David Shuster

CNN must have known that when it pitted Glenn Beck TV's Amy Holmes against the perilously liberal David Shuster of Al Gore's Current TV, sparks were going to fly.

On Sunday's Reliable Sources, when the media's coverage of Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney and Bain Capital surfaced, the pair did end up facing off with Holmes not surprisingly looking like the only adult in the room (video follows with transcribed highlights and commentary):

On Tuesday's edition of the Stephanie Miller radio show, she welcomed the one she called "Dreamy News Man," the former MSNBC anchor David Shuster, now just picking up anchoring scraps from that flailing show with the terminally arrogant former sportscaster on Current TV. Predictably, Shuster pleased the persistently Obama-cheerleading Miller by suggesting the Republicans were in "Crazy-land en masse" on Libya. It's apparently "absolutely crazy" to question the patience, the firmness, the wisdom of Team Obama's foreign policy:

It irritates liberals to no end when conservatives they revile don't comply with the caricatures they've created for them.

Former MSNBCer David Shuster, for example, subbing for radio host Bill Press on Wednesday, had this to say about News Corp. chief Rupert Murdoch's testimony before Parliament (audio clip after page break) --

Tonight MSNBC's cast and crew will gather in Washington D.C. to celebrate their network being on the air for 15 long years. In that time its hosts, reporters and guests have attacked conservatives and Republicans on everything from impeaching Bill Clinton and conducting a war on terrorism, up to the fight over public unions. All the while some of its reporters and hosts have been thrilled by the likes of Mikhail Gorbachev and Barack Obama.

For that entire 15 years MRC analysts have been dutifully watching and noting these often outrageous outbursts of leftism from NBC News' cable outlet.

The following collection of the worst MSNBC quotes, year-by-year, is just a sampling of the Lean Forward network's decade-and-a-half long devotion to advancing the cause of liberalism under the guise of journalism.

(video compilation after the jump)

On MSNBC you can call a sitting president a "murderous" "fascist" even muse about putting the President on trial for war crimes, so long as that president is a Republican. But if you dare call a Democratic president a "d–ck," as MSNBC analyst Mark Halperin did this morning it's grounds for indefinite suspension.

While calling any president the D-word is probably not showing the proper respect for the office, it has to be asked where does it rank compared to essentially accusing a president of mass murder and war crimes?

While some networks have tried to say next to nothing about Obama’s Guantanamo flip-flop, they are not happy on liberal talk radio shows on Tuesday. Ex-MSNBC anchor David Shuster told Stephanie Miller he was disappointed that Obama’s been so conciliatory (wasn’t that part of his "purple state" appeal?)

SHUSTER: I though the President was very clear in his election campaign about okay we’re going to close Guantanamo and we’re going to reinstitute sort of the Constitution and Constitutional principles. I mean I think it gets back to sort of my issue with President Obama all along has been there’s such an effort I suppose to sort of want to be conciliatory and sort of you know reach sort of middle ground and compromise.

But I always thought the job of a President was to sort of use the bully pulpit to bring people towards your position. And say "You know what, this is what we stand for, and I’m going to use the megaphone of the Presidency to convince Americans why I am right."

The far-left Fox-haters are at it again. In just the past couple of days, we've seen multiple instances of leftist pundits dishonestly bashing the Fox News Channel in yet more attempts to slime the cable news channel.

The latest such attempts caught the attention of cable news blogger Johnny Dollar, who consistently documents the left's growing hatred of everything Fox.

The more notable instance of Fox-hating came from former MSNBC host David Shuster. Shuster took to twitter Thursday to celebrate Canada's rejection of Fox News's application for a broadcasting license. Just one problem: Fox's licesnse was approved in 2004. Called out on the mistake, Shuster deleted his tweet, blocked Dollar, and to date has not issued a correction.

Media critic David Zurawik and former MSNBC contributor David Shuster got into quite a heated debate Sunday over the surprise exit of Keith Olbermann.

Appearing on CNN's "Reliable Sources," the pair also quarreled about the difference in journalistic standards at Fox News and MSNBC (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Former MSNBC journalist David Shuster, who used his position as a supposedly straight-forward journalist to slam "nutty," far-right" conservatives, will return to the airwaves Wednesday night, guest hosting the Jim Bohannon radio show.

