Russia

Sparks flew on the set of NBC’s Meet the Press Sunday morning as CNBC’s Rick Santelli accused moderator Chuck Todd of picking sides during the election. The confrontation occurred during a conversation about Russian meddling in the election and claims that intercepted communications showing their glee for Donald Trump’s victory. “To see Russians happy because Trump won: On election night, I never…

Journalist Glenn Thrush, who recently took his Democratic partisanship from Politico to the New York Times, filed “Trump Finds That Attack-Dog Strategy Has Its Limits” for Saturday’s New York edition. The news media was not at all happy with Donald Trump Twitter mockery of liberal Democratic Sen. Charles Schumer, and Thrush piled on Trump. Thrush is a self-described “hack” for the failed Clinton…

CBS This Morning and ABC’s Good Morning America on Friday awoke to the concept that maybe Russia didn’t cause Hillary Clinton to lose the presidential election. CBS co-host Norah O’Donnell observed, “It’s true, actually, that the Clinton campaign spent more money in Georgia and Arizona  than Wisconsin and Michigan. That's a fact.” 

If one day of stupid wasn’t enough, MSNBC’s Hardball host Chris Matthews reiterated his concerns on Thursday night that President-elect Donald Trump has undermined the credibility of the news media to the point that he’s fearful people won’t believe movie times printed in newspapers.

Appearing as a panel member on Tuesday's CNN Tonight, CNN presidential historian Douglas Brinkley repeated as if were fact the claim that Ronald Reagan's campaign in 1980 pressed the Iranian government to delay the release of the Americans held hostage to hurt President Jimmy Carter's reelection chances. Neither host Don Lemon nor fellow CNN presidential historian Timothy Naftali noted that a…

Monday evening, just three days after causing an uproar by reporting that "Russian hackers penetrated (the) U.S. electricity grid through a utility in Vermont," the Washington Post is now saying that "Russian government hackers do not appear to have targeted Vermont utility, say people close to investigation." In other words (cue the late Glida Radner's famous Saturday Night Live character Emily…

UPDATE, January 3: "WashPost on Russian Connection to Vermont Utility Hack: Never Mind"  A not very funny thing happened to the Washington Post after its Juliet Eilperin and Adam Entous posted a story on Friday (now time-stamped as if it was Saturday) claiming in its headline that "Russian hackers penetrated U.S. electricity grid through a utility in Vermont." The claim, according to the utility…

The purveyors of what the establishment press likes to describe as "fake news" have nothing on the fake news the establishment press itself generates at the Obama administration's behest. For example, the Associated Press, in a very late paragraph in just one of its three reports on the topic Thursday, admitted that "Though the FBI and Homeland Security Department issued a joint report on '…

Appearing as a panel member on Wednesday's CNN Newsroom, Jason Johnson of The Root ridiculously claimed, during a discussion before Secretary of State John Kerry's speech on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, that the United States "gives the vast majority of its foreign aid to Israel." In fact, according to the Washington Post, of the approximately $50 billion dollars the U.S. is expected to…

Nate Silver has been the establishment press's designated polling hero since 2008, when he correctly predicted the outcome of that year's presidential contest in 49 of 50 states. He also had a great year in 2012, predicting all 50 states' presidential preference results. This year's election? Not so much. Donald Trump won, and Silver is not handling it well. In fact, he's violated one of the…

Looking back at the media’s track record on communism, one sees a press that was too willing to act as a mouthpiece for the world’s worst dictatorships, and too accepting of the perverse claim that communism meant safety and security for its people.

Even with many of their top personalities on vacation Friday, it didn’t slow down MSNBC’s smearing of President-Elect Donald Trump. Fill in host Katy Tur was in an admitted state of confusion on MSNBC Live, because of perceived conflicts with Trump’s approach to dealing with Russia. “You know, I've got to say, I got a bit of whiplash here. I'm not quite sure what's going on. Mark, can you break…

Appearing as a guest on Wednesday’s Hardball, The Root political editor Jason Johnson told his fellow MSNBC panelists that Russian President Vladimir Putin was the biggest winner of 2016 because he succeeded where Mikhail Gorbachev and the late Fidel Castro couldn’t in “[taking] over the United States” via a “coup” through “Manchurian candidate” Donald Trump. 

The affinity of some American conservatives for Vladimir Putin was a minor phenomenon well before Donald Trump ran for president, and for obvious reasons it’s still grist for the mill of punditry. Liberal blogger and columnist Waldman delved into the topic in a Monday piece for The American Prospect. Waldman mused that maybe Republicans “are just now realizing that Putin is a leader after their…