Posted below: the October 24 edition of Notable Quotables, MRC’s bi-weekly compilation of the latest outrageous quotes in the liberal media. This issue: CNN host Brian Stelter reports on a North Carolina Republican headquarters being firebombed and wonders if Donald Trump is to blame. NBC News’s Kristen Welker claims the media would be spending more time on Hillary Clinton’s scandals but Trump’s “unforced errors” keep getting in the way.
Also in this issue Chris Matthews is transfixed by Hillary Clinton’s “beautiful voice.” And pop singer Madonna makes an offer to voters that Bill Clinton would appreciate. The complete issue, with 20 quotes, is posted below (or view the printer-friendly PDF version).
GOP Headquarters Firebombed and Trump Is to Blame?
“So the Arizona Republic getting so many death threats over an endorsement [for Hillary Clinton] is an example of how over heated the rhetoric is. Another example out of North Carolina today, the firebombing of a local GOP office. We have no idea who has done this. We don’t know if it’s a Republican, a Democrat, a movement. No idea. Could be some core of extremists, some sort of radical. Hopefully we’ll get more information soon. But that kind of action is unacceptable. And we need to have the temperature come down on all sides right now. Unfortunately, Donald Trump is the lead in terms of raising the temperature at this moment in time.”
— Host Brian Stelter on CNN’s Newsroom, October 16.
“Sociopath” Stalin-Like Trump Is “Force for Chaos”
“This campaign is now about a neo-fascist — I keep coming back to that — sociopath....He is setting himself up as the head of....a real neo-fascist movement....Is there going to be remnants of a neo-fascist movement that he leads in this country after this election? It’s a dangerous thing. We’re in a dangerous place.”
— Former Washington Post reporter Carl Bernstein on CNN’s New Day, October 21.
Host Chris Matthews: “This is three elections in a row, he’s threatening to delegitimize. This is a pattern, and it does lead to the suggestion that Robert Costa of the Washington Post said tonight that he will not validate the election results. Pretty scary stuff.”...
Huffington Post editorial director Howard Fineman: “It wasn’t just what he said that was shocking, it was the way he said it. There was a casual contempt in Donald Trump’s voice for 225 years of American political tradition. Donald Trump is a force for chaos. He always has been. If he can’t take something and win something himself, he will destroy that thing and make it impossible for other people to have it....[Trump] is saying that if ‘I can’t have the presidency, I’m going to make it not worth Hillary’s time to have it.’”
— Post-presidential debate coverage 1:34 AM EDT on MSNBC, October 20.
Correspondent Dana Bash: “Not to sound too corny, but what makes this country different from countries with dictators in Africa or Stalin or Hitler or any of those countries with dictators and totalitarian leaders, is that when they took over, they put their opponents in jail. To hear one presidential candidate, say — even if it was a flip comment, which it was — ‘you’re going to be in jail’ to another presidential candidate on the debate stage in the United States of America, stunning, just stunning.”
Host Wolf Blitzer: “It certainly is.”
— Post-presidential debate coverage on CNN, October 9.
How Can You Defend Trump in Front of Your Kids?
“You’re a mother. You’re a woman. Are you more offended by the phrase ‘average Americans’ or ‘grabbing a woman’s genitals?’....You’ve got to look at your kids when you go home at night....I’m not going to let my kids watch the debate tonight. I don’t let my kids watch Donald Trump in the fear that he will say to a woman in the audience, ‘You’re fat.’ In fear, that he’ll make fun of someone with special needs. I don’t ever want my kids to say that.”
— Host Stephanie Ruhle to Donald Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway on MSNBC Live, October 19.
Trump Made Latinos Cry
“That hombres line that Donald Trump used did not go over well, not just with the Hillary Clinton campaign, but from Latinos. I’ve heard from people tonight who tell me they were crying, they were offended, downright disgusted by the way he used that word on that stage tonight.”
— World News Tonight weekend anchor Cecilia Vega ABC’s post-presidential debate coverage, October 20.
Charmed by Hillary’s “Mellifluous” Voice
“Everything about her was presidential tonight. Her poise, her speech delivery was confident, mellifluous, even. She has a beautiful voice. I’ve said that for years. She has a beautiful voice when she is speaking in a conversational manner and she was tonight. She never got, as far as can I tell, she never got stressed out by the tenseness of the conflict tonight. And I noticed afterwards when she got on that plane with the small number of reporters, again, she was very winning. She had winning personality again.”
— Hardball host Chris Matthews during post-presidential debate coverage on MSNBC, October 10 12:06 AM EDT.
It’s Trump’s Fault We’re Not Covering Hillary’s Scandals
“I can’t tell you how many times this past week journalists have said ‘what would this news cycle look like if we hadn’t had the 2005 tape of Donald Trump, if these allegations hadn’t come forward from all of these women?’ I mean, we would be almost solely focused on these WikiLeaks. And yet, Donald Trump continues to kind of make these unforced errors.”
— NBC correspondent Kristen Welker on Meet the Press, October 16.
Trump “Gets Most of the Blame” for “Disgraceful” Debate
Correspondent Bob Schieffer: “Over and over ‘if I’m elected, I’m going to put you in jail.’ I mean this is what they do in banana republics. This is the United States of America. People keep asking me, ‘Have I ever seen anything like this?’ And I keep saying no. And I just hope to God I don’t see another campaign like this one. America can do better than what we have seen here tonight. This was just disgraceful.”