Shuster was "suspended indefinitely" on April 06, 2010 after it was revealed that he was shooting a pilot for CNN, despite still being under contract at MSNBC. The ex-anchor used his Twitter page to announce the development and to inform that his guests for the day's program will include White House spokesman Bill Burton and a UFO expert.

During his time at MSNBC, Shuster repeatedly slammed Tea Party candidates, including on March 2, 2010, when he went after the "right-wing fringe." On another occasion, he sputtered, "Plus, the nutty rhetoric continues from Rush Limbaugh, Michael Steele and Sarah Palin....How offensive can Rush Limbaugh be?"

There's a cynical theme growing in the media that Faisal Shahzad, the man accused of attempting to set off a car bomb in New York's Times Square Saturday, was driven to violence by the loss of his job, the loss of his house, and his anger towards former President George W. Bush.

In all of this theorizing -- or what some might call psychobabble -- those making the assertion have yet to ponder if six years of Bush Derangement Syndrome might also be involved.

For over a year, Americans have been warned that so-called "hate speech" directed at Barack Obama and Democrats by conservative talk show hosts such as Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and Sean Hannity, as well as others at Fox News, is going to manifest itself in violent acts against elected officials and/or our nation.

With this in mind mightn't years of "hate speech" directed at Bush and Republicans by liberal talk radio hosts and MSNBC in particular have incited Shahzad's anger to such an extent that he decided to become a domestic terrorist?

Consider what the Wall Street Journal wrote Wednesday (h/t Jennifer Rubin, photo courtesy AP):

MSNBC on Tuesday announced that anchor David Shuster has been "suspended indefinitely" after filming a pilot at CNN. If this is the end of the liberal host's tenure on MSNBC, he'll leave behind a long legacy of viciously attacking "conservative fear mongering."

During the Obama era, Shuster, supposedly a straight-news journalist, has been quick to deride the opponents of the President. On September 10, 2009, he smeared, "Look at the image of the Republican Party, all white males with short haircuts. They look sort of angry. No women, no minorities, and it looks like they've sort of become unhinged."

On his now-defunct program, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Shuster assailed conservatives and Republicans as totally irrational: "Plus, the nutty rhetoric continues from Rush Limbaugh, Michael Steele and Sarah Palin....How offensive can Rush Limbaugh be?"

Update - 10:45 AM | Lachlan Markay: Contessa Brewer is filling in for Shuster during his 10 am slot. Mediaite is reporting that Ed Schultz will take the 3 pm slot. This will not be the permanent lineup, however.

MSNBC's David Shuster was suspended indefinitely today after a flap with the cable network's brass, who were livid that he filmed a pilot for CNN. Shuster, whose contract is set to expire at the end of the year, has not appeared on air since the news broke.

"If true," said MSNBC spokesman Jeremy Ganes after hearing the news, "this is unacceptable and David will be punished appropriately." MSNBC President Phil Griffin was vacationing in Florida, but reportedly "ripped Shuster a new one over the phone," according to Gail Shister of TV Newser.

This morning MSNBC announced that Shuster has been suspended "indefinitely." Anything less than suspension, an MSNBC exec told Shister, "sends a message from management that this is OK."

David Shuster has once again found himself in trouble with his bosses at MSNBC.

After news leaked that he recently shot a pilot for CNN, Shuster was pulled from his 3 PM time slot on the cable network Friday apparently by head honcho Phil Griffin.

According to Gail Shister over at TVNewser, "Griffin, vacationing in Florida, ripped Shuster a new one over the phone" (h/t NBer armyfool1):

David Shuster may be on his way to CNN, and the cable network may be realizing that it needs the likes of David Shuster -- a hyper-partisan liberal -- if it wants to compete with MSNBC.

The New York Observer reported today that CNN shot a pilot for a new show co-anchored by Shuster, at right in a file photo, and Michel Martin, an NPR reporter with a lower profile, but a noteworthy history of liberal bias.

I wrote a post on Wednesday noting that cable news generally caters to a more political audience. I posited that CNN's supposed attempts to cater to the "center" were not only inconsistent with the network's routinely liberal reporting, but in fact self-destructive, as they try to carve out a market that really isn't there. Apparently CNN got the memo.

