'News' Anchor Berates Trump Over Immigration; Laughing at Hillary's E-Mail Scandal
TV “News” Anchor Berates Trump Over Immigration Plan
“So here’s the problem with your immigration plan. It’s full of empty promises. You cannot deport eleven million undocumented immigrants. You cannot deny citizenship to the children in this country....My other question is: How are you going to build up 1,900 miles of wall?...It’s a completely unnecessary waste of time and money and resources.”
— Univision anchor Jorge Ramos to GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump at an August 25 press conference broadcast live on several cable news channels.
Rest of the Media Gives Ramos a Platform for His Activism
“He has to explain how he wants to deport eleven million people. Can you imagine? How is he going to do that? Is he going to put people in stadiums? We have to denounce that he wants to deny citizenship to children being born here. They’re citizens, just like his [children], and it is impossible to build a 1,900-mile wall between Mexico and the United States. So that’s the kind of questions that I was asking Mr. Trump, and obviously he didn’t give any answers.”
— Univision’s Jorge Ramos on ABC’s Good Morning America, August 26.
“The fact is that, as a reporter, I believe you have to take a stand, Chris, when it comes to racism, discrimination, corruption, public lies, dictatorship, and human rights....When somebody says, Chris, that he wants to deport eleven million men, women, and children; when he says he wants to deny citizenship to children born here in the United States — which, by the way, are U.S. citizens just like he is — he is creating division, he is creating hatred, and we have to call him out on that.”
— Ramos to co-anchor Chris Cuomo on CNN’s New Day, August 26.
“Let’s remember that Donald Trump is a creation of the Republican Party. The same ideas that other Republicans have espoused in the past, but only that he expresses them with more violence and in an extreme way.”
— Ramos on CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360, August 24.
Will We See Confederate Flags at “Racist” Trump’s Rally?
“Trump is very effectively parlaying a sense of anger, anxiety. There’s certainly a healthy dose of racism in what he’s doing. I think ultimately it will really falter, but I’m not sure how long ultimately is.”
— Fill-in co-host Al Hunt on Bloomberg’s With All Due Respect, August 21.
“Do you see any Confederate flags? Any Confederate battle flags anywhere in the audience?...Have you found any significant number of African Americans at the event, of the thirty some thousand there?”
— Host Chris Matthews to NBC’s Katy Tur during MSNBC’s live coverage of Trump’s speech in Alabama, August 21.
Media’s PC Squad Objects to “Anchor Baby” Phrase
“Are you aware that the term ‘anchor baby,’ that’s an offensive term? People find that hurtful....Look it up in the dictionary. It’s offensive!”
— ABC correspondent Tom Llamas to Donald Trump in a clip shown on Good Morning America, August 20.
Suddenly, NBC Cares About Too Much Government Spending
“The candidate known for his big money [Donald Trump] turns out to be a big spender when it comes to his presidential proposals: Deporting 11 million undocumented immigrants, estimated to cost about $138 billion; taking back Iraqi oil fields, which would mean U.S. boots on the ground, $13 to $22 billion; and repealing the Affordable Care Act may cost the government $137 billion in the next decade.”
— Correspondent Hallie Jackson on NBC’s Today, August 18.
As Always, Tragedy = Chance to Push Liberal Agenda
“So, Dr. Carson, you know, we witnessed a terrible shooting today [of two local TV news employees in Roanoke, Virgina]. As a neurosurgeon and someone who tries to prolong life and give life to people, after you watch a crime like this, does it make you question at all the role of guns in our society?”
— Anchor Don Lemon to GOP presidential candidate Ben Carson on CNN Tonight, August 26.
Refusing to Raise Taxes Will “Wreck the United States”
“The [no tax increases] pledge has helped to wreck the United States. It is about the worst kind of public policy that you can imagine, for the reasons we have just heard. So I actually respect Jeb Bush for taking a position against it....It’s terribly destructive. And I pray that Donald Trump is not such a wimp that he changes his mind and signs the pledge. And if he holds out against it and does fine anyway, and Chris Christie [who signed the pledge] goes by the wayside, which he will, then maybe the Republican Party can start to move into a post-pledge environment.”
— The Daily Beast’s Jonathan Alter on MSNBC’s The Last Word, August 12.
Marco Rubio: “So Far to the Right,” He’s “Unelectable”
“What we need to keep our eye on is, who could be elected in a general election? And that means someone who might not just appeal to the Republican base in Iowa, but to the country at large....[Florida Senator Marco Rubio] has painted himself so far to the right, who has put abortion so front and center in this campaign as to render his candidacy unelectable, probably, in terms of the general electorate, no matter how articulate he might have appeared in that debate.”
— Author and former Washington Post reporter Carl Bernstein on CNN’s New Day, August 13.
“Bored” by Hillary’s “Too Hard to Follow” E-Mail Scandal
“I have been utterly bored with the story to the point where I only recently began to really sort of dig into it....The more I look into it, I think it’s one of those cases where the trailer is really simple, but the movie is kind of too hard to follow....Maybe Hillary Clinton on the cloud was actually somehow safer and more secure than the actual government e-mails? I don’t even understand it.”
