Nancy Giles

CBS's Nancy Giles on Sunday scolded women's groups for giving former President Bill Clinton a pass for his transgressions with White House aide Monica Lewinsky.

This strangely came during a Sunday Morning piece about Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich's troubles with the media over his own marital infidelity (video follows with transcript and commentary):

During a prerecorded commentary on CBS Sunday Morning, left-wing CBS commentator Nancy Giles complained about the "bloodlust" of GOP audience members who applauded Texas's use of capital punishment at the recent MSNBC debate and a small number of audience members who applauded at Monday's CNN debate after moderator Wolf Blitzer asked if someone who chose not to purchase insurance should be allowed to die.

CBS played a clip of the exchanges but notably left out Rep. Ron Paul's answer to Blitzer's question as he argued that organizations like churches used to help provide health care before Medicaid existed, leaving Giles to give the impression that Rep. Paul had been unconcerned about the uninsured dying. Giles:

On CBS's Sunday Morning, left-wing commentator Nancy Giles managed to attack Rush Limbaugh while condemning a UCLA student's internet video rant against Asians: "Her monologue was straight out of the Rush Limbaugh playbook from a few months ago....And Rush is a cartoon. In my humble opinion."

A clip was played of Limbaugh mocking Chinese President Hu Jintao after a joint press conference held with President Obama in January. Giles could have just as easily said that UCLA student Alexandra Wallace was taking a page out of the Rosie O'Donnell playbook.

 Appearing as a guest on Tuesday’s Joy Behar Show on HLN, liberal commentator Nancy Giles of CBS Sunday Morning declared that she was "tired" of Bristol Palin and asserted that "she makes me ill."

After host Behar brought up Palin during a discussion of the television show Dancing with the Stars, Giles sighed and responded: "Can I just, can my comment be rolling my eyes and heavy exhaling? I just am so tired of her. I’m tired of her getting these breaks. I’m tired of her making money and leaving her baby at home. I’m tired of her maybe getting 30 grand to speak about abstinence. Excuse me? I’m tired of her."

After Behar challenged Giles’s suggestion that Palin was neglecting her baby, the liberal commentator continued: "I know, Joy, I do believe that, but I’m so, she makes me ill, so all bets are off."

Giles eventually admitted to sounding sexist after actress Eve Plumb complained that men are never asked about whether they are neglecting their children, with the liberal commentator conceding: "I know it’s not fair. I sound like I’m sexist."

CBS News contributor Nancy Giles rudely told St. Louis Tea Party founder Dana Loesch to shut her mouth during a panel discussion on Wednesday's "Larry King Live." 

In the midst of a heated debate about allegations of racism within the movement, Giles asked, "Where is the Tea Party's outrage when members of their own party spit on members of the United States [Congress]?"

Loesch accurately replied, "That was proved false. Let's not engage in defamation and libel."

"Excuse me," barked Giles. "I'm talking so shut your mouth."

When Loesch told Giles, "Be honest when you speak and I wouldn't have to interrupt you," Giles again barked, "You know, Larry, can you just turn off her mike?" (video follows with transcript and commentary):  

Appearing on CBS’s Sunday Morning, commentator Nancy Giles shared her thoughts on Congressman Joe Wilson’s outburst: "Some sign waving and you probably heard about it, heckling. At a joint session of Congress....That’s the voice of Representative Joe Wilson of South Carolina, not some drunk at open mic night, calling the President a liar."

Giles continued, denouncing all health care reform protestors: "He later apologized, but still, it was a frightening mix of disrespect and bad behavior, with a dash of this summer’s town hall meeting craziness. I guess we should be grateful that there weren’t any ‘show us your birth certificate’ signs and at least no one beat anyone with a cane, which actually happened in the old Senate chamber in 1856."

Giles would certainly know about "disrespect and bad behavior," on the October 5, 2003 broadcast of Sunday Morning, she compared conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh to Adolf Hitler: "So as Rush’s world has steadily crumbled, it’s no wonder he allegedly had to turn to prescription pain killers....Edgy, controversial, brilliant....Hitler would have killed in talk radio. He was edgy, too."

We know how the media relished the fall of the GOP, and lovingly analyzed divisions within the party. But their beloved Democrats are falling apart before their eyes, and the strain is beginning to tell. The Blue Dog Democrats are for being the only thing between this nation and socialized medicine, a fact that has some liberals coming out swinging – literally, in at least one case.

“Social commentator” Nancy Giles appeared on the “Today Show” July 28 along with Dan Abrams and Willie Geist during Kathy Lee Gifford and Hota Kotb’s segment “News Flash.” The usually all small-talk segment got heated when it turned to health care.

Kotb posed the simple question “Do you guys think health care will pass…?” Abrams and Willie gave simple answers. Giles, however, got passionate.

“It better and I could punch every Blue Dog Democrat in the nose. And I’m a Democrat. I could punch them, I’m so annoyed. And I’m annoyed with Harry Reid. I better not find him in an elevator.”

On Monday’s CBS Early Show, co-host Maggie Rodriguez asked Sunday Morning liberal commentator Nancy Giles about the incoming Obama Administration and Giles could not resist bashing Bush: "Well, Barack Obama's going to have his hands full with a lot of the carnage that was left by the previous administration." Republican strategist Bay Buchanan was seated next to Giles and Giles defended her statement: "I had to put it that way, Bay. It is carnage." Buchanan joked: "I was told it would cease-fire here for two days." Giles replied: "I know, I'm sorry, carnage just slipped out, but I mean, he's going to have his hands full."

