Crushing Mitt Romney With Media-Generated “Earthquake”
“Good evening. Today there was a political earthquake in the presidential race and all because of a small camera secretly recording from the side of a room....ABC’s Jake Tapper and ABC’s Jon Karl bring us two perspectives on this seismic day.”
— Anchor Diane Sawyer on ABC’s World News, September 18.
Co-host George Stephanopoulos: “Breaking now, Mitt Romney caught on tape at a private fund-raiser. His candid comments causing shock waves....Let’s get more on this from our political analyst, Matt Dowd. Matt, you’ve worked in a lot of campaigns for both parties. Where does this register on the Richter scale?”
ABC political analyst Matthew Dowd: “Somewhere between, I think, six and seven.”
— ABC’s Good Morning America, September 18.
“These are tough days for the Romney campaign. Inside 50 days to go now until the election, and they are dealing with something of a public relations disaster....”
— Anchor Brian Williams on the September 19 NBC Nightly News.
Chris Cackles With Delight Over Liberal Hit Job
“Let me start tonight with: [singing] ‘If I were a rich man, Yubby dibby dibby dibby dibby dibby dibby dum.’ Dumb. It’s one thing to be rich and have the majority of voters convinced you’re out to help the rich. Is there anything dumber, though, to be caught pandering to your fellow rich?”
— Host Chris Matthews on MSNBC’s Hardball, September 18. [MP3 audio [1] (0:30)]
Misquoting Romney In Order to “Correct” Him
“He [Romney] says 47 percent of Americans pay no tax. That’s not correct....He was sort of conflating the idea that 47 percent of people do not pay taxes, and you could argue he’s speaking specifically about income tax, even though they’re paying payroll tax.”
— CNN’s Soledad O’Brien on Starting Point, September 18. Romney’s actual quote was correct: “Forty-seven percent of Americans pay no income tax....”
Even When Romney’s Right, Networks Still Say He’s Wrong
Anchor Brian Williams: “Romney’s remarks about that 47 percent who pay no income tax set off an immediate flurry of fact checking. And tonight, NBC’s Andrea Mitchell has our ‘Reality Check.’...”
Correspondent Andrea Mitchell: “What are the facts? It’s true that approximately 47 percent of Americans do not pay federal income taxes as Mitt Romney said. But not because they are living off of the 53 percent....”
— NBC Nightly News, September 18.
Correspondent Anthony Mason: “When Governor Romney says 47 percent of Americans pay no federal income tax, is he on the money?”
Tax Policy Center’s Roberton Williams: “Well, it’s roughly accurate. We say last year 46 percent of Americans paid no income tax. So Governor Romney’s just about right.”
Mason: “Roberton Williams with the non-partisan Tax Policy Center says, to be precise, 46.4 percent of Americans pay no federal tax. But it’s more complicated than that....”
— CBS Evening News, September 18.
The “Remarkable Candor” of Obama Praising ObamaCare
Anchor Scott Pelley: “This week we have our interview with the President and there was a remarkable moment of candor when he told us the sacrifices he makes being President wouldn’t be worth it except for one thing. Listen for it....”
President Barack Obama: “One of the things that you learn after you’ve been in this office for a while is the pomp, the circumstance, the title, the Air Force One, all that stuff probably isn’t worth the sacrifice with respect to the time lost from your family, the inability to just take a walk and go out for a drive. What makes it worth it is when you meet some couple that says, ‘you know what? Our kid was able to stay on our health insurance plan and it turns out they were just diagnosed with a curable cancer but if they hadn’t stayed on our plan we would haven’t caught it.’ That’s what makes it worth it.”
— CBS Evening News, September 14. [MP3 audio [2] (1:31)]
Falsely Claiming Romney Paid “Lower Rate than an Auto Mechanic”
“The bottom line on Mitt Romney’s taxes: He made $13.7 million last year and paid nearly $2 million in taxes. His effective tax rate, 14.1 percent. That’s a lower rate than an auto mechanic who made $75,000 in pay.”
— ABC’s Jon Karl on World News, September 21. According to the latest IRS data [3], the average taxpayer with an adjusted gross income of $75,000 paid an effective income tax rate of just 8%.
So Much More Understanding of Obama’s Gaffes
Co-host John Berman: “I think we know what the President was trying to say there, but when we heard it, ‘You can’t change Washington from the inside, only the outside,’ to me it felt like a hanging curveball over the plate.”
CNN political director Mark Preston: “It was, John. And you know, you’re absolutely right. What President Obama said was correct: The only way that you can change Washington is to try to elect people to come to Washington to make that change....”
