Fareed Zakaria

CNN's Fareed Zakaria Thursday called the debt ceiling battle a "sideshow" caused by the Tea Party.

Appearing on "In the Arena" as a supposed "astute observer of the economy," Zakaria proceeded to bungle economic and historic facts like a high school dropout (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Eliot Spitzer used his last day at CNN to take a shot at cable news and decry the debt ceiling debate as a "new low for American politics" – although he himself was embroiled in an ugly scandal as governor of New York only three years ago. And he made sure to include a lengthy Constitutional conversation with two of his favorite guests, liberals Fareed Zakaria and Simon Schama.

Schama, a professor of History at Columbia University, has criticized the Tea Party's reverence for the Founders' "infallibility," and snorted that they believed the Constitution to be "quasi-biblical revelation." The Columbia University professor wrote in a June 26 Newsweek piece that "True history is the enemy of reverence."

CNN foreign affairs analyst Fareed Zakaria – who has recently had off-the-record conversations with President Obama on foreign issues – noted the president's "restraint" in his dealing with the "Arab Spring" and the conflict in Libya Wednesday. Zakaria previously gave a thumbs-up for Obama's Mideast speech in May and later defended the president's plan for removing American troops from Afghanistan.

The point-of-note is that this is the same analyst whom, according to the New York Times, President Obama "sounded out" while shaping his foreign policy. The two simply had "off-the-record" conversations on foreign issues, according to Zakaria, and the CNN host claimed he was not an advisor to the President.

There are times when the idiocy oozing from the mouths of America's television commentators sickens me.

Consider Fareed Zakaria, who after telling NPR Friday, "CNN is getting smarter," actually said on the program bearing his name two days later that allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire "would provide the federal government with $3.9 trillion in revenues over the next decade and basically solve the deficit problem" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

CNN's Fareed Zakaria made a bit of a Kinsley gaffe Friday.

On NPR's "Morning Edition," Zakaria said, "The people who watch Fox are not going to watch CNN...Our competitors should properly be The New York Times, the BBC, NPR" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Continuing his push to "modernize the Constitution for the 21st century" by talking about "a few revisions," CNN's Fareed Zakaria hosted legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin for a liberal gripe session on his Sunday show Fareed Zakaria GPS. Both criticized the current Electoral College and state representation in the Senate, and also slammed the "grammatical mess" that is the Second Amendment.

One of the "kinks" of the American Constitution, Zakaria complained, is that "the Second Amendment is a grammatical mess, whatever you may think of the right to bear arms." This is liberal code for the amendment needs to be "updated" to their standards.

[Video below the break.]

On Wednesday, CNN's "Obama Adviser" aka Fareed Zakaria praised the current White House resident's Afghanistan address as a "remarkable speech for an American president."

On the CNN program bearing his name Sunday, Zakaria continued lavishing praise on our Commander-in-Chief saying, "Obama has basically made the right call" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Journalists in Washington don’t want just to write. They want the top government officials to take their advice, to use their wisdom to govern. Here’s what happens next: a dance between journalist and government official to build a mutually beneficial relationship. The official provides access, makes the journalist feel important and consulted, and then the journalist announces that the official is wise and is making all the right moves.

This is exactly what CNN host and Time columnist Fareed Zakaria has been doing with President Obama. He’s advising Obama (informally, of course) and then going on CNN and declaring the president’s speeches are quite good.  In an interview with Keach Hagey of Politico, Zakaria tried to deflect critics:

Fareed Zakaria, CNN's world affairs analyst, hailed President Obama's Afghanistan speech as a "remarkable speech for an American president" Wednesday and defended the president's decision to ignore the advice of his generals on the target dates for pulling troops out of Afghanistan.

"It was a remarkable speech for an American president in the caution, the strategic emphasis, rather than the idealistic emphasis," sounded Zakaria, no stranger to praising Obama's foreign policy speeches. He lauded the president's May 19 Mideast speech as "remarkably comprehensive" and "fair" and "balanced."

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CNN's Fareed Zakaria regurgitated his conservative-bashing Time magazine piece on his Sunday show Fareed Zakaria GPS. He opened up his program with the same barrage against conservatives that he launched in Time on Thursday, namely that today's conservatism is woefully divorced from reality like the Marxists of the 19th century.

Zakaria writes that "conservatives now resemble the old Marxists who refuse to look at actual experience." Instead, he argues, they are hopelessly enamored with "policies that are simply recitations of some free market theory taken out of some book based on no actually-existing national economy."

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CNN host Fareed Zakaria, also the editor-at-large for Time magazine, derides today's conservative movement as out-of-touch and too abstract in a scathing Time article "How Today's Conservatism Lost Touch With Reality." He argues, "Conservatives now espouse ideas drawn from abstract principles with little regard to the realities of America's present or past."

