This year we are celebrating the 20th anniversary of NewsBusters, so as part of this momentous event we are looking back at some of the most outrageous outbursts of bias captured by our analysts and bloggers over the years.
Some moments (like Chris Matthews’s infamous “thrill up the leg”) were first caught by NewsBusters staffers.
So without further ado here is a chronological list of just some of the most obnoxious and absurd outbursts of leftist bias caught by NewsBusters over the last 20 years!
[LANGUAGE WARNING]
2005
Defending RatherGate to the Very End
Reporter Brian Ross: “Mary Mapes was the woman behind the scenes, the producer who researched, wrote and put together Dan Rather’s 60 Minutes report on President Bush’s National Guard service, a report which Rather and CBS would later apologize for airing....”
Ross to Mapes: “Do you still think that story was true?”
Ex-CBS producer Mary Mapes: “The story? Absolutely.”
Ross: “This seems remarkable to me that you would sit here now and say you still find that story to be up to your standards.”
Mapes: “I’m perfectly willing to believe those documents are forgeries if there’s proof that I haven’t seen.”
Ross: “But isn’t it the other way around? Don’t you have to prove they’re authentic?”
Mapes: “Well, I think that’s what critics of the story would say. I know more now than I did then and I think, I think they have not been proved to be false, yet.”
Ross: “Have they proved to be authentic though? Isn’t that really what journalists do?”
Mapes: “No, I don’t think that’s the standard.”
— ABC’s Good Morning America, November 9, 2005.
2006
New York Times Publisher’s Leftist Lecture to Students
“It wasn’t supposed to be this way. You weren’t supposed to be graduating into an America fighting a misbegotten war in a foreign land. You weren’t supposed to be graduating into a world where we are still fighting for fundamental human rights, whether it’s the rights of immigrants to start a new life, or the rights of gays to marry, or the rights of women to choose. You weren’t supposed to be graduating into a world where oil still drove policy and environmentalists have to fight relentlessly for every gain. You weren’t. But you are. And for that, I’m sorry.”
— From New York Times Publisher Arthur Sulzberger, Jr.’s May 21 graduation address at the State University of New York at New Paltz, shown on C-SPAN May 27, 2006.
2007
McClatchy News Service Finds the Bad News In Declining Death Toll
“As Violence Falls in Iraq, Cemetery Workers Feel the Pinch”
— Headline over an October 16, 2007 story by McClatchy News Service reporters Jay Price and Qasim Zein.
2008
Matthews Feels the “Thrill” of Obama
Co-anchor Chris Matthews: “I have to tell you, you know, it’s part of reporting this case, this election, the feeling most people get when they hear Barack Obama’s speech. My — I felt this thrill going up my leg. I mean, I don’t have that too often.”
Co-anchor Keith Olbermann: “Steady.”
Matthews: “No, seriously. It’s a dramatic event. He speaks about America in a way that has nothing to do with politics. It has to do with the feeling we have about our country. And that is an objective assessment.”
— Exchange during MSNBC’s coverage of the Virginia, Maryland and Washington D.C. primaries, February 12, 2008.
2009
Ed Schultz: The GOP Wants to See You Dead!
“The Republicans lie! They want to see you dead! They’d rather make money off your dead corpse! They kind of like it when that woman has cancer and they don’t have anything for her.”
— Host Ed Schultz on MSNBC’s The Ed Show, September 23, 2009.
2010
Another Christian Terror Spree
Author Ayaan Hirsi Ali, talking about radical Muslims: “Somehow, the idea got into their minds that to kill other people is a great thing to do and that they would be rewarded in the hereafter.”
Host Tavis Smiley: “But Christians do that every single day in this country.”
Ali: “Do they blow people up every day?”
Smiley: “Yes. Oh, Christians, every day, people walk into post offices, they walk into schools, that’s what Columbine is – I could do this all day long....There are folk in the Tea Party, for example, every day who are being recently arrested for making threats against elected officials, for calling people ‘nigger’ as they walk into Capitol Hill, for spitting on people. That’s within the political – that’s within the body politic of this country.”
— PBS’s Tavis Smiley, May 25, 2010.
2011
Paul Krugman Attacks the “Fake Heroes” of 9/11
“What happened after 9/11 — and I think even people on the right know this, whether they admit it or not — was deeply shameful. [The] atrocity should have been a unifying event, but instead it became a wedge issue. Fake heroes like Bernie Kerik, Rudy Giuliani, and, yes, George W. Bush raced to cash in on the horror. And then the attack was used to justify an unrelated war the neo-cons wanted to fight, for all the wrong reasons....The memory of 9/11 has been irrevocably poisoned; it has become an occasion for shame. And in its heart, the nation knows it.”
