Hillary's Scandals = 'Distractions' and 'Noise;' Touting Clintons' 'Heartwarming' Successes
Hillary’s Scandals Are Just “Distractions” and “Noise”
“Secretary Clinton has been trying to frame her campaign around issues like immigration reform....But her message has been muddled by a series of recent distractions, including questions about donations to the Clinton Foundation. And this morning, her campaign is once again trying to break through the noise.”
— Correspondent Julianna Goldman on CBS This Morning, May 5.
NBC Touts Clintons’ “Heartwarming” Africa Successes
“Even while the criticism at home rumbles, the heartwarming stories here in Africa are undeniable. Like here at the Starkey Hearing Foundation program, where 150 children and adults will get hearing aids today....In Africa, he’s greeted as if he’s still president....Bill Clinton says he trusts the American people to see the good work the foundation has done for fifteen years and to realize that criticism is political. He’s off to Liberia today to meet with Ebola survivors, and to see the work of the foundation there.”
— Correspondent Cynthia McFadden on NBC’s Today, May 4.
Excited by Socialist Sanders Pulling Democrats Even Further Left
“Bernie Sanders could be good for Hillary Clinton by focusing the campaign more on economic issues. Let’s list two names who we don’t get to talk about, Eugene Debs and Norman Thomas. This is the most serious socialist candidacy for President since they ran. But Bernie Sanders has a long list of particulars that he wants to put on the table, and I think by shifting the campaigns to economics, he will generally help Democrats.”
— Ex-New York Times and Washington Post political reporter E. J. Dionne on NPR’s All Things Considered, May 1.
Carly Fiorina: Nothing But a Hillary-Bashing Failure
“I don’t think we would be taking her [Carly Fiorina] seriously at all if she weren’t a woman. And I would love to see a woman President....I think she is a failed business leader and a failed political candidate....I just don’t get why we should be taking her so seriously.”
— Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus on NBC’s Meet the Press, May 10.
“Do you think Fiorina, Carly Fiorina, has this notion in her head that she can get away with even scurrilous attacks on Secretary Clinton because she is a female? Do you think there’s something going on there or not?”
— Host Chris Matthews to NPR/ABC analyst Cokie Roberts, MSNBC’s Hardball May 5.
Ben Carson: A Great Man, Until He Criticized Obama
“For many young African Americans who grew up seeing Carson as the embodiment of black achievement — a poor inner-city boy who became one of the world’s most accomplished neurosurgeons — his emergence as a conservative hero and unabashed critic of the United States’ first black President has been jarring....Some black pastors who were Carson’s biggest promoters have stopped recommending his book. Members of minority medical organizations that long boasted of their affiliations with him say he is called an ‘embarrassment’ on private online discussion groups.”
— The Washington Post’s Robert Samuels in a May 3 front-page article, “Admirers of Carson find his criticism of Obama troubling.”
Don’t You Know ObamaCare Is a Great Success?
“[In] 2014, you said fewer people would have health insurance. According to plenty of surveys, more people have health insurance today than they did before. It went down from 17, the uninsured rate went down from 17 percent to just under 12 percent. You said it would destroy jobs. The first year it was implemented, the country added three million jobs. Why didn’t your dire predictions come true?”
— Host Chuck Todd to Speaker of the House John Boehner on NBC’s Meet the Press, May 3.
Seizing on Train Tragedy to Demand More Spending
“This morning we are talking about safety. We are talking about people who lost their lives because of our third world infrastructure. But this also has a lot to do with money.”
— Co-host Joe Scarborough on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, May 13. A few hours later, the National Traffic Safety Board announced the train had been traveling at more than 100 miles per hour, double the speed limit.
Horrified That GOP Would Cut Spending
Anchor Scott Pelley: “Some of Amtrak’s equipment has been charitably described as ‘antique,’ but despite that, a House panel today cut Amtrak’s budget even more....”
Correspondent Nancy Cordes: “Amtrak estimates that maintaining and upgrading the Northeast Corridor would cost $2.6 billion per year. But Congress provided just $1.4 billion this year for all of Amtrak’s operations, from coast to coast. Next year, funding will drop by nearly 20 percent, despite an attempt by House Democrats today to boost it.”
— CBS Evening News, May 13.
Republicans So Stingy, They Put Own Staffers at Risk
“Metro is a service that a lot of Republican staffers here on Capitol Hill desperately use to get in and out of the capital. House Republicans want to cut the budget for Metro in half. Remember, in 2009, Metro had a deadly accident, over nine people were killed. They want to cut that budget in half! So there really is no desire to necessarily help rail, unless — even if it’s beneficial to their staff.”
— NBC congressional correspondent Luke Russert on MSNBC’s Now with Alex Wagner, May 13.
When Conservatives Lose, It Will Teach GOP a Lesson
“We’re less than a week away from that general election in the U.K. It’s going to be too close to call. The opposition Labor leader, Ed Miliband, he’s challenging David Cameron, the Conservative, to be prime minister....There’s been commentary that if Cameron loses, the Republican Party ought to learn something from that.”
— Host Chuck Todd on NBC’s Meet the Press, May 3. In the May 7 election, the Conservative Party gained an absolute majority of Parliamentary seats, while the left-wing Labour Party had their poorest showing since 1987.
