John Harwood

After the news portion of a "Warmer Weather Hurting Retail" segment on the impact of the mild winter on retail sales thus far appearing early this morning on CNBC, Joe Kernen and John Harwood got into it over the relevance and influence of so-called "global warming" (I guess Harwood didn't get the memo that it's "climate change" now).

Picking up at the 2:10 mark of the video:

As Thursday's Today show on NBC gave attention to GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich's support for allowing some illegal immigrants to gain legal residency status rather than face deportation, substitute co-anchor Carl Quintanilla asked correspondent John Harwood if the former House Speaker was "pandering" to gain votes in the general election. Quintanilla:

NBC on Wednesday issued a formal apology to Congresswoman Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) for the offensive song that was played as she walked onto the stage to be Jimmy Fallon's guest Monday evening.

The issue was discussed in great detail on Thursday's Today show (video follows with transcript and commentary):

John Harwood, chief Washington correspondent for CNBC, co-hosted the GOP debate in Michigan last Wednesday, and had a hand in Perry’s infamous debate “oops” moment, when the Texas governor was unable to list all three of the federal agencies he planned to eliminate as president. On Monday Harwood revealed that a CNBC producer helped prod Perry’s long, awkward moment by shouting a directive into Harwood’s earpiece.

Harwood also writes a weekly “Caucus” column for the New York Times. On Monday he discussed his role in Gov. Rick Perry’s infamous debate "oops," as well as how the audience booed the hosts for bringing up Herman Cain's sexual harassment controversy.

Before being tapped to be one of the moderators at CNBC's upcoming Republican presidential debate, John Harwood was ranting against the GOP for causing the summer debt crisis. Appearing on NBC's Today in July, Harwood warned: "...the House Republican caucus...would not accept what President Obama needed to make a deal...It's crazy politics, what they're doing..."

When the U.S. later lost its AAA credit rating in August, Harwood again appeared on Today to proclaim that the downgrade had provided President Obama with "a tangible consequence to point to for Republican brinksmanship on the debt and deficit reduction deal.”    

President Obama once again showed a thin skin on Thursday by accusing Fox News's Ed Henry of being Mitt Romney's spokesperson.

CNBC's John Harwood asked White House Chief of Staff William Daley about this the following day, and Daley responded, "There are certain people in the media who do seem at times to carry the water for certain piece of the political spectrum" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

At the top of Saturday's NBC Today, CNBC's chief Washington correspondent John Harwood told co-host Lester Holt that the downgrade of U.S. debt provided President Obama with "a tangible consequence to point to for Republican brinksmanship on the debt and deficit reduction deal."

Harwood observed: "Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader, always said, 'We don't want co-ownership of the economy,'" and predicted, "You can expect the administration to say, 'You've got it now.'"

Appearing on Saturday's NBC Today, CNBC's John Harwood solely blamed House Republicans for the ongoing debt ceiling gridlock: "Speaker Boehner and President Obama, were negotiating in good faith. They wanted a deal....the House Republican caucus...would not accept what President Obama needed to make a deal, and that is real and significant tax hikes as a component."  

Harwood argued conservative House members were intimidating Boehner and declared: "That's why Boehner left the talks. That's why the United States' risk of default, while still low in my opinion, is higher than it was 24 hours ago." Later, Harwood touted how "Independents are starting to side with Democrats" and proclaimed: "House Republicans are not playing politics on this. It's crazy politics, what they're doing, and Republican leaders think it may hurt the party. But it's what they believe, and that's why we're at this point."

 As broadcast news programs over the weekend gave attention to Sarah Palin’s bus tour which was viewed as a possible prelude to a presidential run, NBC correspondent John Harwood had one of the most negative views of the former Alaska governor’s chances of being elected President as he appeared on Sunday’s NBC Nightly News and predicted that she "has next to zero chance of being elected President."

He went on to declare that most Republicans want her out of the race: "I think what Republicans hope most is that Sarah Palin clarifies before too long that she's not going to get into this race."

Below is a transcript of the relevant exchange from the Sunday, May 29, NBC Nightly News:

With what appears to be a devastating election looming for his party, is President Obama attempting to follow in the footsteps of one of his predecessors and moderate toward the center?

Not if choosing Pete Rouse to replace chief of staff Rahm Emanuel is any indication,  according to CNBC’s Larry Kudlow. On the Oct. 1 broadcast of “The Call,” CNBC Washington correspondent John Harwood predicted Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner wasn’t going anywhere, but Obama would take a pro-business tack with the leadership of Department of Commerce. However, Kudlow, citing a “deep political insider,” had a different forecast.

