On Thursday, NBC News sources confirmed [1] that Chuck Todd will bump David Gregory from the Meet the Press host chair. And while Todd isn’t as liberal as his predecessor, he has played defense for the Barack Obama administration on a number of fronts.
Most recently he dismissed the IRS-Tea Party scandal by asking “are there any actual real victims?” and diminished Benghazi hearings as “partisan.” The NBC News chief White House correspondent also claimed Benghazi figure Susan Rice was simply a “victim” of conservative media but in the past compared Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin to a “car-wreck.”
The following is a list of the Top 10 most liberal Chuck Todd quotes from the MRC’s archives:
10. Dumb Conservatives Actually Believe Liberal Bias “Myth”
“There are fewer and fewer Republicans who will go on non-Fox shows....I think that the mythology of the big, bad non-conservative media has gotten into some offices...and then these guys, they actually believe the spin that’s out there, ‘Oh, my God, that’s what the mainstream media does, they do anything to disrupt the conservative agenda.’ And so literally, you only — Lindsey [Graham], John McCain, you know, that’s been my — I just fear that it’s sort of like this whole — there’s this whole sort of this, the mythology of this, the media’s out to get conservatives is believed among more and more actual staffers.”
— NBC political director Chuck Todd on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, February 19, 2013 talking about why so few conservative members of Congress are willing to go on liberal talk shows.
9. Fox News Not Staffed With Real Pros - Like Us at MSNBC
“When a news executive goes out there and states a crazy accusation like that, that it ends up, it only ends up probably hurting what they're trying to do, but it creates, it only denigrates all of us....And, I'm sorry, there are certain news organizations out here whose agenda is to undermine the 90 percent of journalists who are just simply trying to cover stories out there.”
— NBC White House correspondent and MSNBC daytime host Chuck Todd on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, February 8, 2010, reacting to Fox News Washington managing editor Bill Sammon’s statement the previous day that “the mainstream media hates the Tea Party movement almost as much as it hates Sarah Palin.”
8. Why No Public Love for Obama’s “Enormous Amount of Legislative Victories?”
“You’ve had an enormous amount of legislative victories - it’s comparable to any President in history. It has not translated into political capital with the public. Honestly, are you frustrated by that?”
— NBC’s Chuck Todd to President Obama in an interview excerpt shown on MSNBC’s Hardball, July 16, 2010.
7. Getting Ready to Bash GOP for “Beating Up Two Women”
Anchor Chuck Todd: “Any danger that the Samantha Power nomination [to become U.N. Ambassador] becomes sort of a proxy that some Senate Republicans try, because that is a Senate confirmation appointment. And that some Republicans try to somehow go after her because they can’t go after Susan Rice?...Beating up on two women, I think, would be something that the Republican Party brand doesn’t need.”
Politico’s Lois Romano: “They don’t need it, but they — they haven’t had much, you know, problems beating up on Susan Rice.”
Todd: “True, before. That’s for sure.”
— MSNBC’s The Daily Rundown, June 5, 2013.
6. Distorting Facts to Declare Obama’s IRS Scandal Over
“The IRS ‘scandal’ [makes air quote marks] looks like it’s a bureaucratic scandal, not the political scandal that Republicans were wishing that they had come up with....This sort of brings me to [House Chairman] Darrell Issa at this point. I mean, this is the guy who is — I mean, he is living the fable of the boy who cried wolf, at this point.”
— Anchor Chuck Todd setting up a panel discussion on MSNBC’s The Daily Rundown, June 25, 2013.
5. Palin Will Still Draw Political “Car-Wreck Watchers”
“Look, she may spend the next year campaigning for Republicans all across the country. She’s probably going to be the person that can attract the largest crowds, some of it is car-wreck watchers - you know, they just are coming, kind of curiosity-seekers.”
— NBC White House correspondent Chuck Todd talking about Palin’s resignation, July 3, 2009 Nightly News.
4. “Clean White Suit” Obama a Victim of His Own Virtue
“The President is coming under some criticism for tonight’s big-ticket events because they are taking place just a stone’s throw away from Wall Street....One Democratic strategist said that part of the President’s problem is simply his own expectations. Some of the rhetoric he said on the campaign trail made it seem as if he was coming into office in a clean white suit. So now any speck of mud - like raising money from Wall Street donors - shows up a lot clearer than if he came in just as another politician wearing just another gray suit.”
— NBC White House correspondent Chuck Todd on Nightly News, October 20, 2009.
3. Susan Rice: “Victim” of Conservative Media
“It [criticism of Susan Rice] was all driven, in many cases, by some conservative outlets who were making her the center of the Benghazi story....She sort of became a victim of this....You can become collateral damage in a hurry in just the way you can get piled on, whether it’s Twitter, whether it’s advocacy journalism, whatever you want to describe it, talk radio. And that’s what she was. She became political collateral damage.”
— NBC News political director Chuck Todd during live MSNBC coverage on December 13, 2012 after Rice withdrew her name as a potential Secretary of State.
2. No Such Thing as “Unanswered Question” About Benghazi
“It certainly looks more partisan than it looks like a serious inquiry....You know, I’ll hear from Republicans that say, ‘But there are unanswered questions!’ Well, no, all the questions have been answered. There’s just some people that don’t like the answers, that wish the answers were somehow more conspiratorial, I guess....To sit here and investigate talking points seems to be totally missing the larger point here. It’s like investigating who cut down a tree, one tree, in a forest that’s been burned down.”
— NBC political director and chief White House correspondent Chuck Todd on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, May 13, 2014.
1. Mocking IRS’s Targeting of Tea Party: “Are There Any Actual Real Victims?”
“Here is the story many are missing: Why should primarily political organizations get a taxpayer exemption, basically get a handout from the tax code?...So while the IRS is certainly not a good guy here — they have been terrible about being forthcoming — are there any actual real victims?...We know what really is working here for Republicans. Beating up the IRS, good for the base. Good politics there makes for great fundraising e-mails. But let’s remember what the controversy itself is about.”
— NBC News political director and chief White House correspondent Chuck Todd’s “Takeaway” on his daily 9am ET MSNBC show The Daily Rundown, June 25, 2014.
— Geoffrey Dickens is Deputy Research Director at the Media Research Center. Follow Geoffrey Dickens on Twitter. [2]