John Heilemann

As NewsBusters reported last week, eleven out of twelve regular contributors to the syndicated Chris Matthews Show thought Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney won't be able to take control and drive the political debate in the next six months leading to Election Day.

On this weekend's program, only one of the twelve regulars thought President Obama's recent flipflop on same-sex marriage hurts him politically (video follows with transcript and commentary):

It's becoming clearer and clearer that the time has come for MSNBC's Chris Matthews to retire.

On Tuesday's Hardball, despite virtually every intelligent person in this country knowing that Ford was the lone American car company to not accept a bailout in 2009, Matthews actually claimed President Obama "bet on" the auto giant (video follows with transcript and commentary):

You want a clear picture of just how in the tank America's media are for Barack Obama?

On Sunday, Chris Matthews revealed that eleven out of twelve regulars on the syndicated program bearing his name say Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney won't take control and drive the political debate in the next six months leading to Election Day (video follows with transcript and commentary):

If you haven't seen the hilariously effective ad by Karl Rove's American Crossroads group that portrays Barack Obama as a celebrity president with a failed economic record, check it out in the video clip.

Mika Brzezinksi was clearly peeved at how well the ad was playing even with her liberal-dominated panel.  After Obama fan Donny Deutsch, and no-conservative-he John Heilemann praised the ad, a Mika at wit's end sought to recruit HuffPo's Sam Stein to help her out.  "Can you debunk some of the things in the ad?", she entreated.  Stumbled Stein: "ah-h-h-h-h, sure, I guess."  After offering a paltry defense that Joe Scarborough demolished, Stein was reduced to saying that Mika had invited him to try to debunk the ad, and that "I'm trying my best!"  View the amusing video after the break.

Taking the Constitution's limits on federal power seriously is just, well, backwards to liberal journalists. Take Ari Melber of The Nation. Sitting on the panel on the March 26 edition of Now with Alex Wagner, the MSNBC contributor dismissed as "retrograde" the notion that the ObamaCare individual mandate -- the provision forcing Americans to buy private health insurance or else pay a fine to the federal government -- violates the letter and spirit of the Constitution.

Melber, a former John Kerry presidential campaign staffer, made the remark in the midst of comments wherein he suggested the Obama administration could see a stunning victory before the high court, despite the conservative nature of the tribunal:

With the Supreme Court about to decide the fate of ObamaCare, Americans are destined to hear all kinds of accusations about the so-called partisan nature of the conservatives on the bench.

New York magazine's John Heilemann did his part on this weekend's Chris Matthews Show claiming the Court's ruling in 2000's Bush v. Gore case "was pure politics and purely corrupt" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

As NewsBusters has been reporting, Obama-loving media members have almost been orgasmic in their adoration for HBO's new Sarah Palin-bashing film "Game Change."

Firmly on the bandwagon is Chris Matthews who on the syndicated program bearing his name this weekend actually said that Woody Harrelson's performance as McCain campaign manager Steve Schmidt is "the role of the century" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

A week from tonight (Saturday, March 11) HBO will debut Game Change, which promos
strongly suggest will present a disparaging portrait of Sarah Palin, but Thursday night on the Tonight Show, during a segment with actress Julianne Moore who plays Palin, Jay Leno contended the movie “humanizes” Palin and is not “some kind of slash and burn job.”

“Whether a Republican or a Democrat,” Leno urged, “don’t watch it for the politics. It’s just a human piece. I think it kind of humanizes Sarah Palin. I thought it was really, really good.” He soon added: “I highly recommend it. If you’re an ardent Republican and you think this is some kind of slash and burn job, it’s not. It’s really what a campaign does to a person.”

On HBO's Real Time Friday, New York magazine's John Heilemann trotted out the same old tired and completely false cliches about the GOP that Americans are going to hear ad nauseum for the next eight months.

"The Republican Party is becoming just truly is becoming a whiter, more blue collar, more populist, less well-educated party" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Christian evangelist Franklin Graham made some comments about President Obama on MSNBC's Morning Joe Tuesday that have liberals across the fruited plain hopping mad.

So angered is MSNBC's Chris Matthews that on Tuesday's Hardball he said, "I think we should stop inviting this guy to talk about politics...he ain’t his father’s son" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

The double standard by which the media view presidential sex scandals is nothing less than stunning.

