Gleefully Hyping Hillary’s Vacuous Campaign Launch
“She’s in! Hillary Clinton makes it official....Twitter, lighting up with the announcement. Check this out: retweeted three million times the first hour, trending number one across the globe.”
— Anchor Tom Llamas on ABC’s World News Tonight, April 12.
“Yesterday she stopped at a Chipotle, a campaign aide sharing with us that she had a chicken burrito bowl with black beans and guacamole and an iced tea. And you know what that kind of detail tells you — it says, ‘She’s just like us. She eats at Chipotle.’”
— Correspondent Brianna Keilar on CNN’s New Day, April 14.
“We’re told this whole thing was her idea — a political Where’s Waldo....Just two public sightings in two days. One at this Pennsylvania gas station, posing for a picture with this family, and another at an Ohio Chipotle, caught on security camera ordering a chicken burrito bowl. The former Secretary of State wearing sunglasses. No one even recognized her.”
— ABC correspondent Cecilia Vega on Good Morning America, April 14.
“The two words she needs are ‘fun’ and ‘new.’ And part of why yesterday was so successful is she looks like she’s having fun and she’s doing, for her, new stuff. We’ve never seen her get a burrito before. Fun and new.”
— Mark Halperin, co-host of Bloomberg TV’s With All Due Respect, on MSNBC’s Morning Joe on April 14.
Top Cheerleader Mika Already Touting Hillary’s “Great Message”
“I think it will be really interesting to watch what she does with the tremendous platform that she has. I hope she takes it to new heights and really does something with it, instead of plays it safe....Hillary Clinton is on the road and ready to sell a message, and I can’t wait to hear it.”
— Co-host Mika Brzezinski on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, April 13.
“It’s a great message, but if this is going to really resonate with people, it has to stop sounding like she talked to Elizabeth Warren on the phone and then repeated everything Elizabeth Warren said....I want to believe that that is her message. It’s a great message.”
— Brzezinski on Morning Joe, April 15.
Embarrassing Themselves for a Glimpse of Hillary’s Van
MSNBC’s Alex Seitz-Wald: “We see the Scooby van, the famous Scooby van, is coming down the road right now towards our set up now....And the Scooby van is coming up right here, right behind our camera. Here it is. There she goes....You can see the media running behind me here to chase the Scooby van.”
Anchor Thomas Roberts, over pictures of journalists running: “Wow....Guy in the orange pants is pretty quick. I’m looking at these people — Wow! Orange pants, he’s really outnumbered now by all of the people racing around the back. I’m glad you have not taken off from your live shot and remain with me.”
— During MSNBC’s live coverage of Hillary Clinton’s arrival at a campaign event in Iowa, April 14.
Instead of Being Disgusted by Clintons’ Scandals, Let’s Admire Their “Resilience”
“An almost otherworldly resilience has characterized the 40-year arc of the Clintons’ political lives, a well-documented pattern of dazzling success, shattering setback and inevitable recovery. But what their admirers call grit and critics deem shamelessness can overshadow another essential element of the Clinton school: a willingness to put on the hair shirt of humility to regain power.”
— New York Times correspondent Jonathan Martin, April 16.
GOP Can’t Compete with Hillary’s “Huge Resume”
Co-host John Heilemann: “It’s going to be hard for any of these people [the Republican candidates] I think, I don’t know if you agree, to come up and be at the same threshold [on foreign policy] as Hillary Clinton, given her huge resume at least in this area, whatever you think about the policies.”
Bloomberg’s Melinda Henneberger: “I don’t think they can possibly come up to the level of the former Secretary of State.”
— Exchange on Bloomberg’s With All Due Respect, April 9.
“Experienced, Accomplished” Hillary vs. “Little Boy” Rubio
“You measure up accomplishments, an ability to weather the storm, an ability to have had experience that might apply to this job....This is not even a conversation. She eats him for lunch....Hillary Clinton and Marco Rubio. There is no comparison. Maybe this is my ideology, but I’m sorry — that’s a little boy, and that’s an experienced, accomplished woman who’s been elected to the Senate twice, who served First Lady, who served as Secretary of State.”
— Co-host Mika Brzezinski on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, April 14.
Campaigning Against Democrats Just a Futile GOP “Obsession”
“You know, I look at sort of an obsession on the right of beating Obama and beating Clinton, Bill Clinton, over the years, and I think, they’re zero for four. Is there a point where you do this too much?”
— Moderator Chuck Todd to conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt on NBC’s Meet the Press, April 12.
Ed Schultz Lectures Rand Paul on Respecting Women Journalists
“There is evidence Rand Paul has a real problem with women reporters. He has a history of talking down to women on television....The early assessment is that the Senator from Kentucky is arrogant, demeaning, disrespectful and clearly doesn’t know how to run for president, at least not early on he doesn’t. This is really a guy who has a hard time finding the high road.”