CBS This Morning co-host Norah O’Donnell: “I think as we started off saying this is called a presidential debate but there wasn’t much presidential about some of the discussion, Bob Schieffer.
Schieffer: “This was WrestleMania, this wasn’t about presidential politics.”
CBS This Morning co-host Gayle King: “On both sides, Bob, on both sides?”
Schieffer: “I think Donald Trump gets most of the blame here. But I didn’t see much to be proud of on either side tonight, although I felt she handled herself as well as she could under the circumstances.”
— CBS’s post-presidential debate coverage, October 9.
Hypocritical GOP Only Cares When Trump Attacks White Women
“I think what is interesting about all of this is that this is the moment which is driving so many Republicans away. You know, we have witnessed for past year a campaign whose central message to the country was if you elect me I will use state power to suppress Mexican immigrants, Muslim Americans and recently, black Americans with stop and frisk. And it says something not flattering about the Republican Party that it’s begun to leave Trump when the comment finally hits a group of voters that actually they rely on to win elections.”
— Slate chief political correspondent Jamelle Bouie on CBS’s Face the Nation, October 9.
Bill’s Victims Just Props for Trump’s “Hate Theater”
“Only in a third world country, and only in the, sort of, the mind of some sort of movie writer of a third world democracy or dictatorship would you have a candidate publicly humiliate a former occupant of that office by parading all of these other people around as well.”
— Meet the Press host Chuck Todd on MSNBC Live, October 10.
“With Trump flanked at a long, narrow table by the Clinton accusers, it looked like a twisted version of ‘The Last Supper.’...Bringing the accusers into a presidential-debate town hall was nothing but hate-theater: a counterpunch to deflect criticism of Trump’s own shameful history with women.”
— Washington Post media columnist Margaret Sullivan in an October 10 column.
“Paula Jones, Kathleen Willey and Juanita Broaddrick were cheerleaders for Trump long before their canned, pre-debate endorsements of him, which, watched with bad sound on Facebook Live, resembled a Soviet show trial.”
— Former New York Times Executive Editor and current Guardian columnist Jill Abramson in October 11 column.
“Do you think Donald Trump used you as a political prop today?”
— ABC correspondent Tom Llamas to Bill Clinton accuser Kathleen Willey, as aired on Good Morning America, October 10.
Hillary Clinton’s Duplicity Just Like Jefferson and Reagan
“She’s [Hillary Clinton] right....Thomas Jefferson would try to tell the person he was talking to, signal the person he was talking to that he agreed with them and he was going to take the best of what they said and try to put it with this other idea that wasn’t so great from the other guy and maybe we can get there. And so, you know, we live in a nation that is better off because Lyndon Johnson could do that, because Ronald Reagan could do that, to some extent. So there’s always a public and a private face.”
— Former Newsweek Executive Editor Jon Meacham on CBS’s Face the Nation, October 16.
Trump’s Self-Hating Jewish Son-in-Law?
“It’s so nice Jared Kushner’s grandparents survived the Holocaust so he could look into a new TV network that would cater in part to Nazis.”
— October 17 tweet by Politico’s senior White House correspondent Edward-Isaac Dovere about Trump’s son-in-law and husband of Ivanka Trump.
Liberal Bias Is Just Conspiracy Nonsense
“Corrupt media. In Trump’s world, journalists are really just Clinton campaign workers in disguise collaborating with her in an attempt to rig the election. This is not just false, it’s ludicrous and it’s damaging....What are the consequences of this conspiratorial talk?”
— Host Brian Stelter on CNN’s Reliable Sources, October 16.
Fraud Concerns Are Racist Code
MSNBC contributor Joy Reid: “It [claims of voter fraud] is a dog whistle to people who want to believe that African Americans are cheating. The dog whistle to the far right, the Breitbart crowd.”
Matthews: “You mean when he says St. Louis, Cleveland, Chicago, Philadelphia. What do they have many common? Black majorities.”
Reid: “Philadelphia and Chicago. It is feeding the Breitbart people who feel that black people are stealing our elections. That’s all it is.”
— Exchange on MSNBC’s Hardball, October 19.
Trump Disproves Darwin’s Theory of Evolution
“To paraphrase Henry Adams, the movement from George H.W. Bush to Donald Trump disproves Darwin.”
— Former Newsweek editor Jon Meacham on CBS’s Face the Nation, October 16.
How Can Anyone Back “Racist Misogynist Moron” Trump?
“It’s just beyond my comprehension how anybody could support a racist misogynist moron like Donald Trump. It’s beyond my comprehension. I mean, he’s a bad guy, you know? He’s a really bad guy....There’s something wrong with him. I don’t know what a shrink would diagnose what he is, but he’s not a normal person. There’s something mentally wrong with him...He’s just vile....Oh, my God. I honestly think it would be a really dark day in American history if he were to be elected. A really dark day.”
— CSI actress Marg Helgenberger in an interview with local Washington D.C. newspaper Metro Weekly, October 20.
Bill Clinton Just Looked Up Where to Early Vote
“If you vote for Hillary Clinton, I will give you a blowjob. OK? I’m good. I’m not a douche, and I’m not a tool. I take my time. I have a lot of eye contact, and I do swallow.”
— Madonna introducing comedian Amy Schumer for her October 18 show at Madison Square Garden in New York City, as reported by the Daily Mail’s Chelsea White in an October 19 article.