On the very same day that MSNBC put him on to discuss Sarah Palin's violent-sounding rhetoric about a "hit list," leftist talk-radio host Mike Malloy e-mailed a reply to a NewsBusters reader and a group of conservative talkers on his list including Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Bill O'Reilly, John Gibson, Hugh Hewitt, and Joe Scarborough, as well as several other Fox News producers with this message: "eat s— and die you right wing geeks".

And on that same day on his radio show, Malloy kept pushing for the deaths (by suicide) of conservative talkers, in reference to the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. He thought it outrageous that someone would think militias aren't threatening, but what's threatening are hosts like Mike Malloy:

People like me who say that if Limbaugh, and Beck, and Hannity, and the rest of these clowns, in their incitement of the brain-dead followers, if there is another Murrah Federal Building incident, or one similiar to it, these guys ought to commit suicide. That would be the honorable thing to do.

Then he envisioned (and giggled about) these conceptual suicides:

In case there are any residual doubts about how bad the tea partiers have been treated, here are the Top Five ways the left and the media have abused a grassroots movement. The coverage has been so hateful and so biased, it was almost impossible to narrow the list. Here they are in reverse order, just in time for the big tea party events April 15:

5) Protesters are Anti-Government

The media and the left portray tea parties as "anti-government" because it undermines a patriotic grassroots movement. Tea partiers aren't anti-government, they are anti-big government. That's just not the story journalists tell. The "anti-government" theme is strong, cropping up in more than two dozen stories in The Washington Post and New York Times combined. Very few of them mentioned the word "big" in reference to government.

Instead, it's NPR's Liz Halloran claiming tea parties have been boosted by "restive Republicans who have found refuge in the year-old anti-tax, anti-government uprising." Or Frank Rich of The New York Times who compared tea partiers with Andrew Joseph Stack, the man who flew a plane into an IRS building. "Stack was a lone madman, and it would be both glib and inaccurate to call him a card-carrying Tea Partier or a ‘Tea Party terrorist.' But he did leave behind a manifesto whose frothing anti-government, anti-tax rage overlaps with some of those marching under the Tea Party banner."

In the 10AM ET hour on MSNBC on Tuesday, anchor David Shuster talked with Democratic strategist Craig Varoga, founder of the Patriot Majority political action committee, about efforts to "fight against tea-party-backed candidates." Moments later, a headline on screen read: "Tea Party Targets; PAC Launching Counter-Attack of Tea Party."

During the same hour on Monday, Shuster described how in a speech on Sunday, "[Sarah] Palin also took aim at Democrats in the media after she was criticized for posting a map of targeted House Democrats with using rifle cross-hairs." An on-screen graphic showed a picture of the map featured on Palin's website with the headline,"Sarah Palin's Dem Hit List," suggesting Palin was inciting violence against members of Congress.

Meanwhile, during the Tuesday segment with Varoga, the word "target" was used frequently. The headline "Tea Party Targets" remained on screen throughout the segment, as several secondary headlines appeared next to it, including: "Group Targeting Tea Party-Backed Candidates," "PAC Targeting 12 to 15 Conservative Races," "PAC's Mission: To Ensure Congress Tea Party-Free," and "PAC: Americans Need to Confront Tea Party." At one point, Shuster himself used the word: "What are the specific races, specific campaigns that you're going to be targeting?"

MSNBC's David Shuster on Monday continued to hit Sarah Palin for supposedly inciting hate against liberals and Democrats on her Facebook page. The cable channel's graphic hyperbolically complained, "Sarah Palin's Dem Hit-list." With no sense of irony, Shuster then brought on the vitriolic Mike Malloy to trash Palin.

Malloy is the liberal radio host who said in 2009 that Dick Cheney has "been eating the blood of a Jewish or a Muslim baby," to cite but one example. And yet the MSNBC anchor queried this purveyor of hate speech about whether Sarah Palin is bad for the Republican Party.

Conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt also appeared and clearly annoyed Shuster by touting Palin's intelligence and by deriding MSNBC. At one point, the incredulous Shuster focused on a comment Hewitt made about Democrat Senator Barabara Boxer. He wondered, "Hugh, did you just say [Palin will] make the contrast in terms of intelligence with Barbara Boxer?" [Audio available here.]

Reacting to Haley Barbour's quip that the liberal media has given President Obama "the longest wet kiss in political history" after last week's passage of ObamaCare,  Ed Schultz made clear on MSNBC this morning that he feels President Obama deserves it for all the fierce criticism he and Democrats faced during the months of debate over the legislation.

