Chuck Todd joined colleagues Mark Murray and Carrie Dann in a Wednesday article on NBC's First Read blog that decried President-Elect Donald Trump's "dangerous game of...picking winners and losers" in the economy. The trio spotlighted the billionaire "criticizing" and "hailing" different companies on Twitter — thereby, "picking individual winners and losers....And that could have chilling consequences." The journalists oddly wondered, "Despite all of the corporate criticism of President Obama's first few years in office...has Trump intervened more in companies -- directly and individually -- in his month as president-elect more than Obama ever did?"
Despite their mention of the "corporate criticism," the journalists' network had no such qualms about President Obama $600 billion in stimulus spending and the Democrat's bailout of the auto industry after the 2008 downturn in the economy. Back in June 2011, Today featured economist Diane Swonk, who contended that the "financial stimulus and monetary stimulus...got us to the stage where we're healing." Former Meet the Press host David Gregory also gushed over the President's interventions in the economy:
DAVID GREGORY: ...There will be a rebuttal from President Obama as he ramps up for re-election. And it'll be focused on the auto industry, which in the White House they maintain could have been a lot worse. This was a gutsy call by the President to launch the auto bailout and that's a sign of some recovery. But this is going to be the message war. It's about the economy. Are you better off, deeper into this recession, than you were when President Obama came into office?
Later that month, Todd himself touted on NBC Nightly News how President Obama called for an end to the corporate jet tax loophole. However, the journalist failed to mention that this loophole was part of the stimulus package the Democrat signed into law in 2009.
Of course, NBC, along with ABC and CBS, censored the controversy surrounding the $500 million in taxpayer money that were wasted on Solyndra. The solar energy company (led by Obama fundraiser Steven Spinner) went bankrupt, despite this "investment," in 2011. A year earlier, Todd wondered if the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico would be a "missed opportunity" for Congress to pass a new energy bill, which would likely pick winners and losers in that industry.