— New York Times columnist Paul Krugman in a September 11 posting to his NYTimes.com blog
2012
July 4th, MSNBC-Style: “Imperialism, Genocide, Slavery”
“The land on which they [the Founders] formed this Union was stolen. The hands with which they built this nation were enslaved. The women who birthed the citizens of the nation are second class....This is the imperfect fabric of our nation, at times we’ve torn and stained it, and at other moments, we mend and repair it. But it’s ours, all of it. The imperialism, the genocide, the slavery, also the liberation and the hope and the deeply American belief that our best days still lie ahead of us.”
— MSNBC host Melissa Harris-Perry on her eponymous July 1, 2012 program, delivering what she called “my footnote for the Fourth of July.”
2013
Sick and Twisted Attack on Sarah Palin
“One of the most comprehensive first-person accounts of slavery comes from the personal diary of a man called Thomas Thistlewood, who kept copious notes for 39 years....In 1756, he records that ‘a slave named Darby catched eating canes; had him well flogged and pickled, then made Hector, another slave, s-h-i-t in his mouth.’ This became known as ‘Darby’s Dose,’ a punishment invented by Thistlewood that spoke only of the slave owners’ savagery and inhumanity....When Mrs. Palin invoked slavery, she doesn’t just prove her rank ignorance. She confirms that if anyone truly qualified for a dose of discipline from Thomas Thistlewood, then she would be the outstanding candidate.”
— MSNBC host Martin Bashir on November 15, 2013 reacting to Sarah Palin’s comparison of excessive debt to slavery. Bashir apologized the following Monday, but MSNBC permitted him to stay on the air that entire week. After an extended Thanksgiving “vacation,” he quit on December 4, 2013.
Kids Don’t “Belong to Their Parents”
“We have never invested as much in public education as we should have, because we’ve always had kind of a private notion of children....We haven’t had a very collective notion of these are our children....We have to break through our kind of private idea that kids belong to their parents, or kids belong to their families, and recognize that kids belong to whole communities.”
— MSNBC weekend host Melissa Harris-Perry in an early April, 2013 “Lean Forward” spot.
2014
CNN’s Costello: “Sit Back and Enjoy” This Clip of Bristol Palin Being Assaulted
“Okay. I’m just going to come right out and say it: This is quite possibly the best minute and a half of audio we’ve ever come across — well, come across in a long time anyway. A massive brawl in Anchorage, Alaska, reportedly involving Sarah Palin’s kids and her husband. It was sparked after someone pushed one of her daughters at a party....And now police have released audio of that interview. It does include some rather colorful language from Bristol. Here now is Bristol’s recollection of how that night unfolded. So sit back and enjoy.”
— CNN Newsroom anchor Carol Costello on October 22, 2014 introducing audio of Bristol Palin describing how a man shoved her, dragged her on the ground and repeatedly cursed at her.
Eleanor Uncovers the Truth About Benghazi
“Every media organization has investigated this to death. This animates the right-wing of the Republican Party. And I would like to point out that Ambassador [Chris] Stevens was not murdered. He died of smoke inhalation in the safe room in that CIA installation.”
— The Daily Beast’s Eleanor Clift on The McLaughlin Group, May 11, 2014.
2015
Be “Super Careful” About Who You Call a “Hard Worker”
Alfonso Aguilar, Latino Partnership for Conservative Principles: “If there’s somebody who is a hard worker when he goes to Washington, it’s Paul Ryan....”
Host Melissa Harris-Perry: “I want us to be super careful when we use the language ‘hard worker,’ because I actually keep an image of folks working in cotton fields on my office wall, because it is a reminder about what hard work looks like. So, I feel you that he’s a hard worker, I do, but in the context of relative privilege.”
— Exchange on MSNBC’s Melissa Harris-Perry, October 24, 2015.
2016
Welcome to the “White-Lash”
“It’s hard to be a parent, tonight, for a lot of us. You tell your kids, don’t be a bully. You tell your kids, don’t be a bigot....And then, you have this outcome....how do I explain this to my children?...This was a ‘white-lash.’ This was a ‘white-lash’ against a changing country. It was a ‘white-lash’ against a black president.”
— CNN’s political analyst Van Jones during live election night coverage 12:44 am ET, November 9, 2016.
Hillary Clinton is Like Jefferson and Adams Rolled Into One
Correspondent Joy Reid: “If you look at Hillary Clinton’s qualifications, I mean, my God, since the Founding Fathers, has anyone tried run for president with more on their resume?”
Host Andrea Mitchell: “John Quincy Adams, maybe.”
Reid: “Maybe John Quincy Adams. True, true, true. Jefferson, Adams, I mean you have to go back literally to the 18th century to find somebody with a more packed resume than Hillary Clinton.”
