Scott Whitlock's blog

ABC journalist Jonathan Karl on Wednesday lectured Paul Ryan about Barack Obama's reelection "mandate" and grilled the Republican about raising taxes. On Good Morning America, he declared, "If there was one issue that the President campaigned on, it was raising taxes on the wealthy." He added, "Doesn't he have a mandate there?" [See video below. MP3 audio here.]

When Ryan declined to support tax increases, the reporter hectored, "But could you see yourself supporting a plan that raises tax rates on the top two percent?...So you don't support a plan?" The Congressman retorted, "I don't want to get into negotiating with the media." In another version of the interview that aired on Tuesday's World News, Karl played a clip of Saturday Night Live "poking fun" at the former vice presidential candidate.

The alarmist journalists at Good Morning America on Sunday hyped a new report that fretted over whether global warming will spell the end of coffee. Reporter John Muller warned, "...The coffee bean may be going to way of the dinosaur. We're talking about extinction if you believe this new study..." [See video below. MP3 audio here.]

Painting a dark picture, Muller worried, "Scientists from the Kew Royal Botanical Gardens ran computer models on global warming, finding that if their worst estimates come true, in 68 years, there would be nowhere on Earth suitable for wild coffee growth." To compliment the fear-mongering, the journalist included on-the-street interviews with people offering concerns such as "I don't think I could live if I didn't have coffee."

MSNBC host Chris Jansing on Monday found the "parallels" between Abraham Lincoln and the newly reelected Barack Obama to be "fascinating." The anchor interviewed Gloria Reuben, liberal actress and co-star of the just-released Steven Spielberg biography of the 16th president. Jansing compared, "...You have a president who is newly elected, who faces a divided divided Congress and a divided country." [See video below. MP3 audio here.]

Couldn't such a vague analogy be made of many presidents, including George W. Bush? Jansing introduced the Lincoln actress by pointing out, "You're a social activist. You've been very big in [the] pro-choice [cause]. You've been a supporter of Barack Obama and the AIDS movement." She added, "You must find these parallels fascinating." It's unclear how supporting abortion can be connected to Lincoln.

MSNBC's token Republican Joe Scarborough appeared on ABC's The View, Friday, to do what he does best: Trash conservatives. The Morning Joe co-host lectured the Republican Party to "stop listening to the most extreme people." Naturally, the bashing of his own party delighted the mostly liberal View panel. [Video to appear soon. See MP3 below.]

Elisabeth Hasselbeck seriously asked Scarborough if he would "consider being on the [2016] ticket." Scarborough didn't dismiss this as silly. He simply suggested such an undertaking would mean he'd "be home even less" than he is now. When asked by liberal comic Mario Cantone what the solution is for the GOP, Scarborough seethed, "They've got to stop listening to the most extreme people in their party." A delighted Whoopi Goldberg marveled, "Say it one more time. One more time. One more time, Joe, please say it."

Wold News host Diane Sawyer on Thursday grilled John Boehner, pushing the House Speaker to support tax increases in the wake of Barack Obama's victory. In a clip played on Friday's Good Morning America, the anchor lectured, "[Obama] campaigned on it. Sixty percent of the voters have said that they are ready to raise these taxes. They are ready to have the wealthier Americans pitch in here." [See video below. MP3 audio here.]

Reporter Jon Karl reminded that Obama "talked about it in every single campaign speech." In the full interview that aired on World News, Sawyer demanded to know about more taxes: "He campaigned on specific increases in tax rates from 35 percent to 39 percent, for those making more than $250,000. So, is that on the table?...Is it on the table to talk about?"

A sneering Terry Moran on Wednesday night slammed an out-of-touch Republican Party in the wake of Barack Obama's reelection. According to Moran, Rush Limbaugh showed "contempt" for the President's voters and "slandered" them as "moochers." [See video below. MP3 audio here.]

In contrast, Moran extolled Obama as "grayer and maybe wiser." He cheered, "But in the America of the 21st century, he gets something, he embodies something that more and more voters see as the country's destiny."

