Media Slam Obama from the Left on Amnesty Delay
“President @BarackObama once again delays action on immigration. He promised on June 30th to act before the end of the summer. Now he won’t.”
“A promise is a promise/ Una promesa es una promesa”
“This presidential delay means that more innocent people will be deported and more families separated. It’s the triumph of partisan politics.”
— Series of Twitter messages posted by Univision and Fusion anchor Jorge Ramos on September 6, reacting to news that President Obama was delaying an executive order that would bypass Congress and grant amnesty to potentially millions of illegal immigrants.
Moderator Chuck Todd: “Immigration. You made a decision to delay any executive action until after the election. What do you tell the person that’s going to get deported before the election that this decision was essentially made in your hopes of saving a Democratic Senate?”
President Barack Obama: “Well, that’s not the reason....”
— Exchange shown on NBC’s Meet the Press, September 7.
“Leaders of several immigration groups said their members would be furious with the President for raising — and then dashing — their hopes. They criticized Mr. Obama for the delay, saying it breaks a solemn pledge to immigrants. Arturo Carmona, the executive director of Presente.org, called the decision ‘a betrayal’ of the Latino community and ‘shameful.’ He said the President ‘is once again demonstrating that for him, politics come before the lives of Latino and immigrant families.’”
— New York Times correspondent Michael Shear in a September 7 front-page article.
“Nativists have always existed in both parties, and they’ve gotten particularly noisy over this ugly summer, as terrified Central American refugees flowed toward the border — which is really why the President decided to postpone his plans to expand immigration rights until after the November elections....He has abandoned the high ground and seems a bit panicky now, dodging immigration reform even though he believes in it, thereby offending all sides....Barack Obama is playing games with one of the core issues that define who we are as a country.”
— Time’s Joe Klein writing in the magazine’s September 22 edition.
CNN Tells McCain: It’s Your Job to Help Obama Succeed
“We talk about how you are a critic of the administration, but now that there is a strategy, Senator — now that there is going to be action, I want to know from your standpoint, how are you — one of the big voices that we turn to a lot on these issues — how are you going to help the administration succeed now in implementing this?”
— CNN New Day co-anchor Kate Bolduan to Republican Senator John McCain, September 11.
Eleanor’s Double Standard on Coalitions
“If they do go into Syria, and that’s by no means guaranteed at this point, you go in with the kind of coalition that George H.W. Bush assembled back in the day. And the first President Bush is the President whose foreign policy President Obama admires the most. And to put together, in effect, a Desert Storm II is what this administration is now undertaking. It’s a big task.”
— The Daily Beast’s Eleanor Clift on The McLaughlin Group, September 7.
vs.
“[President Bush] is bringing along a world coalition that he calls a ‘coalition of the willing,’ when it’s really a coalition of the bullied and the bribed.”
— Then-Newsweek contributing editor Eleanor Clift on The McLaughlin Group, February 22, 2003. At the time, Bush had a coalition of 39 nations, compared to the nine recruited by Obama.
Excusing Joe Biden’s Gaffes: “He’s Authentic”
Fill-in anchor Kristen Welker: “He wound up apologizing for using the term ‘Orient.’ He also had to apologize for using the term ‘Shylock.’...Julie, you and I have spent a lot of time reporting on Vice President Biden. These gaffes are also a part of who he is as a politician, right?”
AP correspondent Julie Pace: “Yeah, it’s hard to manage this part of Joe Biden, because so much of what is appealing about him to a lot of voters is the fact that he’s authentic, the fact that he doesn’t always seem scripted.”
— MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell Reports, September 18.
Media Fret: Hillary Has “Best Resume,” But Is She Liberal Enough?
“Hillary is finding that once again, being the most prepared candidate with the best resume may not be enough for many in a Democratic Party that is increasingly tilting to the left.”
— Moderator Chuck Todd on NBC’s Meet the Press, September 14.
Correspondent Jon Karl: “Is she going to be too hawkish on foreign policy? Is she going to be too moderate on economic issues?”
Senator Tom Harkin: “We’re always nervous about people moving too far to the right.”
— From a taped piece shown on ABC’s This Week, September 14.
Get Ready to Blame Tax Cuts If Brownback Loses
“Let me ask you: You worked for [Kansas Governor] Sam Brownback when he was Senator. He is in a tough re-election fight. If he loses re-election, he’s going to essentially have lost because he cut taxes too much. Okay? That’s really become a referendum. Is there a point — what happens to the Republicans’ economic philosophy of cut taxes if he does lose? Are you concerned about that?”
— NBC Meet the Press moderator Chuck Todd to former GOP vice presidential nominee Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) during the program’s Web-based “Press Pass” segment, September 14.
Fox News Would Have “Loved” Showing Helpless FDR...