On this weekend's syndicated Chris Matthews Show, the entire panel - which included two women, one being the supposedly conservative syndicated columnist Kathleen Parker - said the new revelations regarding former President John F. Kennedy having sex with a 19-year-old White House intern will have absolutely no impact on his legacy (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Something extraordinarily rare happened on MSNBC Thursday.

One of the network's admittedly liberal anchors, Hardball's Chris Matthews, scolded a liberal guest, New York magazine's John Heilemann, for echoing Obama administration talking points (video follows with transcript and commentary):

On the February 7 edition of MSNBC's Now with Alex Wagner, panelist John Heilemann, who writes for New York Magazine, thought it appropriate to equate the gay marriage debate in California to racial bigotry experienced by African-Americans in the 1960s. 

During an interview with openly gay former Lieutenant Dan Choi, Heilemann asked former Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele the following bigoted and offensive question: “Michael I’m curious about whether you think it would be okay in modern America, for there to be some states where black men could not marry white women?  If local standards where that were unacceptable.” [MP3 audio here. See video below.]

The ridiculous media hypocrisy concerning all the fuss over Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney's wealth and income tax rate was perfectly demonstrated on MSNBC's Morning Joe Monday.

After claiming that Romney's "tax issue is not remotely" past him, John Heilemann, the National Affairs editor for New York magazine, admitted that he never reported John Kerry's income tax rate during the 2004 campaign (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Rick Santorum to John Heilemann [and by extension to MSM at large] on today's Morning Joe: "it's your responsibility to defend the president, not mine." Ouch! If Newt's deft dicing of John King and Juan Williams paid huge electoral dividends, Santorum might anticipate a much-needed bump after running roughshod over the New York mag reporter.

Heilemann had called on Santorum to explain his failure to correct a woman at a town hall meeting in Florida yesterday who said President Obama was an "avowed Muslim" and legally unqualified to be president. After noting that he has repeatedly been on the record saying that he doesn't believe PBO is a Muslim and recognizes that he is legally qualified to be president, Santorum said that he chose not to chastise an elderly and infirm lady.  Then came Santorum's grand slam, as set forth above.  Heilemann only dug himself deeper when he responded by saying that prez candidate McCain had always defended Obama on the campaign trail. Video after the jump.

On Thursday's Hardball, Chris Matthews preposterously insisted that Barack Obama added "only 13 people" to the federal workforce in 2009 and that the total number of individuals working for the U.S. government (as of 2010) was 4,443. 

[UPDATE, 8:55 PM EST: Two hours later, in the otherwise identical 7 PM EST re-play, MSNBC inserted a new graphic and a new audio overlay in which Matthews corrected his incompetence without noting any change from his first broadcast: Video below features both versions. In the 5 PM EST hour, Matthews claimed “the federal workforce totaled forty-four hundred and thirty people in 2009 when Obama took office. In 2010, a year later, the number increased to forty-four forty-three people – a difference of only thirteen people.” In the re-do, Matthews realized “the federal workforce totaled four million, four hundred and thirty thousand in 2009...”]

One year ago, America's media were shouting from the rooftops about the need for more civil political discourse following the tragic shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.).

Less than three days after the anniversary of that horrible event, the gang at MSNBC's Morning Joe gleefully discussed how Mitt Romney is going to "kill" any of his Republican presidential opponents that try to attack him (video follows with transcribed highlights and commentary):

Appearing as a guest on Wednesday's The Colbert Report on Comedy Central, New York magazine's John Heilemann - also an MSNBC analyst and formerly of The New Yorker - made a gay joke about GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum as he described the competitive election in Iowa. (Video below)

After host Stephen Colbert, playing the part of committed conservative wanting to pump up Santorum, asked of the Iowa results, "So, Santorum, this is a victory, right? He may have lost, but it's a victory," Heilemann took a shot at the former Pennsylvania Senator in his response:

It's hard to imagine the media rooting, even "cheering" for a social conservative like Rick Santorum.  But two certified MSMers claim that Santorum does have the potential to attract such unlikely support.

On today's Morning Joe, Mark Halperin and John Heilemann, co-authors of the best-selling Game Change about the 2008 election, both opined that Santorum, given his appealing blue-collar background—and if he can avoid getting prickly with the press—could indeed find the media rooting for him.  Video after the jump.

