Conservatives & Republicans

By now, you’ve probably heard the news. The Walt Disney Company has announced a definitive mega-deal to merge with Rupert Murdoch’s 21st Century Fox, which includes the FX cable channel and – more importantly – the 20th Century Fox motion picture studio. The deal is worth over $50 billion, and is set to close by the end of next year. It does not, however, include the FOX Broadcasting Company, FOX…

There are talkers and doers, sowers of dissatisfaction seeds and agents of lasting change. Much of my column work over the year is dedicated to exposing the worst crapweasels in politics, pop culture, media and the policy arena. But to ring out 2017, I'm raising a toast to some of my favorite bulldogs -- vigilant citizens, independent journalists and bloggers, and dedicated activists who work…

On Tuesday's The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell on MSNBC, substitute host Ari Melber suggested that conservatives who are concerned about there being a "war on Christmas" are either motivated by "ignorance" or by anti-Semitism as he fretted over President Donald Trump speaking on the subject.

CNN Reliable Sources host Brian Stelter offers a weekly guest list full of liberal journalists, and then occasionally he interviews a conservative....if the objective is to offer a conservative underlining one of Stelter's favorite points. That happened again on Christmas Eve, when S.E. Cupp, host of a talk show on HLN (a sister network of CNN), sounded the company talking points on how the "…

As Michigan Democratic Rep. Debbie Dingell appeared as a guest on Tuesday's New Day, CNN host Alisyn Camerota at one point seemed to fret that businesses are planning to pay out bonuses after the tax cuts were passed as a way of making their employees grateful to Republicans for their pay increase and coax them to vote for the GOP -- and that the ploy might succeed.

On Sunday morning, Thomas Beaumont and Nicholas Riccardi at the Associated Press did all they could to convince readers that the tax bill just passed by Congress and signed by Donald Trump isn't seen as a big deal and has no genuine enthusiastic support (even though they found some) among those who voted for him in 2016. They predictably claimed that the law bestows "its richest benefits on…

On Tuesday, Maine Republican Senator Susan Collins bitterly attacked the press's coverage of her decision to vote for the GOP's tax bill. Though Collins didn't name a media outlet in her criticism, the New York Times has been the primary purveyor of now-popular leftist memes, which Collins characterized as "unbelievably sexist," that she was "duped" by party leadership, and that she was so hard-…

At MSNBC on Wednesday, Stephanie Ruhle was clearly not happy that Republican Congressman Chris Collins of New York wouldn't roll over and admit to something that isn't true. Collins noted that the tax bill justifiably anticipates annual economic growth of 3 percent or more, and that such growth will generate collections high enough to prevent the slashing of entitlements. Then, when Collins…

MSNBC’s Hardball host Chris Matthews spent Thursday’s show doubling down on his clownish tirades from the night before, suggesting this time that the GOP’s tax reform celebration at the White House was akin to “a North Korean parade” led by a President similar to Ethiopian dictator Haile Selassie. In a tease for a segment on tax reform, Matthews continued to melt down over Republicans having “no…

In a Wednesday "analysis" piece anticipating the tax bill's passage, Andrew Taylor at the Associated Press, apparently bitter at the impending outcome, framed that successful effort as a betrayal of the "GOP's tea party promises." Apparently, the AP reporter has forgotten what the T-E-A in "tea party" stands for.

On Thursday afternoon’s CNN Newsroom, presidential historian Douglas Brinkley must have seen the buffoonery Chris Matthews served up the night before as he decided to go out and brutally attack “groveling, sniveling” Vice President Mike Pence for “act[ing] like Donald Trump was Buddha and he’s kissing his belly.”

New York magazine's Jonathan Chait is glad that the era of conservative media bias on tax cuts is over. In a Thursday post, Chait observed that Republicans have "complain[ed] bitterly" about the MSM's coverage of the just-passed tax bill. Those gripes, he suggested, aren't surprising, given that the coverage "has been generally clear about the undeniable fact that [the GOP] plan overwhelmingly…

On Thursday's New Day on CNN, substitute host Bill Weir gave former Obama advisor Dr. Zeke Emanuel a mostly unchallenged forum to complain about how Republicans are handling the health insurance issue. Weir even opened the segment by relaying Democratic talking points that Republicans are behaving like "Ebenezer Scrooges" before Christmas and endangering "nine million Tiny Tim" children because a…

After NBC’s Today co-host Savannah Guthrie accused House Speaker Paul Ryan of “living in a fantasy world” on Wednesday for predicting that tax reform legislation would encourage businesses to raise wages for their employees, on Thursday, the network morning show tried its best to deny the reality that several major companies announced that they would be doing exactly that.