John King

When a New York state Supreme Court justice on Monday invalidated a New York City law that prevented the “sale of sweetened drinks in containers larger than 16 ounces” at certain establishments, it came as no surprise that conservatives hailed the ruling as a victory “for liberty-loving soda drinkers.”

However, even as Mayor Michael Bloomberg promised to appeal judge Milton Tingling's ruling, several liberals joined the celebration, including the Teamsters, which declared the decision a “big victory” for the union, and CNN's John King, who mocked “Nanny Bloomberg” by tweeting a picture of a huge 52-ounce cup of soda.

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.]

During Tuesday's post-debate coverage on CNN, as the panel discussed moderator Candy Crowley giving cover to President Obama's attempt to defend his initial flawed response to the Benghazi terrorist attack, CNN correspondent John King blamed former Governor Mitt Romney for giving Crowley the opening to undermine the GOP candidate's criticism of Obama for taking so long to recognize that the attack was a premeditated act of terrorism.

Shortly before 11:30 p.m., CNN anchor Anderson Cooper had raised the subject as he defended Romney's reasoning and suggested that Obama was taking himself out of context to cover his own tracks. Cooper:

The Democratic Convention produced a "home run derby of speeches," insisted CNN's John King early Friday morning on Piers Morgan Tonight. This came after CNN hailed Michelle Obama's DNC speech as "probably a grand slam" and Bill Clinton's DNC address as "one of the great modern political speeches I have ever heard."

"But over all, Democrats have to leave this town pretty happy. Still a close election, but Democrats have to leave happy. They had three very good nights, a home run derby of speeches," hyped King. [Video below the break. Audio here.]

A major controversy erupted on the floor of the Democratic National Convention Wednesday surrounding God and Jerusalem inside the Party's platform.

Hours later, DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz gave CNN an absolutely ridiculous explanation for what transpired resulting in her being mocked for her "alternate reality" by numerous commentators including Anderson Cooper and John King (video follows with transcribed highlights and commentary):

A rather shocking thing happened on CNN's Anderson Cooper 360 Thursday.

Not only did the host and his guests David Gergen and John King claim presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mittt Romney is right that he left Bain Capital prior to any companies it held outsourcing employees, Gergen accused President Obama of "playing a very rough form of politics" counter to what he promised when he ran in 2008 (video follows with transcript and commentary):

While Arizona's "Show Me Your Papers" provision spawned plenty of controversy, it was still upheld as constitutional by the Supreme Court on Monday. But CNN's John King thought it was more than "controversial," blasting the law as "notorious" not once, but twice on Monday.

Near the beginning of the 11 a.m. hour of Newsroom, King called the provision "that one -- and I'll call it 'notorious' – part, the controversial part about 'Show Me Your Papers,' part of the Arizona law left into effect". [Video below the break. Audio here.]

The rainbow halo over President Barack Obama's head on Newsweek's cover isn't sufficient for some in the mainstream media.  Now the meme is shifting to the inevitability of his re-election.  Or so it would seem based on CNN's Your Money today.  Anchor Ali Velshi devoted his heavy intellectual resources to the subject after discussing Mitt Romney's opposition to the auto bailout:

Following Richard Mourdock’s commanding victory in the Indiana Republican primary, CNN’s John King felt it appropriate to criticize Mourdock for of all things his campaign pledge of legislating as a conservative.  King began the interview with a loaded question, asking the GOP candidate, "are you so rigid in your ideology that you will refuse compromise and therefore keep the country from solving its problems?" The presumption, of course, that the country's problems can only be solved through compromise away from conservative solutions.  King like many in the media have been mourning the loss of Dick Lugar who many viewed as a moderate, and now consider his Republican successor as an extreme Tea Party-backed candidate.

Mourdock held his own throughout the interview and consistently maintained that he will not compromise on his principles, explaining that when the term compromise is usually invoked these days, "it’s about having Republicans join Democrats to get something done.  One of the things we’ve spoken of a great deal over the last 15 minutes is my desire to help build the Republican Party into the majority so that the word bipartisanship means maybe some Democrats will come our way instead."  [Video follows page break;  MP3 audio here.] 