“I think if he [Franklin Roosevelt] were running now, sadly, I think TV crews would compete with each other to see who could get the footage that showed him at his most helpless. He had to be carried in and out of buildings. He had to be helped to move his braces and so on. And I think Fox News would have loved that.”
— Historian Geoffrey Ward, co-author of The Roosevelts: An Intimate History, talking about the polio-stricken 33rd President on CBS’s Face the Nation, September 14.
...But Teddy Was a Blood Lusting “Imperialist”
Historian Clay Jenkinson: “There’s no question that Roosevelt is an imperialist. Apologists like to try to play this down. But the fact is he’s probably the most significant imperialist in American history....There is a blood lust in Theodore Roosevelt. He was a killer. You can’t sanitize that....”
Ex-Newsweek editor Evan Thomas: “Teddy Roosevelt, although he’s a wonderful figure and a glamorous figure, is a dangerous figure in some ways. This glorification of war can’t be a good thing in the long run.”
— From the first installment of PBS’s documentary series, The Roosevelts: An Intimate History, September 14.
You Can’t Say That About Our Dear Leader!
Co-host Nicolle Wallace: “I think Joe Biden has an easier time with Congress because I think Joe Biden genuinely loves people and I think he and his wife are more comfortable-”
Co-host Rosie O’Donnell, interrupting: “So, are you implying that Obama doesn’t?”
Wallace: “Yeah.”
O’Donnell: “He doesn’t love people?”
Wallace: “I don’t think so.”
Co-host Rosie Perez: “Oh, that’s bull crap!”
O’Donnell: “Oh, wow!”
— Exchange on ABC’s The View, September 16.
Picture of Electric Chair Is as Appalling as ISIS Beheaders
Fill-in co-host Jeff Glor: “These pictures of ‘Old Sparky,’ the electric chair-”
Reuters editor-at-large Harold Evans, putting his head in his hands: “Oh, God, help me.”
Glor: “-at Sing Sing prison. We were looking at this yesterday. I mean it just-”
Co-host Vinita Nair: “Because you had a really emotional reaction to all this, didn’t you?”
Evans: “I did....When you think about this, it looks like an ordinary chair. You get up close to it, the stark brutality. The room is brutal in its starkness. Almost as appalling, in its sense, as these barbarians who have taken the heads off journalists in the desert.”
— Discussing a new book of news photographs on CBS This Morning: Saturday, September 6.
Decrying America’s “Racism, Poverty and Militarism”
“It underscores that Martin [Luther] King was right about what he called the ‘triple threat’ almost 50 years ago....He said what’s threatening our very democracy is what he called the triple threat of racism, poverty, and militarism. What we saw in Ferguson was racism, poverty and militarism.”
— PBS host Tavis Smiley on CNN Tonight, September 11.
Jay Carney: Paid by CNN, But Still “Loyal to the President”
“I deeply believed in what I did and what he has done as President. And I don’t walk away from that at all. There is no nirvana, but CNN’s mission is news-focused. They are not actively pursuing a niche in one political camp or the other. I believe in the President, believe in the rightness of his policies. I’m also my own person, and I’m going to express my views. But it would be disingenuous to suddenly pretend that I wasn’t loyal to [the President].”
— Former White House press secretary Jay Carney explaining his new CNN job in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, September 26 issue.
Melting Ice Is Scarier than ISIS Beheaders...
“They don’t think things through, the American public. You know, they just feel scared right now. I’m not sure why. I’m not really scared of ISIS. I know they’re a bad group, but I don’t think they’re going to come here and behead me....Do we really need to make a bogey man out of everybody? I get it that ISIS is bad, but they’re not that different than so many other Islamic villains....The other day, Hillary Clinton said something I thought was very smart, which was that global warming...is the biggest issue that we should be afraid of. And I agree. I am much more afraid of ice, as in melting, than I am about ISIS.”
— Bill Maher on MSNBC’s Hardball, September 10.
...While Obama Is “Hated in a Way They Never Hated Before”
HBO’s Bill Maher: “As far as Obama goes, you know, I think he will be treated in history very kindly.”
Host Charlie Rose: “Do you really?”
Maher: “Absolutely. Every President, of course, at the time — and he’s dealing obviously with things that no other President had to ever deal with.”
Rose: “First the economy, and now ISIS.”
Maher: “And the first black President. They hate him in a way they never hated before....There’s a certain in-your-face, in-your-space disrespect that this President has had to put up with. Like being heckled at the State of the Union, or the governor of Arizona when she stuck her finger in his face or when Bill O’Reilly interviews him and he interrupts him every two seconds. You don’t do that to a President. And they just hate him from the get-go, you know.”
— Exchange on PBS’s Charlie Rose, September 9.
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
MEDIA CONTACT: Jeremy Little