Martin Bashir

"Sometimes you do wonder if [Republicans] are moles, Manchurian candidates for I don't know who, if their real job is to bring down America."

So said New York Times columnist Paul Krugman on MSNBC's Martin Bashir show Friday (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Martin Bashir got a scolding on national television Thursday that everyone on MSNBC as well as within the parent companies Comcast and General Electric should receive.

During a contentious interview with the general counsel for Koch Industries, Inc., Bashir's guest said, "The way that your network has handled issues with us, the way that a lot in the far-left media have handled issues with us, attacking us even when there’s no basis like with the Trayvon Martin issues, that situation, that has led to death threats against our owners" (video follows with transcribed highlights and commentary):

After the Obama campaign released an ad on Monday attacking Mitt Romney's record at Bain Capital, CNN went so far as to question President Obama's hypocrisy in attacking Romney. In contrast, MSNBC hosts joined Team Obama on the offensive.

CNN first reported the ad during the 9 and 10 a.m. hours of Monday, and by that evening anchor John King hosted a former venture capitalist who defended the business practices of Bain. Meanwhile, MSNBC's Martin Bashir and the network's prime-time lineup were cheerleaders for the Obama campaign on Monday.

MSNBC's Martin Bashir -- who attends a New York City church pastored by a conservative minister who signed the pro-traditional marriage Manhattan Declaration -- yesterday maligned the Holy Bible in an attempt to defend President Obama from the charge that his support of same-sex marriage contradicts biblical teaching on matrimony.

The incident came in an interview with Dr. Robert Jeffress after the Dallas-area Baptist minister affirmed that he "absolutely" agreed that defending same-sex marriage "contradicts" the teaching of Scripture. "I think the president is violating the very teaching and words of the Jesus he says he follows," Jeffress noted. That's when Bashir sprung his "have you stopped beating your wife, yet"-style gotcha question:

When MSNBC's Martin Bashir invited Rick Tyler on his program Friday to discuss Mitt Romney being a "bully," he must have expected the former Newt Gingrich campaign adviser would play right along with the profile depicted in the Washington Post's hit piece about the presumptive Republican presidential nominee.

Quite the contrary, Tyler didn't take the bait and instead turned the tables on his host saying, "I would consider things like Barack Obama bullying the Supreme Court, bullying the EPA, bullying hundreds of property owners and business owners, bullying donors to the Romney campaign. That’s what bullying is" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

For months, the Obama-loving media have been carping and whining about all the money going to conservative Super PACs in the wake of the Citizens United Supreme Court ruling back in 2010.

Yet as you can see from the following segment on MSNBC's Martin Bashir show Thursday, the press are giddy over the prospect the president will raise up to $15 million at actor George Clooney's campaign event later this evening (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Martin Bashir -- he who slammed Ann Romney as "two-faced," gratuitously ripped fellow Christian Rick Santorum by comparing him to Stalin, and cravenly suggested Santorum's less of a genuine Christian than Barack Obama  judged by the amount of money the men gave to charity respectively -- mounted his moral high horse yet again to thunder hellfire and brimstone upon a conservative Republican.

The target of MSNBC's demon deacon today was Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas), whom Bashir was calling to account for his plans to vote for a bill that would spare the Pentagon of budget cuts by trimming social welfare spending elsewhere in the federal budget.

MSNBC's Martin Bashir practically had an on air meltdown Monday over comments Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney made about President Obama and the European economy.

"He supports Paul Ryan’s budget. He wants to go cut, cut, cut. It’s not president – it’s him. He’s the European Socialist" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

MSNBC political analyst Karen Finney kicked horrific tales of the so-called GOP war on women into high gear on Friday's Martin Bashir show.

In a segment about the Obama campaign's portrait of a fictional woman's life under his leadership versus the Republican presidential candidate's, Finney said, "Here’s what life under the Romney-Ryan plan would be like for Julia...She’d be in the grave by her mid-30s" (video follows with transcribed highlights and commentary):

About 45,000 fewer jobs were added in April than economists expected, and the unemployment rate dropped to 8.1 percent due to more than a half million people giving up the job search. CNN Money reacted with the headline “hiring fizzles.”

University of Maryland Economist Peter Morici wrote in response the jobs report, “The economy added 115,000 jobs in April - much less than expected and not enough to keep up with natural population growth. The unemployment rate fell to 8.1 percent because another 522,000 adults quit looking for work and are no longer counted.”

