Newt Gingrich

After Newt Gingrich recently proclaimed that "more people have been put on food stamps by Barack Obama than any President in American history," presumably referring to the straightforward statistic that a record number of Americans now receive food stamp assistance, FactCheck.org set out to prove him wrong. (Video below)

Last Friday saw two high-profile liberal pundits - one on Bloomberg News's Political Capital and the other on PBS's Inside Washington - repeating the story that Newt Gingrich divorced his first wife while she was being treated for cancer, without either of them noting that one of Gingrich's daughters - Jackie Gingrich Cushman -  last May specifically disputed the account that her mother, who is still alive, ever had cancer, or that her father initiated the divorce during a hospital visit.

On Bloomberg News's Political Capital show, host Al Hunt only vaguely noted that Gingrich's daughter had disputed some of the commonly believed details of her parents' divorce as he dismissed her account as "demonstrably false." After Bloomberg News columnist Margaret Carlson called the former House Speaker a "lout," Hunt asserted:

Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich on Sunday told Meet the Press host David Gregory, "Nobody in the elite media wants to cover" Barack Obama's Saul Alinsky roots.

This came in response to Gregory asking the former Speaker of the House if he can "win independent voters in a general election campaign" talking about Obama's ties to Alinsky and other "radical left-wingers" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Given his high unfavorable rating, Newt Gingrich “cannot win a national election,” MSNBC’s very liberal host Lawrence O’Donnell insisted early Saturday night when it became clear Gingrich would win the South Carolina primary, “it’s impossible.” O’Donnell’s assessment, however, is held beyond left-wingers animating MSNBC shows.  

Saturday night, Fox News veteran Brit Hume asserted: “Republicans in Congress will be terrified to run with this man for fear they will lose the House and the Senate.” Sunday morning on ABC, George Will imagined “people are waking up who are running for office as Republicans – from dog-catcher to Senate – and they’re saying, ‘good God, Newt Gingrich might be at top of this ticket.’”

Newt Gingrich won South Carolina because he refused to succumb to assaults by the liberal media, and because conservatives are just as fed up as he is.

Speaker Gingrich hit a nerve dead-on by pushing back on ABC's blatant character assassination and standing up to John King's first debate question. He tapped into the anger and frustration of not only South Carolina voters, but of the rest of the country. The left-wing media have tried to manipulate this campaign cycle through the systematic character assassination of every conservative in the race. The public has had it.

There are few things the liberal media like more than a Republican renegade.  David Stockman has made a career out of strutting his independence from the GOP.  So little surprise that he was an honored guest on this morning's Up With Chris Hayes on MSNBC.

That Stockman repaid his hosts by attacking Republicans was utterly predictable.  Even so, the absurdity of Stockman's particular assertion was breathtaking.  The former Reagan budget director actually claimed that the notion of American exceptionalism, a focus of Newt Gingrich's campaign, is nothing less than . . . "neo-con code" for an aggressive foreign policy.  Video after the jump.

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.

MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell on Saturday said "Republican audiences do not know that most people on food stamps are white."

This occurred during his network's coverage of the South Carolina primary (video follows with transcript and commentary):

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.”

MSNBC's Rachel Maddow, in a segment about GOP SuperPACs, blamed a technical glitch with a guest's audio on "some sort of nefarious conspiracy."

"I'm assuming it's an eccentric billionaire with an axe to grind" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

HBO’s Bill Maher said Friday that members of the Tea Party support Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich because he’s racist like them.

Fortunately for the small portion of Real Time viewers with a brain, the Daily Caller’s Matt Lewis was there to set the ignorant host straight (video follows with transcribed highlights and commentary):

In a delicious example of irony, NPR’s Nina Totenberg on Friday falsely claimed that there were more people on food stamps under George W. Bush than are using the food assistance program today.

This marvelously came seconds before she told the panel of PBS’s Inside Washington that “facts don’t matter” to Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich (video follows with transcript and commentary):

In the final three paragraphs of a report that was primarily about Mitt Romney trying to lower expectations concerning the results of tomorrow's South Carolina Primary voting, Steve Holland of Reuters told readers that Newt Gingrich canceled an appearance.

Holland then used that appearance as an opportunity to build on a meme the press has been working on for some time about the former speaker:

Once again, an MSNBC reporter has falsely accused Newt Gingrich of using racial overtones in his critique of President Obama’s economic policies. On the Friday edition of her eponymous program Andrea Mitchell Reports, the veteran broadcast journalist maintained that Gingrich deploys language with coded racial overtones that she and fellow MSNBCers can detect is a racially-tinged "dog whistle." [See video below. MP3 audio here.]

Colleague Craig Melvin, a black reporter who hails from Charleston, agreed with Mitchell, arguing that such language is "red meat to the Republican base" thereby attributing bigotry to rank-and-file South Carolina GOP voters.

ABC trotted out the "best of" Newt Gingrich slams on Thursday, finally revealing the results of an exhaustive Brian Ross interview with Marianne Gingrich, the former Speaker's ex-wife. Ross boasted that his scoop could be seen as a "January surprise" to harm Gingrich. Recycling old attacks, Ross eagerly prompted the ex-Mrs. Gingrich: "You know his secrets. You know his skeletons." [UPDATED: See video below. MP3 audio here.]