Of course, if Zakaria is to paint with broad strokes and dismiss the modern conservative movement as entirely lost and ineffective, the reader would expect him to expound upon his point in detail and provide plenty of facts and evidence to support his thesis. His argument is largely devoid of substantial evidence and filled with debatable historical assumptions.

CNN's Eliot Spitzer arrogantly lectured about the benefits of Keynesian economics Sunday while accusing fellow panelists on "Fareed Zakaria GPS" of not knowing what they were talking about because they weren't business owners.

This led British historian Andrew Roberts to point out that President Obama's administration are mostly academics, and Ann Coulter to ask Spitzer, "What business have you ran? You’re a governor" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

NewsBusters previously reported that CNN's Fareed Zakaria had met with President Obama face-to-face to discuss foreign policy. Obama's other reported "source" of information on foreign policy, New York Times foreign affairs columnist Thomas Friedman, mocked Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu Sunday on CNN, and added that he should have dutifully obeyed the demands Obama outlined in his recent Mideast speech.

According to a May 11 New York Times article, Friedman was one of two foreign policy journalists "sounded out" by President Obama for information on foreign affairs. The other, CNN's Fareed Zakaria, has previously criticized Israel's prime minister for not agreeing to the Israeli-Palestinian borders laid out by Obama in his Mideast speech.

[Click here for audio. Video below the break.]

It’s Memorial Day, but the MRC is out with its latest edition of Notable Quotables, a re-cap of the most outrageous, sometimes humorous, quotes from the liberal media over the past two weeks.

This edition: NBC’s Andrea Mitchell insists that Republicans just lack the “guts” to raise taxes; David Gregory suggests it’s “racially-tinged” for Newt Gingrich to try and spotlight President Obama’s poor economic record, and CNN’s Fareed Zakaria first admits to advising the President on foreign policy, then hails Obama’s speech on Middle East policy a few days later. Oh, and Ed Schultz.

The entire package is posted at www.MRC.org; here are some of the highlights.

Just how in bed with Barack Obama is Fareed Zakaria?

On the Sunday CNN program bearing his name, the host began the show by saying Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu should have thanked the President for his Middle East peace proposal given earlier this month (video follows with transcript and commentary):

After proclaiming last week that he would be "surprised if anyone in Israel" objected to Obama's Middle East speech, CNN's Fareed Zakaria ripped Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu for his refusal to accept the President Obama's plan for Israeli-Palestinian borders. On CNN's In the Arena Thursday, Zakaria expounded upon his Washington Post op-ed criticizing Netanyahu, which NewsBusters reported on.

Zakaria has admitted to having face-to-face meetings recently with President Obama to discuss foreign affairs, and revealed that information before Obama's Middle East speech. Zakaria appeared on CNN before and after the speech last Thursday to give his commentary, talked about the speech on his Sunday show, and then wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post criticizing Netanyahu for his stubbornness.

[Click here for audio. Video below the break.]

 In the opinion article, "Where Netanyahu Fails Himself and Israel," in the May 25 Washington Post, CNN anchor Fareed Zakaria blasted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for rejecting President Obama’s peace proposal invoking Israel’s pre-1967 lines. Zakaria compared the Israeli prime minister to former Soviet Union Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko, known as "Mr. Nyet" for his stubbornness in dealing with the U.S.

Zakaria also charged that Netanyahu "might sound like Churchill, he acts like a local ward boss, far more interested in holding onto his post than using it to secure Israel’s future," and that Israel "continues to rule millions of Palestinians in serf-like conditions - entitled to neither a vote nor a country." Zakaria seemed to forget that, while Palestinians outside the boundaries of Israel who are not Israeli citizens do not get to vote in Israeli parliamentary elections, they did get to cast ballots for their own parliament in February 2006, with the terrorist group Hamas winning a narrow victory.

Fareed Zakaria said Sunday the speech President Obama gave last week about conditions in the Middle East was "fair" and "balanced."

As the host of CNN's "Fareed Zakaria GPS" might have advised the current White House resident on its contents, this came as no surprise (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Fareed Zakaria has privately advised President Barack Obama on foreign policy. So it's no surprise the CNN anchor approved of the president's foreign policy speech yesterday.

Unfortunately, however, he never informed his viewers of his private consultations with Obama.

NewsBusters publisher Brent Bozell discussed Zakaria's cozy arrangement with the White House on the May 19 "Hannity" program's "Media Mash"

[See video of the segment below the page break]

Update below the break: Although Zakaria said he would be "surprised" if any Israelis objected to Obama's "quite even-handed" call for pre-1967 borders between Israel and Palestine, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu expressed clear disapproval of the idea Thursday.

