Media Race to Bury Perry After “Ridiculous” Indictment
“The indictment left Mr. Perry, a Republican, the first Texas governor in nearly 100 years to face criminal charges and presented a major roadblock to his presidential ambitions at the very time that he had been showing signs of making a comeback....The indictment could mar the legacy of Mr. Perry, the longest-serving governor in Texas history, as his tenure nears an end.”
— The New York Times’s Manny Fernandez in an August 16 front-page article.
“Perry has vowed to stay in office until the end of his term, that’s January, but his indictment does raise another issue for Republicans. It’s another possible 2016 contender with a blemish on his resume.”
— NBC correspondent Peter Alexander on Today, August 18.
vs.
“This is the stupidest thing I’ve seen, I think, in my entire career. I hope some judge throws it out right away....It is ridiculous that he was indicted for this. Ridiculous.”
— MSNBC contributor and managing editor of Bloomberg Politics Mark Halperin on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, August 18.
Fretting How Obama Is “Stifled at Every Angle”
Host George Stephanopoulos: “It does seem as you look at the range of legislation over the last two, four years — no hope that anything is going to get done.”
New Yorker editor David Remnick: “No, I think he’s pretty stifled. It’s frustrating at times to see his projection of frustration. You want him to suck it up and keep going at it and leading and leading, but I think history is going to show that this presidency has been stifled at every angle.”
— ABC’s This Week, August 3.
No Diversity in Obama Opposition; Just “White Older People”
Host Chris Wallace: “Do you think that the Republican opposition to this President — you heard Hakeem Jeffries talk about hatred — is racial, or do you think it is based on principles and policies?”
Fox News analyst Juan Williams: “Well, all I can do is look at the numbers. If you look at the core constituency, the people who are in, let’s say, Tea Party opposition, support of impeachment, there’s no diversity. It’s a white, older group of people....The Republican Party has become almost a completely white party.”
— Exchange on Fox News Sunday, August 3.
Let’s Not Blame Obama for His Many Failures
“The world is on fire...and people look for the President of the United States. He’s essentially in quicksand right now, politically. His approval rating is down to 40 percent. People feel very pessimistic about the economy at home. They think Washington is a dysfunctional daycare center and nobody can get anything done....And I’m not blaming the President for this. It’s a complicated world and it’s not all his fault....”
— CNN’s John King talking about Obama’s sagging poll numbers on The Situation Room, August 6.
Hopeful Chuck Looking for Signs of a Democratic Comeback
“If November comes and goes and Democrats hold the Senate and break even
in the House, I think we’re going to look back at the month of July as
the month Republicans lost their shot at the Senate....For months Democrats have been dying to have something to run on for themselves, but now they have it — a lawsuit that fires up their base and one more example of Republicans struggling to govern.”
— Incoming NBC Meet the Press host Chuck Todd on MSNBC’s The Daily Rundown, August 1, talking about Boehner’s lawsuit and the House immigration bill.
Missouri Shooting = Prelude to a Racist “Genocide”
“There are people in this country who not only do not like African Americans, but they despise black men. There is a war on black boys in this country. In my opinion, there is a war on African-American men....It is an absolutely deplorable situation that the United States, which is supposed to be the greatest nation on Earth, sits back and allows black boys to be murdered....It’s going to turn into a genocide if it doesn’t stop.”
— MSNBC contributor Michelle Bernard on Hardball, August 18.
MSNBC’s Resident Race-Baiter Actually on a “Peace Mission”
Wall Street Journal’s Jason Riley: “At the same time, the same weekend that this went down in Ferguson, we had 26 shootings in Chicago, but Al Sharpton didn’t head to Chicago. He headed to St. Louis because he has an entirely different agenda, which is to continue to blame whites.”
Fill-in host Andrea Mitchell: “Just to say — well, that is actually not his agenda, because he’s actually there on a peace mission today.”
— Exchange on NBC’s Meet the Press, August 17.
CNN Anchor: “I Understand” the Looting and Rioting
“I hate when people riot and loot, and it happened in Katrina. But when people are put in dire situations, you don’t know how they are going to react. I’m not saying it’s right, I personally urge people to be peaceful and calm. I’m not saying I agree with them, but I understand....I understand....There should never be rioting, but it happens when people are frustrated.”
— CNN’s Don Lemon on CNN Newsroom, August 11, during a panel discussion about the unrest in Ferguson.
Another Example of Liberal Compassion
“I hope Roger Ailes dies slow, painful, and soon. The evil that man has done to the American tapestry is unprecedented for an individual.”
— August 14 Twitter message posted by Alan Pyke, deputy economic policy editor for the far-left Think Progress blog, in reaction to the Fox News Channel’s coverage of the unrest in Ferguson.
Ask Ed: Why Are Republicans “So Mean to the Poor?”
“Our first question comes from Sue: ‘Why do Republicans claim to be Christians while being so mean to the poor?’ Well, they are mean to the poor because they don’t recognize the poor. They think if you’re poor and economically challenged in this country, it’s your own damned fault. That’s how the Republicans view it. Just look at the way they want to not support the budget and some of the social safety nets that are out there. They think it’s all about personal responsibility.”