The next time you get into an argument with a liberal about whether or not the media is biased, show him or her the following video of MSNBC's Chris Matthews admitting on Friday's Hardball that it is (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Brand new MSNBC host and Second Amendment critic Alex Wagner devoted a segment of her November 15 Now with Alex Wagner program to express her exasperation at the fact that she's far left of the American public on the issue of gun control. Wagner prefaced a panel discussion with footage of an ABC News interview with Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, who was critically injured in a January shooting.

"Support for handguns, or rather support for a handgun ban has gone down," Wagner noted as she opened her panel discussion, entitled onscreen "Out of Control?". "In October of 2011, it was at 26 percent. In 1959, it was at 60 percent."

"Gun violence increases and yet people still believe handgun bans are bad. What's the logic there?" the liberal Center for American Progress alumna demanded [MP3 audio here; video follows page break]:

Well, that didn't take long. It took about half an hour into her new noon Eastern program Now with Alex Wagner for the host to attack the Republican presidential field as insane. And true to MSNBC form, her panel of liberal journalists largely agreed with her.

"When I watched that waterboarding segment, all I could think of is these Republican candidates are putting another brick on the house of crazy that they are building for themselves," Wagner complained after airing a montage of  GOP presidential contenders in Saturday's CBS-National Journal foreign policy debate regarding their views on the controversial enhanced interrogation technique. [MP3 audio available here; video follows page break]

You have to wonder if a day has gone by since the September 7 GOP presidential debate without someone on MSNBC referring to audience members cheering when NBC's Brian Williams asked Texas governor Rick Perry about capital punishment in his state.

Likely the most colorful description of this incident to date occurred on Monday's Hardball when host Chris Matthews said Republicans "look hot and horny for executions out in that Reagan library" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

While media outlets such as CBS News celebrate Vice President Joe Biden's claim that rape and murder will increase if the President's jobs bill isn't passed, they've all ignored a crucial point.

According to a report released by the Federal Bureau of Investigation last month, despite the recession with its associated state and city budget cuts, violent crime in America has declined four years in a row:

As NewsBusters reported Monday, Newsweek featured an in-depth look at Fox News and chairman Roger Ailes in its most recent installment.

When this subject came up on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" Tuesday, after the guests predictably carped and whined about FNC's conservative leanings, host Joe Scarborough observed, "People are shocked and stunned at the blurred lines when Roger Ailes and Fox does it, not so shocked and stunned when Democratic establishment figures have been doing it over the past three decades" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

MSNBC's Joe Scarborough chided the "crazy" rhetoric of Republican presidential candidates Tuesday, as he called them out by name and affirmed "crazy never wins." This aired on the same network that employs Al Sharpton and Ed Schultz.

Scarborough insisted that "crazy never wins, one of the reasons we're seeing Rick Perry collapse, the same reason we're seeing Bachmann collapse, the same reason why Newt never took off, the same reason Sarah Palin never took off."

[Video below the break. Click here for audio.]

What a curiously incurious Morning Joe bunch!  Joe Scarborough says Solyndra "is just not a story I have focused on" and John Heilemann similarly admits to not having "drilled down" on the matter.  Meanwhile, Harold Ford, Jr. assures us that when it comes to any potential Solyndra scandal, "there's no there, there" and that no one "has done anything illicit here at all."

A blasé Joe Scarborough grudgingly introduced "this Solyndra thing," citing those pesky "conservatives on Twitter" who keep raising it.  The show deigned to devote under two minutes to the story, with nary a mention of the facts that the main driver behind Solyndra was a major Obama fundraiser, that the Bush admin blew off funding for Solyndra after concluding their products weren't competitive and that Solyndra execs are now taking the Fifth. View the video after the jump.

MSNBC's "Morning Joe" spent a good deal of time Tuesday discussing Teamsters president James Hoffa Jr.'s disgraceful Labor Day comments about the Tea Party and his political rivals.

After playing a clip of Hoffa's remarks as well as President Obama calling for civility months ago, Scarborough pointed out, "There seems to be a rule here which is don’t say really mean things that coarsen the debate, could encourage violence, unless you’re a Democrat...If you support [Obama], you can say, 'We’re going to take people out'" (video follows with partial transcript and commentary):

Forget about 2008's "Hope and Change" mantra.

New York magazine's John Heilemann said on this weekend's "Chris Matthews Show" Barack Obama's message in 2012 will all be about "fear" of the Republican candidate, and the President will spend $500 million on negative attack ads against his opponent to instill it (video follows with transcript and commentary):