“The Commerce thing is a great idea and you're probably going to be right, but I know that you don't hear this,” Kudlow said. “But I had dinner last night with a deep political insider who told me that Michael Bloomberg is the next Treasury secretary. I heard that. All I'll say is this is a serious insider who said the deal has been done and that Bloomberg is the next Treasury secretary.”

One of the most common threads in the media recently has been how bad the Tea Party movement has been for this United States. It has been derided for lacking racial diversity, promoting policies outside the so-called mainstream and blamed for creating a civil war within the Republican Party.

The media often stress those “negatives” at the expense of the positive basic tenets of the Tea Party movement: smaller government, fiscal responsibility and free markets – tenets that, when highlighted, are in fact bullish signals for an ailing economy. This is a phenomenon Larry Kudlow, host of CNBC’s “The Kudlow Report,” explained.

“Tonight, free-market capitalism on the comeback trail,” Kudlow said on his Sept. 15 program. “That is one of the messages of the Tea Party power. We saw a lot of that power last night in the primaries. I tell you what folks, that Tea Party power, that free-market capitalist power is so totally bullish for the stock market.”

The ratings are in for Barack Obama's televised town hall meeting on CNBC Monday, and they're pretty dismal.

In fact, far more people watched the Fox News Channel's "Happening Now" with Jon Scott and Jenna Lee airing at the same time than tuned in to see what the President had to say.

Potentially even more embarrassing, when you add in those that watched Obama in MSNBC's replay of the event later in the day, the total is still less than those that viewed Jon and Jenna at noon.

Chris Ariens of TVNewser reported the numbers Tuesday:

When it comes to picking a moderator for a game of ¿Quien Es Mas Macho?, somehow John Harwood doesn't spring to mind.  But there was CNBC's chief Washington correspondent on The Ed Show this evening, twice accusing Pres. Obama's businessmen critics of "whining," and instructing them to "man up."

Schultz set the stage, playing a clip of Mort Zuckerman describing Obama's White House as "the most anti-business administration."  Trying to tar Mort with the R-word, Schultz spoke of Zuckerman as having considered a run for Senate from New York "as a Republican."  In fact, the Zuck man is a lifelong Dem known for supporting liberal causes.  He briefly flirted with an independent or Republican run for Senate as a means of avoiding a Dem primary, but is as much of a Republican as Mike Bloomberg.

Then came Harwood, who wrote off Obama business critics as a bunch of selfish, whining wusses . . .

Joe Scarborough was on fire this morning, his ire trained on twin targets: Dick Blumenthal, and the New York Times' John Harwood, who casually dismissed the candidate's lies about having served in Vietnam as just a case of getting "a little carried away."  At one point, Scarborough claimed he wasn't calling Blumenthal a "scumbag"—but it sure sounded like it.

Harwood began his Blumenthal defense with a barroom analogy: "the occasions where he was loose is more akin to a guy who had a few too many at the bar and hit on somebody rather than somebody actually trying to slip a mickey into the girls drink." He later added this lame defense: that even if Blumenthal lied to the veterans groups about his record, they weren't deceived by it.  "Were all those veterans groups fooled by it?", asked Harwood, implying they weren't.  "You're a reporter, you go ask them," snapped Scarborough.

Scarborough later pointed out that Blumenthal lied and trafficked on the valor of others on precisely those occasions when, appearing before veterans groups, it would benefit him politically. Harwood miscast Joe's criticism of Blumenthal as a demand that all candidates explain why they didn't serve.  A peeved Scarborough called Harwood out: "John, I don't know show, what feed you're listening to."

Although to ask this question is to invite with a good degree of criticism, it is still worth asking: Is Obama administration's approach to publicly reprimanding private industry cause for concern?

On CNBC's May 4 "Squawk Box," host Michelle Caruso-Cabrera raised this point and asked Washington correspondent John Harwood if White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs' recent statement BP was a little overboard.

"The spokesperson says, quote, ‘We're going to keep our boot on the throats of BP,'" Caruso-Cabrera said. "How is the Business Council going to react to that when they see President Obama?"

Harwood, who often goes easy on the Obama administration, wasn't so quick to criticize Gibbs for this.  His explanation was that it was a little "hostile," but repeated Gibbs' suggestion it was just a regional saying.

As congressional Democrats press on with their attempts to get financial legislation reform passed, a key component has been lacking from the debate: how to handle the government-sponsored enterprises Fannie Mae (NYSE:FNM) and Freddie Mac (NYSE:FRE). 

Although some Republican lawmakers have cried foul over the fact nothing has been included in a bill sponsored by Senate Banking Committee Chairman Sen. Chris Dodd, (D-Conn.), President Barack Obama's administration has vowed to pursue reforming the GSEs ... eventually. 