— Host Ed Schultz answering viewer questions on MSNBC’s The Ed Show, August 20.
Leave “Illegal Immigrants” Alone Unless They Do “Something Illegal”
Vanity Fair’s Mike Hogan: “Republicans are more likely to report illegal immigrants....Fifty-seven percent of Republicans said they would not report somebody living next door, 74 percent of Democrats. And I think Gayle in the green room said, ‘As long as they’re not doing anything illegal, you know, let them live-’”
Co-host Gayle King: “That’s right. That’s right.”
Hogan: “‘-leave them alone.’”
— Talking about a new 60 Minutes/Vanity Fair poll on CBS This Morning, August 4.
Hilarious: “Obama Never Had Reporters Eating Out of His Hand”
“I’m biased in that I think Obama is right about most things. I also believe he’ll be remembered as an excellent President. Which is strange to say, because if you are a consumer of any kind of political news these days, the only impression you get is that the Obama presidency is on the verge of collapse, and that he either doesn’t know or doesn’t seem to care. It’s a complete disconnect, and it has everything to do with how the President is covered. No, Barack Obama never had reporters eating out of his hand the way that right-wingers love to allege....”
— Writer Reid Cherlin, who served as an Assistant Press Secretary during President Obama’s first two years in office, in the August 14 edition of Rolling Stone.
“Dark” 1970s Were Preferable to Reagan’s Optimism
“We think of the ’70s as a dark time and they really were. There were 83 terrorist bombings on American soil in 1975. But to me, there’s some nostalgia for that period, because Americans proved that they could look our problems in the eye, like grownups and face them. And one of the problems with Reagan, one of the things we need to reckon with, is he gave us absolution from doing that hard work....How can we solve global warming with attitudes like that?”
— Author Rick Perlstein plugging his new book The Invisible Bridge: The Fall of Nixon and the Rise of Reagan, on MSNBC’s The Cycle, August 7.
Distressed by Any Equivocation on Abortion
“Listening to politicians talk about abortion, watching state legislatures put up ever more daunting obstacles, reading the opinions of judges who give the states a free pass, it’s abundantly clear to me that some constitutional rights are more equal than others. Or to put it another way, there are constitutional rights and then there is abortion — a right, increasingly, in name only....It’s a point that has gone unsaid in too many quarters for too many years: the right to an abortion is a constitutional right like any other.”
— Longtime New York Times Supreme Court reporter Linda Greenhouse writing at NYTimes.com, August 6.
Still Enthralled by the Dictator Castro
“Cuba is celebrating Fidel Castro’s 88th birthday today, starting the party early with a special concert last night. The opening of an exhibition called ‘Fidel is Fidel,’ attended by Elian Gonzales and his family. That is Elian right there. Gonzalez is now 20 years old. He was only five when he was at the center of that bitter custody dispute back in 1999 between his father in Cuba and his Miami relatives after his mother died on a raft. Gonzalez talked about Castro with admiration last night, saying he made him the person he is today.”
— Anchor Andrea Mitchell on MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell Reports, August 13.
Left-Wing MSNBC Is Really an “Extremely Conservative Idea”
“I think the reason that people say that the media is liberal is to preemptively prevent true liberalism [from] emerging. I think if you say, ‘Oh, the media is so liberal, and pro-homosexuals, and pro-lefties,’ then there is a kind of nervousness about promoting ideas of equality and unity and togetherness. The media is an extremely conservative institution. I’ve been on that MSNBC before, it is an extremely conservative idea.”
— Actor Russell Brand on The Young Turks, a left-wing YouTube show, August 19.
Like Israel vs. Hamas, Solution Is to “Eliminate” the Tea Party
“An extreme faction, Hamas...[has] written into their playbook, the destruction of Israel, the destruction of every Jew on the planet. You can’t negotiate with that....So, clearly Hamas — and again, the virulent faction of a really strong, fundamental group can control everything. You look at the Congress right now in the United States, you’ve got a strong Tea Party group controlling the whole country, because they have a gridlock, they have a gridlock, stranglehold on Boehner....So anytime you’re dealing with an extreme group, you cannot negotiate with them, and the way to do it is to eliminate it. With the Tea Party, you have to go through a political thing, you have to wait until 2020 to redistrict, but, uh, that is really tough stuff.”
— Actor/director Rob Reiner on the August 14 edition of Ora TV’s Politicking with Larry King.
“Starstruck” Actress “Cried” When She Met “Icon” Hillary Clinton
“‘I cried when I met her,’ says Moretz, who calls Clinton an ‘icon.’ ‘I’ve never gotten starstruck by anyone in my entire life, ever, and I couldn’t breathe. She was just sitting there in her little jacket....Well, I said, “I turn 18 on Feb. 10 and I will be 18 when you run for President.” And she was like, “Mmmmmm.”’”
— From an August 21 USA Today story by Jocelyn McClurg on actress Chloe Grace Moretz, star of If I Stay.
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
INTERNS: Laura Flint and Connor Williams