ABC journalist Barbara Walters took to the airwaves on Wednesday to assail the Republican Party for being "behind" on social views. Walters and her View co-hosts looked to analyst Matt Dowd for post-election spin. Per usual, he spent his time lecturing the Republican Party, repeating an assertion that the GOP represents "Mad Men" and not "Modern Family" America.

Walters, who sometimes pretends she's still an objective journalist, derided, "You look at their platform. You looked at things that were said about rape – I mean they were behind in their social views." [See video below. Mp3 audio here.] Earlier, replying to Dowd's gloomy predictions, she wondered, "So does that mean that Democrats are going to win and win and win?"

On the same night he apologized for making a horribly inappropriate comment about Hurricane Sandy, Chris Matthews on Wednesday had Bill Maher on Hardball to compare Karl Rove and Republicans to Nazis. After Matthews wondered about Rove's erroneous predictions, the liberal comic mocked, "It was a little Hitler's bunker, wasn't it? I wanted to rush in with a cyanide capsule there. I thought he was going to say, 'I don't want to live in a world without national socialism.'" [See video below. MP3 audio here.]

Matthews himself got into the act, comparing Rove to Muhammad Saeed al-Sahhaf, a former propaganda henchman for Saddam Hussein: "Is [Rove] the Baghdad Bob of the 2012 election, the last guy to admit something's new and something bad is happening?" Again, this is the same program in which the MSNBC anchor apologized for his "terrible"  election night comment: "I'm so glad we had that storm last week."

Now that the 2012 presidential election is over and Barack Obama has been safely reelected, the journalists at ABC's Good Morning America woke up to the fact that the President has "refused" to provide details the terrorist attack in Libya and that the administration "didn't want to talk about it." [See video below. MP3 audio here.]

Fill-in host Elizabeth Vargas blithely announced, "In the meantime, the Libya issue has been overhanging this election. Allegations of a, quote, massive cover-up, by Senator John McCain about this administration's, really, refusal to really put to rest this issue before voting day." Martha Raddatz, who moderated the vice presidential debate, agreed, saying, "They didn't want to talk about it. Everybody tried to pin them down on that. They did not want to talk about it." "Everybody" tried to pin them down on Libya? 

In the aftermath of Barack Obama's reelection, the lecturing and advice from the liberal media began on Wednesday's Good Morning America. ABC analyst Matt Dowd mocked the GOP as a "Mad Men party in a Modern Family America." [See video below. MP3 audio here.] (The Mad Men reference is to the AMC series set in the 1960s. Modern Family is a gay-friendly sitcom on ABC.) 

According to Dowd, "And it doesn't work anymore. And it just doesn't fit anymore." Host George Stephanopoulos insisted the results indicate that "this is a changing America, which makes it a changing electorate." In a follow-up segment on females, Stephanopoulos asserted Republicans have "got to be thinking, what are we going to do in the future?"

Reporter and Barack Obama acolyte Terry Moran on Monday attended the President's last rally as a candidate, wistfully recalling the "magic" of the Democrat's past campaigns. Moran reminisced, "Looking at Barack Obama today, on the last day of his last campaign, it is impossible not to think back to what seemed a hinge of history." [See video below. MP3 audio here.]

Perhaps speaking of himself, the Nightline co-anchor looked back: "The crowds were bigger, more rapturous, more hopeful. For so many people it was magic." After all, it was Moran who, in February of 2009, hyperbolically declared, "I like to say that, in some ways, Barack Obama is the first President since George Washington to be taking a step down into the Oval Office." He added that the politician went from a "visionary leader" to just the president.

Good Morning America's George Stephanopoulos and analyst Matt Dowd on Tuesday offered one more day of doom and gloom for the Republican presidential ticket. Discussing the prospect of Mitt Romney winning Virginia, Stephanopoulos insisted, "But it's not even enough. He really has to sweep the whole east coast." (Of course, the east coast includes states such as Maine and Massachusetts, areas he doesn't need to win.)

Dowd, who has worked for both Democrats and Republicans, piled on: "[Romney has] a very narrow path to an electoral college victory...It's as if he has to draw an inside straight in this campaign today in order to win this tonight." For emphasis, he added, "He has got to do all those things and the path is still narrow for him to win this."

