Martin Bashir

MSNBC's Martin Bashir on Friday played one heck of a disgusting race card.

In the final segment of the show bearing his name, Bashir made the case without specifically saying it that the Republican Party is too racist for Cuban-American Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fl.) to be its vice presidential candidate (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Are there limits to how far the folks at MSNBC are willing to go to get Barack Obama reelected?

Before you answer, consider that on Thursday, Martin Bashir actually asked the communications director for the Democratic National Committee, "How can Romney claim to be fighting for the middle class when his backers are some of Washington's most notorious lobbyists and when he wants to repeal legislation that's been of direct benefit to many poor people in this country?" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

On the February 8 episode of MSNBCs Martin Bashir program, the host along with liberal Democrat Rep. Peter Walsh (Vt.) used the contraception mandate controversy to advocate the elusive liberal Democratic dream of a Canada-style government-run health care monopoly. [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump]

Bashir started the interview -- better described as a Democrat strategy session -- to blast Speaker John Boehner for his opposition to the Obama administration’s health care ruling.

MSNBC's Martin Bashir honored the 200th anniversary of Charles Dickens' birth Tuesday by likening Republican presidential candidates Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney to two of the author's most reviled creations.

"From Ebenezer Scrooge to Wackford Squeers, Dickens created the most pompous, condescending characters who loved nothing more than protecting their own status while humiliating the poor" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

While most in the liberal media are downright ignoring President Obama's attack on religious institutions -- via the mandate that they cover contraceptives in their health insurance plans, even if doing so violates church teaching -- MSNBC's Martin Bashir mentioned the issue in today's "Clear the Air" commentary that closes his eponymous program.

Of course, true to MSNBC form, Bashir ignored the legitimate policy and religious liberty implications of Gingrich's complaint to dredge up Gingrich's past moral failings, namely his adulteries, as a way of fatally wounding the messenger and hence, Bashir hopes, negating the message [MP3 audio available here; video posted below page break]:

It certainly is no surprise the Obama-loving media are doing a jubilant victory lap over the stronger than expected headline figures in Friday's unemployment report.

Also not at all shocking was MSNBC's Martin Bashir falsely claiming on the show bearing his name Friday, "Under this president over three million private sector jobs have been created" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Reason TV's Kennedy on Friday had a delicious smackdown of HBO's Bill Maher and MSNBC's Martin Bashir.

When Maher and Bashir voiced predictable scorn for Governor Jan Brewer pointing a finger at Barack Obama earlier in the week, Real Time panelist Kennedy correctly observed, "If this were a Democratic governor and a Republican president doing the same thing, the entire panel on your show would be like, 'You go girl.' It is so hypocritical" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

MSNBC's Martin Bashir spent a good part of his on air time Monday calling Republicans liars as he foolishly confused two extraordinarily simple pieces of economic data thereby making it he that was commiting a falsehood.

After calling Tea Party Express founder Judson Phillips a liar on his 3PM program, Bashir said the same thing about Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich on The Ed Show roughly five hours later while in both instances wrongly claiming there were more food stamp recipients when George W. Bush was president than there are now (video follows with transcript and commentary):

UPDATE AT END OF POST: Bashir responds via Twitter.

During a heated exchange with Tea Party Express founder Judson Phillips, MSNBC's Martin Bashir on Monday actually called his guest a liar for correctly saying there are more people on food stamps now than when George W. Bush was president.

This makes two MSNBC anchors in just three days that have made the same completely false claim on the air (video follows with transcribed highlights and commentary):

The South Carolina primary may be over, but MSNBC anchors are not letting up on their portrayal of Republican primary voters are bigots whose support is being courted by the use of "code words." [See video below. MP3 audio here.]

During a promo for her 2 p.m. Eastern show NewsNation, MSNBC anchor Hall falsely accused Gingrich of using incendiary rhetoric on minorities, and claims such words are part of an overall racially charged “attack strategy” in his bid for the White House. About two hours later, fellow MSNBC host Martin Bashir read from a 17-year old New York Times editorial that similarly blasted Gingrich.

A South Carolina State Senator on Tuesday put MSNBC’s Martin Bashir in his rightful place.

As the host attacked Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry’s lack of knowledge about world events, Sen. Larry Grooms (R-S.C.) marvelously replied, “I think he’s got a better understanding than maybe you” (video follows with transcribed highlights and commentary):

MSNBC's Martin Bashir on Thursday perfectly demonstrated the liberal media's hypocrisy concerning campaign finances.