How bereft of new information was the segment? According to reports that broke on Wednesday, Ross sat down with Marianne Gingrich for two hours. In the eight minute segment, ABC only used two and a half minutes of actual footage from that interview. But Ross breathlessly hyped, "And we begin tonight with a story at the white-hot intersection of presidential politics, private lives and character."

ABC News's Marianne Gingrich interview has "that awful, awful taint of Rathergate to it," timed as it was "to do the most amount of damage it possibly could to Newt Gingrich's career," NewsBusters publisher Brent Bozell complained in an interview with Washington, D.C. news-talk station WMAL's Morning Majority program.

While Marianne Gingrich may be "entirely honest" in her claim, she is "lashing out at her ex-husband" and her story is an unconfirmable account. "I think it was a mess of a story, I think it hurts the media," the Media Research Center (MRC) founder added. [interview embedded below page break]

On the CBS Late Show Thursday, host David Letterman aired a mock video of Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich having sex with a vending machine.

This came at the end of his Top Ten segment called, "Top Ten Revelations In The Interview With Newt Gingrich's Ex-Wife" (video follows with transcribed highlights and commentary):

Comedienne Wanda Sykes speculated Thursday that Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry had to drop out of the race because "he was one more debate away from saying the N-word." 

Appearing on NBC’s Tonight Show to bash all the GOP candidates, she also told the host that Newt Gingrich might have wanted an open marriage with his ex-wife because she said he had a "tiny penis" (video follows with transcribed highlights and commentary):

At the very least the timing of ABC News's interview with Gingrich ex-wife Marianne Gingrich is suspect. At the very worst, it is completely inappropriate if it failed to be newsworthy and respectful, NewsBusters publisher Brent Bozell told CNBC's Larry Kudlow on his January 19 Kudlow Report.

"In some respects, aren't they obliged to get it out as fast as they can," Kudlow countered, adding that maybe by putting it out the night of the debate, "it actually lessens the impact and significance of the interview." [see video embedded below page break; see related Bozell statement here]

On Thursday morning, CNN's Soledad O'Brien suggested that candidate Newt Gingrich speaks with a "racial coding" on the campaign trail. She gave credibility to former President Carter's bizarre remark about Gingrich having a "subtlety of racism" about him, asking her panel if the quote was a "bombshell."

O'Brien could also have questioned Carter's remark as a smear coming from a Democrat. Instead she seemed to argue in favor of his side. “Is there racial coding in what Newt Gingrich has said in not only in these debates, but also even in some of the campaign stops?” she asked her panel. [Video below the break.]

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):

As NewsBusters reported Tuesday, MSNBC's Chris Matthews accused Republican voters in South Carolina of being racist.

On Thursday's Hardball, former South Carolina first lady Jenny Sanford told Matthews this depiction of her fellow residents "is absurd and nonsense and frankly just, you know, stirred up by people in the press" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

It is not necessarily inappropriate for a news outlet to interview a candidate’s former wife. However, three conditions must be met: 1) Is it newsworthy? 2) Is it fair and respectful to the families involved? 3) Is the timing appropriate?

On the timing issue alone it is clearly inappropriate for ABC to run this interview on the eve of the South Carolina primary. This smacks of an October Surprise of the worst sort, for which so many in the left-wing press have become so infamous. There is no reason it couldn’t run next week.

Using the same predictable liberal smear of shouting racism at any conservative who criticizes President Obama, on Thursday's NBC Today, co-host Ann Curry ranted: "...you've been increasingly stepping up your characterization of President Obama as a 'food stamp president,' interestingly, in the lead-up now to South Carolina....Are you intentionally playing the race card to win votes?" [Audio available here and view video below]

Gingrich dismissed the assertion and rightfully condemned those hurling the outrageous accusation: "You know, modern liberals are just, I think frankly, totally off the deep end....their only answer is to yell racism and hide."

New York Times campaign reporter Jim Rutenberg filed from Charleston on Wednesday, amplifying racial accusations against the Republican presidential field, especially Newt Gingrich’s recent comments on Obama as a “food stamp” president, in “Risks for G.O.P. in Attacks With Racial Themes.”

South Carolina has the nation’s first female Indian-American governor (a Republican), the highest-ranking African-American in Congress (on the Democratic side) and a rapidly growing population of Latinos, all evidence, longtime political players here say, that the state is shedding its racially charged past.

CBS comedian David Letterman teed off on the Republican presidential field on Monday night while barely batting an eye toward President Obama or the Democrats. The Late Show host joked at the expense of Newt Gingrich's first marriage and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie's weight, while comparing former First Lady Pat Nixon to a reptile from Star Trek.

In addition, the CBS comedian dismissed the entire GOP presidential field as he insinuated that none in the group of rich boring white guys would beat President Obama in the general election. [Video below the break.]

A day after calling South Carolina GOP voters racist, MSNBC's Chris Matthews on Wednesday referred to the Republican electorate as "lemmings" (video follows with transcript and commentary):