The Ed Show

You gotta love ol’ Ed Schultz. A recent demotion at the Lean Forward network hasn’t stopped the bombastic MSNBC host from sputtering over Republican opposition to ObamaCare, despite the fact that Schultz himself admits he doesn’t really know what’s in the bill.

Schultz was recently moved from his weeknight, primetime spot in MSNBC’s über-progressive lineup to weekends, a move sources at the network said would make space for “new talent.” The liberal host has since transformed his new weekend show into an hour-long advertisement for ObamaCare, gushing on Saturday’s The Ed Show that the law is “a great step forward to get us to universal health care some day.” [Yes, Ed, who owns a Canadian fishing lodge, is pining for Canada-style “single-payer” care.]

New day and time, same old liberal slop.  Ed Schultz returned to MSNBC yesterday in his new, relegated-to-the-ratings-desert slot of weekend afternoons.  

One of the topics was the targeting by the IRS of conservative organizations seeking tax-exempt status.  Predictably, Schultz & Co. did all they could to sweep the scandal under the carpet.  Schultz suggested the IRS had nothing to apologize for, while the ever-prolix Michael Eric Dyson actually claimed it was "much ado about nothing,"  and was even willing to diss President Obama's power, saying he lacked the "juice" to have ordered the IRS targeting. View the video after the jump.

Golly, what an upbeat guy MSNBC’s Ed Schultz is! If anyone else in broadcast “journalism” had just been handed a one-way ticket from primetime to Siberia, he’d probably be distraught. But not the roly-poly Schultz.

He used the waning seconds of his last weekday-at-8:00 appearance not to wax nostalgic and thank loyal viewers but to say this:

MSNBC "pushed out" Ed Schultz in order to "make way for new talent," according to Politico on Thursday. This would contradict Schultz, who insisted the decision was voluntary and a great step forward for his "brand." What is that brand, exactly? Sneering at "bastard," "slut," "dirthole" conservatives who want to see Barack Obama murdered. [See below for a video montage. Audio here.]

Schultz's show is being moved to weekends, home of MSNBC's prison specials and To Catch a Predator marathons. Schultz insisted this change will allow him to "produce and focus stories I care about and I know are terribly important to American families." Presumably, examples of this include when he asked his radio audience about Hadassah Lieberman: "Does the word 'whore' apply?" On May 24, 2011, he sneered at Laura Ingraham: "Like this right-wing slut, what’s her name, Laura Ingraham? Yeah, she’s a talk slut."

On Thursday's NBC Today, White House correspondent Peter Alexander promoted the first public comments from Scott Prouty, the bartender who secretly recorded Mitt Romney's 47% comments during the 2012 presidential race: "Even today some political observers insist without that 47% tape, we might actually be talking about President Mitt Romney these days. Instead, the infamous comments marked what was really a campaign game-changer. And now months later, the man behind that tape has finally come forward." [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump]

In the report that followed, Alexander highlighted portions of a Prouty's interview with MSNBC host Ed Schultz on Wednesday's The Ed Show and whitewashed the bartender's obvious left-wing ideology made apparent in the exchange: "Speaking publicly for the first time Wednesday, Prouty, who says he's a registered independent...[said] he arrived at the dinner that night with an open mind."

NewsBusters reported Wednesday that MSNBC's Ed Schultz was leaving his 8 PM time slot to appear instead on weekends.

According to Brian Stelter of the New York Times, Schultz's replacement is Chris Hayes:

Time for Ed Schultz to hire someone to vet what he says to make sure it doesn't embarrass him when juxtaposed with something he's previously said.

On a segment during MSNBC's "The Ed Show" last week, Schultz angrily condemned several examples of Republicans engaged in voter fraud over the last few years. (audio clip after page break)

Ed Schultz was in seventh heaven, lionizing Elizabeth Warren [new first name 'Sheriff'] for the way she grilled financial regulators for failing to take big banks to trial.

Just one teenie-weenie factoid Ed failed to mention: those two regulators he showed Warren scalding during his MSNBC show tonight were appointed by, yup, President Barack Obama.  View the video after the jump.

If beauty is truly in the eye of the beholder, then the host of “The Ed Show” on MSNBC is definitely wearing blinders.

During the Wednesday night edition of his program, Schultz attacked Steve Doocy of the morning “Fox and Friends” show for stating that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is the subject of a new website that is “showing off this glamorous new face. Face-lift, perhaps?”

Politico media writer Dylan Byers reported that Ed Schultz viewers on MSNBC are bigger Obama fans than Schultz fans. While Schultz asserted on Thursday night that "many Americans want to know how the United States can order the killings of American citizens without due process," a phone survey during the hour of his show found
78 percent said they agreed with "the policy of targeted killing of American citizens." Only 22 percent stuck with Ed.

