Matt Hadro's blog

Despite CNN correspondent Dana Bash's claim that "neither side has a really clear mandate" from the election, CNN anchors went ahead on Tuesday and Wednesday and pushed Republicans to admit that President Obama has a mandate to raise taxes by virtue of his party's election gains.

On Tuesday night, Piers Morgan called Paul Ryan's denial of a mandate "ridiculous, given President Obama was re-elected, he's got the perfect mandate. The American people have spoken and they've said, we're re-electing you. He can raise taxation if he wants to, can't he?" [Video below the break. Audio here.]

After Paul Ryan held that a voter turnout increase in "urban areas" hurt the Romney ticket, CNN's Anderson Cooper questioned if he was using racial overtones and hammered him with a "Keeping Them Honest" report claiming Ryan missed other reasons why Team Romney lost.

"Well, some critics jumped on those remarks, since 'historically urban' has often been used as a code word for African-American voters," said Cooper, who proceeded to "keep Ryan honest" by noting that urban areas weren't the only reason why Ryan and Romney lost. GOP strategist Alex Castellanos laughed at that assumption and called it "ridiculous." [Video below the break. Audio here.]

[UPDATE BELOW] CNN's Christine Romans and Soledad O'Brien teamed up on Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) on Tuesday's Starting Point, pressuring him to renege on his pledge not to raise tax rates.

"So would you be fine doing a compromise where you would go against your signature on that pledge?" O'Brien pressed Chaffetz over Grover Norquist's pledge not to hike tax rates and not to increase tax revenues without enacting equal tax rate cuts. She asked him if he would "say this to the pledge" while tearing up a piece of paper. [Video below the break. Audio here.]

No surprise here, but CNN's Fareed Zakaria cheered the states that legalized same-sex marriage and marijuana on his Sunday CNN show, lauding it "a picture of America at its best, edgy, experimental, open-minded and brilliantly diverse."

Zakaria also noted exit polls favoring amnesty for illegal immigrants. "I hesitate to build a grand narrative out of all this, but the trend seems to be towards individual freedom, self-expression, and dignity for all," gushed the liberal journalist once reportedly considered for a position in Obama's second-term cabinet. [Video below the break. Audio here.]

No wonder why CNN's ratings are low – they're diagnosing a large part of their potential audience with a disorder. A CNN guest "expert" said conservatives' brains are more susceptible to fear and claimed many are suffering from "post-election stress disorder" brought on in part by the conservative media.

"And the amygdala, the region of the brain that processes fear was much larger in people with conservative beliefs. So that means they're like more sensitive to fear," said human behavior specialist Dr. Wendy Walsh. [Video below the break. Audio here.]

"Tone deaf" Republicans are too conservative, or so said CNN's panel on Friday's Starting Point. CNN's Don Lemon remarked, "I think unless the GOP becomes the GNP, which is the Grand New Party, they're on the verge of extinction because they're tone deaf."

All three guests agreed that the GOP needs to move to the center. How's that for intellectual diversity? Anchor Soledad O'Brien started it off by lauding "one of the very best tweets" from the election, CNN regular Abby Huntsman saying (surprise!) her dad Jon Huntsman should have been the party's nominee. [Video coming soon. Audio here.]

Not only did CNN relay Obama campaign video of the President crying after his re-election, but they hailed it as "amazing" and "remarkable." In contrast, when Rep. John Boehner (R-Ohio) choked up in front of cameras after GOP victories in 2010 enabled him to become the next Speaker of the House, CNN simply reported it as an "emotional speech."

"So, Soledad, a remarkable moment there. And we're just seeing this now, I should say, because this is video put out by the Obama campaign," reported CNN's Brianna Keilar. "Wow, 'No Drama Obama' gets a little dramatic and emotional," added anchor Soledad O'Brien. [Video below the break. Audio here.]

On Thursday's The Situation Room, host Wolf Blitzer played a montage of liberal comedians poking fun at election night coverage with the jokes overwhelmingly targeting Republicans and conservatives.

"Turns out it's not all bad news for the Republicans. I guess it seems depression is covered by ObamaCare," quipped Tonight Show host Jay Leno. "A big night for the Democrats, Obama won the electoral vote and the popular vote. Mitt Romney on the other side won the unpopular vote," Late Show host David Letterman derided Romney. [Video below the break. Audio here.]

Would CNN's Anderson Cooper refer to far-left Democrats as "extremists"? On Wednesday night's Anderson Cooper 360, he asked how the GOP would court Latino votes with party "extremes" standing in the way.

"I mean how do you change it? You've got – because you have extremes in your party who certainly on the -- on the immigration issue, for instance, don't want to see some sort of a compromise," he told Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who admitted the GOP was moving in the "wrong direction" with Latinos. [Video below the break. Audio here.]

