Newt Gingrich

Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich told MSNBC's Chris Matthews Thursday, "You have a more ruthless approach to politics than I do."

This occurred at the end of a lengthy discussion between the two on Hardball when the host strangely began asking his guest what animals he likes at the zoo (video follows with transcript and commentary):

MSNBC's Chris Matthews doesn't just hate Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney's money.

During an interview with former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich on Hardball Thursday, the host disparaged George Washington as an elite "with a couple of hundred slaves" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

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):

As NewsBusters has been reporting of late, the Obama-loving media have been doing everything they can to play the race card as we head towards Election Day.

CNN's Candy Crowley did it on Sunday morning's State of the Union saying to Newt Gingrich, "Most people do look at Republicans going ‘They’re a conservative bunch of white guys who want to protect Big Oil’" (video follows with transcribed highlights and commentary):

Six months ago, Pew's Project for Excellence in Journalism (PEJ) came out with a report claiming that the GOP candidates received more positive press coverage than President Obama. This morning, the group came out with another installment from the same ongoing study. Their press release claims: "The President’s media coverage in 2012 has been consistently negative while his Republican challenger has experienced a more mixed narrative."

As I wrote here at NewsBusters back in October, PEJ's methodology is seriously flawed: "First, they didn’t study what most people would consider 'the media.' Second, their definition of 'positive' and 'negative' press doesn’t match what media experts consider 'favorable' or 'unfavorable' coverage. And, third, the researchers didn’t really even look at the stories — they let a computer... churn through the words and determine whether an assertion was pro- or anti-Obama."

The D.C. area women's magazine I Am Modern interviewed NPR talk-show host Diane Rehm for their Spring issue, and Rehm’s liberal tilt was unmissable. Rehm warmly declared that her favorite "fascinating" interviews were with Hillary and Bill Clinton and that her “dream guests” were Barack and Michelle Obama. (Her biggest disappointment was Newt Gingrich.)

Not only that, Rehm was asked about attempts to defund public broadcasting and pretended the media was dominated by conservatives. PBS and NPR are seen “as a counterweight to the many outspoken conservative voices who currently dominate the airwaves.”

As NewsBusters reported last week, now that Mitt Romney appears set to win the Republican presidential nomination, Saturday Night Live is going to do its darnedest to trash him every week through Election Day.

This pattern continued Saturday as for the second week in a row the program began with a segment attacking the former Massachusetts governor while also taking shots at all the other candidates including a disgusting homosexual reference to Michele Bachmann's husband Marcus (transcribed lowlights and commentary follow, video for those that can stand it available at Mediaite):

An embarrassing performance Sunday for CBS’s Bob Schieffer in the debut of the new hour-long format for Face the Nation. At least he should be embarrassed by the contrast in how he played sycophant to Vice President Joe Biden, treating him as an oracle of wisdom, while not being nearly so coddling with Newt Gingrich who he corrected and challenged. Schieffer cued up Biden to pontificate:

What’s your take on that?
What did you mean by that?
What do you make of all of that?
What’s your take on that?

To Gingrich, however, he argued with the former Speaker’s points.

CBS's Allen Pizzey completely whitewashed the struggling European economy on CBS Sunday Morning to bash the Republican presidential candidates' attack on President Obama's economic policies. Pizzey zeroed-in on Germany's lower unemployment rate and cited left-leaning Professor James Walston, who claimed that "the candidates are dealing in caricatures of Europe that are about 90% wrong."

The journalist played clips from Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney, who defended the U.S. Constitution and ripped "European socialism." He condescended in reply, "If you're a candidate who wants to move to the White House, why worry about details?" Pizzey also turned to a European woman who insulted the Republican candidates' intelligence: "I just hope that most Americans are just more intelligent than those politicians" [audio clips available here; video below the jump].

On Friday's NBC Today, news anchor Natalie Morales worried about the safety of reality star Kim Kardashian after a "nasty surprise" at a red carpet event: "...a woman threw white powder on the starlet. Paramedics were called to the hotel, but Kardashian refused treatment....The woman who allegedly threw the so-called flour bomb was detained but later released."

The same concern was never extended to Republican presidential candidates who endured glitter-bomb attacks from radical gay activists at campaign events. In fact, NBC actually depicted those incidents as gaffes and stumbles for the candidates.

"I appreciate that you are correctly fact-checking the Republican claims."

MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell actually said this to Obama Interior Secretary Ken Salazar Wednesday in a discussion about oil and gas prices (video follows with transcript and commentary):

"Where Are the Statesmen?" asked the onscreen graphic as MSNBC's Thomas Roberts interviewed a son of the late Ronald Reagan about the state of the Republican Party in light of the presidential primary season thus far. Of course, MSNBC chose to bring on the Gipper's liberal namesake Ron Reagan rather than Michael Reagan, a solid conservative who has endorsed Newt Gingrich. Roberts opened the segment by asking Reagan, "why is Gingrich... still in this race? Does he really find himself to be a viable contender to go up against President Obama?"

Nowhere during the segment, of course, did either Roberts or Reagan fully disclose Reagan's political leanings, leaving less-informed MSNBC watchers with the natural presumption that the former radio show host and son of a conservative president might himself be a right-leaning Republican.

When President Barack Obama recently pontificated on gas prices, the broadcast networks listened, and parroted his explanations of why gas prices have more than doubled since he took office. But the networks had a much different take on gas prices when a Republican president was in office.

On March 7, 2012, Obama declared: “We've got 2 percent of the world oil reserves; we use 20 percent. What that means is, as much as we're doing to increase oil production, we're not going to be able to just drill our way out of the problem of high gas prices.”