After beginning his program gushing and fawning over all the money Barack Obama raised in the fourth quarter, Bashir proceeded to carp and whine about the funds GOP PACs are spending, even calling for campaign finance reform to curb it (video follows with transcript and commentary):

After praising Meryl Streep for her recent performance as Margaret Thatcher, MSNBC's Martin Bashir Tuesday bashed Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich claiming the Oscar-winning actress "would probably make a more authentic president' than either of them (video follows with transcript and commentary):

"The GOP loves a good bogeyman," MSNBC's Martin Bashir complained as he opened a January 6 interview segment on his eponymous program with Cecile Richards, head of the GOP's "favorite target this election cycle," Planned Parenthood.

Bashir proceeded to paint the GOP presidential field, particularly "grenadier Newt Gingrich" as marshaling the forces of misogyny in a "War on Women," as the segment was titled onscreen. The interview amounted to a series of softball questions and leftist talking points to kick start Richards's own recital of left-wing talking points (MP3 audio here):

MSNBC's Martin Bashir on Friday offered an offensive, bewildering comparison, linking the murder of a black British teenager in 1993 to supposedly offensive comments by Republican presidential candidates in 2012. [See video below. MP3 audio here.]

After referencing the killing of Stephen Lawrence and a U.K. inquiry finding institutional racism in the British police force, Bashir played clips of Republicans, including Newt Gingrich saying this: " President Obama is the most effective food stamp president in American history." Shamelessly using the murder of a teenager to score political points, Bashir excoriated, "Let's cut out the food stamps rhetoric right now before things get any worse."

Chris Matthews all but thinks Newt Gingrich is Satan. His MSNBC colleague Martin Bashir is a little more restrained, but not by much, comparing the former House Speaker to huckster and Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard.

Bashir made the comparison in the "Clear the Air" closing commentary for his December 14 program. "Ever since he shot to the top of the Republican race for the White House, I've been trying to figure out which historical figure Newt Gingrich most resembles," noted in opening his monologue, before making a gross historical gaffe of his own (update: Bashir's twitter feed corrected the gaffe later with a h/t to yours truly):

Apparently unconcerned about being hypocritical or lacking intellectual honesty, in the same program today MSNBC's Martin Bashir celebrated the over-the-top partisan smarminess of former Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.) and blasted GOP presidential contender Mitt Romney for his decidedly tame quip about President Obama's economic (mis)management.

The mid-afternoon host proudly featured the ex-congressman in a segment entitled "Sunshine State of Mind," proudly reminding viewers that it was Grayson whose hallmark achievement in Congress was charging during debate on the House floor that Republicans want sick Americans to "die quickly" because they opposed ObamaCare. [video follows page break]

Suggest that infrequent churchgoer Barack Obama may not really be a sincere from-the-heart Christian and MSNBC's anchors will be chief among the media pack to denounce you for questioning the president's religious faith.

But when it comes to Herman Cain, MSNBC's Martin Bashir is comfortable not merely charging the presidential contender as a hypocrite but suggesting he's headed to Hell (MP3 audio here; video follows page break).

MSNBC's Martin Bashir on Friday offered tax evader Charlie Rangel the opportunity to deride Newt Gingrich for being insufficiently concerned about the poor. Talking to Rangel, who was censured on the floor of the House in 2010, Bashir implored, "As someone who represents a district in New York that includes some extremely poor neighborhoods, what's your reaction to Mr. Gingrich?"

Bashir made no move to interrupt or challenge Rangel as the Congressman slammed Gingrich for financial gain: "Perhaps you know, when you live that Tiffany life or when you're getting $60,000 a speech or when you can make millions of dollars and not know the difference between a lobbyist and historians, maybe this distortion could be a permanent mental problem."

To Alex Wagner, "the rhetoric around immigration in this country is as strident and as divisive as it has [ever] been." But immediately after saying that on the December 2 edition of Now with Alex Wagner, the MSNBC host's British-born colleague Martin Bashir went off the deep end, lumping Rick Perry and Herman Cain in with German neo-Nazis suspected in a string of immigrant murders (MP3 audio here; video update to be posted later):

Some members of the liberal media commemorated Rep. Barney Frank's (D-Mass.) retirement announcement by replaying his testy response to a CNSNews.com reporter about homosexuals showering with straight men in the military. Of course, they included their own eulogies about how much the liberal congressman would be missed.