The MSNBC host and liberal radio talker was interviewed by colleague David Shuster shortly after 10:30 a.m. EDT today.

Shuster introduced the segment with a clip of the Mississippi Republican governor's quip on  the March 28 edition of ABC's "This Week" and went briefly over some polling data before asking for Schultz's thoughts [MP3 audio here]:

On Monday, MSNBC host David Shuster insisted Democrats would never stoop to Nazi analogies: "[W]henever we asked Democratic leaders, 'Look, do you support using a Hitler moustache on a poster of George W. Bush?’ Every single time, they said ‘Absolutely not, we do not approve of that. We want, of course, we want people to protest. But not like that.'"

Shuster should take a nice look at the MSNBC archives -- for Hardball on March 4, 2005. Sen. Robert Byrd compared Senate Republicans to Hitler for opposing the unprecedented use of the filibuster against Bush judicial nominees. Chris Matthews and his Democrat guest Steve McMahon agreed this was a "fake foul." Matthews suggested it was at best a "venial sin" and a "gotcha game," and insisted that his Republican guest Charlie Black should also attack the pope or Catholic cardinals for using the word "holocaust" to describe abortion. He even suggested Byrd was sort of  a religious interpreter: 

Now, when that sacred thing to him, the filibuster, is threatened, is it wrong for him, as a human being, to use over-the-top language? Don’t you cut him a little slack? To Bobby Byrd, the filibuster is almost religious. And to have it broken by a bunch of new members of the Senate, who basically come in and say, hey, we're here. We want to get this done. Let`s get rid of the rule. To him, that is sacrilegious.

So in this Church of the Filibuster, it's apparently an acceptable sermon to compare the Republicans to genocidal fascists. Halfway through the March 4, 2005 Hardball came this segment:

A black conservative author took on MSNBC's David Shuster Wednesday concerning the consistent media charge that Tea Party members are racists.

Shuster asked guest Kevin Jackson if the recent allegations of supposed racist activity at healthcare reform protests on Capitol Hill this weekend, as well as vandalism at the offices of some Democrat members of Congress, were proof that right-wing rhetoric was getting out of hand.

"Well, I've been to many Tea Parties around the country, and I've yet to see anybody, any real violence towards anybody," said Jackson. "So, I think it's a bit overstated."

When Shuster asked if Jackson had been at the Capitol Saturday when members of the Democratic Black Caucus were supposedly "greeted with derogatory racial slurs," he calmly responded, "Wasn't there for that, but saw the video about it, and determined that a lot of what they were saying had happened actually hadn't occurred" (video embedded below the fold with partial transcript and commentary, h/t NB reader Thomas Campbell):

You really have to wonder what was running through Vice President Joe Biden's head when he leaned toward President Barack Obama and said "this is a big f**cking deal." Did Biden think that after nearly a year of campaigning for health care reform he was alerting Obama to something new?

But Biden isn't the first vice president to allow an expletive slip in a public forum in this day and age of a geared up media apparatus. Back in 2004, then-Vice President Dick Cheney let the F-bomb slip in remarks he made to Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., over political disagreement between the two.

However, the media, particularly The Washington Post, MSNBC and CNN, took Cheney's indiscretion seriously. But Biden's indiscretion - which was actually captured on national TV - wasn't seen as so serious.

Comparative Videos Below Fold (Warning: Also Includes Explicit Language)

 

Over the last 24 hours, MSNBC's David Shuster has been heavily promoting a questionable online poll suggesting that significant chunks of Republicans think Barack Obama is the Antichrist, Hitleresque or wasn't born in America. On Wednesday, Shuster questioned the Harris survey, even as the network's graphic screamed, "Obama 'Hitler Poll' Questioned: Controversial Poll Suggests Hate Fueling Lunatic Fringe."

Shuster talked with Humphrey Taylor, the chairman of Harris Polling and provided some skepticism about the survey's validity. But, he didn't explain why MSNBC has been so heavily hyping it.

Additionally, Shuster still embraced the incendiary language of the poll. He trumpeted, "Still, a controversial new online interactive poll suggests that general hatred of President Obama on the right, which may be fueling the lunatic fringe is more widespread than previously thought."

