Debates

On Friday’s NBC Today, co-host Matt Lauer spent a three-minute interview with Florida Senator Marco Rubio grilling the Republican presidential candidate on an opponent’s debate performance: “Donald Trump refused to rule out a third-party run. He says he's using it as leverage to make sure the party treats him well. Sounds like a bit of a threat to me. How does that impact the way you and other…

Prediction: Al Hunt will pay no price for calling Donald Trump the "Caityln Jenner of American politics." But can you imagine the outraged reaction on the left if a conservative commentator had said something similar about Hillary for her changing positions on everything from the Iraq war to gay marriage?   Reacting to Hunt's crack on Morning Joe today, Joe Scarborough told Hunt "I think I can…

A frequent whiner when it comes to Republicans and voter ID laws, MSNBC’s Hardball host Chris Matthews couldn’t help but briefly commiserate with his guests following the first 2016 GOP presidential debate that the “denial of voting rights” and other issues like “childhood development” that “parents, especially mothers care about” were not discussed in the debate.

Speaking during CNN’s analysis of the first 2016 Republican presidential debate on Thursday night, CNN political commentator and former Obama White House adviser Van Jones panned Jeb Bush’s performance as “terrible” and “like oatmeal getting colder” but praised Ohio Governor John Kasich as “just unreal,” “emotional,” and an “authentic guy who cares.”

On Thursday’s network evening programs, ABC’s World News Tonight was the only newscast to make no mention of the 5:00 p.m. EDT debate between the bottom seven Republican presidential contenders ahead of the 9:00 p.m. EDT event featuring the top ten candidates. In addition, the CBS Evening News skipped Carly Fiorina’s attack on fellow candidate Donald Trump for his phone call with Bill Clinton. 

During MSNBC’s 4 p.m. ET hour pre-debate coverage on Thursday, Hardball host Chris Matthews called on Fox News moderators to grill the Republican presidential candidates on evolution: “So I would like to think that Fox is just brazen enough to ask some – what they call bizarre questions....If a person doesn’t believe in science or evolution or the evidence of our life on this earth, that’s a bad…

On her Thursday MSNBC show, host Andrea Mitchell fretted that Republican candidates would be not be properly “fact-checked” during the upcoming presidential debate, especially on the Planned Parenthood scandal: “...one of the issues is going to be whether there's going to be any fact checking by the moderators. Certainly we can all do it later after the fact. But the Planned Parenthood debate has…

On Thursday's CNN Newsroom, after showing several clips allegedly showing GOP presidential candidate Jeb Bush to be "gaffe prone," anchor Carol Costello somehow thought it newsworthy to read and display on air some of the Twitter mockery of Bush and the other Republican candidates, including a suggestion that they are a group of clowns.

In a rare acknowledgment of media responsibility, on Thursday’s NBC Today, co-host Matt Lauer declared that it was up to the press to properly cover the first Republican presidential debate: “...that idea of substance versus sizzle, one-liners versus issues. That's on us tomorrow as well. We’ve got to make sure that we cover what they talk about, the issues as opposed to those one-liners.”

The 2016 presidential debate season officially begins Thursdy night. A look back at the last several GOP presidential primary battles finds that, even though these debates are supposed to be for the benefit of GOP primary voters, journalists — especially those working for liberal news outlets — will hit them with left-leaning questions aimed at fulfilling an anti-conservative media narrative.

On Monday’s NBC Today, 9 a.m. ET hour co-hosts Tamron Hall and Willie Geist mourned Jon Stewart’s final week anchoring The Daily Show. Hall proclaimed: “Oh my goodness, it is the end of an era. In a few days Jon Stewart will bid farewell to The Daily Show and all of us.” Hall was particularly worried about Stewart’s absence following Thursday’s first Republican presidential debate: “What the…

Media Research Center (MRC) President Brent Bozell issued the following statement calling for all Presidential candidates to skip the Univision/Washington Post (WaPo)-sponsored forum.

In 1968, ABC News tried to improve on its lowly third-rank status by bringing on some rock-em, sock-em commentary around the two party conventions  from two intellectual heavyweights: William F. Buckley Jr. On the right, and author Gore Vidal on the left. A new documentary – from the left, considering it carries a tag from Independent Lens, a leftist documentary series for PBS – explores the…

"People who think he's a joke and a fool need to be careful because by the end of the campaign, the joke may be on them." That's how Joe Scarborough summed up the surprisingly respectful analysis of Donald Trump's candidacy on today's Morning Joe.  Introducing the segment, Scarborough suggested that if Trump sticks to a Perot-like populist message, he could get 15% of the primary vote. When Joe…