MSNBC

There are times when I really think I live in different country than liberal media members.

Take Al Sharpton for example who in his most recent Lean Forward ad for MSNBC said that America isn’t living up to the Pledge of Allegiance’s creed of “One nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all” (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Ever since MSNBC finally chose to cover the murder trial of abortionist Kermit Gosnell, the majority of MSNBC hosts have used the case as a disgusting opportunity to slam conservatives who want to regulate abortion clinics. Morning Joe co-host Joe Scarborough was the first MSNBCer to actually mention the case, expressing disgust and outrage over the abortionist's practices.

Today, which marks the 6th day since the jury entered deliberations, the network’s only other conservative, S.E. Cupp, finally used her daily platform to express similar outrage over the case involving Gosnell.  [See video after jump. MP3 audio here.] 

We here at NewsBusters are often extremely critical of MSNBC’s Morning Joe as it often sets the agenda for the daily bias on the cable network. There are a few times, such as the Gosnell infanticide trial, when Morning Joe will actually prompt the rest of the liberal network to begin covering a story that it had previously ignored. Unfortunately that's not the case with Dick Harpootlian's racist attack on Gov. Nikki Haley (R-S.C.) at a fundraising dinner with Vice President Joe Biden in attendance.

You may recall that we noted that on May 6, Morning Joe ran a brief segment on the outgoing chairman of the South Carolina Democratic Party, Dick Harpootlian grousing that the Palmetto State's governor, who, like fellow conservative Southern governor Bobby Jindal is of Indian ethnic heritage, should be sent, “back wherever the hell she came from and this country can move forward.” 

On Election Day in South Carolina, as Republican Mark Sanford seeks to regain his old congressional seat, Mika Brzezinski did her best to stop Joe Scarborough from mentioning an ugly slur that the Chairman of the state's Democratic party had made against Republican Governor Nikki Haley.

Former South Carolina Democratic Chairman Dick Harpootlian was caught in controversy this week as he pledged to send Haley—daughter of Indian immigrants—"back to wherever the hell she came from.” According to the Morning Joe panel, Harpootlian has apologized for that remark.  But Harpootlian has never apologized for his 2012 remark, comparing Haley with Adolf Hitler's mistress Eva Braun.  When Scarborough began to cite that slur, Mika sought to silence him. Brzezinski actually resorted to the schoolkid technique of repeating "bah, bah, bah, bah" in order to drown Scarborough out, adding "we don't need to repeat it." View the video after the jump.   

Apparently not even Chris Matthews listens to Chris Matthews. On Monday's Hardball, the liberal anchor compared the speeches at the National Rifle Association's 2013 convention to the Nazis. Three minutes later, he decried the use of Nazi comparisons. On the same program, Matthews insisted that the Republican Party has forgiven the assassination  of GOP President Abraham Lincoln.

As he played clips of Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck at this past weekend's convention, Matthews railed, "First of all, it's Hitlerian, generally speaking, demagoguery. It's always about righteous indignation. All great demagogic speakers talk about how they're coming to get us." The host then played a clip of Beck showing a satirical poster of Michael Bloomberg as Vladimir Lenin. Mistaking this for Nazis, Matthews huffed, "But this idea of making moderate politicians like mike Bloomberg, who's really a centrist, into some sort of...what? A Nazi?" [See video below. MP3 audio here.]

On the Friday, May 3, Politics Nation, MSNBC host Al Sharpton fretted over the video that was played at Friday's NRA convention in Houston to introduce Rick Perry which shows the Texas governor firing at targets with an AR-15. Sharpton began the segment:

On Friday's All In show, with the words "The Sickness" displayed on screen behind him, MSNBC host Chris Hayes began the show with a commentary in which he tagged the NRA as a "far-right fringe organization" that "might be spelling their own demise" by celebrating the defeat of the universal background check proposal. Hayes:

It’s bad enough that MSNBC is extremely liberal, but when they acknowledge their biases but don’t attempt to correct them, it shows how incorrigible they are. Take Monday's Morning Joe, where the panelists discussed offensive comments made on Friday by outgoing South Carolina Democratic Party chairman Dick Harpootlian.

During his speech, which Vice President Joe Biden was in attendance to hear, Harpootlian disgustingly commented that Haley, who is of Indian decent should be sent, “back wherever the hell she came from and this country can move forward.”  [See video after jump.  MP3 audio here.] 

In 2005, USA Today uncovered the scandal that black columnist Armstrong Williams was paid to promote Bush’s Education Department initiatives. In 2013, it’s never a scandal when MSNBC anchors promote Obama’s Education Department initiatives. It’s another Great Leap Forward for government-media synchronicity.

Today at 4 pm, after her daily on-air hour is up, MSNBC anchor Tamron Hall is serving as moderator of a Google-Plus “hangout” at Howard University for the Education Department on “A Legacy of Excellence: Celebrating African American Teachers in our Classrooms.”

