Rampaging Against Republican 'Traitors,' and Do the Media Really Hate Hillary Clinton?
Media Haters vs. Hillary Clinton
“Early in 2016 Race, Clinton’s Toughest Foe Appears to Be the News Media”
— Headline over New York Times reporter Patrick Healy’s March 12 story.
“The media, they hate her the most, okay? More than my party. They hate her. And even the most respected journalists said, you know, ‘Oh, the Clintonian penchant for secrecy is back.’ They have Clinton PTSD from the last Clinton presidency. They are done with her.”
— Co-host Nicolle Wallace, an ex-GOP campaign strategist, on ABC’s The View, March 11.
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“If you were a man, today, would all of this fuss being made be made?”
— Turkish television journalist Kahraman Haliscelik tossing out the first question to Hillary Clinton at her March 10 press conference about her e-mail scandal.
Dismissing Hillary’s E-Mail Scandal: “What Difference Does It Make?”
“Well, it’s one of those stories that gets Washington hyperventilating. Today, Hillary Clinton explained why she used private e-mail to conduct official business as Secretary of State....John, the partisans are going to believe what they want to believe. There’s no chance any minds were changed there today, so what difference does any of this make in Hillary Clinton’s campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination?”
— Anchor Scott Pelley’s introduction and later question to CBS News political director John Dickerson on the March 10 CBS Evening News.
Ready to Accuse Republicans of Going Too Far
“Jason Chaffetz apparently wants to open up a larger investigation on the e-mail system. You heard what Trey Gowdy’s going to do. Do you fear, as somebody who would like to see the Republicans win the White House, do you fear that congressional Republicans could get in the way and actually make her look [like someone people] sympathize with?”
— NBC’s Chuck Todd to former Romney campaign senior advisor Kevin Madden on Meet the Press, March 15.
But a Wannabe Hillary Voter Feels “Deflated”
“A lot of people that I know, and myself included, are not likely to vote for a conservative Republican come 20 months from now. But, you know, a lot of our readers are in that camp, and they want Hillary Clinton to be the best Hillary Clinton she can be....To see a deflating spectacle, like we saw at the press conference, just one second, it just brings back a lot of bad memories....”
— The New Yorker editor David Remnick on ABC’s This Week, March 15.
Rampaging Against Republican “Traitors”
“47 Republican U.S. Senators engaged in treachery by sending a letter to the mullahs aimed at cutting the legs out from under America’s commander-in-chief....The participants represented the bulk of the Republicans’ 54-member senatorial majority, vesting their petulant, condescending stunt with the coloration of an institutional foreign policy statement. They are an embarrassment to the Senate and to the nation.”
— From a March 10 New York Daily News editorial, headlined on the tabloid’s front page with: “TRAITORS.”
Iran’s Mullahs = The “Voice of Reason”?
“The whole thing is just nuts. It is just nuts. And, you know, the Iranians sound like a voice of reason in this whole thing by saying, you know, this whole thing is silly.”
— Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson on MSNBC’s The Last Word, March 11.
Republican Letter on Iran Just “Stupid”
“You almost wonder, did they not realize what they were signing on to? Did they not realize sort of how big of a deal this was going to be, or how much it was going to be promoted?...Forget the actual policy and the historical precedent and all of this other stuff, just on a political front it was stupid.”
— NBC Meet the Press host Chuck Todd on MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell Reports, March 12.
Sneering at Senator Cotton: Who’s Next, North Korea?
“Well, Senator, are you planning to contact any other of our adversaries around the country [sic]? For example, do you plan to check with the North Koreans to make sure that they know that any deal has to be approved by the Congress?”
— Bob Schieffer to GOP Senator Tom Cotton on CBS’s Face the Nation, March 15.
Co-host Mika Brzezinski: “I loved Bob Schieffer’s question. That absolutely crystallizes the stupidity and really, like, the toddler-like quality that exists in the Senate.”
Co-host Joe Scarborough: “Toddler? Toddler-like quality?”
Brzezinski: “He’s a toddler. He’s a toddler. Yes, he is.”
Scarborough: “No, no. He’s a United States Senator who-”
Brzezinski: “Who has made himself into a fool.”
— MSNBC’s Morning Joe, March 16.
Letter from GOP Senators = “Jim Crow’s New Habitat”
“Some day years from now, people will look back on this presidency and see it in sharper contrast. They will read how it started with the Republican Senate leader calling for the President’s defeat....And as of this week, they will learn that a new senator from Arkansas got the signatures of 46 other senators on a letter to the hardliners in Iran urging that they reject the efforts of this President to keep them from building a nuclear weapon....They will then look at a picture of this President, a picture of this man, and perhaps get the idea that the age of Jim Crow managed to find a new habitat in the early 21st century Republican Party.”
— Host Chris Matthews on MSNBC’s Hardball, March 12.