He's compared conservatives to radical Hindus and Islamists, called the Tea Party the "racist white bloc" of the GOP, and compared evangelicals to the Taliban, so naturally Huffington Post writer Frank Schaeffer was the perfect guest for Martin Bashir to bring on the May 2 edition of his eponymous program to discuss the importance of religious "faith as an issue" in the 2012 general election campaign.

Schaeffer toned down his rhetoric a tad bit from previous excursions on the "Lean Forward" network, but he still managed to work in grotesquely misleading and hateful slams of evangelicals and conservative Catholics.

There ought to be a law against newscasters blatantly lying to the public.

On Monday, MSNBC's Martin Bashir falsely claimed the economic plans put forth by Great Britain and Spain are "the Romney-Ryan budget in action...almost exactly, word for word" without informing his viewers that those countries raised taxes to fight their deficits (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Via Real Clear Politics: It's clear that MSNBC host Martin Bashir enjoys making fun of Republican candidates who have sick family members. First, he jabbed Rick Santorum for caring for his daughter, complaining about Santorum's small amount of donations to charity. Last week, he took a jab at Ann Romney, claiming that Mitt Romney is exploiting her health issues to gain votes. [Audio here. Video below the jump.]

MSNBC’s Martin Bashir on Friday might have said the wisest thing he’s ever uttered on television.

Speaking with two Democratic members of Congress about goings on in the House Friday, Bashir said referring to Republicans, “If there isn’t a war on women most of us must be ignorant” (video follows with transcribed highlights and commentary):

"There is no slur against conservatives that's off the table" for the so-called journalists at MSNBC, NewsBusters publisher Brent Bozell told Sean Hannity last night. The Media Research Center president made that remark after viewing a clip of Hardball host Chris Matthews calling the GOP the "Grand Wizard crowd," a not-so-thinly veiled suggestion that conservatives are violent racists.

What's more, "Chris Matthews is lying," Bozell argued, pointing back to a January 13 quote about Romney wherein Matthews called Romney a "moderate." "Even Chris Matthews doesn't believe that lie that he told." Also addressed on the April 26 "Media Mash" segment was how Matthews's colleague Martin Bashir callously suggested that Mitt Romney was "intentionally using" his multiple sclerosis-suffering wife to close a "gender gap." [watch the full Media Mash segment video below page break]

The Obama-loving media just can't stop talking about the President's appearance Tuesday on NBC's Late Night with Jimmy Fallon.

MSNBC's Martin Bashir on Thursday used it as an opportunity to bash conservative talk radio host Rush Limbaugh as liking "sexist, homophobic, and racist" humor (video follows with transcribed highlights and commentary):

On the April 23 version of Martin Bashir, Liberal journalist Martin Bashir treated Democratic National Committee Chairwoman and Florida Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) to a friendly bull session, giving her some free air time to bash Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, as well as give her a chance to further MSNBC’s "GOP War on Women" meme.

During the interview, Bashir fed the DNC chief a helpful talking point by insisted that “Pew Polls suggests that the president, as the result of things that were said during the Republican primary, has been attacked more negatively than Romney.” Yet as we at NewsBusters have shown, that's complete malarkey. [Audio can be found here, video after the jump.]

You "can't blame" President Barack Obama for high gas prices. "Desperate" Republicans are hoping for the scandal-free Obama to have a scandal. When a conservative woman denounces absurd gender politics it's simply "a ventriloquist act" for "patriarchal ideas."

Those were the gems which stumbled out of the mouths, respectively, of conservative columnist S.E. Cupp, Democratic strategist Krystal Ball, and Georgetown professor Michael Eric Dyson, all panelists on today's edition of the Martin Bashir program on MSNBC. The topic at hand was how Republicans were pressing the Obama administration over the Secret Service prostitution scandal.

Geraldo Rivera on Friday accused MSNBC anchors of not caring at all about the evidence concerning the shooting of Trayvon Martin and instead "cheerleading for the conviction of George Zimmerman."

Appearing on Fox New's The O'Reilly Factor, Rivera specifically pointed his finger at Martin Bashir, Chris Matthews, Lawrence O'Donnell, Al Sharpton, and Ed Schultz (video follows with transcript and commentary:

As NewsBusters reported earlier, David Chaney, a now fired secret service agent involved in HookerGate, boasted on his Facebook page in 2008 as having ogled former Alaska governor Sarah Palin while guarding her.

On MSNBC's Martin Bashir Show Friday, the host scolded Chaney for "making Sarah Palin relevant" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Have the executives running MSNBC informed their employees that it's completely acceptable to lie on the air if it helps President Obama win reelection this November?

