Starting Point

After the Obama campaign released an ad on Monday attacking Mitt Romney's record at Bain Capital, CNN went so far as to question President Obama's hypocrisy in attacking Romney. In contrast, MSNBC hosts joined Team Obama on the offensive.

CNN first reported the ad during the 9 and 10 a.m. hours of Monday, and by that evening anchor John King hosted a former venture capitalist who defended the business practices of Bain. Meanwhile, MSNBC's Martin Bashir and the network's prime-time lineup were cheerleaders for the Obama campaign on Monday.

Contrary to the media's lack of coverage of President Obama's high school escapades, CNN's Soledad O'Brien promptly jumped on a Washington Post story featuring accusations of Mitt Romney being a high school bully – even though the story may already have a hole. O'Brien discussed the "harrowing" story on Friday's Starting Point.

O'Brien wondered if Romney "actually owes a bigger apology" for an incident that allegedly happened almost 50 years ago. "Do you think Governor Romney actually owes a bigger apology or needs to say something more about this or is 'I don't remember and if I did something bad, I'm sorry' enough?" O'Brien pressed Romney campaign adviser Kerry Healy. [Video below the break. Audio here.]

In a rather blatant show of a double standard, CNN's Soledad O'Brien interrupted and grilled the Family Research Council's Tony Perkins over his opposition to same-sex marriage, but she gave an exceedingly soft interview to a guest who was "elated" at President Obama's open support of same-sex marriage. The interviews kicked off Thursday's 7 a.m. hour of Starting Point.

CNN was quite one-sided in its Wednesday afternoon coverage of Obama's announcement in favor of gay marriage, and O'Brien simply carried that bias into Thursday morning. She sought the "reaction" of guest Mitchell Gold to the President's remarks, and Gold told her he was "still elated" and lauded the President's "courageous" action. [Video below the break. Audio here]

After CNN's Erin Burnett lamented the defeat of "moderate" Dick Lugar in Indiana's GOP Senate primary, Wednesday's Starting Point panel had a cold welcome for the victorious Tea Party candidate Richard Mourdock.

Anchor Soledad O'Brien asked Mourdock if his "confrontational" attitude wouldn't help "undermine" the cause of uniting Americans. It's doubtful whether Soledad thought the same of President Obama as he shoved liberal legislation down the throats of Republicans in the first two years of his term. [Video below the break. Audio here.]

CNN's Soledad O'Brien once again jumped to the defense of the Obama campaign, as she tried to argue on Monday that the economy is "trending" in the President's favor. She countered Romney aide Andrea Saul who hit Obama's record of net job loss while in office.

"When you say 'hasn't created net jobs,' of course you are talking about there was so much job loss that even started to happen before the President even came in," she lectured Saul. "They're rebuilding from that, so I'm going to correct you on that if I can." What Soledad did not admit is that while unemployment has slid to 8.1 percent, the labor force participation rate is the lowest in decades. [Video below the break. Audio here.]

Hosting the chair of the DNC on Tuesday's Starting Point, CNN's Soledad O'Brien could have grilled her about any number of relevant issues like gas prices, the GSA scandal, or President Obama trailing Mitt Romney in polls on the economy. Instead she simply teed her up with softball questions and left the tough questions to conservative panel member Will Cain.

The method was not unlike O'Brien's April 4 interview of the liberal Van Jones, where she failed to ask Obama's former green jobs adviser about the administration's recent scandals involving green energy companies like Solyndra. The two interviews showed a definitive hesitance on O'Brien's part to ask tough and pressing questions of her liberal guest.

CNN's Soledad O'Brien got a much-needed education about political ideologies from Rep. Allen West (R-Fla.) Thursday.

When she brought up a quote from the Vice Chairman of the National Communist Party refuting the Congressman's claim there are 78 to 81 Communists in Congress, West simply replied, "I don't care what he says" (video follows with transcribed highlights and commentary):

CNN may claim to be the serious, centrist news network but it says something about its broadcast when a liberal comedian is a regular panel member and is allowed to toss slanted, obnoxious questions at a Republican guest. Such was the case on Tuesday's Starting Point when comedian John Fugelsang tried to stick it to Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-Tex.)

Discussing the Buffett Rule, Fugelsang framed the debate on simplistic liberal terms. He asked the congressman if he thought persons "who don't work for their income" – who live off their investments – should have a lower tax rate than those "who work for their income." [Video below the break.]

CNN's Soledad O'Brien once again tried to fact-check numbers she took issue with, and once more she failed to refute them. On Monday's Starting Point she took aim at Mitt Romney's claim that women have accounted for 92 percent of the job losses under President Obama.

"That would be a shocking number if it were true, which it really isn't exactly overall," O'Brien began. Yet even ABC's George Stephanopoulos admitted the report was "accurate." [Video below the break. Audio here.]