Chris Matthews in a special Sunday night Hardball slammed the south as racist and insisted that quoting Barack Obama is bigoted. An incredulous Matthews explained, "And topping it off, we heard Romney himself out here in Ohio today tying all this trash talk together, the President is bent on, get this, revenge." Of course, while talking to voters last week, the President actually said, "Voting is the best revenge."

In another appearance, on Sunday's Last Word, Matthews appeared totally unaware of the context "Well, where did this revenge come from? Where did that line come from?" [See video below.] On Hardball, Matthews insisted to Howard Fineman that most of the country would vote for Obama: "Well, what do you make of the geography, Howard?...The fact that the north, the west, the Midwest will all support Obama, but the south intensely dislikes him?"

Nightline correspondent Dan Harris on Thursday profiled an organization fighting voter fraud, suggesting that the non-partisan group might have a racial motive for targeting certain neighborhoods. Talking to True the Vote founder Catherine Engelbrect, Harris offered this loaded question: "Is your goal really to end voter fraud or is your goal really to intimidate voters who disagree with you politically and scare them away from the polls?" [See video below. MP3 audio here.]

Harris followed up, "You are not in any way directly targeting these communities?" Except for Engelbrect, everyone the correspondent talked to backed up this notion. Harris highlighted Teresa Sharp, a woman who had her right to vote challenged: "But Teresa and other Democrats say it's not about voter integrity but about voter suppression, specifically, trying to intimidate low-income people, minorities and students who might vote for President Obama."

Good Morning America's Matt Dowd, who is often billed as a down-the-line analyst, again predicted doom for Mitt Romney, agreeing with George Stephanopoulos's question that the presidential race is "breaking for [Barack] Obama." Appearing on Friday's program, Dowd touted, "I think the trajectory of this race has now slowly moved to the President over the last few days, especially how he's handled [Hurricane] Sandy." [See video below. MP3 audio here.]

According to a November 1 Rasmussen national poll, however, the race is deadlocked at 48-48. The political operative, who has worked for Democrats and Republicans, also dismissed Romney's push into Pennsylvania, oddly suggesting it was a "Hail Mary pass for him, because he knows the map has shrunk." Despite a Rasmussen poll showing the former governor up two in Ohio, Dowd deemed it "very difficult" for Romney to win the state.

MSNBC's Chris Matthews on Thursday lashed out at Rush Limbaugh and his criticism of Chris Christie, deriding the conservative radio host as "the guy from Deliverance." Matthews played a clip of Limbaugh joking, "New Jersey Governor Chris Christie has decided to play the role of a Greek column today for President Obama."

Matthews fumed, "He reminds me more of the guy from Deliverance– 'Squeal like a pig,'" a reference to the sodomy scene in the 1972 film. Matthews followed up, "...It just seems like he's squealing like a pig essentially here."

A day after he touted Barack Obama's "presidential leadership" in the wake of Hurricane Sandy, Good Morning America's Jon Karl hyped how "cooperation on disaster relief works. It also plays well politically." Karl touted a new ABC poll finding "78 percent of likely voters said the President has done a good or excellent job handling the storm." [See video below. MP3 audio here.]

On Wednesday, Karl praised that Hurricane Sandy has "given [Obama] a chance to show some presidential leadership." On Thursday's GMA Karl misleadingly told viewers, "In all eight of the states where the candidates are campaigning the hardest, the President is either tied or winning." Except the ones where he isn't.

Good Morning America's Jon Karl on Wednesday touted Hurricane Sandy as an opportunity for Barack Obama to show "presidential leadership." During the same segment, Karl repeated liberal talking points, using the storm against Mitt Romney. He pointed out that, at an event, Tuesday, the Republican "ignored questions about his views on FEMA funding." [See video below. MP3 audio here.]

Karl needled, "But during a debate last year, [Romney] suggested he would favor turning over some of FEMA's responsibilities to the states." The journalist then played a primary debate clip of Romney asserting, "Every time you have an occasion to take something from the federal government and send it back to the states, that's the right direction."

ABC News has mostly ignored the blockbuster revelation that the Obama White House knew, within hours, about the terrorist connection to the September 11, 2012 attack in Libya.  Instead, shows such as World News and Good Morning America have focused their attention on more pressing subjects, such as yawning dogs, "mystery monkeys" and a woman who only eats three different foods.