It really is amazing how liberal media members regularly make false statements on national television with total impunity.

Consider MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell who twice on HBO's Real Time Friday arrogantly claimed that the Obamas' federal income tax rate was "in the high twenties" (video follows with transcribed lowlights and commentary):

What's the difference between someone with a “far-left” philosophy and a person who's a “liberal?” Bill O'Reilly received an interesting answer to that question while interviewing Democratic strategist James Carville during Thursday night's edition of “The O'Reilly Factor.”

Carville said that far-left people, including the protesters who clashed with police in Seattle on May 1, are criminals who are “breaking the law,” a standard he used when rejecting the conservative host's assertion that “the MSNBC people” are “starting to dominate the political conversation.”

Washington Post media blogger Erik Wemple spends a lot of time picking apart Fox broadcasts, but he was stunned by a Thomas Roberts interview on MSNBC with the new leader of NARAL Pro-Choice America, Ilyse Hogue. She claimed “we were the first out of the gate to call attention to this case.” Like a news butler, Roberts set her up to make that bizarre claim and then moved on to the next publicist's softball.

Wemple shot back: “Having done precisely 3,454 Nexis and Internet search on the Gosnell case, we missed the part where NARAL had led a charge to highlight the alleged atrocities in West Philadelphia.” He kept searching, and NARAL’s new boss kept looking sillier and sillier:

On Thursday's The Last Word, MSNBC host Lawrence O'Donnell attacked the owners of the gun maker Crickett as "merchants of death" after a five-year-old boy in Kentucky, without adult supervision, used one of their guns to kill his younger sister: "The names I want you to know are the merchants of death, the merchants of this death, the guys who made and sold the rifle that killed this two-year-old girl. "

Once again, MSNBC has outdone itself with extreme comments on the subject of gun control.  The morning after MSNBC anchor Martin Bashir sacrilegiously altered the Lord's Prayer to portray the NRA as ghoulishly bloodthirsty,  Morning Joe panelist Donny Deutsch railed against members of Congress who oppose expanding background checks. 

At one point in his tirade, Deutsch leveled a rather sexist complaint against a female conservative senator, suggesting that she was not true to her "primal" feminine instincts to abhor guns.  [See video after jump. MP3 audio here.}

Last Friday, Obama made “history” by being the first president to address Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest purveyor of abortions. Obama did this in spite of the terrible timing, during the Kermit Gosnell trial. But like the Gosnell trial, Obama’s speech drew a blackout: no story on  ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS, or NPR.

MSNBC's Chris Hayes hailed it was a "history-making" speech, but complained that Obama never used the A-word, which he should never feel ashamed to use. Rachel Maddow praised Obama for “putting a new capstone” on bold proclamations for the “right to choose.” USA Today and the Los Angeles Times somehow missed it. The New York Times blogged it – with this amazing paragraph from reporter Peter Baker as he mentioned Gosnell:

When MSNBC announced in March that Ed Schultz's weeknight program, “The Ed Show,” was being replaced by “All In,” which is hosted by 34-year-old Chris Hayes, the executives of the "Lean Forward" network hoped that the new hour-long program would hold onto the channel's liberal audience and even draw in younger viewers.

Instead, the ratings for Hayes' broadcasts in April were down 18 percent in total viewers from that month's numbers in 2012 for “Ed,” and it appears that “All In” is also dragging down the viewership for “The Rachel Maddow Show,” which was off by seven percent from its ratings during that period a year ago, and “The Last Word With Lawrence O'Donnell,” which also fell eight percent in a year-to-year comparison.

On Wednesday's The Last Word on MSNBC, host Lawrence O'Donnell used a recent commencement speech delivered by Mitt Romney to slam the former GOP presidential candidate as taking the "most dishonorable posture that was possible for an able-bodied man of Mitt Romney's age" for refusing to serve in the Vietnam War while supporting the existence of the draft.

But the MSNBC host also called it "honorable service" for young people to protest against the Vietnam War while refusing to serve. O'Donnell:

The folks at MSNBC are still getting thrills down their leg at the thought of a out-of-the-closet gay man playing in the NBA.

Today, openly gay news anchor and MSNBC Live host Thomas Roberts -- who on a regular basis runs gay marriage advocacy segments on his program -- treated viewers to a puff piece in which he compared Washington Wizards center Jason Collins to the African-American athlete who broke the color barrier in Major League Baseball in 1947. [See video after jump.  MP3 audio here.]

Chris Matthews won't let facts get in the way of his attacks on Republicans. On Wednesday's Hardball, he recapped the GOP Senate primary in Massachusetts to fill John Kerry's seat. Matthews inaccurately described Gabriel Gomez, a former Navy SEAL as "pro-gun, pro-assault rifle and pro-life."