A nostalgic Martin Bashir expressed his sadness at Frank's departure on his Monday MSNBC show, touting "one of the greatest hits from a man who championed the poor and oppressed, Barney Frank. He'll be sorely missed." He then played the CNSNews.com clip. [Video below the break. Click here for audio.]

Acting as a televised press release for the Democratic National Committee, MSNBC's Martin Bashir today brought on DNC chairwoman Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (Fla.) to argue that new voter ID laws in several states of the Union are an attempt by Republicans to "suppress" the votes of "minorities" and college-aged voters, two groups that historically trend Democratic.

True to MSNBC form, no Republican was brought on for rebuttal and the most cynical and racist of motives were attributed to Republicans right out of the gate (MP3 audio available here; video posted after page break)

There was little doubt when Martin Bashir started his mid-afternoon gig at MSNBC in February that he'd be another left-of-center anchor in the show's afternoon lineup, although to what extent the British-born reporter would be a fierce partisan bulldog was uncertain. The past few months, as we've noted, the former rugby player has displayed pugnacious partisanship, at one point ridiculously calling on John Boehner and Eric Cantor to resign if they refuse to give ground on raising taxes.

It's now reached the point where Bashir's mean-spirited, unbridled raw partisanship is not going unnoticed or unchallenged by his guests. Today Republican strategist Cheri Jacobus quipped that Bashir "should be writing ads for the Democratic National Committee" after the MSNBC anchor kicked off a panel discussion with her and Democratic strategist Julian Epstein thusly:

Playing off of Newt Gingrich's applause line that Occupy protesters need to "go get a job right after [they] take a bath," MSNBC anchor Martin Bashir introduced two liberal guests on his eponymous program to pre-game tonight's Republican debate on CNN by grousing that, "Indeed, a bath is exactly what you may need after watching tonight's Republican debate on foreign policy."

"Here to help us perform a pre-debate ceremonial cleansing are MSNBC contributor and Democratic strategist Krystal Ball and Michael Eric Dyson, scholar, author and professor at Georgetown University," Bashir added.

Brand new MSNBC host and Second Amendment critic Alex Wagner devoted a segment of her November 15 Now with Alex Wagner program to express her exasperation at the fact that she's far left of the American public on the issue of gun control. Wagner prefaced a panel discussion with footage of an ABC News interview with Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, who was critically injured in a January shooting.

"Support for handguns, or rather support for a handgun ban has gone down," Wagner noted as she opened her panel discussion, entitled onscreen "Out of Control?". "In October of 2011, it was at 26 percent. In 1959, it was at 60 percent."

"Gun violence increases and yet people still believe handgun bans are bad. What's the logic there?" the liberal Center for American Progress alumna demanded [MP3 audio here; video follows page break]:

The Election 2011 day-after spin is as laughable as it is predictable on MSNBC.Take network anchor Martin Bashir, who said on his eponymous program today that it was "a big night for Democrats in Mississippi, Ohio, and around the country" last night.

Yet Republicans kept the governor's mansion in Mississippi by a landslide, and may well have captured control of the state House of Representatives. At best Republicans and Democrats will have an even split in the lower chamber, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

And let's not forget the legislative elections in the Old Dominion.

MSNBC's onslaught of Herman Cain continued Tuesday with Martin Bashir calling the Republican presidential candidate "a dirty old man" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

There was a marvelously delicious moment on the Martin Bashir show Thursday when an outspoken supporter of Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain's mocked his liberal host saying, "I have made it to the big time - I am on MSDNC. I love it" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Nation magazine writer Ari Berman carped on today's Martin Bashir program on MSNBC that Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) wants to take America back into "a new Gilded Age,"  an "era of the robber barons where the top one percent" would control the nation's wealth.

Immediately after that segment, Bashir turned to CNBC's Brian Sullivan for the day's "CNBC Market Wrap," a look looking at how the nation's stock exchanges performed today.

After discussing the "boring" but positive day on Wall Street, Sullivan added in closing that he would like to come on Bashir's program to debate Berman some time (MP3 audio here; video embedded below):

MSNBC's Martin Bashir on Friday called for House Speaker John Boehner (R-Oh.) and Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) to resign if they won't raise taxes on the rich (video follows with transcript and commentary):