Discussing House Majority Leader Eric Cantor’s surprising primary loss, on Friday’s (June 13) Washington Week on PBS, John Harwood, chief Washington correspondent for CNBC, a regular on NBC and MSNBC, and a political writer for the New York Times , blamed hostility to Jews in Cantor’s “very rural conservative southern district.” “Eric Cantor is a Jewish Republican. This is a very rural conservative southern district where that is not a -- you don’t have a lot of Jewish members of Congress from the South.” Host Gwen Ifill, hardly a conservative, jumped in to counter Harwood’s presumption: “Oh, but he’s been... continue reading
On Friday's NBC Nightly News , Brian Williams strongly hinted that the recent Islamist blitzkrieg in Iraq was completely former President Bush's fault: " Make no mistake: what's happening in Iraq right now is a direct outgrowth of the U.S. decision to invade the country over a decade ago ." However, he glossed over the Obama administration's failure to negotiate a continued U.S. presence and pulling out all American forces in late 2011 as a factor in the crisis. Williams repeated his point to David Gregory: "How does the President sell any action at all to the component of the... continue reading
Apparently two years of Lois Lerner’s emails have been lost, according to the IRS. The disappearance of the emails caused House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp to blast: “The fact that I am just learning about this, over a year into the investigation, is completely unacceptable and now calls into question the credibility of the IRS’s response to Congressional inquiries. There needs to be an immediate investigation and forensic audit by Department of Justice as well as the Inspector General.” The question has to be asked: will the suspicious nature of this latest revelation be enough to get... continue reading
On Friday, CBS This Morning was the only one of the Big Three network morning shows to cover Hillary Clinton's testy Thursday exchange with NPR host Terry Gross over Clinton's shifting position on gay marriage. Neither NBC's Today nor ABC's Good Morning America bothered to mention the unflattering incident for the potential 2016 presidential candidate. [ Listen to the audio ] This Morning co-host Charlie Rose informed viewers: " Politico says Hillary Clinton rejects the idea that politics affected her views on same-sex marriage....In an interview Thursday, NPR host Terry Gross repeatedly asked Clinton about the issue." A clip followed... continue reading
Officials inside the Mormon Church have chosen to expel two activists from its ranks “One who is pushing for women priests. The other targeted for questioning church doctrine” and ABC’s Good Morning America did it's best to hype the supposed “controversy inside the Mormon Church.” On Friday, June 13, ABC’s Mara Schiavocampo promoted how “It's a shocking move by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which in recent years has worked to make itself appear more open and inclusive including an advertising campaign highlighting its diverse membership.” In her report, Schiavocampo sympathized with the activists who openly challenge... continue reading
Thursday's World News on ABC led with the rapid advance of an Islamist group into the heart of Iraq, but glossed over how correspondent Jonathan Karl grilled outgoing White House Press Secretary Jay Carney over how this development casts doubt on two of President Obama's supposed " top foreign policy accomplishments: ending the war in Iraq and decimating and destroying core al-Qaeda ." Terry Moran noted how "President Obama today, resisting pleas from the Iraqi government for immediate U.S. air strikes to turn the tide, tread cautiously." Martha Raddatz later underlined that "Obama said himself today that these fighters could... continue reading
On her 12 p.m. ET hour MSNBC show on Thursday, host and NBC chief foreign affairs correspondent Andrea Mitchell was unusually critical of the Obama administration's handling of terrorists seizing control of large portions of Iraq: "Where is our intelligence? We were there for ten years. We oughta know something about Iraq. This isn't North Korea." [ Listen to the audio ] That comment followed Virginia Democratic Senator Tim Kaine's attempt to defend the White House for being caught flat-footed by the foreign crisis: "Well, this is a late-breaking development. Look, nobody in the administration contemplated that the Iraqi armed... continue reading
With his approval ratings dropping and numerous scandals swirling around him it could be argued that America is going through Obama Fatigue right now. And maybe the President himself is getting tired of it all too. Or at least that’s what Tonight Show host Jimmy Fallon noticed when he took a jab at Obama on Wednesday night: The following joke was aired during Fallon’s monologue on the June 11 edition of NBC’s Tonight Show : JIMMY FALLON: Let’s get to the news first of all. This is just getting weird now. I heard that for the second day in a... continue reading
Al Qaeda-affiliated militants have seized control of two cities in Northern Iraq, including Mosul the nation’s second largest and Tikrit, the hometown of Sadaam Hussein. Despite the increased violence, all three network morning shows did their best to downplay or ignore the Obama Administration’s Iraq policy for potentially contributing to the violence. On Thursday, June 12, ABC, CBS, and NBC all provided extensive coverage on the latest violence on and the danger of the radical Jihadists taking over parts of Iraq. However, the networks downplayed President Obama’s decision to quickly withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq. The only reference to the... continue reading
Despite Al Qaeda being on the rise in Syria and Iraq, numerous unanswered questions remaining about the Bowe Bergdahl prisoner exchange, and the ongoing VA scandal, NBC News decided to send former first daughter and Today show correspondent Jenna Bush Hager to the White House to conduct a softball interview with President Obama on fatherhood. Today co-host Savannah Guthrie teased the pro-Obama fluff at the top of Thursday's broadcast: "Father-in-chief....In an exclusive interview with Jenna Bush Hager, President Obama gets personal about his own childhood without a father and what it's like to raise kids in the White House." [... continue reading