After CNN contributor John Fugelsang agreed with the "substance" of Hilary Rosen's remarks on Ann Romney, conservative columnist Will Cain laid into him for "Balkanizing" the country into classes and sects. The exchange happened during the 7 a.m. hour of Starting Point.

Rosen, a Democratic activist, had sparked an outcry for saying Ann Romney had never worked a day in her life, but CNN host Soledad O'Brien stepped in and claimed people were missing the "whole point of what she was saying." Fugelsang, a liberal comedian and CNN regular, agreed. [Video below the break. Audio here.]

CNN's senior legal analyst said on Thursday's Starting Point that "some of these Republican judges are just deranged by hatred of the President." Jeffrey Toobin was railing against the three-judge panel on the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court that had made the Justice Department write a three page memo about the Obama administration's take on judicial review.

Toobin called the act a "disgrace." However, though President Obama had said the Supreme Court overturning his health care law would be "unprecedented" and "judicial activism," Toobin defended his remarks as "entirely appropriate." [Video below the break. Audio here.]

Once again, CNN hosted former Obama "green jobs" czar Van Jones, giving him plenty of air-time to tout his new book and defend himself against accusations from conservatives. Unsurprisingly, anchor Soledad O'Brien tossed mostly softballs at Jones on Wednesday's Starting Point.

However, even though O'Brien passsed on grilling the former Obama advisor, conservative guest Will Cain was up to the task. "You said you flirted with socialism, communism, various aspects," Cain told Jones, and asked "What I'm curious about is when you were inside, you were part of this administration. How much does your ideology reflect the ideology of the administration?" [Video below the break. Audio here.]

Soledad O'Brien's CNN show is suffering some pretty horrific ratings, and yet she still had the gall to ask Rick Santorum's communications director why the candidate won't drop out of the presidential race.

The quarterly numbers for O'Brien's morning show Starting Point were the lowest in more than a decade at CNN for that time slot, in fact. She averaged less than 100,000 viewers per day from the age 25-54 crowd. [Video below the break. Audio here.]

Apparently, Soledad O'Brien's idea of a balanced discussion is three-to-one Democratic majority. Three out of the four guests she hosted on Wednesday's Starting Point to discuss the ObamaCare hearings were Democrats, and the CNN host did not press them to defend the health care bill's constitutionality.

Her questions simply focused on the state of the legislation and the implications of the Supreme Court decision, teeing up the Democrats to defend the bill and downplay the chance that the individual mandate will be overturned.

Liberal comedian John Fugelsang has appeared for three straight days on CNN's Starting Point as a panel member. Although simply listed as a "political comedian," Fugelsang has offered some outrageous liberal commentary during his time as a CNN guest.

For instance, on Wednesday morning he cracked a joke about Rick Santorum being a "homophobe." He previously called Arizona Governor Jan Brewer (R) a "rude lunatic" and ridiculed Catholics who follow their church's teaching on birth control. [Video below the break. Audio here.]

One week before the Supreme Court hears arguments on Obamacare, CNN's legal analyst has already come down against the conservative side as "really weak." Jeffrey Toobin gave the legal precedents for an individual health insurance mandate and insinuated that it was constitutional on Monday's Starting Point.

Toobin said, regarding those who believe Congress does not have the power to force people to buy health insurance, "basically that is a really weak argument, in that the United States Congress has been regulating health care for years, has been involved in this market for years, and this is a perfectly ordinary use of Congress's power." [Video below the break. Audio here.]

In her syndicated column today (at NewsBusters; at her home blog), Michelle Malkin runs down how CNN news anchor Soledad O'Brien has an affinity for the work of the late Harvard Professor Derrick Bell, particularly his "critical race theory" (CRT) that she has to this point not disclosed to her CNN viewers.

O'Brien also had a guest professor on her program who told the audience that CRT has nothing to do with, in Michelle's words, "bashing America as a white supremacy-ruled government." Trouble is, the professor has written that CRT “highlight(s) the ways in which the law is not neutral and objective, but designed to support White supremacy and the subordination of people of color.” As Michelle wrote: "Oops." An NB tipster noted that O'Brien's O'Babbling should not have surprised anyone given her supportive reaction, noted at the time at Media Bistro, to a particularly odd and pathetic speech (transcript here) the Rev. Jeremiah Wright of Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ (y'know, the guy whose inflammatory, anti-American sermons Barack Obama never heard despite almost two decades as a TUCC member) gave at an NAACP dinner in Detroit on April 26, 2008 (internal link was in original):

CNN's Soledad O'Brien told her critics on Monday to "stop tweeting" her and that the particular debate over Obama's past was over. Then on Tuesday she hosted birth control activist Sandra Fluke and simply rolled out the red carpet for her guest to knock her own conservative critics.

Fluke slammed her critics for spewing "misinformation" and silencing women "regarding their own health care." CNN host Soledad O'Brien pointed viewers to Fluke's CNN.com op-ed and teed her guest up with easy questions like "How have the last couple of weeks been?" [Video below the break.]

