Chuck Todd Eulogizes Frank Lautenberg: A Liberal Before It was 'Cool' to be a Liberal

Apparently being a liberal is cool nowadays, at least in Chuck Todd’s view. On Monday NBC’s chief White House correspondent and host of MSNBC’s The Daily Rundown eulogized longtime Democratic New Jersey Senator Frank Lautenberg as a groundbreaker who advanced liberal ideas like gun control long before it was "cool" to be for them.

The following exchange was aired on the June 3 edition of MSNBC’s The Daily Rundown:

CHUCK TODD: Frank Lautenberg [was] sort of an interesting character in the U.S. Senate over the years.

DAN BALZ, WASHINGTON POST: Yes he was. And a liberal when people weren't necessarily-

TODD: When it wasn’t cool.

BALZ: -when it wasn't cool to be liberal. And, and he never hid that.
...

TODD: You know among his, the issues that he would push, he would push things. He was on the gun issue, again, before it was cool to be on the gun issue. Smoking bans. He was a big proponent of that. I think he himself was a recovering smoker. And I believe that's why he pushed some of these things so hard. So he very much was sort of wanting an activist government.

-- Geoffrey Dickens is the Deputy Research Director at the Media Research Center. Click here to follow Geoffrey Dickens on Twitter.