— Exchange on MSNBC’s Place for Politics, April 8, 2016.
2017
Massacre of Country Music Fans = “Blood Sacrifice” to the “Constitution”
“The Constitution is not a pact with the devil, nor is it a suicide pact. It is a formalized, legalistic ritual of blood sacrifice. There are some things that we as a society, alas, must tolerate in order to stay true to our founding beliefs and to remain free. Schoolchildren shot to pieces is one of those things. The massacre of country music fans is another one of those things, the 273rd blood sacrifice to that one provision of the Constitution this year.”
— Esquire columnist Charles Pierce in October 2, 2017 column “If Newtown Wasn’t Enough, Why Would Las Vegas Be Enough? Our leaders are afraid to tolerate limits on Second Amendment ‘freedoms.’”
2018
Mike Pence = “Dangerous” Christian With “Mental Illness”
Co-host Sunny Hostin: “When you have a Mike Pence who now puts this religious veneer on things and who calls people values voters, I think we’re this a dangerous situation. Look I’m Catholic. I’m a faithful person, but I don’t know that I want my vice president speaking in tongues and having Jesus speak to him.”
Co-host Joy Behar: “Like I said before, it’s one thing to talk to Jesus. It’s another thing when Jesus talks to you....That’s called mental illness, if I’m not correct. Hearing voices.”
— ABC’s The View, February 13, 2018.
2019
Sliming Kavanaugh
“I’ve never heard of a guy who is a one-time rapist. I’ve never heard of a one-time sexual assaulter. I grew up with guys [Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh] like this. He’s from around this area, right? He is the fifth guy in a gang rape. He’s the guy who comes in after he is drunk because everybody else encourages him and he can get away with it. He’s been pretty much covered his entire life. And now he’s on the Supreme Court, where he can move that same despicable misogynist attitude he has gotten away with his entire cowardly life to the greatest misogynist of all, which is the President of the United States.”
— MSNBC contributor and TheRoot.com’s Jason Johnson on MSNBC’s AM Joy, September 15, 2019.
2020
Stopping the Looting = “Declaring War on Americans”
“Open your eyes, America. Open your eyes. We are teetering on a dictatorship. This is chaos. Has the President — I’m listening — is the President declaring war on Americans? What is happening here?”
— Host Don Lemon discussing Trump bringing in the military to stop looters, as aired on CNN’s Situation Room, June 1, 2020.
2021
Don Lemon: If You Voted for Trump, You Are On Same Side as the Klan
“If you voted for Trump, you voted for the person who the Klan supported. You voted for the person who Nazis support. You voted for the person who the alt-right supports. That’s the crowd that you are in.”
— Host Don Lemon on CNN Tonight with Don Lemon, January 14, 2021.
Biden’s Big Hug of America
“Those lights that are, that are just shooting out from the Lincoln Memorial along the reflecting pool….It’s like almost extensions of Joe Biden’s arms embracing America. It was a moment where the new President came to town and sort of convened the country in this moment of remembrance, outstretching his arms.”
— CNN Political Director David Chalian during CNN’s Inauguration coverage, January 19, 2021.
2022
Lemon Is Either Lying or He’s Crazy
Host Stephen Colbert: “The word on the street is you guys aren’t allowed to be liberal anymore? Is that the case?”
CNN host Don Lemon: “I don’t think we ever were liberal.”
Colbert: “What?”
Lemon: “Yes, I don’t think we ever were liberal.”
— CBS’s Late Show with Stephen Colbert, November 28, 2022.
2023
If Elected, Trump Will “Execute” As Many People As He Can Get Away With!
“The only thing that stood between him [Donald Trump] and the destruction of American democracy was the federal judiciary. He will do, he will get away with, he will imprison, he will execute whoever he is allowed to imprison, execute, drive from the country.”
— Co-host Joe Scarborough on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, November 21, 2023.
2024
Best Version of Biden Ever!
“Start your tape right now, because I’m about to tell you the truth. And f-you if you can’t handle the truth. This version of Biden intellectually, analytically, is the best Biden ever. Not a close second. And I’ve known him for years. The Brzezinskis have known him for 50 years. If it weren’t the truth, I wouldn’t say it.”
— Co-host Joe Scarborough on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, March 6, 2024 rejecting claims Biden was slipping mentally.
2025
Elie Mystal: U.S. Constitution Is a “Piece of Crap”
“When South Africa got over apartheid, did they just go back to their Afrikaner racist constitution…No! They threw the whole thing out and started again….and they came up with a new constitution. It’s one of the reasons why the South African constitution is generally thought of as one of the best constitutions in the world and ours continues to be a piece of crap.”
— The Nation justice correspondent Elie Mystal on the syndicated radio show The Breakfast Club, April 3, 2025.