However, despite a long history of alleged corruption, close ties to the current administration and a recent $10-billion extension of "emergency aid" to Freddie and Fannie in the deadest possible part of the news cycle, these two entities have gone relatively unnoticed by the news media, with a lion's share of the spotlight given to Wall Street bogeymen like Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS).

More Video Below Fold

Finally! What the public thinks is now important.

That was the takeaway from an April 22 CNBC "Squawk Box" segment in which the network's Washington correspondent John Harwood explained the upside for the Obama administration in taking an aggressive tack on financial regulation and pushing it through Congress.

According to Harwood, public opinion on this issue favors President Barack Obama. He explained that Wall Street is very unpopular and that's causing some Republicans to be willing to compromise with Democrats on the issue.

"He knows that things are rolling his way on this issue," Harwood said. "You had battle lines initially drawn - both parties took to the trenches, started firing heavy ammunition. But the throw weight is with the Democratic side on this. The public wants financial regulation reform. They don't like Wall Street, just as they don't like Washington. So this is a case where Barack Obama, instead of being the target of public anger, can direct some of it somewhere else. That is what causes Republicans at the end to say, ‘OK, it's time to negotiate, get serious about a deal.' And they're going to get some concessions in that bargaining in exchange for their votes. And they will then be able to stand up and say, ‘This bill was headed to be a bailout bill. We stopped the bailout and everybody can hold hands and say they did something good for the country.'"

CNBC's John Harwood, in an interview aired on Thursday's Today show, pressed Barack Obama about the need to regulate Wall Street as he questioned the President if Americans needed to view them in the same way they view Big Tobacco as "companies whose core activities are harmful to the country?" Obama declined to make the comparison to the tobacco companies, but went on to insist Wall Street needed new rules to protect against "excess." [audio available here]

JOHN HARWOOD: Should average Americans think about big Wall Street institutions the way that some have come to think about tobacco companies, that is, companies whose core activities are harmful to the country? 

BARACK OBAMA: No. We have to have a thriving financial sector. But, we also have to have basic rules of the road in place to make sure that investors, consumers, shareholders, the economy as a whole, are protected against excess. We have gotten into one of those places where we need to update those rules of the road, and if we do so, not only is that good for the economy, not only does it protect consumers and investors, it's also good for the financial sector.

Is President Barack Obama really instituting "cradle-to-grave" social policies and transforming the United States into a nanny state? Well, it may not be "womb-to-tomb" yet, but he's certainly creating a welfare state for Americans beyond their mid-20s.

On CNBC's April 12 "Squawk Box," the network's Washington correspondent John Harwood was outlining what he perceived to be the more positive aspects of ObamaCare, specifically extending how long a one can remain on their parents' insurance policy and whether or not someone can be disqualified for pre-existing conditions.

"I think it's more likely to be stuck," Harwood said. "Now, ultimately, the hope for Democrats, and for the president, is the actual experience with the legislation. Forget the sales job, but once elements of that kick in, especially the more popular ones, letting kids stay on their parents' insurance policies until they're 26, and preventing insurance companies from kicking people off when they hit a lifetime max - those kinds of things, they hope, will make, fuel acceptance of this legislation."

PBS Washington Week host Gwen Ifill was featured Friday on the Romenesko media-news site for her "Gwen’s Take" blog post dismissing the Eric Massa groping scandal as a silly distraction (echoing  Rachel Maddow, and Nancy Pelosi). She compared Washington to Dug the talking dog in the cartoon movie "Up" chasing a squirrel.

But in 2006, Ifill’s show almost screamed with hype that the Mark Foley internet-message scandal was "a Watergate-kind of meltdown" for Republicans, as Ifill asked "Why didn’t [Speaker] Dennis Hastert resign?"

Ifill wrote that she loves the movie "Up," and finds the talking dog a scream:

CNBC "Squawk Box" co-hosts Joe Kernen and Becky Quick get it. Unfortunately, their CNBC colleague that covers Washington, D.C. for the network doesn't.

On the Jan. 22 broadcast, Harwood appeared on the program to give a status report on the current version of health care reform being negotiated in Congress and what it means in the aftermath of Scott Brown's filibuster-proof busting election victory in Massachusetts on Jan. 20. Kernen suggested that the health care bill might have been forced through if not Brown's election and the public fervor it revealed.

"I think it's unbelievable that it would have gone through and they would have definitely jammed it through if this weird, serendipitous seat hadn't opened up and if there hadn't been a special election, 17 percent of the economy - based on what they wanted to do, based on what these elected officials wanted to do, against what the public wants - they would have just rammed it through, either way," Kernen said.

On MSNBC's "New York Times edition" Friday afternoon, host John Harwood, who also writes about politics for the Times, called talk show host Rush Limbaugh's comments about Obama using the Haiti earthquake to appeal to black voters "pretty disgusting," about twenty minutes into the show.