— MSNBC national correspondent Joy Reid on All In with Chris Hayes, August 20.
CNN Salutes Hillary’s Humor: A “Fun Way to Obstruct” Journalists
Clip of FNC’s Ed Henry: “You were the official in charge. Did you wipe the server?”
Clip of Hillary Clinton: “What, like with a cloth or something? No.”
Anchor Carol Costello: “Okay. You see she was joking about it, right?...I mean, you had to laugh when Hillary Clinton said that. Clearly she must know what wiping a server means?”
Mashable senior tech correspondent Christina Warren: “Absolutely. Absolutely. Of course she knows. But it was a fun way to try to, maybe, obstruct from the question.”
— CNN Newsroom, August 19.
Since It Won’t Matter, Why Should Journalists Bother to Investigate?
“The Clintons have been embroiled in scandal longer than I have been alive. And at this point it’s all just background noise. Everybody’s formulated an opinion about whether they think the Clintons are above board, or whether they care about whether the Clintons are above board or not. And I can’t imagine this breaking through in a way that the previous 25 or 35 scandals did, unless she were to be indicted, which I do not think is going to happen....My guess is this is something that is not big enough that people care.”
— New York Times correspondent Josh Barro on MSNBC’s The Last Word, August 17.
Admitting Journalists “Encouraged” Socialist Sanders to Run
“We, and a lot in the media, were encouraging of Bernie Sanders getting in the race, because the senator from Vermont does provoke a lot of passion from the left part of that party. We thought that that would be an interesting mix of ideas because, certainly, the Clintons are more known for the centrism that they present to the Democrats.”
— Co-anchor Chris Cuomo on CNN’s New Day, August 19.
Chicago: No Longer Big Enough for Superstar Obamas
“There are remnants of the Obamas all over their old neighborhood of Hyde Park. Walk east on 53rd Street, and you’ll pass the place where Barack and Michelle first kissed. A bronze marker laid into a stone marks the spot....[But] lingering in the air is the acknowledgment, eked out in drips and dribbles over the past year, that the Obamas probably will not call this place their permanent home again....‘They’ve probably outgrown Chicago socially and professionally,’ said [author and ex-Post reporter Peter] Slevin, who interviewed many of the family’s associates. ‘Chicago can’t hold them.’”
— Washington Post reporter Krissah Thompson, August 21.
Voters Rejected “Nice” and “Decent” Carter for “Cowboy” Reagan
“I think it does say something profoundly about who we are as a people that Carter’s decency and goodness was taken for weakness and had to be remedied with the sort of bluster of a Ronald Reagan and that the idea we needed a cowboy to replace what people viewed as a man who wasn’t cowboy enough to be president, that he was too nice.”
— MSNBC’s Joy Reid on The Last Word, August 20.
CNN Host Fulfills Carson’s Prediction of “Ridiculous” Journalism
Fill-in host Jim Acosta: “And let me ask you about something else you said earlier this week. You said that the United States should consider using drone strikes to secure the border with Mexico....Are you talking about taking drone strikes at the U.S.-Mexico border?”
GOP presidential candidate Ben Carson: “It was quite clear what I was talking about. I said that drones are excellent for surveillance....In no way did I suggest that drones be used to kill people. And I said that to the media at the time. I said, ‘You guys, some of you are going to go out and say Carson wants to use drones to kill people on the borders.’ How ridiculous.”
— CNN’s State of the Union, August 23.
Andrea Thrilled: John Kerry Brought Teddy’s Cane to Castro’s Cuba
“You have been looking at pictures of John Kerry and he’s off the crutches for this trip, at least so far today. You can see him using a cane, and it was Teddy Kennedy’s cane. Obviously, from the Kennedy family, offered to him. So, such a great symbol, symbolic gesture....The cane used by the youngest of the Kennedy brothers, and he, of course, was a senior senator, had long wanted this kind of normalization, which is now being affected by his junior senator and partner from Massachusetts, now the Secretary of State.”
— NBC’s Andrea Mitchell covering the re-opening of the U.S. embassy in Cuba, MSNBC’s The Rundown, Aug. 14.
Decrying Trump’s “Old School, Slave Owner Mentality”
“I mean, look how far he’s gotten. Knowing what it — I mean, yo, my man’s got a strong, old-school, slave owner mentality, and he’s not holding back. He told the Latinos, you’re this, you’re that, you’re this and I’m gonna win your — and you’re gonna vote for me! That’s slave owner 101, and people are like, keep going! Because the middle of the country is like, we feel the same way.”
— Actor Michael Rapaport on Comedy Central’s The Nightly Show, August 13.
“Freedom” and “Liberty” Just Thinly-Disguised Racial Epithets
“I think as a country most of us now know you can’t sling around the racial epithets. That’s not — those things won’t play. So we have a vernacular that allows us to play the same games, but now it’s all about personal freedom and liberty and my property values and not-in-my-backyardism, you know.”
— Television writer-producer David Simon in a Bloomberg Business interview posted August 14.
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
INTERNS: Connor Williams, Spencer Raley
