Geraldo Rivera

As he appeared on Friday's The O'Reilly Factor, FNC's Geraldo Rivera complained that GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney never mentions that his father, George Romney, was born in Mexico while campaigning as the "most virulent anti-illegal immigration person ever," and ended up calling the former Massachusetts governor a "hypocrite." (Video below)

 

Think your government has more than enough on its hands? Geraldo Rivera wants it to do so much more.

On his new WABC radio show Friday, Rivera cited an incident that day involving a Brooklyn mother suspected of killing her 3-year-old daughter, saying this (audio clips after page break) --

Debuting his first radio show yesterday on WABC in New York City,  Geraldo Rivera reminisced about his storied career in media with guests including Donald Trump, former NYC mayor Ed Koch and Fox News colleague Mike Huckabee.

The show turned unintentionally hilarious when Rivera described how he begged Fox chief Roger Ailes to send him to Afghanistan as a war correspondent after 9/11, and Rivera's response to the stunning news last May that bin Laden was dead (audio) --

Politico stunned the presidential campaign Sunday night with a hit piece on Herman Cain alleging with unnamed sources that two women accused the Republican candidate of "inappropriate behavior" decades ago.

Appearing on Fox News's Geraldo At Large moments after the story broke, conservative author Ann Coulter said, "It's outrageous the way liberals treat a black conservative. This is another high-tech lynching" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

On the evening of the tragic shootings in Tucson, Fox News's Geraldo Rivera, like so many other liberal media members, went out of his way to connect the event to the Tea Party.

Seven days later, the host of "Geraldo at Large" told his viewers, "There was a very public death threat today in Tucson that prompted police action. Ironically, it came from a hard-core liberal" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Bill Press appeared on Fox News' Geraldo At Large, on Sunday night, as part of a discussion about whether the Bush era tax cuts would be extended and the former CNN host couldn't get his story straight as he recommended that Congress go back to the Bill Clinton era "tax cuts." In fact Clinton, back in 1993, passed the largest tax increase in history but this bit of truth didn't get in the way of Press claiming, three times, that Clinton had cut taxes.

Oddly enough Press, near the end of his segment, eventually backed into truth, when he bragged: "I have to add Bill Clinton raised taxes, not one Republican voted for it, and 20 million jobs created under Bill Clinton."

The following exchange was aired on the December 5 edition of Geraldo At Large:

(video after the jump)

Fox News apparently employs a pair of 9/11 "Truthers": Geraldo Rivera, host of FNC's "Geraldo at Large", and, we've recently discovered, Judge Andrew Napolitano, who hosts "Freedom Watch" on the Fox Business Network.

Both Napolitano and Rivera have, er, raised questions about the "official" (read: commonsensical) explanation for the collapse of the WTC7 building on September 11, 2001. This conspiracy theory has been thoroughly debunked a number of times. Apparently Geraldo and the Judge are not convinced.

Just moments after the conclusion of the Aug. 28 "Restoring Honor" rally in Washington, D.C., an olive branch, albeit a potentially double-edged one, was tossed between an unlikely couple very much on opposite sides of the political aisle.  

To the surprise of those in attendance, the Rev. Al Sharpton has challenged Glenn Beck to come on Geraldo Rivera's Fox News program and support the building of the Ground Zero Mosque.

Appearing on "Geraldo At Large" after his own civil rights event in our nation's capital, Sharpton told the host, "Why don't you, you're here on Fox, invite Mr. Beck on the show to finish the speech?"

"He said we should all come together equal...how do we do that?"

Later in the program, Sharpton raised the bet even further saying, "He made a great statement - he said after 9/11 we all came together. All Americans, all races, all religions - therefore Mr. Beck, will you say we should stop fighting the mosque? That's where the rhetoric will hit the road" (partial transcript follows with commentary): 

E! Online "The Awful Truth" columnist Ted Casablanca on Aug. 21 called the graphic depictions of sex and violence on HBO's vampire drama "True Blood" "highly ironic" and promoted the show as "great fun."

Casablanca defended the show on Fox News Channel's "Geraldo at Large" in a discussion with host Geraldo Rivera and Culture and Media Institute Assistant Editor Nathan Burchfiel. The debate was sparked by the controversy surrounding a recent Rolling Stone magazine cover that depicted "True Blood" stars naked and covered in (fake) blood.

Burchfiel pointed out that while the shows originate on premium cable channels like HBO and Showtime, many "worst-of" clips are available online within hours of broadcast, and many popular shows like "The Sopranos" and "Sex and the City" have found their way onto basic cable via syndication, a likely future for "True Blood."

