MSNBC

Appearing as a guest on Thursday's PoliticsNation on MSNBC, Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank mocked South Carolina Republican Governor Nikki Haley as someone who has "reached out to a minority" in the form of white supremacists since they are a "minority," as he reacted to accusations that a member of her reelection committee is a white supremacist. Milbank:

"Pay attention to Senator Cruz because he is the unsmiling, contemptuous face of the wild, nasty, hard-right fringe of a Party that once competed with the Democrats to be the country’s governing Party."

So said MSNBC's Chris Matthews on Friday's Hardball (video follows with transcript and commentary):

On his May 23 program, the Rev. Al Sharpton’s PoliticsNation panel turned to the thorny issue of race in politics. As could be expected, it was not a balanced discussion as Sharpton’s panel was an Amen pew of liberal pundits: the Washington Post’s Dana Milbank and left-wing XM Radio host Joe Madison.

For his part, Milbank snarked that the GOP is made up of “a coalition of white southern men,” but even more outrageously, Madison railed that Republican leaders “really don’t know people who look different than they are.” Sharpton, a Baptist minister, did not rebuke his guests for bearing false witness.

In a way you have to hand it to Krystal Ball. The former Democratic congressional candidate-turned-MSNBC co-host is always hard at work spinning for the Obama administration, come what may. Appearing on Thursday's Politics Nation, the co-host of MSNBC’s The Cycle raved about President Obama’s May 23 national security speech, claiming the president is “reining in his own power,” a “remarkable and incredibly unusual” move.

Ball fawned over the president’s speech to host Al Sharpton, claiming he “put the steps in place” to close the Guantanamo Bay detention facility, before offering this proclamation about Obama’s executive power:

MSNBC’s openly gay daytime host Thomas Roberts has almost daily segments promoting the network’s pro-gay agenda. Over the past several months, one of Roberts’ pet projects has been opposing a long-standing policy by the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) prohibiting openly gay individuals from being members of or leaders in the organizations.

On May 23, the BSA voted to allow openly gay individuals to join troops as of next year, but gay adults would still not be allowed to lead a troop. As a result, on Thursday May 24, Roberts opened his 11:00 a.m. show with the on-screen graphic “Far Enough?” to express his displeasure with the BSA’s decision. Rather than leave it posed as a question, Roberts made pretty clear his view that indeed it didn't go "far enough."

Chris Matthews on Thursday made it crystal clear that he sees his role at MSNBC is to present only one side of any issue.

Clearly oblivious to how he was letting the cat out of the bag for all to see, the Hardball host trashed his own network's Morning Joe for being "open to all people's points of view" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Fort Hood shooter Maj. Nidal Hassan is still drawing his military paycheck while the Defense Department has refused to deem Hassan's victims as suffering combat-related wounds, which would entitle them to Purple Hearts and additional pay and benefits to aid the cost of their rehabilitation, Scott Friedman of Dallas, Texas, NBC affiliate KXAS reported on Wednesday morning. [watch the original KXAS report below the page break]

Yesterday, native Texan and MSNBC anchor Tamron Hall aired Friedman's report on her NewsNation program in her "Gut Check" segment in which she asked her viewers to weigh in on her Facebook page, "Should the Pentagon designate the Fort Hood shooting a terrorist attack?" [For their part, 76 percent of her viewers agreed that it should.] Although this is a pretty compelling report, at time of publication, neither NBC's Nightly News nor Today programs have aired the story.

Longtime MSNBC host Andrea Mitchell on Thursday lashed out at the Obama administration, complaining that "more than any of its predecessors in recent years [they have], gone after journalists." The usually Obama-friendly journalist complained that the White House "has not" challenged journalists in a restrained way, but "has done it in a very broad, sweeping way as we saw with the Associated Press and also with Fox News." [See video below. MP3 audio here.]

In another segment, Mitchell skeptically commented on the President's renewed effort to close Guantanamo Bay: "But do we have a solution yet, first of all, for those, for whom there is no place to go and who cannot be brought to trial?" Talking to Jeh Johnson, she pressed, "What about the residual group of prisoners? Where will they go?"

On the Wednesday, May 22, The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell show on MSNBC, host O'Donnell called for the defeat of a "vicious" Senate amendment pushed by Louisiana Republican Senator David Vitter which would bar people convicted of some violent crimes from receiving welfare benefits.