CNN's Fareed Zakaria appeared three times on Newsroom Thursday to preview and evaluate President Obama's speech on the Middle East – but never revealed that he has recently had face-to-face meetings with the president on foreign policy matters.

Last weekend a comment by CNN prime time host Eliot Spitzer revealed that Zakaria was advising the president on foreign policy matters, but Zakaria later dismissed that observation and said he simply had off-the-record conversations with Obama on foreign issues. However, he still did not disclose that information when he evaluated Obama's foreign policy speech Thursday on CNN.

The news that CNN's Fareed Zakaria has had private conversations with Barack Obama unveiled a glaring double standard at that network, as back in November 2002, when it was revealed that Fox News Chairman Roger Ailes sent a memo to then President George W. Bush regarding his post-9/11 actions CNN anchors threw a fit.

As the MRC's Brent Baker reported in the November 19 CyberAlert, CNN anchors throughout an entire broadcast day expressed outrage at Ailes' actions, led by Jack Cafferty and Paula Zahn's mocking of Fox News as a biased network, as seen in this November 18, 2002 exchange:

JACK CAFFERTY: Listen Paula, I have a story that may interest you here, a story that might be good for what ails you. That's as in "Roger Ailes," the guy who runs Fox News, that low-budget operation down the street with the red letters.

The President’s secret meetings with Fareed Zakaria – the same reporter who openly used a CNN network broadcast to promote Obama in 2008 – show a clear and disturbing double standard at CNN.

For decades, the liberal media have repeatedly condemned conservatives in the media who communicated privately with Republican presidents. They furiously attacked George Will in 1980 when he advised candidate Ronald Reagan, and trounced on Roger Ailes when he sent President Bush a note about the new war on terror in the wake of September 11th.  Neither of them was a reporter.

Two days after liberal Democratic politician/CNN host Eliot Spitzer told fellow CNN host Fareed Zakaria it “brought a smile to my face” and “makes my heart warm” to learn President Obama “calls you for wisdom and advice about issues around the world,” Zakaria took to CNN’s Web site for his Sunday show, Fareed Zakaria GPS, to issue a “clarification on my conversations with the President” in which Zakaria, an in unusual late Saturday afternoon posting, declared: “The characterization that I have been ‘advising’ President Obama is inaccurate.”

Zakaria maintained that all he’s done is “had a couple of conversations with the President, off-the-record. At no point did President Obama ask me for advice on a specific policy.” Apparently, “conversations” that are “off-the-record” do not constitute “advising.”

The next day, on Sunday’s Reliable Sources, Howard Kurtz accepted Zakaria’s explanation and only offered a gentle reprimand for not making the meetings known. Kurtz relayed how Zakaria claimed “that the two meetings he's had with Obama in recent months give him a sense of the President's thinking, and that he used to have the same kinds of meetings with, for example, Condi Rice.”

Update below the break: When it came to Roger Ailes and George Will, the media ethicists were out in full force. Why not for Zakaria? | Update May 15: Zakaria denies he "advises" Obama

CNN's Fareed Zakaria, host of the weekend show Fareed Zakaria GPS and editor-at-large for Time magazine, admitted on CNN Thursday that he has been advising President Obama on foreign policy matters.

Eliot Spitzer, host of CNN's In the Arena, brought up the fact at the very end of a conversation with Zakaria about Pakistan and foreign policy. Zakaria affirmed it and clarified that "mostly it's been face-to-face meetings...organized by Tom Donilon, the national security advisor."

As NewsBusters reported Sunday, while George Soros likened Rupert Murdoch and Fox News to Nazis on CNN's "Fareed Zakaria GPS," the host never once challenged the far-left billionaire on any of his wild accusations.

On Monday's "O'Reilly Factor," former CBS Newsman Bernie Goldberg blasted "supposed journalist" Zakaria for sitting there "like a bump on a log when somebody is making crazy statements like that" (video follows with partial transcript and commentary):

George Soros on Sunday likened Fox News and Rupert Murdoch to Nazis while claiming that Tea Partiers are being deceived and misled by a force they can't understand.

Appearing on CNN's "Fareed Zakaria GPS," the financier of far-left propaganda outlets such as the Center for American Progress, Media Matters for America, and MoveOn.org was not shy about his distaste for conservatives (video follows with transcript and commentary):

 As CNN’s Fareed Zakaria concluded his Fareed Zakaria GPS show on Sunday, he recommended to his audience that they read former President George W. Bush’s memoir, Decision Points, but, even while recommending the book, he still took a dig at the former President as he described the book as "surprisingly well written." He also acknowledged that "you might not think he’s super-smart" before praising the former President as "agreeable" and "frank."

Below is a transcript of the relevant portion of the Sunday, February 13, Fareed Zakaria GPS on CNN: