Posted below: the November 7 edition of Notable Quotables, MRC’s bi-weekly compilation of the latest outrageous quotes in the liberal media. This issue: The Washington Post’s Dana Milbank blasts that Donald Trump has “threatened democracy” and therefore any sort of press “neutrality” on the GOP nominee would be legitimizing “the illegitimate.” NBC’s Chuck Todd and ABC’s George Stephanopoulos get put on the defensive by Trump and campaign manager Kellyanne Conway.
Also in this issue: a freelance reporter for the Los Angeles Times actually wishes death on Trump while The View’s Joy Behar gushes everyone is going to like “Mommy” Hillary once she’s elected.
The complete issue, with 19 quotes, is posted below (or view the printer-friendly PDF version).
Justifying Media Hostility to Trump
“In an ordinary presidential campaign, press neutrality is essential. But in Trump we have somebody who has threatened democracy by talking about banning an entire religion from entering the country; forcing Muslims in America to register with authorities; rewriting press laws and prosecuting his critics and political opponents; blacklisting news organizations he doesn’t like; ordering the military to do illegal things such as torture and targeting innocents; and much more. In this case, attempting neutrality legitimized the illegitimate.”
— Washington Post’s Dana Milbank in an October 25 column.
They’re Not Even Denying the Bias Any More
“Right now, Hillary Clinton is enjoying an enormous honeymoon period. Whether it’s with the press who covers her, or whether it’s with the polling, she’s really riding high. What you’re seeing in these stories, and what you’re seeing in this conversation going on, is a preview of what comes next in the event that she does win this election.”
— MSNBC correspondent Kasie Hunt on Morning Joe, October 27.
George and Chuck Get a Tad Bit Defensive
Anchor George Stephanopoulos: “When you look back over the sweep of this campaign, going back to last June is there anything you regret?”
Donald Trump: “Oh, absolutely. I’d love to have done certain things over, but you can’t. You can’t, but that’s true in life. I’d love to have done, in life, certain things over I guess. And you would have too.”
Stephanopoulos: “Give me one.”
Trump: “You would love to have not contributed to the Clinton Foundation, as an example. There are things you wish you didn’t do. Okay?”
— Exchange on ABC’s Good Morning America, October 27.
Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway: “We’ve seen all these revelations Chuck, 96 percent of the donations, politically, went to Hillary Clinton by working journalists. 96 percent, there’s no arguing — ”
Host Chuck Todd: “There were no actual — there was no political journalists in there. It is a, I get where you’re going with that, but that includes people that cover sports or entertainment. I mean, I’m just saying. Let’s give it some nuance here.”
— NBC’s Meet the Press, October 23.
Fox News Is for Racists Who Are Too Lazy to Join KKK
Host Joy Reid: “There are people who say Fox News doesn’t hate Muslims enough, isn’t angry enough about immigration, that Megyn Kelly is too tough on Trump surrogates. There is an audience that’s further to the right because it’s on Breitbart.com right now.”
Daily Beast columnist Dean Obeidallah: “Finally a network for people who find Fox News too intellectual, and too warm and fuzzy, and too lazy to join the Klan....We’ve watched Fox — we’ve watched Trump TV, a preview the last about 15, 16 months. It’s horrifying. It is bone-chilling....To his supporters, the name ‘Trump’ is becoming a modern day version of the Swastika.”
— Exchange on MSNBC’s AM Joy, October 23.
Hard to Spin When You Don’t Know What’s Coming Next
“Hillary Clinton is swinging at shadows if we don’t know what’s in these e-mails. How does she defend herself?”
— Anchor Scott Pelley’s question to correspondent John Dickerson on the CBS Evening News, October 28.
Gushing Over Michelle’s “Master Class”
“What we saw was a master class in political speech-making. There is a reason people are calling the First Lady [Michelle Obama], Hillary Clinton’s not-so-secret weapon. Very few people who could do what she just did.”
— Correspondent Chris Jansing on MSNBC Live with Kate Snow, October 27.
Fears of Dictator Trump
“[Trump’s] most recent comments about the legitimacy of the election, with their whiff of Third-World tumult, have perversely made some immigrants feel right at home...In their minds, they said, questions about a president’s legitimacy were inseparable from chaos and bloodshed, and thus they could not stop themselves from thinking the worst.”
— New York Times reporter Yamiche Alcindor in October 21 article “For Some Immigrants, Trump’s Warning on Election Results Sounds All Too Familiar.”
Treasonous GOP “Needs to Die”
Host Chuck Todd: “The House, it’s a long shot. Not since ’52 has the House changed hands in a presidential election year. So, if it does, who leads the Republican Party, Tom?”...
New York Times columnist Tom Friedman: “Maybe this party needs to crash and burn. This version of the Republican Party needs to die. So out of the ashes, just as a new Democratic Party came out of the post-McGovern, post-Dukakis era, that we will get a Democratic Leadership Council movement, a sane Republican Party.”
— NBC’s Meet the Press, October 23.
“They [Republicans] have forgotten the difference between being a party of opposition and a party of obstruction. There’s great honor in being a party of opposition, you know, saying, ‘Listen, we think your ideas are wrong. We can make them better.’ But when you just stop the entire government from functioning, there’s a word for that: treason. That’s the word. That’s treason. You have to do your job. You have to do your job. You take an oath. Period.”
— CNN political commentator Van Jones, talking about opposing Hillary Clinton, on HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher, October 28.
Comey Should Just Shut Up
Correspondent Andrea Mitchell: “I mean the fact is, that Donald Trump was in New Hampshire, took the stage minutes after this letter came out and said, ‘illegal,’ ‘misconduct,’ ‘she should be in jail.’ I mean, you heard the ‘lock her up’ cries from the crowd. The fact is, he [James Comey] could have said, ‘This is not an investigation. This is just finding out.’ He could have said, ‘There’s nothing criminal here.’ He could have put in, we don’t know, ‘we have seen not seen e-mails.’ Which has been reported. ‘We don’t know what’s in them. We don’t know if they’re work related or personal.’ He could have said these things Larry [Kudlow]. And the fact that he wrote that letter and now all of these Senate chair — or ranking members saying, ‘You’ve got to be more specific.’”
CNBC contributor Larry Kudlow: “I don’t think the letter was as artful as it could have been.”
Mitchell: “You think?”
— NBC’s Meet the Press, October 30.
“Even I, as a lowly assistant U.S. Attorney in the 1990s, knew there was a bedrock principle at the Justice Department....you don’t interfere in elections. Two months before, you go dark. You don’t start making public disclosures. You don’t issue subpoenas, you don’t issue indictments on the eve of election and I don’t see what possible justification James Comey had to violate that principle....Why throw that stink bomb at the very end of the campaign?”
— CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin on CNN Newsroom with Brooke Baldwin, October 31.
Being Biased Against Him Isn’t Enough
“@Time I would rather see Donald Trump’s life end.”
— November 3 tweet by Los Angeles Times freelance reporter Steven Boroweic. In response to @Time magazine tweet “See Donald Trump’s life in photos.” Boroweic tweeted later: “I apologize for my Trump tweet. I meant it in jest.” The Times later announced it had “ended its relationship with him.”
Saying “Illegal Alien” Could Lead to a Latino Holocaust?
“What you can do is you can say it is an immigrant living illegally or an immigrant living without papers or without documents in this country. But what you cannot do is to label a person illegal. And the reason why I say this is not because I learned it from some radical Latino or Latina studies professor when I was a college student. I learned it from Elie Wiesel, who survived the Holocaust, who said, you know what, the first thing they did was that they declared the Jews to be an illegal people. And that’s what we’re talking about at this point. This is real fear.”
— NPR anchor Maria Hinojosa on MSNBC’s AM Joy, October 29.
A “Disaster” in a Red State Would Be “Helpful” for Hillary
Co-host David Plotz: “What is something that you would have President [Hillary] Clinton do, to unify us?”....
Co-host and New York Times Magazine writer Emily Bazelon: “I’m not wishing this upon anyone, but it would be helpful for her to have a natural disaster to deal with in a red state where she could go and be because she would be able to be — seriously — I’m not saying I want it to happen, but the timing would be helpful.”
— Exchange on Slate’s “Political Gabfest” podcast, October 28.
Everyone Is Going to Like Our New Mommy Hillary
“When a woman is running for office nobody likes it. No one likes an ambitious woman like that. But once they’re in, then she’s like ‘Mommy.’ You know? She’s mommy now! And everyone’s going to like her then.”
— Host Joy Behar on ABC’s The View, November 3.
Vote Hillary or Die
“If you vote for Gary Johnson or you vote for Jill Stein you need to assume that it will be the last presidential vote you get to cast. I’m not being symbolic, I’m not being hyperbolic, I am pointing out simple realities. In every swing state, a vote for Johnson or Stein is one less for Hillary Clinton and her victory over Donald Trump. As big a victory by as large and indisputable a margin as possible, is vital to your safety. It is necessary to make sure the country still exists four years from now, essential to make sure your right to vote still exists one year from now. The difference between Clinton and Trump is that stark....The man [Trump] is a bigot. He has shown no commitment to free elections in this country, he is a bully with severe anger management problems, combined with a desire to have and use nuclear weapons. And he’s not running for president, but for dictator.”
— Keith Olbermann on GQ.com’s The Closer, October 25.
Nazi Trump Is America’s “Greatest Threat” Since WWII
Host Chistiane Amanpour: “What do you make first and foremost of the major Republican candidate refusing to accept the legitimacy of the process even before the vote is cast?”
Filmmaker Ken Burns: “It’s unprecedented. I don’t recognize my country anymore. This is so terrifying. I think this is an existential moment for the United States of America. I think this is the greatest threat since the Cuban missile crisis and the Second World War....The Trump campaign is taking a play, their playbook is out of the National Socialist party in Germany.”
— Exchange on CNN International’s Amanpour, October 20.
Hillary Is the “Two-Faced” “Bitch Mother” America Needs
“We need a two-faced, conniving, crazy — just somebody who’s just like got a million schemes. By the way, all her [beep] is out there. Every e-mail she ever wrote is in the newspapers and she’s not in jail which is amazing! But just we need just a tough bitch mother who nobody likes and who just does [beep]. If you vote for Hillary you’re a grown-up. If you vote for Trump you’re a sucker.”
— Comedian Louis C.K. on TBS’s Conan, November 1.