Last week, CNN's Soledad O'Brien got into a heated debate with Breitbart.com's Joel Pollak over his story tying then-law student Barack Obama to radical professor Derrick Bell. O'Brien insisted that neither Bell nor his critical race theory was radical, and then hosted an Emory Law professor on Monday to debunk Pollak's story.

The CNN host has clearly expressed her support for Professor Bell but has failed to answer for bizarre statements and writings of his that exude radicalism. She simply teed up a professor of critical race theory (CRT) to explain how normal it actually is. [Video below the break.]

When Breitbart.com's Joel Pollak went on CNN and connected then-law student Barack Obama to radical Harvard professor Derrick Bell, CNN guest Jay Thomas of Sirius radio began creepily asking Pollak if he was afraid of violence from black people, on Thursday morning's Starting Point.

During the chippy segment, host Soledad O'Brien fiercely defended Bell and insisted that Obama's previous support of him was a non-story. She accused Pollak of "misreading" Bell's critical race theory, even though the professor has clearly espoused radical views in his past, including writing a fictional account of how blacks would be sold to aliens as slaves. O'Brien also failed to disclose that she herself is an admitted admirer of Bell's. [Video below the break. Audio here.]

John F. Kennedy may be a hallowed name within Democrat circles, but CNN's Soledad O'Brien seemed to argue Wednesday that he is revered among Catholics too, so much so that they won't vote for a candidate who attacks him.

After Tuesday night's Michigan GOP primary, O'Brien tried to get Rick Santorum's press secretary to admit that the candidate lost Catholic voters in the state because he attacked former President John F. Kennedy for saying the church had no role in the policy of the state.  [Video below the break. Audio here.]

While she grilled Rick Santorum's press secretary over his debate performance, CNN host Soledad O'Brien asked an Obama aide nothing even approaching a critical question on Thursday's Starting Point, and even teed her up to bash Republicans.

O'Brien mirrored her own network's treatment of President Obama in Wednesday night's debate – avoiding critical questions on the President's record and past statements. Instead, she kept the focus squarely on Republican missteps in her interviews with both Republican and Democrat staffers. [Video below the break. Click here for audio.]

Cathy Areu, of the Washington Post Magazine, compared Sarah Palin to unsophistocated redneck Larry the Cable Guy back in 2010. She was back to her old self Thursday morning on CNN's Starting Point, railing against Gov. Chris Christie (R-N.J.) as "a Tony Soprano" character.

CNN host Soledad O'Brien also had some fun with Christie's weight, chuckling at Piers Morgan's compliment that governor was doing well in his weight loss regimen. [Video below the break. Click here for audio.]

According to CNN's Soledad O'Brien, the auto bailout led to a "pretty incredible resurgence" in the American auto industry. She grilled Congressman Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) on Thursday morning over candidate Mitt Romney's previous opposition to the bailout, saying that his opposition and the auto industry's eventual success could become a "huge, huge problem" for the candidate.

"[H]e was against the bailout, and the bailout looking back now, has been successful. Isn't that just standing on the wrong side at the end of the day?" O'Brien pressed Rogers, a special advisor to Romney's campaign. But O'Brien failed to report some of the specific consequences of the bailout, such as the cost to taxpayers. [Video below.]

Liberal CNN anchor Soledad O'Brien on Tuesday berated Republican Pat Toomey as a supporter of tax cuts for the rich. The Starting Point host then cited a liberal think tank and proceeded to piously portray herself as above partisanship: "I'm just a voter, just a regular old voter." [See video below. MP3 audio here.] Toomey slammed the "factually ridiculous" charges.

During the interview with Republican Senator Patrick Toomey, O’Brien repeatedly slammed the Senator’s budget proposals as being rich-friendly and harmful for the middle class. She declared, "Here's what you propose. Tax cuts for the wealthy. For people who are making under $200,000, taxes would...rise."

National Journal's Ron Brownstein challenged the assumption that the Bush tax cuts created much economic growth, noting that they failed to stem the rising number of Americans living in poverty. Brownstein made his liberal points Thursday morning on CNN to guest Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.).

"What in that record gives you confidence that extending those tax cuts will produce better economic growth in the future than they've contributed to so far in the past?" the CNN analyst posed to Ryan, citing that the number of Americans living in poverty increased by 8 million after President Bush enacted his tax cuts.

Even when told that paying for birth control would violate the consciences of certain religious organizations, CNN's Soledad O'Brien wondered why the groups still shouldn't have to cover contraceptives for interested employees.

O'Brien cited statistics from the abortion-supportive Guttmacher Institute showing that even the vast majority of Catholic women use birth control. She then asked why so many shouldn't have the option to pursue such practices, regardless of what the Catholic Church teaches. [Video below the break. Click here for audio.]