Newt Gingrich

NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams on Tuesday evening promised a look “back at some of the hits, runs and errors” of Newt Gingrich’s years as Speaker of the House, but other than a sentence from Lisa Myers about how “working with President Clinton, Gingrich piled up real achievements: a balanced budget, an historic welfare reform,” she focused her entire piece on how “his speakership also was marked by chaos, polarization, and incendiary remarks.”

Her first witness: NBC’s own Joe Scarborough, who feigned concern that Gingrich “hurt the Republican Party and more importantly, to a lot of us, the conservative movement moving forward.”

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]

After a stint as a White House reporter for the Times after George W. Bush took office in 2001, Frank Bruni wrote a fairly respectful biography of the president, Ambling Into History. But as a recently minted Times columnist, Bruni has betrayed no similar feeling for the current Republican candidates, who “are to varying degrees yahoos," according to his mocking Sunday Review column "And Now ... Professor Gingrich."

In his Politico column and on Morning Joe today, Joe Scarborough made the case for Newt Gingrich from the Republican primary voter's perspective, pointing to Gingrich's record of winning back the congressional majority, achieving balanced budgets and passing welfare reform.

Scarborough then proceeded to trash Gingrich, saying that: 1. he'd never vote for him; 2. Gingrich would be a "danger to the country"; 3. Gingrich is a "bad person" in political if not personal ways; and 4. Gingrich would lose to Obama in a rout, winning 100 electoral votes at best.  Video after the jump.

As NBC's Meet the Press panel ripped into Newt Gingrich on Sunday for his comments on poor children in inner cities lacking working role models, Manchester Union Leader publisher Joe McQuaid was the lone voice of dissent: "I think he gets a bum rap on the child labor thing."

That prompted host David Gregory to declare: "Are you really saying that the working poor in this country don't have good role models of how to work hard?...How do you get to that practical solution and not see it as a kind of grotesque distortion of what's really happening out there?"

On Monday's Early Show, CBS's John Dickerson and Time's Joe Klein harped on Newt Gingrich's overwhelming "liabilities." Klein hinted that the former House Speaker's ego would get the better of him: "This is a guy who cannot stand prosperity....[He] cannot control his ego when he is riding high." Dickerson played up how Gingrich's "negatives were very, very high when he left Washington in the mid-'90s."

Fill-in anchor Jeff Glor asked the CBS political director, "What are the chances Newt Gingrich is the nominee?" Dickerson punted on making a prediction, but borrowed a line from colleague Jan Crawford, stating that "he has a great deal of baggage." When co-anchor Rebecca Jarvis followed up by asking about how the Obama reelection campaign saw the former Speaker, he raised the "likeability" issues with Newt:

How much do the gang at MSNBC's Morning Joe despise Newt Gingrich and want to derail his run for president?

Near the end of a Monday segment in which she read - with a smile on her face, mind you - numerous columns quite hostile to the former Speaker of the House, co-host Mika Brzezinski asked, "How do we stop talking about Newt Gingrich?" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

When the Washington Post's "conservative" blogger Jennifer Rubin last Sunday accused the right-leaning media of being "embarrassingly bad this election cycle," it seemed a metaphysical certitude CNN's Howard Kurtz would soon have her on to advance her view.

True to form, exactly one week later there was Rubin on Reliable Sources with the host saying, "This indictment suggests, my reading of it, that the conservative media, parts of the conservative media are essentially corrupt" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

The liberals on PBS's Inside Washington Friday were all giddy at the thought of Newt Gingrich as the Republican presidential nominee.

So sure this would be good news for the president he adores, syndicated columnist and PBS fixture Mark Shields said this would result in the "landslide reelection victory of Barack Obama" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

On Thursday, December 1, several left-wing radio talkers viciously attacked Newt Gingrich, the GOP front-runner. There is a special toxicity level they reach when talking of the former House speaker.

Take Randi Rhodes, who mocked his appearance: "He always looks like a corpse that was pulled out of a lake! Every time I watch CSI and they pull somebody out of the lake, I think, hey, is that Newt? No, it's this week's murder victim. He's bloated and a massive mutiliated middle aged flesh curtain hanging!" Then take Mike Malloy, who compared Newt to an ax murderer and railed against his bad breath:

Apparently, Newt Gingrich wanting to employ students from poor neighborhoods and teach them job skills means that he believes they possess "no work habits." CNN obliged to put words in the candidate's mouth during Friday's 1 p.m. news hour as its headlines slammed Gingrich's "controversial" statements.

Anchor T.J. Holmes admitted that the candidate "tends to say some pretty edgy things every now and again," and CNN headlines blared that Gingrich's "controversial" talk "could become a campaign liability," and that his statement "targets children in 'poor neighborhoods'." [Video below the break. Click here for audio.]