Co-host Harry Smith then chimed in, saying to Giles: "I spent the entire afternoon yesterday talking to people, and there were actually very few people who were echoing the sentiments you were echoing...There were some people who were angry and still carrying grudges. But moreover, it was a sense of for the moment, no more Republicans, no more Democrats, we're all on the same page, at least for a moment."

In contrast to her view of Bush’s "carnage," Giles praised Obama: " Barack Obama said something last year that I heard him say about his definition of homeland security and national security. It had to do with making education a real important thing. He felt that educating our young people would make the nation that much more secure. And I love that way of thinking."

On Tuesday’s CBS "Early Show," left-wing comedian and CBS commentator Nancy Giles, upset over the Barack Obama New Yorker cover, remarked to co-host Harry Smith: "So is the New Yorker at some point going to do a similar wild interpretation of the rumors about John McCain or have him holding his wife as a trophy, stepping on his ex-wife?"

Like MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell, who on Monday worried that the magazine cover was "too sophisticated" for the American public to understand, Giles similarly fretted: "But the thing about this particular cartoon is that I think for the people who really already believe that Barack Obama is Muslim...because of the fear that this country has, this will maybe reinforce that fear. They -- I don't think they'll see that as satire." When Smith described how the cartoon was meant to mock Obama’s critics, Giles added: "I get that...but I think that there may be people who just look at the cover and see it for what it is."

For his part, Smith actually defended the New Yorker and suggested the Obama campaign was overeacting: "Why's everybody going crazy about this?...Front page story in the New York Times this morning is people are trying to figure out what's funny about this campaign and so far nothing has been funny about Obama. Is Obama off-limits?...what we're returning to the age of absolute political correctness?"

Following Monday’s sanitized coverage of the controversial comments of Barack Obama’s pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, Tuesday’s CBS "Early Show" continued to gloss over the most inflammatory of Wright’s comments, spending over 6 minutes on Obama’s upcoming speech on the issue while devoting only 16 seconds of video to Wright’s more mild statements. Following this video, co-host Russ Mitchell asked left-wing commentator Nancy Giles: "How careful does he [Obama] have to be today not to denounce Jeremiah Wright and make some black voters angry?"

The rest of the analysis with Giles, who was ‘balanced’ with Democratic strategist Joe Trippi, was entirely about political strategy, not about Wright’s statements. Mitchell asked Trippi about the possibility of race affecting Obama’s appeal: "Joe Trippi, sticking with the risk factor for a second. There are folks out there who are going to look at Barack Obama, who's made no secret of the fact that he's black of course...And look at this speech and say 'you know what honey, I just realized something today, he brought up race. Barack Obama is black.' How risky is that in this speech?"

This past Sunday, on CBS’s morning show Sunday Morning, Nancy Giles offered commentary on the foiled terror plot in London, and noted that she takes no comfort that this plot was foiled. Additionally, she used her segment to opine that news of the terror plot is just a "distraction" from what she considers more important issues, and offers scathing criticism of the Department of Homeland Security.

Giles began:

"Thank God for Scotland Yard and the people of Great Britain, because I feel more protected by them than the agencies here at home..."

Scotland Yard indeed deserves credit for infiltrating this terror cell and disrupting the plot to blow up airplanes bound for the United States. But what about foiled terror plots here at home? Or the fact that there has not been a terrorist attack here in the U.S. since the tragedy of September 11, 2001? Giles never mentions the U.S. successes in the war on terrorism. Given these facts, it would seem the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI and other law enforcement agencies, the CIA and the entire intelligence community, and all others charged with protecting America from terrorism are doing a remarkable job in keeping us safe and are just as deserving of praise as Scotland Yard.

In the days and weeks following the disaster in New Orleans, many in the media suggested that the federal government’s “slow” response to Hurricane Katrina was caused by the race and economic condition of those impacted. President Bush had to regularly answer the questions of reporters concerning this, while media members opined at will.

Most famous of such assertions was reported by NewsBusters when rapper Kanye West said during a televised Katrina relief fundraiser that, "George Bush doesn't care about black people." Earlier that day, CNN’s Wolf Blitzer said, “Almost all of them that we see, are so poor and they are so black.” And, as also reported by NewsBusters, CBS News’s Nancy Giles said: “[Bush] has put himself at risk by visiting the troops in Iraq, but didn't venture anywhere near the Superdome or the convention center, where thousands of victims, mostly black and poor, needed to see that he gave a damn."

CBS News Sunday Morning “contributor” Nancy Giles, in the only commentary aired on the show on Sunday, delivered a blistering diatribe in which she charged that racism was behind the slow response to the hurricane victims in New Orleans, rationalized looting, claimed the real war is the one on poverty that’s being lost thanks to tax cuts, and mocked President Bush for visiting Iraq but skipping the Superdome -- thus showing he doesn’t give “a damn” about black people.

Giles asserted that “if the majority of the hardest hit victims of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans were white people, they would not have gone for days without food and water” and insisted that “the real war is not in Iraq, but right here in America. It's the War on Poverty, and it's a war that's been ignored and lost.” She complained that “we've repeatedly given tax cuts to the wealthiest and left our most vulnerable American citizens to basically fend for themselves." Giles scolded Bush for finding photo-ops with some “black folks to hug” while he skipped “the messy parts of New Orleans.” She castigated Bush for how he “has put himself at risk by visiting the troops in Iraq, but didn't venture anywhere near the Superdome or the convention center, where thousands of victims, mostly black and poor, needed to see that he gave a damn."

Video excerpt: Real or Windows Media

Full transcript of her September 4 commentary follows, as well as a look back at her 2003 commentary charging Rush Limbaugh with racism.