President Barack Obama has apparently completed his evolution on gay marriage.   On CNN Newsroom's 3:00 pm segment today, anchor Brooke Baldwin spoke with chief national correspondent John King on the subject and he began by noting "we should say up front it's a bold, personal choice for the president to decide to do this publicly."  His analysis included what he perceives as possible risks:

Critically to me, Brooke, in this calculation, African-Americans and Latinos. Many Latinos who are Catholics. They go to Catholic Church, where their priest tells them every Sunday homosexuality isn't just wrong, it's evil. That's what their priest tells them. It's evil.
 
A lot of African-American preachers in the Southern Baptist -- Southern churches across this country, but particularly in Virginia, North Carolina, states the president carried last time, say the same thing.

Can NBC's Chuck Todd be any more obvious about being a White House shill?

On Sunday's Meet the Press, he actually said of the Ann Romney-offending Hilary Rosen, "This is not an Obama surrogate. This is a paid CNN commentator" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Following Wednesday night's presidential debate on CNN, Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum took on the deliberate campaign on the part of Democrats and their media enablers to stigmatize him as purely a "social issues" candidate with limited appeal to Americans not as concerned about those topics.

Chatting with CNN analyst Gloria Borger following the GOP candidate contest, Santorum responded to Borger's question that he is "spending way too much time talking about divisive cultural issues" with a full-on rebuttal. "I understand the game," the former Pennsylvania senator said. "I do get these questions [...] and then the next question from the reporter is 'Why are you talking so much about social issues?' Full transcript of the exchange follows.

John King had an unfortunate slip of the tongue during CNN's coverage of the Nevada caucuses Saturday.

While discussing how the various religious groups voted for the different Republican presidential candidates, King called Mitt Romney "Governor Mormon" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

As NewsBusters previously reported, Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich severely admonished CNN's John King for beginning last Thursday's debate in South Carolina with questions about the former Speaker's ex-wife.

King asked Gingrich about this highly-publicized incident on his program Tuesday, and the former Speaker told his host, "You didn't have to take the bait. You didn't have to pick it up. You could have ignored ABC" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Newt Gingrich wouldn’t have won the South Carolina primary if not for two journalists who served as his perfect foil at two debates in the days before Saturday’s contest, Juan Williams and Charles Krauthammer contended Saturday evening on FNC.

“I was expecting a check,” quipped Williams who had challenged Gingrich Monday night about comments “intended to belittle the poor and racial minorities.” Williams suggested he and CNN’s John King, “the guy who asked him about his problems with his second wife,”  split the check 50-50.

It's not often that Newt Gingrich looks like a winner in The Washington Post. But on Saturday, Post media reporter Paul Farhi lined up a set of liberal media veterans and journalism professors to attack CNN reporter John King for walking into a Gingrich buzzsaw by opening the debate with his second wife's "open marriage" assertion at Thursday night's CNN debate.

“Gingrich was clearly waiting for the question, clearly was prepared to pounce,” said W. Joseph Campbell, a communications professor and media historian at American University. “King seemed taken off guard. He looked a little sickened. And he did himself no favors by lamely pointing out that it wasn’t CNN but another network that dug out the Gingrich-infidelity story. That allowed Gingrich to pounce again.”

CNN's John King explained after the final South Carolina debate that he started by asking Newt about his "open marriage" because it seemed like the "elephant in the room." Former Bush aide Ari Fleischer dissented and said the economy is always the number one story, not just the political insider's hot story. So let's ask: when CNN hosted a Democratic debate in South Carolina on January 21, 2008, did they lead with a hot scandal or a personal peccadillo? Nope. They started with the economy.

It was the tenth anniversary of the Monica Lewinsky story breaking, and the debate stood out when Hillary slashed Obama on his relationship with shady financier Tony Rezko. But Monica and Clinton's impeachment never came up. CNN's Joe Johns led off by asking Hillary Clinton about just how generous her "stimulus" would be:

As NewsBusters reported, Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich severely scolded CNN’s John King for beginning Thursday’s debate in South Carolina with a question about allegations made by his ex-wife earlier in the day.

