Howard Fineman

Prior to Donald Trump’s rally Monday night in Dallas, Texas, Chris Matthews and the panelists on MSNBC’s Hardball mocked Republican women and voters from “southwestern Virginia” of Scots-Irish heritage who’ve “got an attitude” and previously supported Democrats like Jim Webb. Matthews wrote them off as white people “like Pat Buchanan...the people that went to the mountains when they immigrated to…

After all these years, Chris Matthews still hasn't lost that lovin' feeling. The MSNBC host spent a total of two minutes and 12 seconds on Wednesday night hitting Florida Sen. Marco Rubio (R) for a line comparing Donald Trump to Barack Obama. "Look how he's lived his life. He's done everything right," Matthews began, going on to explain how Obama is "perfect" and "immaculate."

The hosts and journalists of MSNBC seem to have found a new Republican favorite, one in the mold of 2012 moderate Jon Huntsman. Daughter Abby Huntsman, a co-host on The Cycle, lamented presidential primary politics, sneering, "You have got to be an entertainer. You've got to feed the far-right what they want." Huntsman described the process, "You've got to sometimes say things you don't always…

Veteran journalist Howard Fineman on Tuesday smeared conservatives primary voters, saying that Donald Trump's comments on immigration indicate "xenophobia" "sells in New Hampshire and Iowa." Appearing on The Cycle to discusses the rise of Trump, co-host Krystal Ball wondered what "it says about the Republican Party that this guy seems to have momentum?" Fineman, a former editor of Newsweek who is…

On Monday's Hardball program, Chris Matthews and gang worked furiously to shield Hillary Clinton from legitimate scrutiny over foreign donations to the Clinton Global Initiative, with Matthews grousing that the former secretary of state was facing a GOP "firing squad" who were hoping to bring about the "crib death" of the Clinton presidential campaign.

While admitting that it was a shame that President Obama was a no-show for Sunday's unity rally in Paris, MSNBC contributor Howard Fineman offered that actor George Clooney's "Je Suis Charlie" speech at Sunday evening's Golden Globes award show was in some sense just as well as representation of America's solidarity with France.

Wildly spinning a recent NBC/Wall Street Journal poll showing just 38 percent support President Obama's planned executive amnesty while 48 percent oppose it, Huffington Post's Howard Fineman offered that it's possible "some" of those opposed are against it from Obama's left, thinking it doesn't go far enough.

On the November 17 edition of Hardball, MSNBC anchor Chris Matthews and MSNBC contributors Howard Fineman and Eugene Robinson offered some criticism, albeit pretty mild, of President Obama's veto threat for a bill which would greenlight the Keystone XL oil pipeline. 

ABC and NBC failed to cover the upcoming midterm elections during their Wednesday evening broadcasts, but instead devoted over three-and-a-half minutes to going after New Jersey Governor Chris Christie (R) for confronting a protestor earlier in the day during an event marking the second anniversary of Superstorm Sandy. Christie, who has received some rare praise from the mainstream media for a…

During his MSNBC show on Thursday night, Chris Matthews discussed a soundbite of Iowa Republican Senate candidate Joni Ernst stating her stance on the Second Amendment from two years ago and interpreted it as “pretty radical” to the point that “[s]he has talked about killing politicians she doesn't agree with.” First, here is what Ernst actually said (which was uncovered in a Huffington Post…

Kentucky Secretary of State and Democratic U.S. Senate nominee is "insulting the intelligence" of Bluegrass State voters when she insists she cannot disclose for whom she voted in the 2008 and 2012 presidential elections. That was the assessment of MSNBC contributor Howard Fineman, appearing on the October 14 edition of The Cycle in a panel discussion handicapping the 2014 Senate races. 

Iowa's primary industry is agriculture, but Iowa farmers are more "worldly," "educated," and "sophisticated" than their counterparts elsewhere in the United States, according to the Huffington Post Media Group's Howard Fineman. While he didn't explicitly make the connection, the inference is that red-state, socially-conservative farmers were not so intelligent.

Hillary Clinton was positively compared to not one but two beloved Republican presidents -- Dwight D. Eisenhower and Ronald Reagan -- in a July 16 Hardball segment praising the former secretary of state's interview with Jon Stewart and thinking through how the former secretary of state should make her pitch to the American people in the time between now and November 2016. Huffington Post…

Ronan Farrow devoted a significant portion of his July 9 show to attempting to coopt the storied heroism of Raoul Wallenberg to spin the Mexican border crisis. The MSNBC host invited the US Ambassador to Sweden Mark Brzezinski and Swedish Ambassador to the US Bjorn Lyrvall onto Ronan Farrow Daily to discuss the accomplishments of the Swedish humanitarian who saved thousands of Jewish lives…