Nina Totenberg
Nina Totenberg, National Public Radio's legal affairs correspondent, talked to Grant Reeher on public radio station WRVO, warning about the Supreme Court’s threat to abortion rights, criticizing the hearing performance of Brett Kavanaugh, and denying her outlet’s liberal bias. The NPR member station, which serves New York state from the campus of SUNY-Oswego, posted on Friday some transcribed highlights from Reeher’s half-hour interview with Totenberg, whose liberal bona fides are well-established on NewsBusters.
Twenty years ago, on December 19, 1998, the House of Representatives voted to impeach President Bill Clinton on two counts: perjury to a grand jury, and obstruction of justice. Back then, the liberal media howled about its injustice and since Clinton had a high approval rating, they insisted it would damage the Republicans for years to come. Keep these quotes in mind if the new Democratic majority in the House moves to impeach President Trump.
The one guarantee about Trump appointing Judge Brett Kavanaugh is that the Democrats, fueled by their mindless street mobs, will try to destroy him. It’s how Democrats behave. It is not how the “news” media should behave. Is there anyone who disputes that? But it is how they will comport themselves, because they are one with their Democrat brothers and sisters.
On Sunday's MSNBC Live, NPR legal affairs correspondent Nina Totenberg again showed her blatant double standard in being quick to label conservative justices as "very conservative" but painting liberal justices as being more "centrist." Appearing as a guest on Sunday's MSNBC Live, Totenberg claimed that three of the current U.S. Supreme Court justices are "very hardcore people," "hard core to the right." She also claimed that Chief Justice John Roberts was viewed as "very, very conservative" until he was "savaged by the far right" over his ObamaCare vote.
President Trump won’t officially announce his latest nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court until this evening, but it’s already easy to predict the liberal media’s spin. As with all recent Republican nominees, reporters will repeatedly label them as “conservative,” which will nicely reinforce the Democrats’ strategy to paint them as outside “the mainstream.” But when Democratic Presidents announce their Supreme Court nominees, those same reporters can’t find the words to call those choices “liberal.”
Tuesday's All Things Considered on NPR targeted the Supreme Court's decision that upheld President Donald Trump's travel ban. Host Mary Louise Kelly touted that "the Court's conservatives plac[ed] few limits on presidential power" on the issue. Nina Totenburg lined up three legal experts who all expressed "distinct disappointment" in the high court's ruling. Totenburg also spotlighted that the first version of the ban caused "chaotic scenes in airports across the globe."
National Public Radio touts itself as an oasis of civility. But the calm tones of its announcers belie a dramatic liberal tilt. On Thursday's Morning Edition, longtime Supreme Court reporter Nina Totenberg touted the "quiet rage" and even "bad-assery" of Sen. Mazie Hirono, Democrat of Hawaii (lifetime American Conservative Union rating: 0.73 percent). She said to people who call her liberal, "F--- them."
Friday’s New York Times featured a “Sidebar” column by the paper’s left-leaning Supreme Court reporter Adam Liptak celebrating Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, “24 Years on the Bench, and Still Putting Them in the Seats.” The online headline gave her the nickname: “On Tour With Notorious R.B.G., Judicial Rock Star.” Liptak is a long-time fan of Ginsburg’s social-justice approach to interpreting the law, and the text box summed up the tone of his lead National section "news": "Boisterious applause for a genial justice in city after city." Before digging up Ginsburg’s silly nickname (a reference to the rapper Notorious BIG), Liptak compared her to a music superstar of another eraL Bob Dylan.
On Wednesday, MSNBC was doing its part to spread misinformation that bolsters liberal spin on alleged "voter suppression" by Republicans as anchors Craig Melvin and Hallie Jackson -- hosting MSNBC Live at different times of day -- both wrongly claimed that, according to Ohio law, voters can be removed from the voting rolls if they fail to vote in just two consecutive elections. Washington Post reporter Aaron Blake stepped in to inform them that it actually takes about six years of not voting for a purge to happen -- but even he still fretted that other states might use the Ohio law as precedent to be more restrictive.
The liberal media’s message to Donald Trump is clear. Don’t even dare think about removing Robert Mueller from his position as Special Prosecutor. Such a decision would be considered a “radical” and “dangerous” move against a man “even Republicans” have a deep respect for. However, this was hardly the stance the liberal media took when Ken Starr was first appointed to look into Bill Clinton’s Whitewater scandal in the nineties. Back then, Starr was accused of “McCarthyism” and conducting a “Salem witch trial” into a “parody of a political scandal.”
In today’s political climate, an observer would be roundly mocked if they suggested President Trump is the victim of a “spiteful” “witch hunt,” or even a “coup d’etat.” But during the Clinton impeachment drama in 1998 and 1999, liberal journalists trotted out all of those claims as a way to deflect and defend a Democratic President who was impeached for, among other things, obstruction of justice — the same transgression journalists are associating with President Trump.
Nina Totenberg is very confused. The hard-left NPR journalist on Tuesday admitted that Judge Neil Gorsuch is “respected,” yet he’s also somehow “very conservative.” Appearing on MSNBC, Brian Williams asked Totenberg to project the Supreme Court nominee’s ideology. At first, she hedged, saying, “I actually don’t know.”