After the debate ended, CNN contributor David Gergen said, “This is one of the most explosive moments we’ve seen in debate history. It was also one of the harshest attacks we’ve had on the press that I can remember in a long, long time…I think that there’s a reasonable chance after talking to people here tonight that he could win South Carolina based on that answer” (video follows with transcribed highlights and commentary):

CNN’s John King despicably started Thursday’s Republican presidential debate in South Carolina by bringing up allegations made by Newt Gingrich’s ex-wife earlier in the day.

When asked to respond to the controversy, the former Speaker of the House said, “I am appalled that you would begin a presidential debate with a topic like that,” (video follows with transcribed highlights and commentary):

For many months, the liberal media elite has made no secret that in its mind, the field of Republican presidental candidates includes Mitt Romney and a collection of clowns. Clearly, Romney is the opponent that Barack Obama and the liberal establishment want nominated.

Journalists have mercilessly savaged every single conservative alternative to Romney who’s ascended to the top of the polls. Palin. Bachmann. Cain. Perry. Gingrich.  It’s too bad for them that the results from the Iowa caucuses threw off their bold predictions that the Romney Juggernaut would achieve liftoff in Des Moines. Yet Romney won by only eight votes over surprising Rick Santorum. This means one thing only: Senator, step up to the guillotine.

In a Wednesday interview with up-and-coming GOP candidate Rick Santorum, CNN's John King dug up a "controversial" 2003 interview Santorum had with the AP and then proceeded to misquote him on the matter of homosexuality.

The AP reporter who had then questioned Santorum was Lara Lakes Jordan – whose husband Jim Jordan managed John Kerry's presidential campaign later that year. King never mentioned any possibility of a conflict of interest there, but used Santorum's "controversial" answer on the question of homosexuality as an example of what Democrats hail as his "extreme" conservatism. [Video of the exchange below the break.]

As NewsBusters has been reporting, America's supposedly impartial media have been gushing and fawning over President Obama's press conference retort to Republican accusations of his appeasement, "Ask Osama bin Laden."

Doing his part Thursday was CNN's John King who proudly declared on the program bearing his name, "Point, set, match Obama" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

On his radio show yesterday, Ed Schultz asked Rich Stockwell, executive producer for "The Ed Show" on MSNBC, about their responsibility in covering Occupy protests.

Stockwell's response (audio) -- "Well, look, as journalists we need to cover this story. We need to let people know where it is, what it means, try to understand it, get people on who speak literately about it, and capture the mood of the country." (video and audio clips after page break)

Depending on which news outlet you rely on for current events, you may not have heard that convicted Chicago real estate developer Tony Rezko was sentenced to 10½ years in prison Tuesday.

On top of this, unless you read the following report from Reuters, you mightn't have known just how connected he was to a junior senator from Illinois who just so happens to be the President of the United States:

NewsBusters publisher and Media Research Center debated liberal CNN contributor Roland Martin on the November 1 John King USA regarding the media's coverage of anonymous 15-year-old sexual harassment allegations against Herman Cain.

"What's the accusation?!" Bozell demanded, noting the media's frenzy over what amounts to incredibly vague, anonymously-sourced accusations from 15 years ago.

"What's he being accused of?" Bozell asked. "None of us know, and we're talking about this for 36 hours?! That's a lynching." Watch the full segment in the video embed below the page break:

As the media did a victory lap over Friday's announcement by President Obama that all American troops would be removed from Iraq by the end of the year, Fareed Zakaria took a surprisingly contrary position.

Speaking from Tehran with a variety of CNN hosts throughout the day, Zakaria said this development was a disappointment for the United States and a victory for Iran (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Interviewing former Vice President Dick Cheney at the Reagan library, CNN’s John King recalled how former President George H.W. Bush “made an incredibly tough personal and political choice” to raise taxes. King touted how Bush “had the courage knowing it might cost him re-election.”

As he and Cheney sat overlooking the Air Force One Pavilion, King pointed to Bush as a model for Republicans today: “There are some people now saying that we need a moment like that and that the Republicans should give President Obama some tax increases as long as they get from him significant spending cuts and a big deficit reduction package. Should Republicans learn from George H.W. Bush and sit down with the President and cut a deal?”