— CNN’s Early Start, September 21.
Press Won’t Hold Obama Accountable, So Romney Must
“We’ve since learned that this administration at first thought this uprising in Libya was just a kind of — something that bubbled up from the ground. Well, now they are calling it a terrorist attack. ‘What went wrong there?’ ‘What did you get wrong in the first place?’ ‘Why weren’t you securing the embassy the way you should have been?’ These are points that a Republican could make, that Mitt Romney needs to make, because he knows the press isn’t necessarily going to make that case for him.”
— CBS News political director John Dickerson on Face the Nation, September 23. [MP3 audio [4] (0:45)]
Liberal Pundit: Media Attacks on Romney “Utterly Insane”
“The outrage that has been expressed over the fact that Mitt Romney put out this statement has even overshadowed any kind of outrage that you would see over the fact that you have Islamic flags being hoisted over American embassies, the fact that an American ambassador is dead. I mean, you just are not seeing the same level of outrage over just the process of what time he put the statement out. I mean, it is just absolutely utterly insane the way that they have elevated this.”
— Daily Beast columnist and Democratic pundit Kirsten Powers on FNC’s America Live program, September 13. [MP3 audio [5] (1:01)]
No Tax Pledge = “What’s Wrong With Congress”
“Republican Congressmen have told me if they don’t sign it [anti-tax pledge] they’re dead, they’re gone. Well that’s absurd, absolutely absurd. In one of the debates I thought there was a very good question asked about what kind of proportion would you take between tax cuts and revenue raising taxes. Would you take $5 of revenue cuts for every dollar of new taxes? No, they said. How about ten-to-one? No. Twenty-to-one? No. Fifty-to-one? No. That’s absurd, that’s just absurd. You cannot tie yourself down that way, and I think it’s just a very good example of what’s wrong with the Congress right now.”
— Former ABC World News anchor Charles Gibson speaking at Quinnipiac University in Connecticut, September 20, video of which was later posted at the TVNewser blog.
Fawning Over the Dictator of Love...
Host Piers Morgan: “How many times in your life, Mr. President, have you been properly in love?”
Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (via translator): “I’m in love with all of humanity. I love all human beings.”
Morgan: “That might be the best answer I’ve ever heard to that question.”
— CNN’s Piers Morgan Tonight, September 24.
...And Yearning for 30 More Years of Bill Clinton
“People see you putting on this event, they heard you at the convention make a barn-storming speech, an incredible speech....I was there. You electrified the place. And they all say, ‘Why do we have this goddamned 22nd Amendment? Why couldn’t Bill Clinton just run again and be President for the next 30 years?’...We’re trying to change the rules in Britain, actually, because if you can’t be President again here, we’d quite like you to be Prime Minister in our country. Are you available if it comes to it, if I get this through?”
— Piers Morgan to Bill Clinton, September 25.
When Will We Finally “Admit” Al Gore Was Right?
“I want to just end on a question, I know it’s near and dear to your heart. You’re here for Climate Week as well. We’ve had a crazy week in this — year — in this country of extreme weather. Are you seeing around the world the kind of motivation and will that’s necessary to, a) admit there’s a problem, and then address the problem?”
— Host Matt Lauer to ex-British Prime Minister Tony Blair, September 24 Today. [MP3 audio [6] (0:48)]
Barack Obama, Judicial Conservative?
CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin: “Well, one of them believes in change. One of them believes that the Constitution has fundamentally been misinterpreted by the Supreme Court for the past 20 or 30 years, and the one who believes in change is John Roberts, not Barack Obama....”
NPR host Terry Gross: “So I think what you’re saying is that Obama is the conservative when it comes to the court, and Roberts is the judicial activist?”
Toobin: “That is exactly right.”
— Exchange on NPR’s Fresh Air, September 17.
Grueling Questions for the Hubby-in-Chief
“President Obama, are you a romantic kind of husband?”
“I heard there’s a plaque in Chicago marking the site of your first kiss. Tell us about that first kiss.”
“You guys have a ritual. First Lady, you go to bed at 10:00 in the evening. Your husband comes to bed at 1:00 in the morning. But you have a ritual where he tucks you in at night?”
— Some of co-host Sherri Shepherd’s questions to President and Mrs. Obama on ABC’s The View, September 25.
Barack Obama, “Fiscal Conservative”
“Compared to George W. Bush and Ronald Reagan, Obama has been more fiscally conservative than any other president in recent history, with the exception of President Bill Clinton.”
— Singer/actress/liberal activist Barbra Streisand writing on The Huffington Post under a heading that read “Here are truths they will try to bury,” September 18.
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