"It's highly ironic, Geraldo," Casablanca said of the show, adding, "It's a highly intelligent, very clever indictment of the very conversation that we're having right now and it's an allegory to our times."

When reporting on the nationality of a criminal from another country who has already been arrested, it normally would be considered unnecessary or even uncalled for to take the extra step of explicitly identifying the suspect’s ethnicity or religious affiliation as well. But, given that Israelis, the vast majority of whom are Jewish, often face sharp criticism and negative press reaction over conflicts with their Arab neighbors – inflaming anti-Semitic sentiment – if an Israeli citizen who is non-Jewish is implicated in a violent crime, informing viewers that he is non-Jewish would seem to be in order.

But so far in the media coverage of serial stabber Elias Abuelazam’s arrest, some major news shows on both broadcast and news networks have avoided explicitly informing viewers that he is not a Jewish Israeli, while others have been more upfront with viewers on the subject. CNN’s The Situation Room, the NBC Nightly News, FNC’s Fox and Friends, and CBS’s The Early Show all have directly relayed to viewers at least once that Abuelazam is an Israeli Arab. But ABC’s World News, the CBS Evening News, FNC’s Fox Report, ABC’s Good Morning America, CNN’s American Morning and NBC’s Today show have all avoided such a direct identification of ethnicity.

What is it with liberals and their violent fantasies? The Journolist has given us a public radio producer imagining herself laughing with glee as Rush dies a painful death, while other members want their political enemies thrown through plate-glass windows.
This evening brings us "comedian" and liberal radio talk show host Stephanie Miller fantasizing about Bill O'Reilly, Glenn Beck and Geraldo Rivera being beaten with baseball bats by drunken Yankee fans.  Miller was a guest on Ed Schultz's week-ending "Club Ed" segment.

Surprises come unexpectedly sometimes.

On Fox News Channel's July 11 broadcast of "Geraldo at Large," an aggressive host Geraldo Rivera took on chairman of the New Black Panthers, Malik Zulu Shabazz over his political gestures.

"It is absolutely pathetic, it is so old-fashioned," Rivera said. "What are you trying to do? Are you trying to be the big, bad nightmare?"

Shabazz, leader of the New Black Panther Party (NBPP) rattled off one of his causes, Oscar Grant, but he leveraged him to make a case for reparations.

"I'm trying to help Oscar Grant, who was shot down in cold blood by a white cop and I am trying to redeem, I am trying to redeem - put that camera back right over here, I am trying to redeem -- and black people who have been lynched, raped or mobbed and have not been given reparations."

Geraldo Rivera on Friday excoriated Rolling Stone writer Michael Hastings actually comparing him to al Qaeda terrorists.

Discussing the article that effectively destroyed General Stanley McChrystal's career, Rivera told Fox News's Bill O'Reilly, "These guys, particularly the staffers who gave the most damning statements about the civilians in office, including the vice president of the United States, these guys had no idea that they were being interviewed by this guy." 

Rivera then made a staggering analogy (video after the break with full transcript and commentary):  

Two days before 9/11, two al Qaeda terrorists posing as journalists got up to Sheik Massoud, our most valuable ally in Afghanistan. They blew themselves and Sheik Massoud up, a tremendous setback. I maintain historically that the removal of General McCrystal at the hands of this freelance reporter for "Rolling Stone" has almost comparable strategic significance.   

Fox News Channel's Craig Rivera, on Sunday's Geraldo At Large, in a shipboard interview from the Gulf of Mexico, actually asked a conservationist if the oil spill there was a real world equivalent of the fictional disaster seen in the recent James Cameron blockbuster as he pressed: "Do you see what's happening in the oil industry and offshore drilling comparable or some kind of parallel to, like, the movie Avatar?"

After Steiner theorized: "It certainly could be," Rivera then made the following hard transition to an interview with Avatar star Sigourney Weaver: "Although the fight Sigourney Weaver and director James Cameron are waging to protect the rights of the indigenous people of the Amazon from a huge hydroelectric plant is a world away from the situation in the gulf oil spill, the principle is the same - protecting the planet from those interested in only quick profits." Rivera then aired a clip of Weaver boasting that Avatar showed the world "how concerned people are about our planet." [video below the fold]

The following is an excerpt from the Craig Rivera piece as it was aired on the May 9 edition of Geraldo At Large:

A lot of the media have been very willing to declare President Barack Obama's monologue at the White House Correspondents' Dinner on May 1 a smashing success. And even though that is a fair assessment, perhaps that's a clue the President chose the wrong occupation.

On Fox News Channel's May 2 "Geraldo at Large," in a segment dedicated to Obama's grand performance, Rev. Al Sharpton praised Obama for the job he did.

