NY Times Downplays, Delays and Spins Clinton-Lynch Encounter
The New York Times was extraordinarily slow to the draw in covering the controversial Phoenix airport meeting between U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch and former President Bill Clinton. Its first in-house recognition of the Monday evening meeting took place Thursday evening, over 48 hours after the first media reports of it had appeared. That report by Mark Lander was relegated to Page A17 of…
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First Donald Trump, Now 'Match Game' Targets Ted Cruz
Culture
I'm sensing a pattern with ABC's revival of the Match Game. Last week, one prompt was "Donald Trump has created a new Olympic event that he knows he can win. It’s a contest to see who can BLANK the most times in 60 seconds," which gave Rosie O'Donnell an opportunity to bash her nemesis. This week they got political again, but with a different Republican candidate.
NYT Writer’s ‘Star Wars’ Analogy: U.S. Is the Empire vs. Iraqi Rebels
Writing in the Sunday Review section of The New York Times, U.S. military veteran Roy Scranton admitted that he’s come realize that his time in Iraq with his fellow servicemen and women had morphed him into “the faceless storm trooper” while “the scrappy rebels were the Iraqis.”
Liberal Pundit Calls Clinton-Lynch Meeting ‘Improper’ and ‘Stupid’
Bill Clinton’s personal conduct has exasperated liberals for roughly as long as his political success has exhilarated them. While some of them dismissed his get-together with attorney general Loretta Lynch as trivial, others saw it as yet another of his potentially damaging, impulse-driven unforced errors. Esquire’s Charles Pierce called the meeting “stupid and reckless” and fumed, “For the…
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Roberts: Team Clinton Clueless on Fixing Hillary's Low Trustworthiness
On Sunday's morning's This Week show on ABC, hos Martha Raddatz asked normally unflappable Hillary Clinton supporter Cokie Roberts about the "deep mistrust" voters have towards presumptive Democratic Party nominee Hillary Clinton. Concerning her campaign, Roberts responded that "I don’t think they have a clue how to fix it." That's understandable. How do you "fix" a media-enabled problem at least…
Donald Trump vs. CNN: Score One for Donald
I see that CNN is calling upon the good offices of Mr. Potato Head to refute Donald Trump's evisceration of Hillary Clinton in his speech last Wednesday. Mr. Potato Head is very indignant that Peter Schweizer has written a book, "Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich," demonstrating that a pattern of corruption exists in…
Fact-Checking The Washington Post’s Callum Borchers
So. Over at The Washington Post this week, I see that columnist Callum Borchers is upset with me. The reason, it seems, is that in an appearance on CNN’s Reliable Sources with Brian Stelter I had the audacity to say the following in a discussion about the current fashion of “fact checking” in the media.
AP: Egypt's Morsi Was 'Freely Elected President,' Ignores His Tyranny
In its coverage of Egypt's declaration of a national holiday to mark the ouster of Islamist dictator Mohammed Morsi (also spelled "Mursi") three years ago, the Associated Press recast history. It completely ignored Morsi's assumption of de facto dictatorial powers only months after he was "freely elected" in 2012, his government's brutal repression while he was in power, and his Muslim…
From Cincy to D.C.: How Lois Lerner's IRS Targeted the Tea Party
Lois Lerner’s confession at that conference did contain one small truth. The IRS targeting scandal did indeed start in “Cincy”—as D.C. headquarters refers to that outpost. On a cold late February day in 2010, a Cincinnati screener named Jack Koester found himself focused on an application from a local Tea Party group.
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CBS's 'American Gothic' Whines About Voter I.D.
Culture
CBS’ American Gothic took an unnecessary swipe at Republican legislators in its second episode, “Jack-in-the-Pulpit.” When Alison (Juliet Rylance) bemoans her inability to keep her thorn-in-the-side brother, Garrett Hawthorne (Antony Starr), from mouthing off at the podium, Naomi (Maureen Sebastian) helpfully suggests taking a page from the “Republican’s voter suppression tactics.”
New Republic Writer: Conservatives ‘Easy Marks’ For Trump’s ‘Con Game’
Whatever else Donald Trump is, he’s a skillful multitasker, suggested Jeet Heer in a Tuesday article. Trump is in the news mostly as a presidential candidate, of course, but Heer claims that his “real objective, win or lose, is relaunching his lucrative brand.” As for how Trump became the Republican party’s presumptive nominee even though politics wasn’t his top priority, Heer opined that there’s…
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Matthews: Bill Clinton's ‘Tail Wags When He Sees Someone He Knows'
Going into the Independence Day weekend, MSNBC’s Chris Matthews played the role of creeper on Friday’s Andrea Mitchell Reports as he excused former President Bill Clinton chatting with Attorney General Loretta Lynch amid Hillary’s FBI investigation because Bill is like the late Elvis Presley and “[h]is tail wags when he sees somebody he knows.”
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Mitchell Whines Clinton/Lynch Meeting Has ‘Overshadowed’ the Campaign
MSNBC host and NBC News correspondent Andrea Mitchell was still at it on Friday afternoon lamenting that the Bill Clinton/Loretta Lynch airplane meeting has been “overshadowing” Hillary Clinton’s campaign and surmised that the former President wasn’t looking to “gain some influence” from the Attorney General as her Justice Department and FBI investigate Hillary’s private e-mail server.
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Halperin: Clinton Met With Lynch Because He’s a ‘Really Social Guy’
Appearing on NBC’s Today on Friday, Bloomberg Politics editor Mark Halperin offered a laughably naive explanation for Bill Clinton’s controversial meeting with Attorney General Loretta Lynch: “The most obvious explanation and probably the right one, is Bill Clinton is a really social guy...” He cast Clinton and Lynch as celebrities who just ran into each other: “And we’ve all seen situations…
