Pat Buchanan

Like a lot of Americans who live outside the D.C. metro area, I was first introduced to Tony Blankley by PBS's McLaughlin Group.

It was therefore quite fitting that host John McLaughlin as well as panelists Michelle Bernard, Pat Buchanan, Eleanor Clift, and Clarence Page on Friday paid tribute to Blankley who sadly passed away last Saturday (video follows with commentary):

Last October, liberal groups who want MSNBC to be "purified" of conservatives -- like Color of Change, the group that lobbied to get Glenn Beck removed from Fox News -- demanded a purge of Pat Buchanan from the MSNBC airwaves. In the past, MSNBC used Buchanan as a shield against the idea their network was going to be as hermetically sealed against conservatives as the old Olbermann show. Now, Buchanan's days at MSNBC "may be over," reports the New York Times.

Over the weekend, MSNBC chief Phil Griffin told Deadline Hollywood that Buchanan's views are toxic. “I don’t think the ideas that [Buchanan] put forth [in his latest book] are appropriate for the national dialogue, much less on MSNBC.” Griffin continued: "Pat’s a good guy. He didn’t like [being removed from the air], but he understood."

Some of the same leftist activists that campaigned to get Glenn Beck removed from the Fox News Channel are now demanding Pat Buchanan be removed from the MSNBC lineup. The Color of Change, formerly run by Obama-appointed Marxist Van Jones, is running a campaign headlined "Tell MSNBC: Fire Pat Buchanan."  Not in that campaign: "and appoint a different conservative." They want the MSNBC airwaves purely liberal.

"For years, Pat Buchanan has passed off white supremacist ideology as legitimate mainstream political commentary. And MSNBC continues to pay him and give him a platform on national TV to do it," they argue. "Buchanan just went on a white supremacist radio show to promote his new book -- which argues that increasing racial diversity is a threat to this country and will mean the  'End of White America.'"

For the second day in a row, MSNBC's Martin Bashir made a statement involving New Jersey governor Chris Christie that should offend Americans on both sides of the aisle.

Discussing Republican presidential candidates with conservative author Pat Buchanan Thursday, Bashir asked, "Why do you think Mr. Christie is the great white hope?" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

For the second time this month, MSNBC's Joe Scarborough has taken on the extreme liberal bias of Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne.

On Thursday's "Morning Joe," after Mika Brzezinski read part of Dionne's pathetic "Why Conservatives Hate Warren Buffett," her co-host replied, "I like E.J., but he changes every couple of years depending on who’s in the White House" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Someone at MSNBC should tell Martin Bashir that he might not agree with Pat Buchanan's politics, but he's not one to challenge about a matter of fact.

On the show bearing his name Thursday, Bashir mistakenly tried to refute the conservative's claim that former Mayor Ed Koch accused President Obama of throwing Israel under the bus (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Those crickets you hear? Her fellow left-wingers responding to Rachel Maddow referring to then-President Elect Obama as a "boy king" on her MSNBC show last night.

Yes, hard to believe. Even in an era when the president of the United States is a man of color, as is our attorney general, as is the governor of Massachusetts where Maddow lives, Obama must be subjected to such vile disrespect -- a black man at the pinnacle of achievement described as a mere "boy," albeit of the monarchical variety. (video clip after page break)

Looks like Joe Scarborough aims to single-handedly winnow the Republican presidential field.  A few weeks ago, the Morning Joe host dismissed Michele Bachmann as "a joke."  Today—not for the first time, as NB's Scott Whitlock documented—Scarborough proclaimed that there is "no way" Rick Perry could beat Barack Obama.

Scarborough, imagining an anti-Perry ad, surmised that Perry's statements on Social Security, the selection of US Senators and secession would come back to haunt him. View video after the jump.

Pat Buchanan regularly serves as Morning Joe's lone conservative in the show's self-described 10:1 ratio sea of lib to conservative guests.  But Buchanan this morning demonstrated that he is anything but a Republican partisan.  

Sounding more like Barney Frank after a bad night's sleep, Buchanan blasted President George W. Bush, claiming 43 "broke the Republican party and frankly he broke the United States as a superpower."  View the video after the jump.

With each passing day it is becoming clearer and clearer the brainiacs at MSNBC replaced one blithering idiot in their 6PM time slot with another blithering idiot.

On Wednesday's "Morning Joe," Al Sharpton actually accused well-known isolationist Pat Buchanan of having supported the Iraq war (video follows with transcript and commentary):

The liberal media are predictably fawning over billionaire Warren Buffett's op-ed in the New York Times Monday calling for new taxes on the super-rich.

This led MSNBC's Pat Buchanan on Monday's "Morning Joe" to challenge the Oracle of Omaha asking, "Why doesn’t he set an example and send a check for $5 billion to the federal government?" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

MSNBC's Chris Matthews and Pat Buchanan got into quite a heated debate on Monday's "Hardball."

At issue was the battle of the debt ceiling with Matthews calling Tea Partiers opposed to raising it "crazy protesters" and telling his guest, "You want to join" them (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Newsweek's Tina Brown compared congressional Republicans to suicide bombers on Wednesday's Morning Joe after lamenting their refusal to agree to the tax hikes demanded by Democrats. "I think they’re the suicide bombers in all of this," said Brown. Will Tina Brown be banned indefinitely from Morning Joe? Sounds harsher than a crotch reference.

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There was a truly delicious moment on this weekend's "McLaughlin Group" that's guaranteed to please conservatives from coast to coast.

