Foreign Policy

On Saturday evening (published in print on Sunday), the editorial board at the New York Times had an epic meltdown over the Republican Party's allegedly shabby treatment of President Barack Obama. Although its title claimed that the GOP had entered "A New Phase in Anti-Obama Attacks," nothing truly new seemed to prompt this rant. Its primary focus was the letter 47 GOP Senators led by Tom Cotton…

Ronald Reagan: "My idea of American policy toward the Soviet Union is simple, and some would say simplistic. It is this: we win and they lose." Thomas Friedman on Barack Obama: "He actually knows what America looks like from the outside in. And he can actually see America even to some point from the Iranian perspective." So whom will history record as being more effective in countering America's…

A Reuters report published late Saturday evening ("Obama meets Venezuela's Maduro at time of high tensions") is astonishing for what it ignores. The unbylined report from Panama City opens by referring to how "the United States recently placed sanctions on Venezuela." Indeed, President Barack Obama did just that in an executive order on March 9, stating that he was "declaring a national…

Imagine you're a Cuban who has somehow managed to catch the cablecast of Melissa Harris-Perry's MSNBC show today.  The topic is President Obama's opening toward Cuba. You're scraping by on the average Cuban monthly salary of $20/month and are thrilled at the prospect of getting a better-paying job if and when American tourists start coming in numbers. Then suddenly you hear Harris-Perry fretting…

Throughout her MSNBC show on Thursday from Panama at the Summit of the Americas, host Andrea Mitchell wrung her hands over the Obama administration actually trying to stand up to a Latin American dictator: "...there are other issues here, including recent sanctions by the U.S. against Venezuela, which have really upset the Cubans and a lot of America's close allies here, Costa Rica and Colombia…

For Iran, Mike?  On today's Morning Joe, reliable Obama fan Mike Barnicle managed to keep a straight face while lauding the Iran deal as an "extraordinary feat." He did so despite poll numbers displayed showing that a huge majority of Americans don't think the ayatollahs will keep their promises. Let's see: sanctions lifted while centrifuges keep spinning and nuclear scientists beaver away in…

The major English and Spanish broadcast networks ducked a new development in the Clinton Foundation scandal on Thursday night as a report surfaced that then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton supported a U.S. trade deal with Colombia following donations to her family’s foundation from a Colombian oil company and its founder despite concerns of human rights violations and labor strikes.

Are we talking Frequent Flyer Miles, Hillary's record of "success" in such places as Benghazi, Syria and Yemen, or just what? On today's With All Due Respect, Bloomberg's Melinda Henneberger claimed that when it comes to foreign policy, none of the Republican presidential hopefuls "can possibly come up to the level of the former Secretary of State."  Host John Heilemann had teed up the question…

Thursday's CNN Newsroom zeroed in on "one of the issues that needs to be resolved" between the U.S. and the communist regime in Cuba – namely, its providing a safe harbor for U.S. fugitive Charlie Hill. Correspondent Patrick Oppmann interviewed Hill, and noted that he is "accused of killing a police officer in New Mexico. He's accused of hijacking a plane 43 years ago to Cuba." Oppmann then asked…

While CBS This Morning and ABC's Good Morning America both covered the latest problems with the Iran nuclear negotiations on Thursday, NBC's Today skipped the story altogether in favor of touting how President Obama "plays tourist" in Jamaica.

Too bad the "framework" of a nuclear weapons deal with Iran didn't come four days earlier on April Fools' Day. It would have been more appropriate.

Much of today's Morning Joe was devoted to a discussion of Rolling Stone's failed journalism on the UVa story. Maybe Mika Brzezinski should look in the mirror: she began her interview of Wendy Sherman, the chief US negotiator on the Iran deal, by offering her "congratulations."  Even Sherman herself had the sense to suggest that congratulations were not yet in order. In contrast, Joe Scarborough…

During its coverage of the Iran framework on Monday, NBC Nightly News touted the hopes of proponents and the Obama administration that the “details of a deal may be changing” the minds of “some” critics as President Obama and Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz began selling the agreement in press conferences, interviews, and calls with world leaders. Lester Holt began by promoting Obama’s recent…