On Wednesday Night, World News allowed a scant 20 seconds to e-mails showing that the strike on the Benghazi embassy was, indeed, a pre-planned assault. Yet, on Thursday, Diane Sawyer devoted a minute and 47 seconds to answering this pressing question: "...We know how contagious yawns can be among people, but have you ever wondered if your dog is yawning because you did?" [See a video montage below. MP3 audio here.]

A shrieking Chris Matthews on Thursday smeared the Republican Party, comparing the abortion stances of candidates such as Paul Ryan and Richard Mourdock to those found under Sharia law. The hyperbolic Hardball anchor snarled, "I don't like to comparing anything to Sharia, but there's something about this theocratic notion that we're going to apply all our philosophical beliefs, our metaphysics, our religious training and turn it into law and turn it into criminalization."  [See video below. MP3 audio here.]

Matthews continued, "And it's not quite like stoning, but it has that same sort of impulse which is we're going to punish women." Terry O'Neil, the president of the National Organization for Women appeared on the show and screeched, "I think that it's kind of the creeping Talibanization of American policy." Speaking of Mitt Romney, she insisted that the Republican is in the "thick of this very fringe but very dangerous line of thought."

World News on Wednesday night continued to try and link Mitt Romney to the comments of a Republican Senate candidate in Indiana.  Anchor Diane Sawyer began the program by hyping, "The Romney campaign wrestles today with a landmine on a big issue for women."

On Tuesday, Richard Mourdock said that life is a "gift from God" and that "even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape that it is something that God intended to happen." Reporter David Muir insisted the words "have caused a firestorm." On Wednesday's Good Morning America, George Stephanopoulos warned that "Romney [is] catching some flak for his ties" to Mourdock.

Liberal cable anchor Chris Matthews, who in 2010 used the phrase "shuck and jive," on Wednesday assailed Sarah Palin as racist for using the phrase "shuck and jive." Referring to a Facebook post the former Alaska governor wrote about Obama and Libya, Matthews ranted, "You know, a dog whistle is a dog whistle...A trumpet call is another."

The MSNBC host insisted that "shuck and jive" has "a particular ethnic connection" and "to throw it at the president as an ethnic shot is pretty blatant." On July 7, 2010, Matthews, while talking to Rachel Maddow about her visit to Afghanistan, wondered, "What has it been like, as you shuck and jive, hang out with the men over there, the women over there, in uniform risking their lives every day?" The late Tim Russert also used the term on July 18, 2003.

An analysis by the Assocation of American Medical Colleges (AAMC)  concludes that by the year 2020, there will be a shortage of more than 90,000 doctors. The organization finds the cause, in part, to be the passage of Barack Obama's health care law. Yet, when Good Morning America briefly covered this story on Wednesday, there was no mention of ObamaCare.

Josh Elliott insisted, "A national medical group says there's currently a shortage of more than 13,000 doctors across the United States. And the group warns that over the next decade, that shortage will grow to be ten-times worse as the population ages and more doctors retire." USA Today, however, explained, "The newly enacted Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act will soon require most people to obtain health insurance, leading millions more to seek care."

All three morning shows on Wednesday touted White House talking points linking Mitt Romney to a Republican Senate candidate in Indiana who, while speaking about "the horrible situation of rape," called life a "gift from God." Only one program, CBS This Morning, seemed to notice how closely this story mirrored Democratic spin.

As though he was referencing a connection to a criminal, former Democratic operative George Stephanopoulos intoned, "Mitt Romney catching some flak for his ties to a GOP Senate candidate making controversial comments about abortion and rape in a Tuesday debate." Trying to make trouble, reporter David Muir asserted that the GOP campaign is "trying to distance itself from a Senate candidate that Romney endorsed, did a TV ad for." Muir needled, "The [Romney] campaign did not say whether it would ask [Richard] Mourdock to take down this ad." CBS's Norah O'Donnell speculated that the remark could cost Republicans a shot at "control of the Senate." [See video below. MP3 audio here.]