Byers wrote, "These results may have come as a surprise to Schultz -- neither he nor MSNBC PR immediately responded to a request for his reaction -- because the results of his viewer surveys almost always align with his own progressive worldview."

Remember then-obscure Senator Barack Obama's speech to the 2004 DNC? All the no blue state, no red state stuff?  Fugedaboutit.  Now, he's all about killing—figuratively of course—his political opponents.

Ed Schultz sees Obama for what he is: and applauds him for it, of course.  On his MSNBC show tonight, Schultz repeatedly claimed--polls notwithstanding--that America is a center-left, progressive country. On Obama's coming battles over his liberal agenda, Schultz said--with a sly grin--that when it comes to Republicans, the president's plan is to "grab the jugular." View the video after the jump.

On Thursday's The Ed Show, MSNBC analyst Jonathan Alter -- formerly of Newsweek -- chastised Whole Foods CEO John Mackey for using the word "fascism" criticizing Obamacare, suggesting that he is less "enlightened" than liberal CEOs like Warren Buffett for not realizing that "The only reason that they have been able to be so successful is because they're operating in a country, this country, where they get all kinds of public services..."

Without informing viewers that Whole Foods employs a plan based on high deductibles and "personal savings accounts" to provide health care for all its full-time employees and about 90 percent of employees who work at least 30 hours a week, Alter went on to assert that libertarian-minded CEOs like Mackey "don't get" that they have "certain social responsibilities," and charged that Whole Foods has a "crunchy" and "earthtone ethic" regarding its employees.

Liberals always say they don’t want to take away guns. But give them an awful tragedy like the Newtown, Conn. shooting and they get bolder and more honest. MSNBC host Ed Schultz showed a rare bout of such honesty during a brief Twitter exchange Saturday. Schultz asked “Why should anyone own an assault rifle ?” and followed it up by saying “it's the confiscation of these types of weapons that counts and will have an impact.”

“The Ed Show” host wasn’t done his attack on gun rights. “The NRA needs to state the case why assault weapons are needed by anyone,” he claimed. And after that, he told one poster that “a Glock pistol qualifies as an assault weapon.” That last bit is surely a surprise to both gun owners and Congress which didn’t include handguns in its previous assault weapons ban.

On MSNBC's The Ed Show Monday night, New York Times sports columnist William Rhoden defended NBC sportscaster Bob Costas's controversial comments, made during halftime of an NFL game Sunday night, on the murder-suicide committed by Kansas City Chief player Jovan Belcher, even agreeing to the idea that the NFL commissioner try to ban players from owning guns.

Costas had quoted an anti-gun screed by sports columnist Jason Whitlock, in part: "Our current gun culture ensures that more and more domestic disputes will end in the ultimate tragedy, and that more convenience-store confrontations over loud music coming from a car will leave more teenage boys bloodied and dead. Handguns do not enhance our safety. They exacerbate our flaws, tempt us to escalate arguments, and bait us into embracing confrontation rather than avoiding it." (Video below.)

In an interview with CBS News anchor Scott Pelley last week, Goldman Sachs chairman and CEO Lloyd Blankfein immediately brought up a highly sensitive subject that liberals in the media and highest levels of government refuse to acknowledge: entitlement spending on Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are unsustainable at their current rate and need significant reform to ensure those programs exist in the future.

In response to the clip, MSNBC host Ed Schultz and Teamsters President James Hoffa were beside themselves on Tuesday night's Ed Show -- offended that Blankfein would voice such a "misinformed" view on national television. The only son of the notorious Jimmy Hoffa was ardently opposed to the idea that there is anything currently wrong with the system as is, to suggest otherwise is just "outrageous" he thundered. [ relevant video & transcript below ]

Ah, Thanksgiving.  A time for Americans to come together, be grateful for their blessings—and tell people with different politics to stuff it?

That's apparently Ed Schultz's take on the holiday. On his MSNBC show this evening, gloating over his presumption that taxes will be going up on the top 2%, Schultz sent this warm 'n fuzzy message to John Boehner: "think about it over your turkey and stuffing Speaker Boehner. And by the way, you can put some gravy on that--and you know the rest of the sentence."  View the video after the jump.

It should come as no surprise to most people that MSNBC is a liberal network, but it appears as though they are now actively campaigning for the Democratic Party.  For several years, MSNBC has produced their own ads featuring numerous on-air personalities promoting different liberal causes.

 MSNBC’s latest ad, however, goes well beyond promotion of liberalism and has shifted into outright DNC promotion.  Narrated by ultra-liberal primetime host Rachel Maddow, the commercial is a litany of Democratic “achievements” essentially a mirror-image of the DNC platform.   [See video below page break.  MP3 audio here.] 

Ed Schultz's lofty opinion that he's indispensable at MSNBC is apparently not widely shared at 30 Rockefeller Center.