During the Bush years, the news media were the promoters of protest, the champions of dissent. Denouncing the president as a brain-damaged warmonger was the most patriotic thing you could do (just ask the Dixie Chicks), and it was guaranteed to please the press.

On MSNBC before the Iraq War in 2003, David Shuster elevated the "anti-war" movement as the equivalent of the United States military, only with a higher morality: "The size of the demonstrators, at least here, at least in Europe, seems to underscore that there are now perhaps two world superpowers," he told Chris Matthews. "There’s the United States and then there are those millions of people who took to the streets opposing U.S. policy."

My, how times – and standards – change. On the weekend of the vote for a massive government intervention in the health-insurance market, these same reporters had a different take. The Tea Party protesters were not going to be hailed for their courageous and patriotic use of their free time. They were going to be smeared for daring to be.

MSNBC's David Shuster and liberal Professor Michael Eric Dyson on Monday took turns smearing Rush Limbaugh. Discussing conservative reaction to the passage of the health care bill, Shuster berated, "But, nobody on the right produced as much controversial venom this afternoon as Rush Limbaugh."

Shuster also linked the radio host to isolated outbursts over the weekend during protests in Washington. Talking to guest Michelle Bernard, he connected, "Is it possible, Michelle, to draw a link between Rush Limbaugh and when he talks, in a clip we didn't play, but how supporters should be wiped out?" He asserted, "That sort of venomous language and you create this picture- Rush Limbaugh creates this picture of fascism and Nazism on the march."

MSNBC's David Shuster on Friday attacked conservatives for "targeting" an 11-year-old child who lost his mother and is now lobbying for government-run health care. The liberal anchor sneered, "Is the right sinking to a new low? We'll let you judge for yourself." He then interviewed the young Marcelas Owens and his grandmother, for the second time in ten days.

In case viewers didn't get the slant of the segment, MSNBC's graphic reiterated, "New Low For Right? Conservative Critics Call Owens' Tale a 'Sob Story.'" As the MRC's Tim Graham noted, this story is being heavily pushed by Media Matters and other left-leaning outlets. Shuster did not talk to any conservative voices. (He only played a brief clip of Rush Limbaugh asserting that Democrats are using Owens for their own purposes.)

Near the end of the 10AM ET hour on MSNBC Thursday, anchor David Shuster criticized Fox News anchor Bret Baier for having "interrupted the President numerous times" in a "contentious" and "heated" Wednesday interview. Shuster later accused the network of bias: "Fox is far more – far more conservative overall than MSNBC could ever be liberal."

Shuster brought on left-wing Mother Jones editor David Corn and David Freddoso of the Washington Examiner to discuss Baier's interview with Obama. He asked Corn if Baier's questioning was "inappropriate," Corn didn't think so, but joked: "I was just disappointed overall, though, because there were no questions about where the President was born." Freddoso thought Baier got "bogged down" asking the President about the controversial 'deem and pass' procedure possibly being used to pass ObamaCare.   

Turning to Freddoso, Shuster cited former White House Communications Director Anita Dunn claiming that Fox News is the "communications arm of the Republican Party." Freddoso discounted that criticism: "You can call names and sling mud. I mean, Fox News definitely – it has more of a center-right perspective than MSNBC, which generally has more of a center-left, political perspective." Prompting Shuster to reply: "But the difference is that – and I've worked at both places – and you can find this from every sort of media analyst who's objective, Fox is far more – far more conservative overall than MSNBC could ever be liberal. It's not a question of their – one's five points to the right and one's five points to the left. It's not like that at all."

MSNBC host David Shuster on Tuesday demonstrated his condescension for conservative tea party activists, deriding protesters who had arrived in Washington as "far right" and "going nuts." Talking to reporter Richard Wolffe, he chided, "I mean, what does the White House make of the opposition on the far right?" [Audio available here.]

Later in the day, Shuster showed video of demonstrators who oppose the health care bill and dismissed, "Tea partiers are going nuts over the process Nancy Pelosi may use to pass the bill, even though it's the same process Republicans used when they were in power."

In the 10am hour, the MSNBC anchor talked to Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar. He brought up the very unusual parliamentary tactics that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has threatened to use. But, Shuster didn't seem particularly concerned with questions of the constitutionality of the so-called deem and pass measure. Instead, the journalist fretted about the "very pugnacious, very aggressive" tone of the protesters.