"You know, I thought he was very good," Sharpton said. "I was there. At one point I was sitting at a table that Michael Steele was right across the table. And I think the surprise of everyone in the room was that the President was that edgy and he was coming off with it. His timing was good. It was a very good evening."

"You have not had a single, as far as I know, violent action related to the Tea Party activity. For all the bluster or energy or street theater, no one's been hurt. They haven't, you know, they're not the bogeyman that maybe they have been portrayed by many."

So amazingly said Geraldo Rivera to fired GEICO announcer Lance Baxter aka D.C. Douglas Sunday evening.

As NewsBusters reported last week, Baxter was terminated by the insurance giant for leaving a disgusting voice-mail message at the offices of FreedomWorks, an organization that is supporting the Tea Party.

Days later, Rivera decided to question Douglas and FreedomWorks President Matt Kibbe separately (video follows with highlights and commentary):

Geraldo Rivera told a Latino Congressman Saturday that he might get stopped on the streets of Phoenix by Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio as a result of the new anti-immigration law signed by Arizona Governor Jan Brewer the previous day.

Discussing the newly-passed legislation with guests Arpaio and Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart (R-Fla.) on "Geraldo at Large," the host ungraciously started the segment by asking, "Sheriff, how do you define reasonable suspicion? Is it like obscenity that you don't exactly know how to define it but you know it when you see it?"

Arpaio responded, "[D]uring the course of the duties of law enforcement, my deputies, if someone doesn't have a license, doesn't speak English, ten guys stashed in back of a van, I think that's reasonable action or probable cause to take action."

Moments later, Rivera quipped, "Congressman Lincoln Diaz-Balart, let me just warn you, maybe if you were walking around the streets of Phoenix, Sheriff Joe might stop you. You look sort of Latino, we're not sure even though you have a storied family background" (video follows with transcript, hat-tips to @Cubachi and The Right Scoop):  

Former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay said Sunday that Americans saw the Constitution burned by Democrats as the current Party in power rammed through healthcare reform legislation the citizens clearly said they didn't want.

Speaking to Fox News's Geraldo Rivera after the historic vote, the man formerly known as "The Hammer" said, "Not only did they not listen to the American people, they shredded and trashed the Constitution and then stood there on the floor of the House and lied to the American people."

Despite what fawning and gushing liberal media members have and will continue reporting concerning what happened in our nation's capital Sunday, DeLay spoke the really inconvenient truth that might haunt this country for generations, "You saw the Constitution burned by the Democrats in the House of Representatives tonight" (video embedded below the fold with partial transcript, h/t PoliJam):

Some of the American people probably thought they were voting for hope and change when they voted for President Barack Obama on Nov. 4, 2008. But according to Rev. Al Sharpton, they were voting for socialism. 

Sharpton, the founder of the National Action Network and talk radio host told Fox News on March 21, during their special coverage of the House of Representatives' passage of health care reform legislation, this victory for President Barack Obama and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi would begin "transforming" the country.

"I think that the president and Nancy Pelosi get credit," Sharpton said. "I think this began the transforming of the country the way the president had promised. This is what he ran on."

And if that transformation is socialism, then so be it, he explained. That is what the American public "overwhelmingly" voted for.

I don’t usually post the MRC’s bi-weekly Notable Quotables here on NewsBusters, but there seemed to be more than the usual number of obnoxious liberal quotes over the past two weeks — disparaging the Tea Party as “harsh” or racist; denigrating Sarah Palin as “preposterous” and “anti-intellectual,” and insisting that the voter revolt against Democrats’ big government policies is fiction: “a tempest in a teapot.”

Here are some of the choicer quotes from this issue; the entire package (with five audio/video clips) is posted at www.MRC.org. You can also sign up to get each issue sent to you via e-mail (next issue will be March 8).

Scolding “Harsh Rhetoric” of Tea Party “On the Fringe”

ABC’s John Berman: “The business of this first ever national Tea Party convention is the nuts and bolts of politics, like voter registration....But barely scratch the surface, and there’s a tone of anger and confrontation....When we asked delegates what they thought, their feelings about the President were almost universal.”
Unidentified Man: “I believe he is a socialist ideologue.”
Unidentified Woman: “You just read his history, he’s a Marxist.”...
Berman: “One of the goals of this convention is to turn this movement into a political force. The question is, does the harsh rhetoric keep them on the fringe?” — ABC’s World News, February 5.