The MSNBC host complained that the children of a criminal would "pay for his crime by going hungry," and called for "human decency" to defeat the measure. O'Donnell began the short segment:

Joe Scarborough seems to have an obsession with conservative and Tea Party favorite Ted Cruz. Scarborough and his Thursday Morning Joe panel bashed the freshman Texas senator for at least the fourth time in a few months, berating the Lone Star Republican for his distrust of Congressional leadership. The MSNBC host suggested Cruz has “no interest in working with any of his colleagues,” and accused the senator of using the Senate “as a branding vehicle.”

Scarborough went as far as to wishfully pronounce Cruz’s political career dead, suggesting that his criticism of Democratic and Republican leaders in Congress on the Senate floor Wednesday would "blow up in his face” and “hurt the great people in Texas":

As my colleagues at NewsBusters have documented, the liberal media have already jumped on the bandwagon to defend an 18-year old Florida woman with unlawful sexual conduct with a 14-year old girl, saying authorities are only pressing charges because she's a lesbian. On Wednesday evening, MSNBC’s Chris Hayes joined the media frenzy by declaring this case an example of “LBGT Injustice.” 

On the May 22 edition of "All In," Hayes featured 18-year old Kaitlyn Hunt, her mother Kelly Hunt-Smith and their attorney Julia Graves to hype what Hayes remarked was an “incredible story.” With the on-screen graphic titling the segment, “LGBT Injustice.”

NBC News senior investigative reporter Lisa Myers had some harsh words for the Obama administration Thursday.

Appearing on MSNBC's Morning Joe, Myers said, "For a year the IRS essentially knowingly lied to Congress and no one came forward" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

With each passing day, it's becoming clearer and clearer that many of the current White House resident's followers in the media are really angered by his attack on the Associated Press and Fox News's James Rosen.

On MSNBC's Morning Joe Thursday, the National Journal's Ron Fournier said of this issue, "You can't make journalism a conspiracy...The irony here is that President Obama, by raising a jihad against the press, has now made it more likely that we’re going to have what he called 'dumb wars'" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

You can take the flack out of the DNC but you can't take the DNC out of the flack, especially it's MSNBC regular and newly-minted weekend host Karen Finney, who today said that Mitt Romney should have made a bigger deal out of the IRS scandal on the campaign trail. The only problem, of course, is that no one knew about the IRS's malfeasance until well after the election.

On Wednesday's Now with Alex Wagner, Ms. Finney claimed that, "Everybody knew about this investigation long before the election. So, if they were that freaked out, why didn't Romney make more of a big deal of it during the election?" Fortunately for viewers at home, former AP reporter Ron Fournier, now with National Journal, corrected Finney's ridiculous speculation. [See video after jump. MP3 audio here.]

If Barack Obama is losing Chris Matthews, he might be in serious trouble. The MSNBC host on Wednesday declared that the Tea Party is the victim of "profiling" by the Internal Revenue Service that is on the level of targeting innocent Muslims as terrorists. On the subject of former IRS official Lois Lerner pleading the Fifth, Matthews wondered, "Why, if you have nothing to hide and you're a truth teller and you're of sound mind, and she seems to be, why doesn't she sit in that witness stand and answer truthfully?" [See video below. MP3 audio here.]

The bewildered host continued, "Why wouldn't she want to clear her reputation today?" Matthews even went so far as to compare the attack on conservatives to racial profiling: "I go to the airport and I'm running TSA. Instead of deciding based upon people's movements around the world that might be suspicious, going to countries that cause us trouble, I just look for everybody that looks Arab and I put them in one line. The American people would say that's outrageous."

MSNBC's Rachel Maddow warned her very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very liberal audience that the Virginia Republican Party just picked a slate of "very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very conservative" candidates to run for office this fall.

On Tuesday's edition of MSNBC's Rachel Maddow Show the host left no doubt in her viewers' minds about how "very conservative" she found the candidates selected by Virginia Republicans to be, as she used the word "very" a total of ten times in just one segment. (video after the jump)

Even ABC News’s Cokie Roberts recognizes that the Obama administration has far overstepped its constitutional boundaries in obtaining the personal emails of Fox News reporter James Rosen. The political commentator denounced the Obama/Holder Justice Department’s actions on Tuesday’s Morning Joe on MSNBC, claiming the overreach was “appalling.”

Roberts later criticized the administration’s treatment of the press at large, arguing that the White House has its “own broadcasting network” that delivers “unfiltered presidential propaganda to people all the time.” Yes, she said that on MSNBC, failing to see the irony. And yes, this is the same Cokie Roberts that just last week marveled at how Obama’s presidency was “scandal-free.”

