Tomorrow, when you listen to the establishment media’s Inauguration Day coverage, you likely won’t hear journalists celebrate the incoming Republican President Donald Trump. And it’s not just their unique hostility to Trump — a deep dive into the MRC’s archives shows liberal reporters and anchors have been ardent participants in the so-called “honeymoon” for new Democratic Presidents, but provide a much chillier reception when it’s a Republican President being sworn into office.
Back in 1993, for example, the weekly newsmagazines cheered the arrival of incoming Democratic President Bill Clinton. Newsweek’s Howard Fineman enthused: “There’s no doubting that the nation is about to be led by its first sensitive male chief executive.”
Time’s Richard Corliss hit the same note: “Clinton is a prime communicator, a beacon of middle-class charisma, a lover of being loved, a believer in the importance — perhaps the primacy — of image, metaphor, style....This huggy-bear President needs to feel the electromagnetism of approval — but in a New Age way.”
Four years later, Los Angeles Times television writer Howard Rosenberg was still smitten. “His sturdy jaw precedes him. He smiles from sea to shining sea. Is this President a candidate for Mt. Rushmore or what?” Rosenberg wrote in a review of Clinton’s second inaugural address in 1997.
In 2001, the media weren’t nearly as thrilled at incoming Republican President George W. Bush. During her network’s live inauguration coverage, NBC’s Maria Shriver lectured incoming National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice that Bush would have “to reach out to the millions of people who felt disenfranchised by this election, who don’t feel that he’s their President yet?”
And in 2005, journalists huffed that Bush’s inauguration was a waste of money. “On World News Tonight/Sunday, President Bush prepares for his second inauguration. In a time of war and natural disaster, is it time for a lavish celebration?” ABC’s Terry Moran griped four days before the swearing-in.
Then came Obama, Trump and Biden. If the media’s partisan tilt had been easy to spot during the earlier Clinton/Bush era, it became an in-your-face assault starting in 2009. An effervescent media giddily celebrated Barack Obama’s arrival that year: “Never have so many people shivered so long with such joy,” correspondent Bill Weir gushed during ABC’s live “news” coverage.
Trump’s inauguration eight years later was met with contempt. “I thought it was shockingly divisive for an inaugural,” NBC’s Chuck Todd whined. And journalists openly celebrated Joe Biden’s takeover in 2021. “We’ve gone from indecency to decency,” MSNBC’s Joy Reid declared during her network’s live coverage four years ago.
The media’s partisan pattern is so firmly established, it would be a shock if any journalist has kind words to say for the President affirmed by more than 77 million voters. In anticipation of Monday’s second inauguration of Donald J. Trump, here’s a look back at the most outrageous media quotes from the previous four presidential inaugurals, all from the archives of the Media Research Center:
2009
■ “A new day is dawning here in the nation’s capital on the eve of the inauguration of Barack Obama as the 44th President of the United States...Does it get any better, or more beautiful, or more spectacular, than this?”
— Co-anchor Maggie Rodriguez opening CBS’s Early Show, January 19, 2009.
■ “This is one of the great opportunities in journalism to cover history in the face. We’re going to see history in the face and when you get up tomorrow morning I recommend you stay tuned all day because I don’t think you’re going to stop seeing history being made....It’s going to be the honor of our lifetimes to be here on the Washington Mall.”
— MSNBC’s Chris Matthews previewing his network’s inauguration coverage, January 19, 2009 Hardball.
■ “We know that wind can make a cold day feel colder, but can national pride make a freezing day feel warmer? It seems to be the case because regardless of the final crowd number estimates, never have so many people shivered so long with such joy. From above, even the seagulls must have been awed by the blanket of humanity.”
— ABC’s Bill Weir on World News, January 20, 2009.
■ “What a day it was. It may take days or years to really absorb the significance of what happened to America today....When he [Barack Obama] finally emerged, he seemed, even in this throng, so solitary, somber, perhaps already feeling the weight of the world, even before he was transformed into the leader of the free world....The mass flickering of cell phone cameras on the mall seemed like stars shining back at him.”
— Correspondent Andrea Mitchell on the January 20, 2009 NBC Nightly News.
2013
■ “The Second Coming. America Expects. Can He Deliver?”
— Headline for Newsweek’s “Inauguration 2013" cover, January 18, 2013.
■ “Here in Washington the excitement is already beginning. Those marching bands getting ready for their parade, the caterers, 10,000 eggs for one hotel. And the whole city has a smile on its face.”
— Anchor Diane Sawyer talking about Obama’s inauguration during a live special report, January 20, 2013.