Schultz responded angrily on his radio show yesterday to a New York Times story about the network that contained an eye-opening disclosure close to the end of the piece (audio clips after page break).

Forget about Benghazi, Fast & Furious, Solyndra, etc. -- it's Mitt Romney who has serious problems with transparency if you're to believe the talking heads at MSNBC. He hasn't taken questions from reporters for three whole weeks, groused Ed Schultz on the Halloween edition of his program.

Of course, President Obama hasn't exactly been willing to talk to the press corps either. As we've documented, his recent sit-downs with NBC's Brian Williams and a chat with comedian Jay Leno were gauzy interviews. Add to the ridiculousness of Schultz's gripe was that his guest contributor on the topic was none other than DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman-Schultz (D-Fla.), who is obviously a fierce partisan paid to be a mouthpiece for the Democratic Party . [ video & transcript below ]

Over the past several months, MSNBC has been on a tirade criticizing attempts by mostly Republican state legislatures to ensure voting integrity by requiring a photo ID in order to vote. 

As NewsBusters has documented, one of the leaders of the anti-ID movement is none other than the host of the 6 p.m. Eastern program Politics Nation, the Rev. Al Sharpton, who on numerous occasions has suggested that such laws are thinly-veiled, racially animated attempts to depress minorities of their right to vote.  [See video below break.]

It appears as though MSNBC has gone into overdrive covering up for the Obama administration over the terrorist attack on our consulate in Libya.  Following emails uncovered by CBS News late Tuesday evening showing the White House knew within two hours that the attack was terrorist related, MSNBC has run a grand total of two stories on these shocking developments. 

Unlike yesterday, NBC's Today did provide a news brief on the emails Thursday morning as well as a story during Wednesday night’s Nightly News, but their sister cable network MSNBC has only covered the story once today, on The Daily Rundown at 9:00 a.m. Eastern.

On Tuesday's edition of MSNBC's The Ed Show, all but official Obama campaign surrogates Ed Schultz and Richard Wolffe discussed the third and final presidential debate. Both declared the president a clear winner and insulted the intelligence of anyone who would disagree. Failing to recognize the irony of what they were doing for Obama, Schultz criticized the Romney campaign for declaring victory -- as if it defied all logic.

"Romney's camp is spinning last night as a victory for him," he said. "What about that? I mean, do they really think the American people are that stupid?" [ video below, MP3 audio available here ]

Appearing on Friday's NBC Today, left-wing MSNBC host Ed Schultz desperately tried to explain away President Obama's bad debate performance: "I think that there were so many lies coming across that stage, and so many inaccuracies, it was hard for the President to comprehend it and decide which one he wanted to attack first." [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump]

Co-host Savannah Guthrie called him out on the liberal talking point: "That sounds a little bit like you're making excuses for the President." Schultz doubled down on his lame attempt to defend the President: "[Romney] was the guy in the board room, he was the corporate shark, he knew how to get this audience done and he was going to run over everybody. And I think that might play to his disadvantage in the long run."

If whoever invokes Hitler first in an argument loses, then place an 'L' next to Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson's name tonight . . .

On this evening's Ed Show, slamming Mitt Romney's comments about the 47%, Robinson suggested that Romney sees himself as one of the "ubermenschen."  That of course was, by way of Nietzche, one of Hitler's favorite phrases. Video after the jump.

MSNBC's Ed Schultz isn't the only liberal media member disappointed with Augusta National Golf Club's announcement that it's admitting two women including Condoleezza Rice as members.

The Nation magazine actually published a piece Monday titled "Condi Rice's Membership at Augusta National Is Nothing to Celebrate":

The Augusta National Golf Club did an amazing thing Monday: it finally admitted women as members, with one of them being African-American Condoleezza Rice.

But that wasn’t good enough for MSNBC’s Ed Schultz who whined on his program later that evening that Michelle Obama and Hillary Clinton should have received this honor instead (video follows with transcribed highlights and commentary):

Some Biden gaffes easily get papered over by the media. Others, like yesterday's racially insensitive remarks, are too big to ignore. And that's precisely when the dutiful Obama/Biden acolytes at MSNBC go into full spin mode, defending the indefensible.

Take Ed Schultz. Following Biden’s controversial crack before a largely African-American gathering that Mitt Romney will unchain Wall Street and put "you all back in chains," Schultz brought on Georgetown University Professor Michael Eric Dyson to accuse the GOP of being the real racists in the 2012 election.   [Video coming soon.  MP3 audio here.]

Appearing as a guest on Thursday's The Ed Show, MSNBC political analyst Jonathan Alter - formerly of Newsweek - advised the Obama campaign to argue that, if Mitt Romney is elected President, "a lot of people will die" when Obamacare is repealed.