Geraldo Rivera, on Fox News' Geraldo At Large on Sunday, essentially accused Dick Cheney of treason for criticizing the Obama administration over the weekend, as he asked panelist Ann Coulter if the former VP was "giving aid and comfort to the enemy." For her part the conservative author slammed back: "To be hearing that from liberals after eight years of relentless attacks on George Bush, when he was waging the war on terror, is comical." [audio available here]

The following back and forth between Rivera and Coulter was aired during the February 14 edition of Geraldo At Large:

On Friday's "O'Reilly Factor," the host and his guest Geraldo Rivera had quite a lively debate on Attorney General Eric Holder's announcement concerning Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other terrorists being tried in New York City.

As you might imagine, Rivera was all for it, and Bill O'Reilly, well -- not so much.

Although this wasn't on par with their classic battle over illegal immigration in 2007, it still was pretty feisty (video embedded below the fold with highlights, fuller transcript, file photo, h/t Story Balloon):

No bias, just a Joe Biden moment.

FNC's Geraldo Rivera inadvertently called Barack Obama "President Osama bin Laden" on the October 30 "Fox & Friends" program. 

The video's embedded below the page break. Enjoy (h/t NB commenter Blonde):

 

 

Recently a lot of hubbub had been made about the possibility that the peaceful tea party protests and some conservative voices would stir up emotions that could lead to violence. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi was even one of those sounding that alarm.

But what has gone unsaid by those same voices has been the possibility of violence against those who might take a position antithetical to that of the left.

Case in point: CNN's Lou Dobbs. Dobbs, who has been the target of a smear campaign by the left-wing noise machine, told his radio audience on Oct. 26 that his home had been shot at three weeks earlier. (Unabbreviated audio available here)

Geraldo Rivera on Thursday lambasted Lou Dobbs for the outspoken CNN host's views concerning illegal immigration.

Speaking at a luncheon sponsored by El Diario La Prensa NY, Rivera disgracefully said, "Lou Dobbs is almost single-handedly responsible for creating, for being the architect of the young-Latino-as-scapegoat for everything that ails this country."

Rivera also told the audience that he had spoken to his boss, and was assured Dobbs was not coming to Fox (video embedded below the fold with partial transcript):

WOR radio's Steve Malzberg likely had no idea the hornets nest he was walking into Monday when he decided to discuss race relations with Fox News's Geraldo Rivera.

Regardless of the tension on display or the uncomfortable conclusion, what transpired perfectly demonstrated how far we as a nation are from ending racism.

At first, Rivera seemed rather reasonable when he called CNN's Rick Sanchez a jerk for his comment a few months ago that Hispanics working for Fox News are all sellouts.

But when the discussion turned to the confirmation of Justice Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court, and whether her comments concerning a wise Latina woman making better decisions than a white man could be perceived as racist and sexist, Rivera got quite defensive and eventually hung up on his host (15-minute audio available here, rough transcript below the fold):

According to a posting at MediaBistro's TVNewser, FNC's Geraldo Rivera admitted to being so excited about Judge Sonia Sotomayor's selection for the Supreme Court that he got "goosebumps" when he heard the news and bumped his head on a light fixture when he sprang from his chair in excitement. TVNewser's Gail Shister writes: "The Fox News host was so excited about the high court's first Hispanic nominee that he leapt from his chair in his home office and bopped his head on a low-hanging light fixture."

She went on to quote Rivera: "This is as important to us as Obama was to the African-American community. I have goosebumps."

A New York Times story on Friday by young Atlanta-based reporter Robbie Brown, "Mississippi Mayor Facing Trial Dies After Election Loss," dealt with the death of Frank Melton, the controversial mayor of Jackson, Miss., and included a bizarre characterization of Fox News host Geraldo Rivera:

Less than two days after he lost his bid for re-election, and four days before he was to go on trial, the mayor of Jackson, Miss., died early Thursday, city officials said....Mr. Melton was known for his flashy, hands-on approach to combating urban crime. He carried a police badge, two guns, a bulletproof jacket and a large stick while personally patrolling Jackson's toughest streets, although he was not certified as a member of the Police Department. This approach earned him a national reputation and the support of conservatives like the Fox News commentator Geraldo Rivera.

"Fox & Friends" viewers were treated to quite an entertaining discussion Halloween morning when Ann Coulter (pictured right in file photo) and Geraldo Rivera squared off on the state of the presidential campaign.

At issue were such things as the Los Angeles Times' refusal to share the controversial videotape of an encounter with Barack Obama and former PLO operative Rashid Khalidi, McCain's position on immigration, how Sarah Palin was treated by the media, and how baby boomers still in love with the '60s are dominating journalism.

Videotape of much of this segment is embedded below the fold (h/t our dear friend Johnny Dollar):

Moments ago, Geraldo Rivera, reporting live from Galveston, Texas, was knocked over by the storm surge ahead of Hurricane Ike. This delicious example of poetic justice needs no further introduction (h/t Johnny Dollar):