Rick Santorum

Appearing as a guest on Monday's The Tonight Show on NBC, advertising executive and former CNBC host Donny Deutsch praised President Obama for voicing support for same-sex marriage, and predicted that voters will prefer Obama as a person, in contrast with Mitt Romney, as Deutsch raised the story of Romney allegedly "bullying" a fellow classmate in high school.

When host Jay Leno showed Deutsch the latest cover of Newsweek devoted to Obama's stand in favor of gay marriage, Deutsch effused:

Bill Maher on Friday took a disgusting shot at former Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum.

In his final bit on HBO's Real Time, the perilously liberal host said of the former Pennsylvania Senator, "I never worried Rick would have an affair. I worried he’d dress up as his mother and kill women in a motel" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Sean Penn on Monday said former Senator Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) is "anti-American" and "did not read the Constitution."

Rather hysterically, the Oscar-winning actor also told CNN's Piers Morgan, "I am very pro-American in the sense of a Constitutional America" (video follows with transcript 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."

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):

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]

New York Times editorial page editor Andrew Rosenthal showed his usual class in a Tuesday afternoon post responding to Rick Santorum's withdrawal from the Republican presidential race: "Goodbye, Rick Santorum."

Reporting on Rick Santorum leaving the Republican presidential race on Tuesday's NBC Nightly News, correspondent Ron Mott proclaimed: "It was a campaign filled with highly-publicized gaffes....From calling President Obama out on education, to President Kennedy's famed speech on the separation of church and state....Just two of a number of comments he eventually walked back or was pushed to explain."

Mott also depicted Santorum as only appealing to a narrow group of voters: "Santorum's support was mostly rooted in a core of Republican strongholds, where his unapologetic push for social conservative values, something the GOP establishment largely sought to avoid, was enthusiastically embraced by evangelicals."

According to Muslim comedian and CNN regular Dean Obeidallah, Rick Santorum speaks the language of "the Taliban" when he talks about the intersection of church and state in America. On CNN Sunday night, liberal host Don Lemon decided to have a religious discussion for Easter Sunday, and his first question was about the separation of church and state.

Obeidallah has attacked Santorum in the past, and found a way to bring him into the discussion. He referred to Santorum "saying the Bible and our laws must comport," adding later that "He was saying the same things honestly that the Taliban would say, that religious scripture and the laws of that state must agree." [Video below the break. Audio here.]

Good Morning America analyst Matt Dowd on Wednesday lectured Rick Santorum to "get out" and stop wasting "any little bit of political capital he has left." Depending on which count one looks at, Mitt Romney is currently 489 delegates short of the nomination.

That fact didn't stop Dowd from making his point clear. Over four sentences, he used the phrase "get out" four times, pronouncing, "I think he has to get out because he wants to preserve any little bit of political capital he has left and a voice in the Republican Party." The same man who, on March 26 slammed conservative states as hypocrites, instructed Santorum, "I think it would be good to get out right now before he loses Pennsylvania. But he has got to try to keep a voice in the party by getting out."

On Monday's Piers Morgan Tonight, as he interviewed Rick Santorum, CNN host Morgan suggested that America needs more gun control, and pressed the GOP candidate on whether it is "caring" for him, "as a Christian," to undo ObamaCare if elected President. (Video below)

Soledad O'Brien's CNN show is suffering some pretty horrific ratings, and yet she still had the gall to ask Rick Santorum's communications director why the candidate won't drop out of the presidential race.

The quarterly numbers for O'Brien's morning show Starting Point were the lowest in more than a decade at CNN for that time slot, in fact. She averaged less than 100,000 viewers per day from the age 25-54 crowd. [Video below the break. Audio here.]

Early frontrunner for the most preposterous political analogy of the year . . .

On today's Morning Joe, Tina Brown said Rick Santorum was "like Judas Iscariot."  And just what was Santorum's sin that merited comparing him to the man who betrayed Jesus Christ for thirty pieces of silver?  That Santorum, 15 years after the fact, now regrets having supported Arlen Specter when his then-fellow Republican senator from Pennsylvania ran for president.  View the video after the jump.

Update/correction (30 March 2012, 16:12 p.m. EDT): Brewer is no longer employed with MSNBC. I was going off of outdated information on her Facebook fan page. The post below is corrected accordingly.