■ “I thought it was a marvelous speech and it’s brave and it’s bold and I think it’s going to play well in history.”
— Historian Douglas Brinkley on CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360, January 21, 2013, reviewing Obama’s inauguration speech.
■ “He is a president renewed in office by the votes of 65 million Americans. He is a president with a purpose....Change — this time around that word means something else to Barack Obama. He used his second inauguration to make an audacious claim that the coalition that reelected him — younger, more diverse, non-native, more socially liberal — is the next America, the rising generation, and he spoke directly to and for them....A man, a president with a purpose and an agenda, a progressive agenda, no question about it.”
— Co-anchor Terry Moran on ABC’s Nightline, January 21.
2017
■ “If, as I fear, we see the White House transformed into a bog of scandals flowing from an unprincipled narcissist, we as a nation will be more appreciative of a first family that set an impeccable example for all the world.”
— New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof in January 19, 2017 article “Missing Barack Obama Already.”
■ “I have to say, I think it will go down in history as one of the most radical speeches ever given by a president.”
— Host Jake Tapper on CNN’s live coverage of Trump’s inauguration, January 20, 2017.
■ “I thought it was shockingly divisive for an inaugural....He insulted — at points, insulted almost every living president that was there to witness his inaugural, which, to me, was so stunning.”
— NBC Meet the Press moderator Chuck Todd on the January 20, 2017 Nightly News.
■ “The new President also repeating that our guiding principle will be ‘America First,’ ‘America First.’ We know how he has used that as a campaign slogan, that does also have very dark echoes in American history. There was an America First Committee that formed in this country, hundreds of thousands of people in this country, some of the richest businessmen in the country who were part of it, they were formed to keep us out of World War II. They were infiltrated by the Nazis, many of them are anti-Semitic, part of why they weren’t alarmed by Hitler’s rise in Germany. The America First Committee is something that means a specific thing in this country, to re-purpose it now, not that far down the historical path. It’s hard. It’s hard to hear.”
— Host Rachel Maddow during MSNBC’s live coverage of Trump’s inauguration, January 20, 2017.
■ “But I’m thinking when he said today ‘America First’ it was not just the racial, I mean the, um, I shouldn’t say racial, the Hitlerian background to it. But it was the message I kept thinking, what is [British Prime Minister] Theresa May thinking this morning, when she picks up the papers and goes ‘My God, what did he just say, he said America first, what happened to the special relationship?’”
— MSNBC’s Chris Matthews during live coverage of Trump’s inauguration, January 20, 2017.
2021
■ “He [Joe Biden] gave kind of inaugural address our Presidents used to give, as hopeful as the man delivering it, yet an honest reflection of a great country at its modern-day low point: Beset by two viruses, one a pandemic, the other a sickness that has flowed into our politics....The message has gone out that the United States is back and under new management.”
— MSNBC’s 11th Hour host Brian Williams during MSNBC’s live coverage of Joe Biden’s Inauguration, January 20, 2021.
■ “Joe Biden had to deliver the speech of his life, and he did. In my lifetime, I have never seen a more challenging inaugural address....What he did in about 21 minutes was absolutely astonishing under these incredibly challenging circumstances.”
— MSNBC’s The Last Word host Lawrence O’Donnell on MSNBC’s live coverage of Joe Biden’s Inauguration, January 20, 2021.
■ Co-anchor George Stephanopoulos: “Most of us will remember where we were when we heard Joe Biden take the oath of office, give his inaugural address....Echoes of Abe Lincoln.”...
Correspondent Byron Pitts: “Watching this moment, today’s inauguration felt more like a church service, right? And we see there, right after the sermon, the congregation doesn’t want to go home. People are hugging, shaking hands. I thought from Joe Biden today, certainly he was commander-in-chief, but he was also papa-in-chief. He gave a speech to comfort the nation.”
— ABC News’s live coverage of Joe Biden Inauguration, January 20, 2021.
■ “We’ve gone from indecency to decency….We’ve gone from what can only be called idolatry and false religion under Trump, this worship of greed and this lust for conquest, one American over another, to really what the religion, the true religion is supposed to be, at least when I grew up in church….We try to love our fellow man, we try to be brothers and sisters, we try to care about the poor, the immigrant, we try to care about those in need. That’s the creed. That is the Christian creed. It’s what it was supposed to be before it was about stealing the children of migrants.”
— MSNBC’s The ReidOut host Joy Reid on MSNBC’s live coverage of Joe Biden’s Inauguration, January 20, 2021.
For more examples from our flashback series, which we call the NewsBusters Time Machine, go here.
