential visits to war zones to spend time with the troops during Thanksgiving or other holidays have become a bipartisan tradition that everyone can support. While most view such visits as a way to honor the troops and express amazement at the amount of planning and secrecy that goes into such trips, MSNBC Live host Stephanie Ruhle took Friday to call Trump's Thanksgiving visit to Afghanistan a "photo-op" and wonder that if he will plan more foreign visits as part of a strategy to counter impeachment.
Putting his life at risk by traveling to a war zone, President Trump traveled secretly to Afghanistan to spend Thanksgiving with our troops on the ground, he even served them dinner. It was something special but ABC and NBC refused to check their petty politics at the door. In addition to reporting on his holiday visit, those networks decided to serve up the attacks of former Navy Secretary Richard Spencer, who chose to resign recently after disagreeing with the President.
CNN Newsroom co-host Jim Sciutto took the opportunity on Monday to diagnose Republicans with reality-denying "psychosis" and hype his book Shadow War in the process. Sciutto was particularly incensed at Republicans for questioning Russian interference in the 2016 election, instead offering up the CrowdStrike conspiracy theory that says it was Ukraine that interfered in 2016.
MSNBC contributor and Politico national security correspondent Natasha Bertrand twisted herself into a rhetorical pretzel on Friday where she declared that Vladmir Putin interfered in the 2016 election in order to see Donald Trump elected president. This assertion occurred less than a minute after MSNBC Live host Stephanie Ruhle played a clip of Dr. Fiona Hill's Thursday testimony saying that such talk is "is exactly what the Russian government was hoping for."
The liberal broadcast networks seemed in good spirits Thursday evening following the final day of televised impeachment hearings. Their jubilation came as part of a moment during the testimony of former White House Ukraine adviser Dr. Fiona Hill supposedly “blasting Republicans for spreading a conspiracy theory about Ukraine interfering in the 2016 election,” as NBC Nightly News anchor Lester Holt suggested.
In the aftermath of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's announcement that the Donald Trump administration was essentially reversing the Barack Obama policy of declaring Israeli settlements as illegal, most of the dominant media have inaccurately claimed that Trump has reversed "decades" or "40 years" of U.S. policy on the matter.
As impeachment frenzy continues to sweep the nation, CNN Newsroom co-hosts Jim Sciutto and Poppy Harlow welcomed CNN national security analyst Shawn Turner and former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine (under Clinton) Steven Pifer to their Tuesday show. Turner and Pifer tried to debunk the Administration's claims that they have been tougher on Russia than President Obama, because unlike Obama, Trump actually has sent the Ukrainians lethal aid in the form of Javelin anti-tank missiles and that Trump withheld the aid because, according to Mick Mulvaney, he was worried how Russia might react.