Rachel Maddow Accuses Sunday Talk Shows of Being Biased Towards George W. Bush

Forget about Bush Derangement Syndrome.

According to MSNBC's Rachel Maddow, the Sunday morning political talk shows are all biased towards the 43rd president we conservatives all thought they despised (video follows with transcript and lots of debunking commentary):

RACHEL MADDOW: I will admit right off the bat this is petty. I’ll admit it. But it is also true and it has got to drive Democrats in the White House absolutely nuts.

Here it is: Republican Senator Dick Lugar, Republican former presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani, Republican former Congressman Tom Davis, the Bush administration’s CIA director, General Michael Hayden, the Bush administration’s secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, the Bush administration’s homeland security secretary, Michael Chertoff, the Bush administration’s defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, the Bush administration’s vice president, Dick Cheney, the Bush administration’s vice president’s daughter, Liz Cheney -- the week the Obama administration announces it has killed Osama bin Laden, that’s the guest list on the Sunday morning political talk shows to talk about it.

The Sunday shows are supposedly the apex of political debate -- the pulsing, throbbing heart of what’s going on in American politics. Is the biggest story in American politics right now retirees from the Bush administration and how they feel about stuff? Plus, Dick Lugar?

Honestly, this is the roster? This is Sunday morning in all of its thundering seriousness?

Now, among those nine Bush administration officials and other Republican politicians, there were three outliers: Senator John Kerry, also a former White House communications director named Anita Dunn, and one current White House official Tom Donilon, the national security adviser. So, there were those three.

But the week the Obama administration announces that bin Laden is dead, the invitees to the adult’s table, the measure of serious and importance in Washington is three-to-one, Bush administration and Republican officials. Why is that?

Sometimes I really wish I was a liberal and could say anything I wanted - even on television - with total disregard for the facts.

Yes, there were indeed more members of the Bush administration and Republicans on the various political talk shows this Sunday. However, when you add up all the time these nine folks were given on these shows, it was still less than the minutes alloted to folks connected to the Obama administration.

In the end, that's all that matters.

Here are the numbers:

• ABC's "This Week"
  • Obama National Security Adviser Tom Donilon - 9 minutes
  • Bush Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice - 2 minutes
  • Liz Cheney - less than two minutes
• CBS's "Face the Nation"
  • Senator John Kerry (D-Mass.) - 11 minutes
  • Bush Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld - 8 minutes
• CNN's "State of the Union"
  • Donilon - 14 minutes
  • Sen. Dick Lugar (R-Ind.) - 8 minutes
  • Former Obama Communications Director Anita Dunn - approximately 4 minutes
  • Former Republican Congressman Tom Davis - approximately 4 minutes
• "Fox News Sunday"
  • Donilon - 15 minutes
  • Former Vice President Dick Cheney - 15 minutes
• NBC's "Meet the Press"
  • Donilon - 13 minutes
  • Bush Department of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, Bush CIA Director Michael Hayden, and Rudy Giuliani in a joint discussion with host David Gregory - 10 minutes

Totals by administration affiliation:

• Obama
  • Donilon - 51 minutes
  • Kerry - 11 minutes
  • Dunn - 4 minutes
  • Total - 66 minutes
• Bush
  • D. Cheney - 15 minutes
  • Chertoff, Giuliani and Hayden - 10 minutes
  • Rumsfeld - 8 minutes
  • Lugar - 8 minutes
  • Davis - 4 minutes
  • Rice - 2 minutes
  • L. Cheney - less than 2 minutes
  • Total - less than 49 minutes

This means that despite there being fewer Obama administration officials or affiliates on these five programs Sunday, they actually got 35 percent more air time than guests tied to the Bush adminstration.

Taking this a step further, the panel discussion on "This Week" besides Liz Cheney and regular George Will included liberal guests Tom Ricks, who writes the Best Defense blog for Foreign Policy magazine, and Lawrence Wright of the New Yorker.

The "Meet the Press" panel was tremendously skewed with liberals Doris Kearns Goodwin, the BBC's Katty Kay, and the Washington Post's Bob Woodward. The only so-called conservative in the group was Republican strategist Mike Murphy. 

If you add this to the previous data, no impartial analysis of these five programs Sunday could possibly conclude that conservative views were more present than liberal ones.

Of course, as Maddow and her entire disgrace of a "news" outlet admittedly "lean forward," one doesn't expect even a shred of impartiality.

Nice try, Rach. Keep up on leanin'.

*****Update: Liberal websites the Huffington Post and Mediaite both reported Maddow's nonsense without doing any research to verify her accuracy.