TV 'News' Enlists in Obama's Climate Crusade; Benghazi Just a GOP Voodoo Cult
TV “News” Enlists in Obama’s Climate Crusade
“Let’s imagine for a moment that there’s a baby being born right now. There are, you know, babies being born all over this country. What future does this child face if nothing is done?”
— NBC correspondent Andrea Mitchell to EPA administrator Gina McCarthy on MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell Reports, May 6.
“I spent the whole day here at the White House, and the President and his staff tell me they’re most excited about this, because they think it’s going to help people plan and respond to disasters. And then something interesting happened, Diane. The President actually asked me a question. He wanted to know which storm was the worst that I had ever covered. My answer, Hurricane Sandy and Katrina.”
— ABC News meteorologist Ginger Zee on World News, May 6.
“It was an honor to get in there, ask some questions...because it’s a crucial time for the President. Climate change is one of those issues that he promised to attack. To get something done now, it has to happen right now....And as the report says, it needs to happen, too, for the planet.”
— Zee on ABC’s Good Morning America, May 7.
Hitting Obama from the Left: Why Haven’t You Done This Sooner?
“More dangerous floods. More frequent and powerful storms. Wildfires burning more often with less water on hand to put them out. And on the heels of America’s warmest decade, more heat waves and periods of severe drought. All these symptoms set to grow more severe, according to the latest National Climate Assessment put out by the White House Tuesday. [to Obama] Why has it taken so long to get to this point where you’re sounding this urgency?”
— NBC weatherman Al Roker to President Obama in an exchange shown on Today, May 7.
CNN’s John King: “If the President has this power with his pen through executive authority, and this issue is so important to him, why did they wait so long? Why not do this in the first term? Why not do this in the first week?”
AP correspondent Julie Pace: “Yeah. That’s a question we’ve been asking about, actually, a lot of issues when the White House talks about this ‘year of action’ that they’re happening — that they’re having. You know, if these things are so important, why didn’t you do them earlier?...”
The National Journal’s Ron Fournier: “The President has missed an opportunity to really seize one of the most important issues facing our globe — not just our country — and he’s let politics get in the way.”
— Discussion on CNN’s New Day, May 6.
Benghazi: Just a GOP Voodoo Cult
“The enemies of Hillary Clinton, by that I mean the partisan enemies, have got their voodoo doll. It’s called Benghazi. Every time they put the pin in, they hope it hurts Hillary....It’s become an obsession bordering on cultism among Republicans, with even John Boehner falling under its spell. You can almost smell the incense. ‘Benghazi, Benghazi, Benghazi.’ They keep chanting the word until it gets Hillary to fall.”
— Chris Matthews opening MSNBC’s Hardball, May 5.
Promoting Pelosi’s Plan As Cure for GOP’s “Partisan Stunt”
“The way they rolled this out, it feels very political. It feels very ham-handed. So if they accept Nancy Pelosi’s terms immediately,...they sort of can get some of the high ground back. And they can say, well, it’s fully bipartisan, it’s fully, you know, we’re doing the way Nancy Pelosi wanted to set this up. So it would get some political legitimacy back because right now I feel like it looks nothing more than a partisan stunt.”
— NBC/MSNBC’s Chuck Todd on Morning Joe, May 7, discussing the House select committee on Benghazi. Pelosi wanted equal numbers of Republicans and Democrats, something she never accepted as Speaker.
Sterling’s Racism Just “the Tip of the Iceberg”
“I don’t want us to get sidetracked. We historically, whether it’s Donald Sterling or Cliven Bundy or Trayvon Martin, we look at a tip of the iceberg and we ignore the mass underneath it. And really, that’s what — that’s where the problem lies.”
— Former NBC and CBS morning news anchor Bryant Gumbel, now the host of HBO’s Real Sports, on NBC’s Meet the Press, April 27.
“I see a relationship between what Paul Ryan says when he talks about inner-city people who are urban, with all the code words being articulated, and the kind of Cliven Bundy expression, to the kind of Donald Sterling.”
— MSNBC contributor and fill-in host Michael Eric Dyson on CBS’s Face the Nation, May 4.
Sterling’s Racism Generated by Hannity and Limbaugh?
“There’s absolutely no question about it, that he [President Obama] has been picked on because of the color of his skin. And there’s no doubt that he has been called many names by conservative talkers in America, many names. He has been targeted. He has been obstructed. And I think that the way this President has been treated empowers jokers like this [Donald Sterling]....I pin this attitude that we have in society being inflamed by right-wing talkers who hate this President, that embolden people such as this guy to go on and act disrespectful against society. And it breeds racism.”
— MSNBC’s Ed Schultz on his eponymous radio show, April 28.
Fracking: Just as Odious as Racism?
“Some of these folks who own these NBA teams, and this is breaking news Ari, some of them are not the most savory folks. Some of them are bankrolling anti-gay marriage initiatives. Some of them got rich off of fracking.”