On Thursday's NBC Nightly News, anchor Brian Williams fretted over comments made by Newt Gingrich about providing school jobs for inner-city students: "The Newt Gingrich that a lot of folks will remember from his speakership days back in the '90s was back on display making statements about controversial issues that left some of his critics slack-jawed."

In an interview with the former Speaker aired on Thursday's ABC World News, chief White House correspondent Jake Tapper similarly cautioned: "And then the other concern has to do with your propensity to make outrageous, interesting, however – whatever adjective you'd like to assign – remarks, the most recent one about child labor laws, for example, being stupid."

CBS's Jan Crawford played up Newt Gingrich's "baggage" on Friday's Early Show, underlining how the Republican presidential candidate is "going to be hit hard for his ties to corporate interests, the ethics allegations...even his personal relationships- his adulterous affairs." Crawford also spotlighted the claim that only Herman Cain's "die-hard supporters...think that he can stay in this race."

The correspondent first reported on the allegation that Cain had a 13-year affair with Ginger White and how the candidate recently admitted to helping White financially. Crawford shifted to Gingrich by stating that "in a crowded field, that could help candidates like Newt Gingrich, who continues to surge ahead." She then used her "baggage" term, and highlighted a "scathing new ad" from GOP competitor Ron Paul, which targeted Newt.

During Thursday's Erin Burnett OutFront, CNN contributor John Avlon flagged candidate Newt Gingrich for an "excessive celebration" penalty. Gingrich, he claimed, was letting his recent success in the polls get to his head.

Gingrich's bragging from his "Newt-centric universe," Avlon lectured, could turn off potential voters as "the more Newt starts to shoot from the lip, the more he runs the risk of reminding people why they fell out of love with him in the first place." [Video below the break. Click here for audio.]

On his Politics Nation program last night, Rev. Al Sharpton reacted with incredulity to a remark that former Speaker Newt Gingrich made on the campaign trail about there being millionaires collecting food stamps.

"I challenge Newt Gingrich to name one millionaire that he knows that's getting food stamps," Sharpton blustered, apparently unaware of news that broke in May of this year about lottery winner Leroy Fick. The Michigan man won $2 million in a state lottery game yet continued to collect food stamps because, as Ron French of the Detroit News reported: (emphasis mine)

UPDATE: Scarborough Responds--Don't Twist My Criticism of Newt Into Support For Obama

In response to an inquiry from this NewsBuster, Joe Scarborough has made clear that he strongly opposes President Obama's "disastrous" record, urging people not to twist his criticism of Gingrich into support for Obama.  Full Scarborough statement after the jump.

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On Wednesday's Joy Behar Show, HLN host Behar was joined by liberal guests Bill Press and Hilary Rosen to trash the GOP presidential field as the group discussed the latest sexual accusations against Herman Cain, and Newt Gingrich's rise in the polls. Press took a shot at Gingrich early on as he cracked that Cain would be the frontrunner now if he had had an affair while his wife was "dying of cancer":

After Politico hysterically named Environmental Protection Agency chief Lisa Jackson its "Energy Policy Maker of the Year" Tuesday evening, NewsBusters sought the opinion of James Inhofe (R-Ok.), the ranking member on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.

As readers would expect, this led to a lengthy discussion about the global warming myth, Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich, ClimateGate, and a host of related subjects guaranteed to inform and entertain skeptics across the fruited plain (audio follows with transcript):

During what he billed as an "official exit interview" for retiring Rep. Barney Frank, Hardball host Chris Matthews asked the Massachusetts Democrat if he believes in good and evil and moreover, does he believe that "there's some people like Newt Gingrich that personify one side of this Manichean struggle in our life."

Frank, no fan of Gingrich, seemed taken aback by how strident Matthews feels about the former Republican Speaker of the House (video follows page break; MP3 audio here):

On Monday, NewsBusters broke a story about Washington Post blogger Aaron Blake using Twitter to dig up dirt on Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich.

On Tuesday, the former House Speaker spoke to St. Louis radio host and Big Journalism editor Dana Loesch about this saying, "It’s a little sad to see a paper the quality of the Washington Post stoop to...the National Enquirer approach to life" adding they "would rather worry about rumors about conservatives than facts about the President" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

MSNBC's Chris Matthews on Tuesday issued an absolutely disgraceful commentary concerning Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich.

In Hardball's final segment, the host attacked the former House Speaker saying, "Ever since he arrived on the national scene, politics has been nastier, more feral, too often uglier," and concluded, "Gingrich being nominated by a major political party for the American presidency promises a grotesquery to make even the most hard-nosed of us avert our glance in embarrassment and sadness for our republic" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

The Washington Post should either fire Aaron Blake or "acknowledge that it doesn't have a semblance of objectivity left to it," NewsBusters publisher Brent Bozell told Fox News Channel's Neil Cavuto on his Your World program this afternoon.

The Media Research Center (MRC) founder was reacting to this November 28 tweet by the Post political blogger (video of segment follows page break):