In reality, Gomez's own website notes: "The President and the Congress must act now to forge consensus and compromise to close the gun show loophole, and to keep weapons out of the hands of those with mental health issues." The Boston Globe in March reported that Gomez sent a letter to the state's Democratic governor. On guns, he insisted, "I support the positions President Obama has taken on these issues and you can be assured I will keep my word and work on these issues as I have promised." Looks like Matthews should check his facts before launching into a rant.

On Tuesday's All In show, MSNBC host Chris Hayes asserted that, since Republicans have taken control of the North Carolina state government, the state is moving toward becoming an "insane right-wing dystopia," and claimed that the GOP wants to engage in "voter suppression" in the state. Hayes:

The craziness keeps gushing from Chris Matthews’ mouth like a waterfall. On Tuesday morning, Matthews was anchoring MSNBC’s coverage of President Obama’s third news conference of the year. (Why they didn’t get a real journalist to anchor the coverage, I don’t know.) While waiting for the news conference to begin, Matthews and an array of panelists were discussing the gun control battle that they recently lost. The exasperated analysts seemed to agree that the background check bill failed in the Senate because gun rights advocates were more intense and single-minded than gun control advocates.   

Matthews, picking up on this idea, attempted to glorify the gun control crowd: “Let's keep reminding ourselves that a lot of people who are for gun safety also are for world peace, also for jobs, also for the environment. People who are for guns are for guns.” [Video below. MP3 audio here.]

For the first time in over two years, the farce of a cable news network known as MSNBC dropped to third place in total viewers and primetime in April being beaten by the long-suffering CNN and of course Fox News at the top.

As TVNewser reported Tuesday, despite April being a heavy news month with disasters in Boston and West Texas, MSNBC viewership was actually down from April 2012:

On Monday's All In show, MSNBC host Chris Hayes celebrated the coming out of gay NBA player Jason Collins as he tagged the development as a "real milestone," a "watershed moment," "something momentous," and "big, big news." He later hosted a panel that included liberal gay activist Dan Savage, known for trying to spread the flu to a GOP presidential candidate headquarters in 2000, and with aggressively trying to slander former Senator Rick Santorum for his criticism of homosexuality.

Hayes teased the show:

If there’s one senator that Joe Scarborough and the rest of the folks on MSNBC’s Morning Joe have contempt for it’s Ted Cruz. The freshman Texas senator and Tea Party favorite has been attacked by the morning schmoes on a regular basis, and on April 30 Scarborough -- a formerly conservative U.S. congressman -- went after Cruz once again. 

On Tuesday morning, Scarborough chastised Cruz for, “mocking members of his own party” surrounding the gun control debate in Congress. Scarborough and co-host Mika Brzezinski, who are no strangers to verbally attacking Cruz, described his actions as inappropriate:

The Texas freshman broke tradition on Friday by publicly discussing what went on behind closed doors when fellow Republicans criticized him for giving Democrats ammunition to portray the GOP as obstructionists. [See video after jump.] 

On Friday's All In show on MSNBC, host Chris Hayes not only praised President Obama for being the first sitting President to speak to Planned Parenthood in the group's history, but he also seemed to lament the fact that pro-choice Democrats are not confident enough to actually use the word "abortion" more openly, as he noted that the President avoided the word during his speech.

The MSNBC host asserted that the President "made history" as he plugged the segement before a commercial break: "President Obama made history today doing something that took 97 years for a President to do. That's coming up."

Bob Herbert: columnist from the Planet Benzar?  Seriously, what the former New York Times op-ed writer had to say this morning is enough to make you wonder whether he occupies the same orb as the rest of us.  Appearing on Melissa Harris-Perry's MSNBC show, Herbert literally laughed out loud at the notion that American media leans liberal.  According to Herbert, the bias in the American media is "overwhelmingly" to the right.

Herbert's snicker came in response to a statement by New York Times reporter Amy Chozick, also an MH-P guest.  Chozick recently wrote an article reporting on the Koch brothers' possible interest in buying the Tribune Company, which among other media outlets owns the Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Tribune. According to Chozick, the brothers' interest was in part sparked by their outrage in seeing the liberal bias when they pick up American newspapers. View the video after the jump.

What is it with Martin Bashir and his tendency to talk dirty to women guests?

A couple of months ago, we noted the MSNBC host claiming to guest Karen Finney that Senator Marco Rubio, in his questioning of a hearing witness, was seeking to show that he had "very strong testicles."  This evening, taking things a vulgar step further, Bashir told another Dem woman that Americans so detest Congress that they "would rather contract gonorrhea" than show respect for that institution.  View the video after the jump.

On Thursday's All In, MSNBC host Chris Hayes hinted that, if only Barack Obama had been successful in his efforts while he was a Senator, the fertilizer plant explosion in West Texas might not have happened, as the MSNBC host also suggested culpability from the Bush administration for transferring chemical plant regulation from the EPA to the Department of Homeland Security.

The MSNBC host plugged the segment at about 8:39 p.m.: