War on Terrorism

Covering President Obama’s Sunday night address on Monday’s CBS This Morning, co-host Norah O’Donnell turned to White House correspondent Major Garrett for “new insight on why the President spoke last night.” After briefly noting “lukewarm” reviews of the speech, Garrett proceeded to parrot administration talking points excusing the President’s poor performance. ABC’s Good Morning America labeled…

On Monday's New Day, CNN's Alisyn Camerota badgered Senator Rand Paul over President Obama's call for Congress to ban terror suspects from buying firearms: "That's one that seems as though it should be easy to fix. Why not close the loophole that allows suspects on the FBI's no-fly list to buy guns?" When Senator Paul cited how Ted Kennedy was on the no-fly list, Camerota shot back, "Look, I mean…

Moments before President Obama’s Sunday night address to the nation about the San Bernardino terrorist attack, NBC Nightly News anchor Lester Holt hoped the speech might be “a defining moment for his presidency.” By Monday morning, reaction from hosts and analysts on the Today show made it clear the presidential remarks were not impressive.

This week, the media double down on Obama's anti-gun agenda and mock those who offer prayers as "cowards" hiding behind "meaningless platitudes." Also: NBC's Chuck Todd fears that, after San Bernardino, "our politics could be very ugly and very negative" thanks to Americans' "Islamophobia," while CNN can't figure out if the attack was because of radical Islam or "postpartum psychosis."

Following President Obama’s Sunday night address, the always large post-event panel on CNN had plenty to say, but it was quite the disconnect as many of their political commentators hailed the “straightforward” speech by the President while two of their foreign policy analysts panned the President’s “self-congratulation” and having “his head...in the clouds if he thinks this current strategy is…

At the Associated Press Sunday evening, White House Correspondent Julie Pace's coverage of President Obama's Oval Office address was predictably weak. One could cite at least a half-dozen problems with Pace's story, but two of them were particularly disingenuous.

Appearing as a guest on Saturday's CNN Newsroom with Poppy Harlow, CNN's Fareed Zakaria complained that Americans are willing to "invade two countries, spend hundreds of billions of dollars" to fight terrorism from "some threatening 'other'" who "looks, feels, sounds different," but "we won't ask for gun registration, we won't ask for background checks, we won't ask for simple, common sense stuff…

Appearing as a panel member on CBS's Face the Nation on Sunday, PBS host Gwen Ifill made a negative characterization of GOP presidential candidates' reactions to recent terrorist attacks as she declared that, "For Republicans, it's going to be a variation of what we've seen so far, which is, 'How can we be more alarmist than the last guy?'" She then moved to take jabs at GOPers Chris Christie…

While NBC’s Lester Holt was wondering before President Obama’s speech Sunday night if it would “be a defining moment for this presidency,” his counterparts on ABC and PBS picked up where he left off afterward by enthusiastically praising how “struck” they were by “a stern and direct” Obama “laying out" what Obama called "a strong and smart strategy” to deal with terrorism.

Maybe you're a liberal, reluctant to accept Charles Krauthammer's conclusion that President Obama's speech on terror tonight was a "complete failure." Fine. But there's no getting around Richard Engel, whom no one would accuse of conservatism. Speaking with Chris Matthews on MSNBC, the bleak assessment of NBC's chief foreign correspondent was that President Obama laid out "the same strategy that…

Seconds before President Obama addressed the nation from the Oval Office on Sunday night, NBC Nightly News anchor Lester Holt gave viewers a quick preview with Meet the Press moderator Chuck Todd and wondered to Todd if the speech will mark “a defining moment for this presidency.”

Center for American Progress (CAP) President Neera Tanden joined CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday morning as part of the panel and encouraged President Obama to use part of his Oval Office speech later in the day to denounce Republicans for their “continual language....to target Muslims” which she argued the GOP’s so-called Islamophobia “is exactly what ISIS wants.”

In a column posted last Monday, two days before the San Bernardino massacre, Heather Digby Parton warned of Americans with “violent desires” who might find “inspiration” to stage mass-casualty attacks not in jihadist propaganda, but in rhetoric used during “a Republican presidential debate.” Parton linked the fatal shootings at the Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs to remarks by GOP…

The front page of Saturday's New York Times, next to the paper's already infamous front-page gun-control editorial, claimed that "Shootings in California Reshape the Campaigns." The language used by reporters Michael Barbaro and Trip Gabriel, was quite revealing. See how the Republican presidential candidates "angrily demanded...[rode a] rising tide of bellicosity... seethed with disgust for…