"A compelling, alarming case against the GOP and its 'War on Women.' Lest you think it can't happen here, just ask Iranian women how conservative, religious fanatics ripped their rights away." [see screen capture below page break; h/t @mattjmobile]

That's how former MSNBC host Contessa Brewer introduced her Facebook fans to a March 25 New York magazine piece by Frank Rich entitled "Stag Party: The GOP’s woman problem is that it has a serious problem with women."

The journalists at Good Morning America on Tuesday appeared shocked that a "sour" Rick Santorum dared to aggressively oppose a New York Times reporter, hyperventilating that the Republican presidential candidate has gone to "war against the media."

Former Democratic operative turned journalist George Stephanopoulos insisted that the "wear and tear of a long, tough campaign" is beginning to show on Santorum. He piled on, "His Cinderella story has gone a bit sour." Reporter Berman, who often can't refuse using over-the-top language for his stories, began, "Well, cover your ears and hide the children. Dirty words have hit the presidential race." [See video below. MP3 audio here.]

Today's starter topic: With his chances of winning the GOP nomination decreasing as time goes by, former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum said in an interview that he would accept an offer to be the Republican vice presidential candidate if he were offered it by likely presidential nominee Mitt Romney:

Saturday's front-page New York Times story by Susan Saulny focused on the Santorum campaign in Louisiana before Santorum's easy win in the Republican primary there: "On the Right, Santorum Has Women's Vote."

Saulny emphasized the religious angle of Santorum's appeal. The condescending story provided slight corrective to the paper's misleading previous coverage assuming Santorum lacked support from women, but maintained the unsubstantiated idea, embraced by the Times, that moderate Republican women are turned off by appeals to social conservatism.

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].

Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum had a very testy exchange with New York Times reporter Jeff Zeleny at a campaign stop in Wisconsin Sunday evening.

In the midst of the encounter, Santorum angrily said, "Stop lying...Quit distorting our words...It's bulls--t!" (video follows with transcribed highlights and commentary):

Failure to heed Rush Limbaugh's Thursday warning relating to another matter ("If I were you, I would regard every AP story, particularly this year, as nothing more than a propaganda piece for the reelection of Barack Obama") is allowing the Associated Press to perpetuate what I demonstrated on Friday is a totally unsupported falsehood concerning a statement made by presidential candidate Rick Santorum.

What Santorum said was a clearly conditional statement (full context and here): "If you’re going to be a little different, we might as well stay with what we have instead of taking a risk with what may be the Etch A Sketch candidate of the future." Here is what the AP's headline writers and the wire service's Will Weissert twisted things on Friday (saved here at host for future reference, fair use and discussion purposes):

On Friday's The Ed Show on MSNBC, host Ed Schultz and MSNBC political analyst Richard Wolffe - formerly of Newsweek - drew attention to a woman at a shooting range who recently encouraged Rick Santorum to "pretend it's Obama" while the GOP presidential candidate was firing at a target.

After Schultz noted that Santorum criticized the comment when it was brought to his attention, Wolffe warned viewers:

Rush Limbaugh was right yesterday when he suggested that "If I were you, I would regard every AP (Associated Press) story, particularly this year, as nothing more than a propaganda piece for the reelection of Barack Obama." Rush fan Matt Drudge, who currently has a deliberately misleading AP report linked at the top of his Drudge Report, would do well to heed Rush's suggestion.

The AP story by Will Weissert concerns what GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum said yesterday about Mitt Romney. What Santorum actually said was that “If they’re going to be a little different (Romney compared to President Barack Obama), we might as well stay with what we have instead of taking a risk of what may be the Etch A Sketch candidate for the future.” Notice that the statement is conditional, and that if Romney can demonstrate that he is more than "a little different," Santorum's concern is no longer valid. That's not what Weissert's headline or copy portray (HT to a NewsBusters emailer; bold is mine):

"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):

Liberal comedian John Fugelsang has appeared for three straight days on CNN's Starting Point as a panel member. Although simply listed as a "political comedian," Fugelsang has offered some outrageous liberal commentary during his time as a CNN guest.

For instance, on Wednesday morning he cracked a joke about Rick Santorum being a "homophobe." He previously called Arizona Governor Jan Brewer (R) a "rude lunatic" and ridiculed Catholics who follow their church's teaching on birth control. [Video below the break. Audio here.]