In an article for the November Philadelphia Style magazine, a cocky Chris Matthews wistfully recounted a considered 2010 run for Senate, bragging at how incredible he would have been: "I'm not dreaming here. I would be one of the stars of the Democratic Party—there aren’t that many."

The liberal MSNBC anchor flirted with, but ultimately decided against, running in the Pennsylvania Democratic primary. Perhaps wondering what might have been, he lamented, "I know this: If I had run and won and beaten [Senator Pat] Toomey, I would be one of the Democrats people talk about today." The Hardball host also took some disgruntled shots at Barack Obama.

Talking to two fellow liberals on Monday, an unhinged Chris Matthews trashed conservatives and Republicans who opposes Barack Obama's birth control policies as "Nazis." Matthews smeared, "Is it in society's interests for [a young woman's] boss to be able to be the birth control Nazi to decide who gets it and who doesn't?" [See video below. MP3 audio here.]

Matthews has previously railed against calling one's political opponents Nazis. On April 28, 2010, the liberal host ranted, "But let's agree, can we, to drop the Nazi stuff?" On Monday, Matthews invented a hypothetical woman: "A young woman who works in her 20s or 30s and is not ready to have a child, that's her decision, I think we all agree on that. She wants birth control. Isn't it in society's interest for her to get that as part of her health care?"

Disgraced ex-CBS anchor Dan Rather delved into conspiracy theories on Monday, speculating that the Ohio Republican Party could steal the election for Mitt Romney. In a Facebook posting for Dan Rather Reports, the journalist hyped, "The whole upper tier of Ohio state government is in the hands of the GOP now; in very close voting they have the power to influence what votes are counted and how."

Linking back to other conspiracy theories, Rather reminded, "Remember Ohio, Bush v. Kerry in 2004 and Florida, Bush v. Gore in 2000)." The former CBS Evening News host seemed to be echoing the fevered claims of Keith Olbermann, one of the first proponents of the idea that Bush stole the 2004 election.

ABC analyst Matthew Dowd on Sunday cheered the "laudable" Candy Crowley for propping up Barack Obama with wrong information about Libya during last week's debate. Referring to a contentious exchange between the President and Mitt Romney over when the White House called the attack a terrorist indicent, Dowd enthused, "...What Candy Crowley did, I actually thought, was laudable, because what happens in this whole thing is the truth becomes a casualty." [See video below. MP3 audio here.]

Dowd, appearing on This Week,  lamented a media culture where "we're just supposed to make accusations back and forth to each other and nobody's supposed to correct and say, 'by the way, that's not true.'" Of course, Obama did not initially call the violence in Benghazi a terrorist attack." As the Washington Times explained, he "used the word 'terror' exactly once, late in his [September 12th Rose Garden] address."

The editors of the Washington Post have, yet again, shown their extreme dislike for George Allen. Less than three weeks before Virginia's crucial Senate election, the liberal paper offered front page profiles of Republican Allen and Democrat Tim Kaine. On Friday, the Post's headline sympathetically declared: "A Man of Faith and Practical Politics: While Running for Senate in Virginia, Kaine Finds Time to Wrestle With His Conscience." (The paper endorsed Kaine on Monday.)

The headline for Thursday's profile announced, "A Humbler, More Cautious Allen." Not surprisingly, the Post dredged up Allen's 2006 "macaca" remark. Marc Fisher reminded that six years ago, Allen "found himself portrayed in news reports and voters’ minds as a colossally insensitive brute, a senator who publicly slurred an Indian American man who was working for his opponent at a campaign event, calling him 'macaca.'" The above description came from the third paragraph and made it onto page A1.

In the wake of the announcement on Thursday that Newsweek will cease print publication at the end of the year, Time's managing editor appeared on Morning Joe to swear that his magazine won't be next. Co-host Willie Geist quizzed, "But it's still cost effective for you to print this out every week?"  Richard Stengel first admitted "the most expensive single thing" is to physically produce the publication.

He hedged, "And obviously the post office has a lot of trouble." Stengel then insisted the print version of the liberal magazine "becomes a premium product that you get in addition to all the other as specks of Time on every other platform." Offering some empty bravado, Stengel asserted, "We will continue to do well. I've always said like the NBA slogan, there can only be one – and that's us."