During a heated discussion about President Obama's call to end tax breaks for corporate jet purchases, Pat Buchanan and John McLaughlin literally silenced Newsweek's Eleanor Clift much to her dismay (video follows with transcript and commentary):

As NewsBusters has been reporting for weeks, one of the goals of the Obama-loving media is to depict every possible Republican presidential candidate as racist.

On Monday's "MSNBC Live," substitute host Al Sharpton implied that newly announced candidate Rick Santorum was making a racist comment when he said at Saturday's Faith and Freedom Conference, "America was a great country before 1965" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Newsweek's Eleanor Clift said on PBS's "McLaughlin Group" Friday that the press really aren't interested in Mitt Romney being a Mormon.

This amazingly transpired roughly 24 hours before her magazine revealed a June 13-20 cover story about Romney entitled "The Mormon Moment: How the Outsider Faith Creates Winners" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Newt Gingrich came in for some serious criticism on today's Morning Joe.  

Reacting to footage of Newt on Meet the Press alluding to Paul Ryan's health care proposal as "radical," Joe Scarborough accused Gingrich of being in "the mushy middle." Pat Buchanan came with the unkindest cut of all, saying Gingrich is "out on the left wing of the Republican party."

View video after the jump.

MSNBC's token conservative Pat Buchanan has really been having a lot of fun lately taking on the liberals at the so-called news network he contributes to.

On Monday's "MSNBC Live," Buchanan in the middle of a discussion about oil prices and subsidies told the host, "You’ve got to learn a little bit about supply and demand as Barack Obama never did when he was out there in that Saul Alinsky outfit in Chicago" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

"A lot more Americans are going to learn to speak Spanish, and I think that's a fine thing."

So said Newsweek's Eleanor Clift Friday in the middle of a "McLaughlin Group" program devoted in its entirety to looking at how America is responding to a growing Hispanic population as well as an ongoing economic expansion in Latin America (video follows with transcript and commentary):

MSNBC has lately been spending a tremendous amount of time on Donald Trump and the President's birth certificate.

The round the clock coverage of this issue led MSNBC contributor Pat Buchanan to say on Tuesday's "MSNBC Live," "MSNBC is transfixed with it" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

For the second week in a row, Newsweek's Eleanor Clift and National Review's Rich Lowry had quite a battle on PBS's "McLaughlin Group."

This time the fireworks started when Lowry called President Obama classless for the way he treated Congressman Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.) at Wednesday's speech on deficit reduction which led Clift to ask, "What else would you expect from a socialist born in Kenya who’s hiding his birth certificate?" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Eleanor Clift on this weekend's "McLaughlin Group" made a truly absurd comment about the disparate ways Barack Obama and Ronald Reagan handled Libya during their respective presidencies that left Monica Crowley in stitches.

After Clift mocked Reagan by saying, "You don’t need leadership that goes into a Muslim country all alone," Monica laughed loudly before replying, "American presidential leadership, Eleanor, never goes out of style" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

A minor historical footnote, perhaps, but arguably an interesting one . . .

A man whose Watergate reporting made his career and led to Richard Nixon's downfall has declared that Pres. Gerald Ford did the right thing in pardoning Nixon.  

Carl Bernstein made the--to me at least--surprising statement on today's Morning Joe, in the course of a discussion of Jeff Greenfield's new book about various what-ifs in history.

View video after the jump.

The Washington Post's Ezra Klein decried an upcoming congressional hearing on the threat of homegrown Islamic terrorism Monday, saying that Christians engage in violence as well but are not investigated by Congress. Klein lambasted the investigation, led by the chair of the House Homeland Security Committee Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.), as an attention-grabbing ploy to demonize the American Muslim community.

"We've had school shootings from young Christians," Klein claimed on Monday's "Morning Joe." He added that there are "neo-Nazis who claim they're Christians. Is the Christian community in America so deeply vulnerable to neo-Nazis?"

Klein's point was not that Christians in America deserve an investigation by Congress, but rather that the Muslim community should not be singled out for acts of terrorism, and that they are not so vulnerable to be influenced by extremism from abroad. However, he failed to provide a single instance of violence that was itself motivated by a radical strand of Christianity.
 

Does a sycophantic devotion to the President make liberal media members lose all connection to reality?

Before you answer, consider that on Friday, Newsweek's Eleanor Clift and liberal radio host Bill Press actually said on PBS's "McLaughlin Group" the U.S. auto industry is stronger than it ever was (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Newsweek's Eleanor Clift on Friday amazingly asked, "Since when does Scott Walker represent 'the people'?"

Such happened during a heated discussion on PBS's "The McLaughlin Group" about the goings-on in Wisconsin (video follows with transcript and commentary):

For the second week in a row, Newsweek's Eleanor Clift found herself in a hostile crowd on PBS's "McLaughlin Group."

During a lengthy segment about the crisis in Eqypt, after Clift claimed the protesters were secular, the entire panel almost pounced on her with Mort Zuckerman saying several times, "That's nonsense" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

What would be worse: if Norah actually believes it--or if she doesn't?

Norah O'Donnell has claimed that the Washington Post and the New York Times provide straight-up information, without bias, of the sort that would be appealing to members of the putatively non-partisan "No Labels" group.

Norah's mind-boggling assertion came on today's Morning Joe during a discussion of AOL's acquisition of HuffPo for $315 million.  Reacting to indications that Arianna Huffington may be guiding her creation toward the center and away from its leftist roots, WaPo's Jonathan Capehart argued the move made sense on the theory that people such as those at No Labels are hungry for straight-up reporting. That's when Norah broke in to claim that such unbiased reporting is already being provided by, yup, WaPo and the Times.

View video after the jump.