— MSNBC host Ed Schultz on The Ed Show, April 8.
vs.
“Like this right-wing slut, what’s her name, Laura Ingraham? Yeah, she’s a talk slut.”
— Schultz on his May 24, 2011 radio show, comments that earned him a brief suspension from MSNBC.
Opposing Tax Hikes = “Speaking-in-Tongues Madness”
“The one very sensible cost-saving measure that Christie doesn’t include in his plan, notably, is the progressive idea to lift the ‘cap’ on payroll taxes, so that the top percent of American earners pay more than a fraction of their wages into the system. Here Christie falls short of most reform proposals, but it’s not hard to see why; raising any tax creates a kind of speaking-in-tongues madness among the activists inside his party.”
— Yahoo! News national political correspondent Matt Bai writing about New Jersey Governor Chris Christie’s plan to fix Social Security, April 14.
Republicans = “Party of Jefferson Davis” and “Jim Crow”
“Let me finish tonight with the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, who was shot 150 years ago today....Why do the people running the Republican Party, starting with Reince Priebus, oversee a national effort in three dozen states to create voter laws that make it hard for minorities, especially older minorities, from exercising the right that Abraham Lincoln died fighting to get them. This is a scar on the Grand Old Party....Who can not blame the Republican Party itself from reverting to the bad old days of Jim Crow and poll taxes and bogus literacy tests?”
— Host Chris Matthews on MSNBC’s Hardball, April 14.
“Fueled by the mega-donations of the mega-rich, today’s Republican Party is not just far from being the party of Lincoln: It’s really the party of Jefferson Davis. It suppresses black voting; it opposes federal efforts to mitigate poverty; it objects to federal investment in infrastructure and education just as the antebellum South opposed internal improvements and rejected public education; it scorns compromise. It is nearly all white. It is the lineal descendant of Lee’s army, and the descendants of Grant’s have yet to subdue it.”
— Washington Post columnist Harold Meyerson, April 8.
Nets Grill Obama by Reading from White House Script
“Asthma is something your family has experienced. Do you worry that the environment, the climate has impacted on your own daughter?”
— ABC’s Dr. Richard Besser to President Obama in a clip shown on Good Morning America, April 8, promoting the administration’s claim that global warming triggers more cases of asthma.
“What do you say to the people who deny that climate change is real and that it’s impacting our health?”
— Medical contributor Dr. Natalie Azar to Obama in an interview shown on NBC’s Today, April 8.
“You have two daughters who are teenagers. Are you thinking long term because of them? Are you — is that somehow part of the equation?...Did that bring it home for you with Malia, ‘This is affecting my daughter, I have to do something about it’?”
— CBS’s Jon LaPook to Obama in a segment shown on CBS This Morning and the CBS Evening News, April 8.
Pay No Attention to Those Chants of “Death to America!”
“After marathon negotiations, Iran’s Foreign Minister Javad Zarif arrived home a hero, especially among the young who hope the new deal will bring their country in from the cold. At Friday prayers, there was the usual chant of ‘Death to America,’ but more habit than conviction.”
— Correspondent Elizabeth Palmer on CBS This Morning: Saturday, April 4.
Republican Warmongers Yearning for a “Mushroom Cloud”
“The Republicans aren’t going to be happy until they see a mushroom cloud, the way they’re trying to deep-six this Iran nuclear talks. They don’t even want to give peace a chance.”
— MSNBC host Ed Schultz in his daily audio podcast, April 14.
Fearing Americans Will Spoil Castro’s Communist Paradise
“On the one hand, it is great to reopen these relationships. On the other hand, I worry about American tourists and the ways we can sometimes be a plague on the rest of the world, particularly in these nations that become high-tourist economies. And I’m wondering if there is a downside to our economic ties opening up with Cuba, for Cuba.”
— Host Melissa Harris-Perry on her eponymous MSNBC show, April 11.
Making Excuses for Clintons Calling Secret Service “Pigs”
“Now, I think people who didn’t grow up in the ’60s wouldn’t know — now, I’m not defending it, of course — but that word ‘pigs’ has a particular meaning for people in the ’60s. They [Bill and Hillary Clinton] worked in the McGovern campaign, they were against the police and the Chicago police riots and all that. So when they say, ‘pigs,’ that’s a very ’60s term.”
— MSNBC’s Chris Matthews on the April 9 Hardball, talking to author Kate Anderson Brower about her new book The Residence: Inside the Private World of the White House and revelations that Chelsea Clinton referred to Secret Service agents as “pigs” and told an agent her parents used the same term.
Only “Morons” Deny Climate Change
“People don’t really get it [the drought in California]. It’s awful out there. Any climate change deniers are morons. It’s happening, big time.”
— Actor/comedian Billy Crystal on CBS’s Late Show with David Letterman, April 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
INTERN: Bryan Ballas