You have to wonder whether HBO's Bill Maher is losing his mind, trying to draw attention to boost ratings, or really believes he can say anything he wants about conservatives and liberals will support him.

After ridiculing Alabama and Mississippi voters Tuesday as being "toothless," Maher took to Twitter with an even far more vile comment about Republican presidential candidates Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum (serious vulgarity warning):

“Hell Hath No Fury,” the second episode in ABC’s unholy mess “GCB,” was even worse than the pilot. Despite the vain and meager PR attempts by its Jesus-touting stars, the show's true agenda of degrading Christianity, conservatives, and Texans shines as bright as the light of Heaven with a total of 72 attacks on the Christian faith in a mere two episodes.

“GCB’s” sin-filled debut left audiences and advertisers questioning Disney-owned ABC’s credibility. Because of the show’s blatant assault on a particular audience, Kraft pulled its Philadelphia Cream Cheese ad  from the programming faster than Kristen Chenoweth could don one of her hideous “Southern” costumes.

Barbara Walters gave Joy Behar a well-deserved dressing down on ABC's The View Monday.

After the liberal comedian said Sarah Palin "was completely unprepared for the [vice presidential] job as are a lot of the candidates right now that we’re watching in some of those debates,” Walters responded by providing her co-host the legislative and executive experience of the remaining Republicans in the race (video follows with transcribed highlights and commentary):

Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich had some harsh words Friday for ABC and its new show GCB.

As The Note reported, the former Speaker told supporters at a campaign event in Gulfport, Mississippi, "Take the exact name, drop out 'Christian' and put in 'Muslim,’ and ask yourself is there any network that would have dared to run a show like that and you know the answer is not a one":

Syndicated columnist Mark Shields on Friday excoriated Supreme Court justices Samuel Alito and John Roberts for "taking our system and absolutely screwing it up completely."

Appearing on PBS's Inside Washington, Shields was complaining about how "these campaigns have been taken over totally by Super PACs" as a result of the Citizens United decision (video follows with transcript and commentary):

In an interview with Exxon Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson aired on Friday's NBC Today, co-host Matt Lauer pushed the oil company executive to reject a plan by Newt Gingrich to lower the price of gas: "Newt Gingrich is promising Americans that he can deliver gasoline at $2.50 a gallon. Is he being truthful with the American public, in your opinion?"

Tillerson responded: "Well, I haven't seen his specific plan for doing that. I guess the thing that might concern me would be, would you be taking some short-term action simply to achieve a short-term result that could, in fact, be very detrimental to the longer term security of energy, moderate pricing of energy for the country?"

During live coverage of the Super Tuesday primaries, after Rachel Maddow declared that Newt Gingrich has a way of giving speeches that move people in the audience unlike fellow conservative Rick Santorum, Chris Matthews launched into his latest round of personal attacks on the former House Speaker, asserting that he "looks like the devil," and that he appears "diabolical."

The MSNBC host described Gingrich as a "menacing force" and accused him of doing "evil things" when he ran Congress. Below are both video and a transcript of the relevant portion of MSNBC's Super Tuesday coverage from Tuesday, March 6:

As NewsBusters reported Sunday, Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich scolded Meet the Press host David Gregory for beginning their interview with a question about the Rush Limbaugh-Sandra Fluke controversy.

On Fox News's On the Record Monday, Karl Rove said of this exchange, "God bless Speaker Gingrich for taking David Gregory out behind the barn and giving him a whooping" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

On Monday's CBS This Morning, Charlie Rose hinted that Republicans needed to go further in decrying Rush Limbaugh's slam of radical feminist and law student Sandra Fluke. Rose asked Senator John McCain, "Are you satisfied that those Republican officials have gone far enough in condemning these statements?" McCain replied, "Oh, I'll leave that up to pundits like you, Charlie" [audio available here; video below the jump].

The morning newscast also highlighted how "seven companies have pulled commercials from Limbaugh's nationally syndicated show. Online data company Carbonite said the on-air attack crossed the line....Limbaugh had some defenders, but they were drowned out by those protests on the left, and critics on the right."

In today's "Don't Bring a Knife to a Gunfight" segment, ABC's George Stephanopoulos on Sunday once again failed miserably in a battle of wits with Newt Gingrich.

After the This Week host claimed past experience has shown long primary battles "[mean] that party loses in the general election," the former Speaker of the House marvelously responded, "George, I'll be glad to swap history credentials with you" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

With all that ails the nation, Meet the Press host David Gregory actually began his interview with Newt Gingrich by asking him about contraceptives and Rush Limbaugh.

Showing obvious disgust for the topic, the Republican presidential candidate marvelously responded, "You know, David, I am astonished at the desperation of the elite media to avoid rising gas prices, to avoid the President's apology to religious fanatics in Afghanistan, to avoid a trillion dollar deficit, to avoid the longest period of unemployment since the Great Depression, and to suddenly decide that Rush Limbaugh is the great national crisis of this week" (video follows with transcribed highlights and commentary):

In an interview with Newt Gingrich on Tuesday's NBC Today, co-host Matt Lauer hoped to get the former speaker to denounce recent comments by Rick Santorum about higher education: "Santorum said, 'President Obama once said he wants everybody in America to go to college, what a snob.' As a former college professor, how did you feel about that exchange?"

Despite Lauer's attempt to appeal to his academic background, Gingrich refused to take the bait: "You know, you have to ask Santorum why he said that. I do think every American ought to get trained. I think it doesn't matter what your degrees are, it matters if you're employable....So, I think there's a middle ground here..."

The journalism watchdogs over at "PolitiFact" don't do justice to their name, Rachel Maddow frequently complains.

This from an MSNBC pundit whose claims about Republicans are best understood as "politifiction." (video after page break)