— MSNBC’s Touré talking to fellow quad-host Ari Melber on The Cycle, April 28.
Opposing Big Government Is Racist
“Even as Republicans scrambled to get away from Bundy’s now-toxic views, several liberal academics suggested that Bundy’s comments should come as no surprise. They argued that the anti-government rhetoric espoused by the likes of Bundy go hand-in-hand with the GOP’s views of minorities....‘[Bundy] is a window into the soul of modern conservatism,’ said Ian Haney López, a law professor at the University of California at Berkeley, who wrote a book called Dog Whistle Politics, told us last week. ‘A demonization of minorities and a demonization of the government in modern conservatism — those are inextricably linked.’”
— Washington Post political reporter Wesley Lowery in a piece headlined “Does small-government conservative ideology have racist roots? Academics offer a history lesson,” posted at the Post’s The Fix political blog, April 29.
Pass Everything Liberals Demand or You’re a “Racist”
“I think not raising the minimum wage is a racist policy....Not raising the wage, the minimum wage, is every bit as racist as comments made by Cliven Bundy and Donald Sterling. It’s just displayed in a different way.”
— Host Ed Schultz on MSNBC’s The Ed Show, April 30.
“Far to the Right” GOP Needs a Romney Rescue?
“Jeb Bush is apparently now thinking about running. And, you know, I have a source that told me that, if Jeb Bush decides not to run, that Mitt Romney may actually try it again. Because they’re very concerned that the party is not moving forward, that the party has moved so far to the right that, you know, they can’t elect a presidential candidate.”
— Face the Nation host Bob Schieffer, April 27.
Run, Hillary, Run
ABC’s Robin Roberts: “When I look at your Twitter page, the last thing you list is saying you’re a ‘glass ceiling cracker.’ And no one feels it would be better to crack that glass ceiling than to have a woman as President, and many believe that should be you.”
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton: “Well, I think we should crack it also....”
— Excerpt of Roberts’ interview of Clinton shown on ABC’s World News, May 7.
Run, Elizabeth, Run
Correspondent Jeff Zeleny: “Hopeful Democrats are lining up, eagerly awaiting the first woman President.”
Unidentified woman: “If she runs, she may be the first woman President.”
Second woman: “I think she’d be fantastic.”
Zeleny: “They’re not talking about Hillary Clinton. They’re excited about this woman, Elizabeth Warren....A U.S. Senator for only a year, she’s now making an even bigger splash. Her new book is a middle class manifesto....and, many liberal Democrats hope, a roadmap for the party’s future. A draft movement is already underway....To her admirers, she’s a political celebrity, and even if her name is not on the ballot, her ideas may still drive the race.”
— ABC’s This Week, April 27.
Baffled Bob Worries About a Return to the “O.K. Corral and the Old West”
“I want to ask you about this gun law that they just passed down in Georgia, which, as I understand it, allows people to take guns into airports. Do you think that’s a good idea, Senator?...Does it bother you or does it worry you that we may be going backwards, that we’re going back to the day of the O.K. Corral and the Old West where everybody carried a gun? Is that where we’re headed here?”
— Host Bob Schieffer to former Republican Senator Rick Santorum on Face the Nation, April 27.
Obama’s Performance Suffers Because the World Is Letting Him Down
“What’s frustrating to me sometimes about Obama is that the world seems to disappoint him. Republicans disappoint him, Bashar al-Assad disappoints him, Putin as well. And the fighting spirit sometimes is lacking in the performative aspects of the presidency. Do I think that at the end of eight years this will go down as a terrible presidency? I don’t....I think an enormous amount has been achieved.”
— The New Yorker editor David Remnick on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, May 6.
Even Larry King Mocks CNN’s Malaysia Jet Fetish
“The tough time I would have at CNN now, I think, would be doing this airplane story. Because I think I’d crack up laughing. I think I would have — you know, how many times can you cover a plane? Six weeks and all we know is it made a left turn....I would probably not want to do it. I think it would get embarrassing after a while.”
— Former CNN host Larry King on NBC’s Today, May 6.
Ha, Ha, Ha! Republicans Are a Bunch of Racists
“Good evening Mr. President — or, as Paul Ryan would call you, another inner city minority taking advantage of the federal government to feed and house your family.”
“E! is also home to the Kardashians who, believe it or not, are Republicans. And I know that because they’re always trying to screw black people.”
“Ted Cruz proposed a government shutdown to protest the Affordable Care Act and everyone else in Congress decided to go along with it simply to get some time away from Ted Cruz. The Tea Party is anti-socialism and anti-immigration, so it makes sense that their hero is a Cuban from Canada.”
— Comedian Joel McHale, host of the E! network’s Talk Soup, performing at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, May 3.
Example of the Keen Insights Delivered by NBC News
“I don’t understand the complex between Republicans, Democrats, Congress. Like that whole dance, to me, it just turns me off.”
— Rapper/singer William Adams, aka will.i.am, during his stint as a roundtable panelist on NBC’s Meet the Press, May 4.
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