Conservatives: The Indelicate, Ungenerous “Nasty Party”
“On Friday, in front of 10 Downing Street, Mr. Cameron promised to ‘govern with respect’ and ‘as a party of one nation, one United Kingdom.’...That task will require a delicacy of touch and generosity of spirit that the Conservatives, once labeled ‘the nasty party,’ are not thought to possess in large amounts.”
— New York Times London bureau chief Steven Erlanger in a May 9 “news analysis.”
Labour’s Downfall Was Believing Lefty Media
“Many popular media notions of what a restless electorate is against (bankers, corporate power, tax dodgers, economic austerity) and what it is for (fundamental change, leveling the powerful, taxing the rich and big social program promises) came a cropper in the British election last week....”
“Labour not only got the mood of the country wrong, but so did the news media. Indeed, part of Labour’s problem was likely to have only seen its future, and understood the ambitions of the electorate, through its own favored media. The left-leaning BBC was wrong; the left-leaning Guardian was wrong; digitally centric Buzzfeed, trying to make inroads in Britain by targeting news to a young audience, was wrong.”
— Michael Wolff on the front page of the May 11 USA Today.
America’s Real Infrastructure Crisis: Not Enough Abortion Clinics
“This was a drive Emily had never taken for a procedure she hadn’t imagined needing, in a time when fewer clinics and tougher laws were making the geography of abortion more complex....in places such as Texas, where more than half of the clinics have closed since 2013, or in South Dakota, where the single clinic has a mandatory 72-hour waiting period between appointment and procedure, or in Wyoming, where there is one private provider and no clinics in all the state’s 98,000 square miles, and where the nearest facility Emily could find an appointment was six hours away.”
— Washington Post writer Monica Hesse in a May 7 Style section piece, “The long drive to end a pregnancy.”
Blaming the Targets, Not the ISIS-Inspired Attackers
“An anti-Islamic group held a contest on who could be the nastiest — draw the nastiest cartoon of Mohammed. Do you believe that people set that kind of a mousetrap?... I wonder whether this group that held this event down there to basically disparage and to make fun of the Prophet Mohammed doesn’t in some ways cause these events. Without the word ‘causing,’ how about ‘provoking,’ how about ‘taunting,’ how about ‘daring’?...Here is Pamela Geller, who organized the ‘draw Mohammed’ event....I think she caused this trouble.”
— Host Chris Matthews on MSNBC’s Hardball, May 4.
Enthralled by Michelle’s Claims of Racial Victimhood
Anchor Lester Holt: “Michelle Obama like we have rarely heard her before. Deeply candid about race and the private pain she’s endured....The First Lady’s speech was candid, personal, heartfelt, even blunt on the issue of race....”
Correspondent Chris Jansing: “Twitter users called the address ‘riveting’ and ‘amazing.’”
— NBC Nightly News, May 11, about Mrs. Obama’s May 9 commencement address in which she claimed she was held to a racial double-standard as the nation’s first African American First Lady.
“That is a speech worth reading from beginning to end. Everyone should take a look at that.”
— Co-host Norah O’Donnell on CBS This Morning, May 11.
“Thug” Really Just a Sneaky Way to Say the N-Word
“Listen, I think what the Baltimore city councilman, Carl Stokes, was trying to tell Erin Burnett is that thug is a proxy, it is a word we use instead of the N-word. And I think that’s really true. I can’t think of a situation where there’s ever been a headline or someone has called a white young person who is in the middle of a violent protest demonstration, whatever, a ‘thug.’ We use it all the time when we’re talking about people in the inner city.”
— Former CNN anchor Soledad O’Brien on CNN’s Reliable Sources, May 3.
Let’s Just Add It to the Banned Word List
“To my colleagues in the television news business, I beg you, beg you when you’re getting ready to use the word ‘thug’ on national television, ask yourself what the word ‘thug’ adds to the discussion....What would be the first word of choice for a virulent racist to use on your show about those people and know for certain that he or she could get away with using that word? It would be thug. You know it would be thug. And African Americans know it would be thug....We don’t need that word.”
— Host Lawrence O’Donnell on MSNBC’s The Last Word, May 5.
Departing Dave Tingles Over “Charismatic” and “Impressive” Obama
“On the program last night, we had the President of the United States, Barack Obama....Politics notwithstanding, what an impressive man. I mean, my goodness, he walks out here and you can feel the electricity in the room, and the people in the audience jumped to their feet and it’s very impressive. Smart, handsome, charismatic guy. Just tremendous.”
— Retiring CBS Late Show host David Letterman, May 5.
“Very Happy” If “Tremendous” Hillary Becomes President
“I think that she’s a tremendous candidate and I know her and I think the world of her and I think that I would be very happy if she were President.”
— Actor George Clooney, referring to Hillary Clinton, on Fusion’s America with Jorge Ramos, May 12.
PUBLISHER: L. Brent Bozell III
EDITORS: Brent H. Baker, Rich Noyes, Tim Graham
DEPUTY RESEARCH DIRECTOR: Geoffrey Dickens
RESEARCH ANALYST: Mike Ciandella
NEWS ANALYSTS: Scott Whitlock, Kyle Drennen, Matthew Balan, Jeffrey Meyer and Curtis Houck
INTERN: Bryan Ballas