On Thursday, Martin Bashir flat out lied to make the case to his audience that Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney is going to hell for supposedly lying when he says the current White House resident promised unemployment would not rise above eight percent if his stimulus package was enacted (video follows with transcript and commentary):

MSNBC's Martin Bashir, who previously compared Rick Santorum to genocidal murderer Joseph Stalin, on Wednesday mocked the concept that MSNBC could be biased against Republicans. A network graphic dismissed, "Paranoia? Romney: More Media Should Be as 'Fair' as Fox News."

After playing clips of Mitt Romney decrying liberal media bias, Bashir huffed, "This is pretty rich from a man who hasn't appeared on Meet the Press, whose spokesman won't even accept an invitation to appear on this broadcast." Why would Republicans come on Bashir's show? In addition to comparing Santorum to a dictatorial mass killer, this same anchor linked Newt Gingrich's political comments to the murder of a British teen. [See MP3 audio here.]

It's quite clear that on MSNBC, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney's family is not going to be considered off-limits to commentator attacks during this campaign season.

On Tuesday's Martin Bashir show, in a closing segment about rock star Ted Nugent's endorsement of the former Massachusetts governor, the host attacked Ann Romney as being "fake" and "two-faced" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

On the April 17 edition of his afternoon program, MSNBC's Martin Bashir mocked Mitt Romney’s unabashed support for our military.  Bashir insulted Romney claiming that, “for all his endless references to military personnel, was this not the same Mitt Romney who managed to dodge the draft during Vietnam and spent most of his time I believe in France as a Mormon missionary?”

Bashir has a storied history of slandering conservatives for what he calls ‘chicken hawks’ as individuals who deliberately dodge the draft.  Last October, Bashir falsely claimed Herman Cain dodged the draft despite serving as a civilian employee in the Department of the Navy during the Vietnam War.  [See video below. MP3 audio here.]

MSNBC political analyst Karen Finney said Friday that Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney wants to "go back to a time when women couldn't vote, blacks couldn't vote."

Such was said on the Martin Bashir show immediately following the former Massachusetts governor's speech to the National Rifle Association (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Bashing conservatives is nothing new for MSNBC or for Martin Bashir. However, on the April 13 edition of Martin Bashir, liberal British journalist Martin Bashir went on a rant about how Rick Santorum is a hypocrite for giving a small portion of his earnings to charity. Except there is one key fact that Bashir is missing. Rick Santorum is spending a lot of money on medical care for his sick daughter Bella.  [Video below the jump]

The presumption of innocence is a cornerstone of Anglo-American jurisprudence, so surely well-educated British citizen Martin Bashir knows better than to declare in his closing "Clear the Air" commentary on his April 11 MSNBC program that with charges pending against Sanford, Florida resident "George Zimmerman will have to justify his actions in a court of law." "From the very outset, virtually every aspect of this case has raised serious questions about Mr. Zimmerman's actions and the story that followed," Bashir added, before rattling off the as-yet-unproven but widely reported notion that Zimmerman continued to pursue Trayvon Martin on foot after the 911 dispatcher counseled him not to.

But wait, there's more, as Bashir used the opportunity to not only convict Zimmerman but virtually finger gun rights groups that have lobbied for Stand Your Ground laws as unindicted co-conspirators:

On the April 5 episode of his show, liberal MSNBC host and self-proclaimed ‘journalist’ Bashir excused the bounty placed on George Zimmerman by the New Black Panthers because there are only "five or six of them."  This comment came in a segment with TheGrio.com’s Joy-Ann Reid wherein the two mocked conservatives’ objections to the media coverage of the Trayvon Martin case. 

Bashir claimed that, "the one thing conservatives do seem to enjoy about this story is that it lets them talk about how it’s the president they say who’s taken political advantage. Even as they beat the war drum over their favorite target, the New Black Panthers, all five or six of them, I guess."  [Video embedded below.  Click here for MP3 audio.]

Given that the NBC network is currently conducting an internal review of its selective editing of a 911 call from the Trayvon Martin case, it would be reasonable to assume that other networks in the NBCUniversal family would take heed. But then, that would take all the fun out of working for a network like MSNBC.

On his April 2 program Martin Bashir played a clip from a Mitt Romney campaign event which made it seem as though Romney was dodging a question about his faith.  The distorted clip was then used as a jumping-off point for Bashir and liberal contributor Krystal Ball to lament a perceived double standard on reporting on the religious faiths of the president and the former Massacusetts governor.  [Click here for video.]