Conservatives & Republicans

In an interview with New Jersey Governor Chris Christie on Friday’s NBC Today, co-host Savannah Guthrie pressed the Republican presidential candidate on whether Donald Trump was hurting the GOP: “Is Trump doing long-term damage to the Republican brand if he's insulting Muslims, Latinos, women, veterans, prisoners of war? I mean, do you worry about the effect this is having for the long-term…

This NewsBuster is a paid subscriber and regular listener to Hugh Hewitt's podcasts, and believes that Hugh is the ablest conservative interviewer on radio. So it was surprising to see him serve as such a loyal CNN soldier on today's Morning Joe. Hewitt, a member of the CNN panel at Wednesday's GOP debate, refused to complain about the paltry opportunities he was given to question the candidates…

Among the insights: Fiorina "has a notable facility for delivering answers that thrill conservatives but fall apart under close examination"; a discussion of childhood vaccines showed that the party is "fervid, claustrophobic, recklessly insinuating, and, at the same time, utterly timid when it comes to extremism in its own ranks”; and the GOP as a whole is "wedded to the tenets of [George W.]…

All three Thursday network evening newscasts led off with their respective recaps and analysis of the second Republican presidential debate, but NBC Nightly News stood out in proclaiming that the event “expos[ed] disconnects within the Republican Party” on issues such as Iraq in addition to defending Hillary Clinton from Fiorina’s “fierce attack” against her and Planned Parenthood.

In her first live interview of the 2016 campaign via satellite, Hillary Clinton spoke with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer during Thursday's The Situation Room and received a free pass from Blitzer in allowing her to dodge a question about whether she’s viewed the horrifying Planned Parenthood videos. He asked only two questions, in a 14-and-a-half-minute interview, about her e-mail scandal.

MSNBC's Morning Joe and CNN's New Day both interviewed Carly Fiorina on Thursday after she did well at the Republican presidential debate. However, the two programs failed to bring up her dare to President Obama and Hillary Clinton to watch the hidden camera videos exposing Planned Parenthood's sale of unborn babies' organs and tissue. CNN's Alisyn Camerota and Chris Cuomo largely skirted the…

Eager to provide supposed “fact-checking” of the Republican presidential debate, on Thursday, MSNBC NewsNation host Tamron Hall declared: “But to Carly Fiorina's moment regarding Planned Parenthood. While that comment was applauded by conservatives, a lot of that Twitter traffic was also...people fact-checking her on that statement.”

Apropos of Wednesday night’s Republican debates, Esquire’s Charles Pierce worried that political reporters may be treating the race for the party’s presidential nomination as if it were a Brad Thor novel rather than a highly consequential real-world event. “How do you cover a campaign in which 15 candidates are running on the basis of things that simply are not true…that simply do not exist?”…

Either Nicholas Riccardi at the Associated Press is woefully ignorant, or he set out to deliberately mislead readers about the impact of Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush's tax plan. I'll report the details; readers here can decide for themselves. Riccardi's "analysis," contained in his Sunday morning writeup covering the tax proposals of Bush, Marco Rubio and Rand Paul, contained the…

At the top of the 9 a.m. ET hour on NBC’s Today, co-host Tamron Hall slammed the Republican presidential debate as being like a bad reality show: “...a friend of mine said it was like The Real Housewives with Andy Cohen, because they were just pitted against each other.”  

In an interview with actress Emily Blunt on Thursday’s NBC Today, co-host Savannah Guthrie downplayed the celebrity’s recent swipe at Republicans with an anti-American joke: “You recently became an American citizen....You made a joke the other day, saying you watched the Republican debate and you joked, ‘What was I thinking?’ And some people took that the wrong way.”

Despite a strong debate performance Wednesday night, on Thursday’s NBC Today, co-host Savannah Guthrie lectured Republican presidential candidate Carly Fiorina on her business record: “I know you have gotten into the reasons for your dismissal from Hewlett-Packard....in politics, and you know this well, if you're explaining, you’re losing.”

It's one thing for conservatives to concur that Carly Fiorina was outstanding at last night's debate.  But to hear a string of superlatives about Fiorina coming from committed liberal Mika Brzezinski was breathtaking. Over the course of today's Morning Joe, a stream of praise for Fiorina flowed from Mika, capped by this: "my God, I have never seen anyone like her. Ever."

In the late hours of Wednesday night after the Republican debate, MSNBC’s Hardball host Chris Matthews was in his element as he whined about the 2016 GOP candidates being “very ideological tonight” and targeted the Cuban-American heritage of Senators Marco Rubio (Fl.) and Ted Cruz (Tex.) for thinking that “they still are fighting a Cold War” and “treat[ing] Obama like he’s Castro.”