As more revelations surface concerning the White House targeting press members, more and more of Barack Obama's fans in the media are breaking ranks.

Count NBC's chief White House correspondent amongst them, for on MSNBC's Morning Joe Wednesday, Chuck Todd actually said, "They want to criminalize journalism" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

How worried should President Obama be when he loses the likes of Al Hunt?

On today's Morning Joe, discussing the James Rosen outrage, Hunt called President Obama "no better than Richard Nixon" when it comes to the press. He then strongly suggested that Attorney General Eric Holder should go. View the video after the jump.

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.]

As NewsBusters has been reporting, Americans are tiring of MSNBC.

Deadline reported Monday the liberal so-called "news" network's ratings last week dropped to levels not seen since 2006:

MSNBC ads on liberal websites like Salon.com are pushing to increase interest and ratings in the badly named show "All In," when it could be titled "A Few In." Or, to quote Dana Carvey's George Bush, "Still Gaining Acceptance." The ad says “Click here to get to know Chris Hayes.” This takes you to the “All In With Chris Hayes” Facebook page.

What you get there is a great sense of just how energetically Hayes is trying to avoid the Obama scandals. Instead, the scandal is the alleged starvation of the public sector:

As NewsBusters has reported over the years, America's media love to hype every serious weather event.

On Monday, shortly after an F4 tornado demolished the town of Moore, Oklahoma, MSNBC's Martin Bashir called it "perhaps the worst tornado in the history of the planet" (video follows with transcript and commentary, file photo):

On Friday's PoliticsNation on MSNBC, host Al Sharpton lambasted House Republicans for repeatedly voting to repeal ObamaCare, calling it a "scandal" and an "outrage," as he seemed to cite a questionable study from a left-wing source from 2009 claiming that 45,000 people a year die because they lack health insurance. Sharpton began the segment:

Now that the race for Virginia’s next governor has kicked into high gear, NBC News’ Chief White House Correspondent has decided to be partisan and sharply criticized the Republican ticket.

On his May 20 edition of The Daily Rundown, the MSNBC anchor hammered the GOP’s nominee for Virginia Lieutenant Governor, African-American pastor E.W. Jackson, as extreme and someone who “might make Todd Akin look like a moderate.” "Can the GOP win in 2013 with a ticket of candidates who are best known for being very conservative and very outspoken on social issues?" Todd rhetorically asked before playing several clips of Jackson in a manner worthy of a liberal attack ad. [See video after jump. MP3 audio here.]

Former Obama press secretary and campaign advisor Robert Gibbs had some harsh words for New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd Monday.

Appearing on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, Gibbs said, “I don’t normally read Maureen...largely because it’s sort of largely the same column for the last like eight years” (video follows with transcript and absolutely no need for additional commentary):

Appearing as a guest on Thursday's PoliticsNation show on MSNBC, Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank mocked House Republicans for repeatedly holding unsuccessful votes to repeal ObamaCare as he suggested they should continue to "waste" time so "they'll be less of a harm to the country" because that way "they're not cutting food stamps." Milbank:

The “journalists” at MSNBC continued to fawn over ObamaCare on Friday’s Morning Joe, even in the midst of startling criticism for the bill from David Gregory, liberal host of Meet the Press. The discussion over the president’s massive health care overhaul came after reports that the IRS official in charge of the agency’s unfair treatment of conservative groups during its targeting is now leading the IRS’s efforts to implement ObamaCare.

Gregory pointed out that the Medicare surtax that is funding “Obamacare across the board” is “a lot of money.” “You may not know how it helps you,” he noted, “but you know what it's taking away from you.” Of course, dutiful defenders of Obama like MSNBC Politics Nation host the Rev. Al Sharpton and Huffington Post’s Sam Stein were on hand to defend ObamaCare [see video below the page break].

For a brief period on the morning of May 17, MSNBC was actually acting like a real news network. Starting at 9:00 a.m. Eastern on Friday, MSNBC carried live coverage of a House Ways and Means Committee hearing on the Obama IRS scandal, but apparently actual news coverage can only last so long before the network breaks out in hives from objective journalism.

Following an hour of live coverage, MSNBC felt it necessary to cut from the hearing to interview Rep. Joe Crowley (D-N.Y.) to dismiss the entire proceedings as political partisanship. MSNBC was the only cable news network to cut from the live coverage to conduct a meaningless interview with a Democrat to slam Republicans.