John Barrasso

During CNN's inauguration coverage on Monday's Starting Point, correspondent John King helped bolster President Obama's image as he asked Tea Party Congressman Steve King (R-Iowa) if Republicans were "chastened" by Democratic electoral victories.

"The President won an election that many historians say he shouldn't have won, given the high unemployment rate, given the sluggish recovery. He beat your party. Your majority in the House is a little smaller. Democrats gained a bit in the Senate. Are Republicans chastened now?" he asked the Tea Party congressman. [Video below the break. Audio here.]

Once again, CNN pressed a Republican to support income tax hikes. On Thursday, Starting Point co-hosts Brooke Baldwin and John Berman tried to paint GOP opposition to tax increases as at odds with the American people and a financial expert.

"So here is one of the biggest guys in finance on the planet saying that maybe a tax rate increase should be part of a deal. Does he have a point? Can't it be part of a deal?" pushed Berman. He cited the CEO of Goldman Sachs, Lloyd Blankfein, who said he "wouldn't preclude" the President's plan to raise tax rates. [Video below the break. Audio here.]

New MSNBC daytime host Craig Melvin is quickly adapting to the network's liberal ethos.

Melvin, who was hired this summer from Washington, D.C. NBC station WRC-TV, pressed Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) from the left in an interview shortly after noon today about Republican opposition to President Obama's call for tax hikes on higher income earners.

[video follows page break]

NBC's Andrea Mitchell, hosting her self-titled MSNBC show on Wednesday, got into a bit of a tiff with Republican Senator John Barrasso over, of all things, a scheduling conflict. Mitchell opened her broadcast of Andrea Mitchell Reports asking why the Republicans delayed a meeting with the President as she whined: "How about that for setting a new tone of bipartisanship in Washington?" Then the NBC News correspondent brought on Barrasso to explain the great slight to the President as she pestered: "Senator so what happened? You guys are just too busy tomorrow?"

Mitchell even brought up the complaint via her Twitter account where she compared it to when a then House Speaker Newt Gingrich once complained about his seating arrangement on Air Force One during the Clinton administration:

Dissing POTUS -sources say white house wanted to meet, GOP "couldn't" - is this like newt complaining abt his seat on af1? could backfire?

The following is the full exchange as it was aired on the November 17 edition of Andrea Mitchell Reports:

(video after the break)

Say goodbye to hope and change. It's time to embrace the politics of doom and gloom.

MSNBC host Contessa Brewer, in an interview that seemed a lot like a lobbying campaign for the stimulus set for a vote in the U.S. Senate, quizzed Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., about the possibility that his vote against a stimulus bill could send the country spiraling into a Depression - and endanger the public's footwear.

"But if it fails, if it fails and our economy implodes and we see ourselves stuffing cardboard back in our shoes like they did in the Depression era, are you willing to put your name behind that?" Brewer asked.

"I'm willing to stay here and continue through the weekend, next week, the next week, to try to solve something and get it right - don't rush into something like this country rushed into the bailout program right before the holidays last year," Barrasso replied. "I think that was rushed. We found out that that didn't accomplish the goal."