On the night after the election, CNN's Piers Morgan buttered up Obama aides and supporters while trashing the Tea Party and the "extreme right" for being "intransigent" and pushing "archaic" policies.

"I think he [Obama] won a very convincing victory," Morgan told Newark Mayor Corey Booker after the President won just 50 percent of the vote and received 9 million less votes than his 2008 total. He laughably praised Vice President Biden as "one of the unsung heroes. I thought his vice presidential debate was terrific." [Video below the break. Audio here.]

Reacting to Democratic Senator-elect Elizabeth Warren's victory in Massachusetts, CNN's Ali Velshi gushed on Wednesday morning, "I have to say, regardless of party, good for her."

"She prevailed. She got crushed and now she's going to be a U.S. senator," he noted her prior setback, when she failed to become the head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. [Video below the break. Audio here.]

CNN contributor John Avlon dumped on Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) early Wednesday morning, when he quipped that she was re-elected on "a bad night for wing-nuts."

"And I mean, look, it was a bad night for wing-nuts last night, but Michele Bachmann is straight through in a redrawn district that was drawn to be more conservative," Avlon said after CNN projected that Bachmann would win re-election. [Video below the break. Audio here.]

The film "SEAL Team Six" came under fire for being an Obama-booster just before the election. Its Obama-supporting producer Harvey Weinstein gave credibility to those charges when he lauded the President and took shots at Mitt Romney and John McCain on CNN on Monday night.

"I didn't have to do anything to remind anybody about the decision that Barack Obama made to pull the trigger on Osama bin Laden," Obama-donor Harvey Weinstein told CNN. Host Piers Morgan teed him up by calling the drama "quite overtly political in the most magnificent propaganda-style way." [Video below the break. Audio here.]

CNN's Piers Morgan hyped that President Obama has been "on fire" and channeled liberal blogger Nate Silver's confidence that he will be re-elected. Newt Gingrich swatted down that liberal spin, on Monday's Piers Morgan Tonight.

"[H]ere's an alternative universe. You say this person of the New York Times has come to the startling discovery that in the New York Times universe, Obama's going to win," Gingrich quipped about Silver's prediction of an Obama victory. [Video below the break Audio here.]

Former Daily Kos blogger Nate Silver turned heads with his Obama-friendly election predictions in the New York Times, but CNN's Soledad O'Brien thinks his conclusions show no bias. Of course, the liberal CNN anchor just might have a blind spot for poll numbers favoring Obama.

"Nate Silver is very careful about focusing on the numbers. And he doesn't have a liberal bias in his calculations, which I think is why a lot of people follow what he has to say," O'Brien declared on Tuesday's Starting Point. [Video below the break. Audio here.]

CNN's own national poll has Obama and Romney tied, but that didn't stop anchor Brooke Baldwin from asking Monday if Republicans are already giving up on the election.

"Do you hear any of the Republicans giving up the fight?" she foolishly asked Rep. Diane Black (R-Tenn.) after Republican Haley Barbour said that Hurricane Sandy "broke Romney's momentum." [Video below the break. Audio here.]

CNN's Soledad O'Brien threw Democratic talking points at Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) on Monday's Early Start, but the Romney surrogate was ready as he defended the campaign's Jeep ad.

"Was it a mistake then to run that Jeep ad which ran in Toledo, Ohio?" O'Brien pressed. "[I]t was deemed by PolitiFact to be false," she added, despite the claim's accuracy that plans were indeed made to build Jeeps in China.

New reports (and denials) that the CIA told its members in Benghazi to stand down during the embassy attacks are nothing but "an argument for ideologues" and no election game-changer, sounded CNN's Fareed Zakaria on Friday.

"I think this is a highly politicized set of charges and countercharges," added Zakaria. This from the man who reportedly was considered for a post in Obama's next administration if he was re-elected. [Video below the break. Audio here.]

After the last jobs report before the election, CNN's Soledad O'Brien tried to be positive even with high underemployment and unemployment rates. On Friday's Starting Point, she ridiculously cast underemployment moving down one tenth of a percent to 14.6 as "improving."

"Underemployment which was 14.7 percent, now 14.6; labor force participation, as well, that's better. Are you feeling encouraged at all?" she asked conservative guest Grover Norquist. "No. This is not even a dead cat bounce," he replied. [Video below the break. Audio here.]

CNN and PBS claim to be impartial and non-partisan networks, but guess who their audiences are voting for? According to BuzzFeed, a significant majority of Facebook fans of those networks are likely Obama voters.

On a graph titled "What does your favorite TV channel say about your politics?", CNN falls well to the left of center, with almost 30 percent more fans likely voting for Obama over Romney. PBS lies even further left with close to a 50 percent advantage of likely Obama voters.

CNN's Piers Morgan lauded President Obama's "excellent" work during Hurricane Sandy, and teed up liberal guest Michael Moore to bash Republicans on global warming. As NewsBusters reported earlier, on his Wednesday night show he didn't once press Moore about his despicable anti-Romney ad.

Morgan gushed that "whichever side you're on, you cannot say that President Obama has not so far done an excellent job." That came after Moore took a shot at President Bush. [Video below the break. Audio here.]

Liberal CNN host Piers Morgan wants the network's anchors to be more opinionated on-air, as he told The Hollywood Reporter. "We should collectively as a network be more aggressive, more provocative, more debate-y," he opined.

Morgan's gun control Twitter rant just hours after the Aurora shooting, as well as his own laughably slanted show that night points to what he'd like to see more of if he got his way – not that he hasn't already accomplished that himself.

A Mitt Romney quote circulated by Democrats over the weekend has now been hyped into a "political controversy" by CNN. A liberal journalist and a Democratic strategist first brought the story to CNN on Monday morning, and by Tuesday CNN's Soledad O'Brien brought it up in an interview.

"In the wake of super storm Sandy, a political controversy rages over something Mitt Romney said at a primary debate last year. Did he suggest FEMA should be eliminated?" reported CNN's John Berman on Wednesday's Starting Point.

Over at Politico, Republicans who have had to endure the Obama spin from CNN's Soledad O'Brien are talking about her painfully evident bias, all while O'Brien has arrogantly compared interviewing one of them with talking to her children.

Former New Hampshire governor John Sununu called her a Democratic hack. "There's Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Stephanie Cutter, and Soledad O'Brien," he told Politico. "She [O'Brien] is so committed to Obama she doesn't even know what she's doing." Romney adviser Barbara Comstock said "she's not a reporter, she's an advocate."

Reporting on the Massachusetts Senate race on Thursday, CNN's Brooke Baldwin played a Democratic card by noting the amount of Wall Street money Republican incumbent Scott Brown's campaign receives compared with his Democratic challenger Elizabeth Warren, who has campaigned as a populist opponent of Wall Street.  

"The Center for Responsive Politics was reporting nearly 9 out of every 10 Wall Street dollars spent in the Massachusetts campaign here going to Brown. How is that playing, how will that play with voters there?" Baldwin asked her guest, after noting the "huge sea change" causing Warren's lead in the polls. She didn't ask about any of Brown's attacks on Warren, however. [Video below the break. Audio here.]

[Update, Friday, 10:44 am Eastern: Ted Turner released an apology on Thursday. (via Yahoo! News)]

On the October 19 edition of Piers Morgan Tonight, Ted Turner said it was "good" that more American soldiers are dying from suicide than in combat.

"I think it's good, because it's so clear that we're programmed and we're born to love and help each other, not to kill each other, to destroy each other," Turner said. [Video below the break. Audio here.]

A Democratic Senate candidate insulted CNN's Candy Crowley by joking to a male debate moderator "You're prettier than her," but CNN still hasn't covered that after a week. The network quickly jumped all over GOP Senate candidate Richard Mourdock for his comments on rape and abortion, however.

After Democrats pounced on Mourdock for saying pregnancies, even in cases of rape, are "something that God intended to happen," CNN hammered the story all day Wednesday. Anchor Ashleigh Banfield spent over 20 minutes – one-third of her news hour – on Mourdock's comments and his press conference.

The Media Research Center's Brent Bozell told CNN on Wednesday that the upcoming National Geographic drama "SEAL Team Six," produced by Obama-supporter Harvey Weinstein and set to air two days before Election Day, should not be released until after the election is over.

"If it doesn't have a political agenda, as they say it doesn't, and if there aren't any political purposes behind this, as they say there aren't, then simply put it off by two days," Bozell told CNN. [Video below the break. Audio here.]

On Wednesday, CNN's Carol Costello spent more time on a GOP Senate candidate's remarks on abortion than she did on a new bombshell report on the Libya attacks. Costello devoted just over 12 minutes to Libya, versus 13 and a half minutes to Indiana Senate candidate Richard Mourdock's comments, and his endorsement by Mitt Romney. Costello anchors the 9 and 10 a.m. hours of CNN Newsroom.

Mourdock affirmed his faith-based views against abortion in cases of rape, stating "life is a gift from God, and I think even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen." Costello said those words "erupted online and re-energized the so-called war on women."

Is Soledad O'Brien working for the DSCC? She distorted a pro-life statement from Senate candidate Richard Mourdock by including it with the Todd Akin controversy in a critical "Get Real" segment on Wednesday's Starting Point. She also tied Romney to Mourdock by noting he previously backed the candidate.

"Our 'Get Real' this morning, I think it's a really interesting question about a lack of sensitivity toward a victim of rape," O'Brien began. "Big implications politically, of course, Dana, for this," she hyped later. [Video below the break. Audio here.]