Media in Distress after Netanyahu Wins Another Term
“After a bruising campaign focused on his failings, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel seemed to emerge from Tuesday’s elections in the best position to form a new government, though he offended many voters and alienated allies in the process....It remained to be seen how his divisive — some said racist — campaign tactics would affect his ability to govern a fractured Israel.”
— New York Times Jerusalem bureau chief Jodi Rudoren in a March 18 front-page article.
“Netanyahu’s hard-line rhetoric helps him win re-election, but at a price....Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s reelection to a fourth term will likely bring new tension between Israel and the United States....Palestinian leaders said that Netanyahu’s campaign was based on racism and apartheid.”
— CBS Evening News anchor Scott Pelley, March 18.
“It is hard to know what is more depressing: that Netanyahu went for the gutter in the last few days in order to salvage his campaign — renouncing his own commitment to a two-state solution with the Palestinians and race-baiting Israeli Jews to get out and vote because, he said, too many Israeli Arabs were going to the polls — or the fact that this seemed to work.”
— New York Times columnist Tom Friedman, March 18.
Scolding Israel’s “Racist” Right Wing
“Israeli Arabs, citizens of the country, 1.7 million of them, as this parliamentarian told me, have been incredibly motivated in this election and they want to get out and try to better their lives, but they’re very conscious, as one of them — as this one told me, that they feel that the Likud Party and the right wing do have a sort-of racist policy towards them and it’s very scary for them.”
— CNN’s Christiane Amanpour on The Lead with Jake Tapper, March 17.
Netanyahu Acted Like America’s Racist Conservatives
“He kind of played the Israeli version of the Southern Strategy, and basically tried to scare his base into coming out and giving their votes to him by saying, essentially, ‘the Arabs are coming.’...He used that as a scare tactic.”
— The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg on MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell Reports, March 18.
“In what appeared to be a panicked last-ditch ploy to turn out right-wing voters today, he took another page from the American playbook, resorting to demagoguery....On the heels of his speech to the U.S. Congress, perhaps no figure is more polarizing at home and abroad than Benjamin Netanyahu. He is Israel’s George W. Bush.”
— MSNBC’s Chris Hayes hosting All In, March 17.
Giving Speech to Congress = Act of Betrayal?
“Why should President Obama trust you when you came to Congress to lobby against his negotiations with Iran?”
— NBC’s Andrea Mitchell to Netanyahu in an interview shown on the NBC Nightly News, March 19.
Hillary Preferable to “Not Enormously Gifted” Bushes
“You know, this idea that we have these dynasties — it’s troubling on the Democratic side with the Clintons. But with the Bushes, we’re not talking about, sort of, history making with the first woman President, potentially. We’re talking about three people from a same family who are not — no offense to all of them — but they’re not, you know, enormously gifted Americans.”
— Daily Beast columnist and longtime Newsweek editor Jonathan Alter on MSNBC’s Hardball, March 18.
Brett Favre and Cher Are Gone, But Potent Pelosi “Powers On”
“The quarterback Brett Favre has long retired. Cher shut down her most recent tour. Representative Nancy Pelosi — repeatedly written off and derided since her party lost the House in 2010 — powers on. Ms. Pelosi, 74, maintains unwavering control over Democratic members of the House on legislation — in contrast to the House speaker, John A. Boehner, who continues to struggle with his cacophonous caucus — and she may be a surprisingly vital tool for the White House at the end of President Obama’s tenure.”
— From reporter Jennifer Steinhauer’s March 7 New York Times profile of House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi.
Empathizing with Obama: “Are You a Masochist?”
“Whenever I do an environmental piece, out come the ‘bots,’ out come the ‘eggs,’ you know, on Twitter, because there’s all kinds of negative stuff that they want to cause doubt. That’s everyday for you. How do you do it? How do you handle the controversies, the negativity? Why be President? Are you a masochist?”
— Vice News founder Shane Smith to President Obama in an interview posted March 16.
Chuck Todd: “There’s No Point of View to Meet the Press”
Host Mike O’Meara: “A lot of people talk about the liberal media and the liberal mainstream media....So I’m curious whether you get any blowback from political leaders about the point of view of Meet the Press?”
NBC’s Chuck Todd: “Not from me, ’cause there’s no point of view to Meet the Press.”
— Exchange on the online Mike O’Meara Show, March 17.
Republican Senators Guilty of “Criminal Mutiny”?
“The moment that that letter arrived in Tehran, they were protesting from foreign shores....I think that where we should not be looking at this, is not in terms of treason, but mutiny and I think perhaps criminal mutiny.”
— Actor Sean Penn on HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher, March 13, talking about the GOP letter to Iran.
PUBLISHER: L. Brent Bozell III
EDITORS: Brent H. Baker, Rich Noyes, Tim Graham
DEPUTY RESEARCH DIRECTOR: Geoffrey Dickens
NEWS ANALYSTS: Scott Whitlock, Kyle Drennen, Matthew Balan, Jeffrey Meyer and Curtis Houck
INTERN: Bryan Ballas
