USA Today put the latest troubling signs of private insurers bailing out of Obamacare on the top of the front page Wednesday. But something really obvious was missing from the text of the entire article – the name “Obama.”
The headline for this beating-around-the-bush story was “Health care costs to rise in 2017: Aetna pullout in 11 states reflects insurance industry upheaval.”
During a guest appearance on Tuesday's edition of MSNBC's Morning Joe program, Cokie Roberts -- a political commentator for National Public Radio and ABC News -- hammered people who still support Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump as “morally tainted” and an example of “textbook racism.”
Roberts said of the approximately 40 percent of American voters who polls say still support Trump: “I mean, there’s just no question about that. You can’t say ‘He’s a racist and what he says is textbook racism, but I support him because he’s the nominee of my party.’”
The new chief executive of the Donald Trump campaign owns a stake in Seinfeld royalties, a fact that naturally was used to make fun of Stephen Bannon on MSNBC. With All Due Respect co-host Mark Halperin admitted that “we jumped at the chance to combine Seinfeld” and Trump. The journalist then played an extended montage of reporters making fun of Bannon and clips of the comedy classic.
MSNBC’s Hardball host Chris Matthews had always been a big admirer of now-former Democratic Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane, so he was naturally beside himself on Tuesday night as he gave a news brief on Kane being found guilty of nine criminal charges stemming from a series of leaks to a grand jury concerning a legal and political rival.
On Wednesday, the Morning Joe crew erupted over the revelation that notes from Hillary Clinton’s interviews with the FBI are being given to a congressional committee for review. According to guest Adam Schiff, a Democratic Congressman from California who serves on the House Intelligence Committee, this “opens a Pandora’s box of requests from Congress.” Bloomberg Politics Editor, Mark Halperin, believes it is one of the “most horrible precedents” he’s seen in a long time.
On CNN New Day Wednesday morning, Chris Cuomo brought up the video of Sylville Smith’s sister, calling for violence in the suburbs getting widespread attention, though the initial part of her message calling for nonviolence in their community, was. “That part of the bite was not widely used,” Cuomo said, conveniently leaving out that CNN was the one who left out the rest of the soundbite, initially.
The New York Times “Interpreter” column is a recent addition to the paper’s news pages. Sold as a philosophical fact-check, it comes off as an excuse to sneak yet more liberal opinion into the paper under the guise of offering an elevated perspective on current events. Most egregious yet: Wednesday’s column by Amanda Taub, in which she goes to ludicrous lengths to wave away the problem of the threat of sexual assault by Islamic migrants and denigrate conservative critics of the assaults: “Portraying Muslims as a Threat to Women, Donald Trump Echoes ‘Us vs. Them’ Refrain.” Taub’s text is even worse, as she offensively compares valid concerns about Islamic refugee sexual violence and refugee attitudes toward women in general to Jim Crow and the lynching days
On Wednesday’s CNN New Day, Chris Cuomo brought on CNN commentator and host of BET News Marc Lamont Hill and former Secret Service agent and current candidate for congress in Florida Dan Bongino, to discuss Trump polling poorly with African-Americans. While Bongino argued that democrat run cities have failed black communities, Lamont Hill claimed that poverty and Democrat machines are connected, but that “doesn’t mean” being a Democrat makes you poor.
On Wednesday’s NBC Today, co-host Matt Lauer and his colleagues were aghast Team USA’s Olympic champions would be forced to pay taxes on their winning medals. Lauer proclaimed: “Like other medalists, Michael [Phelps] receives a cash bonus for all the hardware. Guess what? He’s gonna have to pay taxes on every single medal and every single bonus. It's called the victory tax.”
NBC Chairman Bob Greenblatt slammed presidential candidate Donald Trump, calling him "toxic" and "demented," after his network spend more than a decade building his image. In a Facebook post he later deleted, Greenblatt lamented the “sad state of affairs” created by “pompous businessman turned reality TV star” Donald Trump.
ABC became the first Big Three network to cover the felony conviction of the Democratic attorney general of Pennsylvania, Kathleen Kane, on the early Wednesday edition of Nightline. Byron Pitts spotlighted the downfall of the "rising star in Pennsylvania's Democratic Party," who went from being endorsed by Bill Clinton to being a "convicted criminal." ABC's morning and evening newscasts still haven't covered the Kane story, nor have their competitors at CBS and NBC.
Acting can transform reality, according to the Ben-Hur actors. In an interview published Tuesday, FlickDirect correspondant Judith Raymer interviewed Ben-Hur actors Jack Huston (who plays Judah Ben-Hur) and Rodrigo Santoro (as Jesus of Nazareth) about how the film changed them.
Amidst the craziness of our world, it’s beautiful to see that ordinary instances of heroism abound. We hope your hearts are warmed and your spirits are lifted by these stories.
Kellyanne Conway on Wednesday became the first female to ever run a Republican presidential campaign. But the networks did not excitedly tout this as progress, instead they glossed over this point. On ABC’s Good Morning America, reporter Tom Llamas blandly explained, “Overnight, Donald Trump shaking up his campaign promoting pollster Kellyanne Conway to campaign manager.”
In a recent interview with CNN senior political correspondent Manu Raju, New Hampshire Governor and Democratic Senate candidate Maggie Hassan repeatedly dodged questions about whether Hillary Clinton was “honest” and refused to vouch for Clinton’s credibility. Despite the embarrassing exchange making news on cable, the broadcast networks of NBC, ABC, and CBS all ignored the story.