MSNBC’s Hardball host Chris Matthews left viewers on Tuesday night with a rather disturbing image of Matthews grunting and stretching while giving his best Incredible Hulk impression ahead of a Phoenix Trump rally that he insinuated could turn violent. The Atlantic’s Rosie Gray was noting the difference between Trump with a Teleprompter versus without when Matthews interjected that the latter is “[w]hen his Incredible Hulk thing grows in him.”
Conservative author, and anti-Donald Trump pundit, P.J. O’Rourke appeared on MSNBC, Tuesday, to say something pleasing to MSNBC types. Talking about the President’s upcoming rally in Phoenix, O’Rourke attacked, “Oh, I think the President is going to use humor tonight. He’s going to come out in a bed sheet with a Tiki torch.”
Throughout the day on Tuesday, MSNBC sounded the alarm that President Trump’s planned rally in Phoenix, Arizona could lead to violence. Hour after hour, hosts, pundits, and correspondents hyped “concerns about people’s safety” and the “combustible situation” that was supposedly being created by the presidential visit.
CNN’s Chris Cuomo on Tuesday discovered a new phrase that he could employ in deriding Donald Trump. The New Day anchor used it again and again, repeatedly wondering if the President is a “moral agent.” Talking about the President’s speech on Afghanistan, the journalist lectured, “Moral agency is about what comes out of you at your core. Okay? It doesn't matter how you say it.” Cuomo hinted that Trump’s well-received speech would soon be contradicted.
In an exclusive interview with Vice President Mike Pence on Tuesday’s NBC Today, co-host Matt Lauer noted that President Trump was “getting applause from a lot of people” for his address to the nation on Afghanistan, but then focused entirely on criticism of the newly announced war strategy.
All eyes were on President Trump Monday night as he addressed the nation about the country’s future actions in regard to the war in Afghanistan. And without giving too many details, the President declared that there would be some form of troop increase but noted that there were conditions to our aid and limits to the costs we were willing to bear. But that wasn’t enough for MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell, who bemoaned Trump’s address and eagerly awaited White House leaks of the details.
On Monday night, the “big three” networks of ABC, CBS, and NBC each broke in with special reports for President Trump’s speech announcing his Afghanistan strategy and, in the course of the post-speech analyses, ABC and NBC lobbed cold water on the plans seeing as how low Trump’s approval ratings have been.
ABC, CBS, and NBC's evening newscasts on Monday all failed to cover the thwarted bombing of a Confederate monument in Houston, Texas. The Big Three networks led and concluded each program with full reports on the solar eclipse that crossed the United States, but didn't even set aside a news brief to the arrest of Andrew Cecil Schneck, who allegedly prepared explosives and tried to set them off near the Texas landmark.
Let’s offer some congratulations to AMC’s Preacher for giving me the fastest, most efficient subject for an article yet. The latest episode featured a subject so embarrassingly crass that I’m shocked I got through the entire episode without slamming my head against a wall. It only takes three simple words: Jesus having sex.
Over the course of last week, on NBC and MSNBC, host Chuck Todd gave a leg up to the violent Antifa movement by letting them defend their assaults on the police and innocent people not once, but twice. Todd’s interviews showed just how tolerant he was of those who use violence to shut down free speech. And while Todd was absent from MTP Daily on Monday, Katy Tur picked up his torch and proudly pushed back against the First Amendment’s acknowledgment of a person’s right to free speech.
Hours before President Trump’s Monday night speech announcing a U.S. troops surge in Afghanistan, MSNBC’s Hardball host Chris Matthews admitted that he’s a “dove” “already worried about tonight” because it’s a “pure” escalation by the military “establishment.” It’s worth noting that this represented an admirable consistency by Matthews, seeing as how he also criticized a troop surge by President Obama on December 1, 2009 (but more on that later).
New on August 21: CNN host Brian Stelter wondered if President Trump has an illness that makes him unfit for office: “Is the President of the United States a racist? Is he suffering from some kind of illness? Is he fit for office? And if he’s unfit, then what?”