Harwood then put Times columnist Ross Douthat on the spot as its "man of the right" to explain Limbaugh if he wished (Douthat didn't). Liberal Times columnist Charles Blow followed up by calling Rush "a particularly vile human being."

The source of the Times's ire? Limbaugh's comments on his radio show that "This'll play right into Obama's hands, humanitarian, compassionate. They'll use this to burnish their, shall we say, credibility with the black community in, both light-skinned and dark-skinned black community in this country."

The Media Research Center's "Best Notable Quotables of 2009: The Annual Awards for the Year's Worst Reporting" are garnering some media attention of their own. MRC President Brent Bozell drew laughs from the gang on Fox & Friends this morning as he reviewed a few of the winners, but other journalists have also found the awards worthy of coverage:

The American Spectator's Quin Hillyer, who participated as a judge of this year's awards, wrote a December 11 column going over the quotes "that particularly enraged/amused/befuddled me" even before the official results were tallied. Hillyer observed:

Sometimes you must wonder how some members of the establishment media live with themselves. Their double standards are so egregious, as is their refusal to observe the boundaries between straight news and opinionizing (to coin a word), and as are their utter contempt for and viciousness against those anywhere to the political right of them, that one would think there is no way they retain any conscience at all.

Pres. Obama should find time in his busy vacation schedule to drop a palm-trees-and-sandy-beaches thank you postcard to NBC.  On this morning's Today, successive network staffers defended the administration's [mis]handling of the Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab matter.

First, terrorism expert Roger Cressey [who usually plays it straight], claimed there wasn't enough information to "connect the dots" and move young Umar from the "watch list" to the "no-fly" list.  Really? The guy's father, a respected international banker, was so concerned about his son's extremist Islamist views that he took the unusual measure of personally contacting the US embassy with a warning.  Dots?  How about a huge, flashing, neon exclamation point!?

Next, John Harwood backhands GOP criticism of the Obama admin's national security policy as "partisan." 

The year 2009 might be classified as the year Barack Obama came down to Earth. The latest NBC-Wall Street Journal poll found that 47 percent approve of the job Obama is doing, and 46 percent disapprove. Those are not exactly Messiah numbers.

And that’s the big difference between the public and the press. The media do believe he’s God.

Evan Thomas of Newsweek has a way of summing it all up. On "Hardball" in June, Thomas explained that while Ronald Reagan was just a "parochial" and "provincial" president of the United States, Obama can lead the whole world. "In a way, Obama is standing above the country, above the world. He's sort of God. He's going to bring all different sides together." After the inevitable furor, Thomas said he wasn’t "being literal."

Here is the latest episode of NewsBusters’ Notable Quotables comedy show. To celebrate the year’s end, this week’s show provides a sampling of the best of the worst media sound bites of 2009.

A full list of the winners, decided by a panel of 48 opinion makers and media observers, have been announced in the Media Research Center’s annual ‘Best of Notable Quotables.’

The show features a dramatic reading of the quote of the year, won by Discover magazine deputy web editor Melissa Lafsky for channeling Mary Jo Kopecne while remembering the late Ted Kennedy. It also mocks Newsweek editor Evan Thomas for winning the prestigious ‘Audacity of Dopes Award for Wackiest Analysis’ for his godly description of President Obama.

Numerous other outrageous media moments from 2009 provided comedic material to the NQ show cast. Just take a look!  Plus, check out the show in a larger format on Eyeblast.

Appearing Monday on MSNBC during the 10AM ET hour, CNBC White House correspondent John Harwood worked to whip up support for the health care bill passed by Senate Democrats while slamming its liberal opponents: “...so much of the commentary I’ve heard has been really idiotic. Liberals who want universal health care ought to be thanking Harry Reid for getting this thing done...”

Speaking to anchor Contessa Brewer, Harwood told left-wing critics to stop “talking about what’s inadequate in the bill” and said that if they think “that Harry Reid can do better than what he’s done....they ought to lay off the hallucinogenic drugs because we have had a vivid demonstration of the limits of political possibilities on this issue.” Later in the 1PM ET hour Harwood called them “insane” and that they should “have their heads examined.”

Here we go again. We've already seen how ineffective the previous $787-billion stimulus Congress and the President forced through earlier this year has been with curbing unemployment, as it has raced into double-digits over the previous months. But will there be an effort to force through another one?

Earlier this week, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi made overtures of another stimulus in a conference call. CNBC's Erin Burnett noted the possibility of a push for a second stimulus on the network's Nov. 27 "The Call."

"John, what would you say, I don't know, the chances of some sort of an additional jobs stimulus - however you'd like to characterize that, or whatever form it would take or price tag it might have ?" Burnett asked.