Following the firing of Matt Lauer over sexual harassment allegations, on Tuesday, NBC officially named Hoda Kotb as his permanent replacement on the Today show. While fellow co-host Savannah Guthrie and the rest of the morning show crew celebrated the announcement with a champagne toast, there’s good reason for conservative viewers to be concerned over the liberal bias Kotb has brought to the broadcast over the years.
Here are a few examples of the newly-named Today co-host’s slanted political coverage:
Skittles: ‘A Symbol of Racial Injustice’
During a 2012 interview with advertising executive and liberal pundit Donny Deutsch, Kotb bizarrely declared that Skittles candy had become “a symbol of racial injustice” following the shooting death of Trayvon Martin.
Voting Republican = ‘Hold-Your-Nose Election’...
Days before Republicans had a wave of victories in the 2014 midterm election, Kotb turned to Meet the Press moderator Chuck Todd and feared: “Do you think people are actually going to want to go out to the polls, are they going to be holding their nose, picking the lesser of two evils? What are we going to see?” Predictably, Todd was quick to agree with her assessment: “Well, I definitely – the voters I met, definitely feels like a hold-your-nose election.”
...While Dem Senator Promoting Binge Drinking ‘Wins Her Votes’
Even as the GOP was poised for major wins in 2014, Kotb and the rest of the Today show crew chose to focus instead on Democratic Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu – in the middle of a tight race to hold on to her seat – helping a man do a keg stand while tailgating at an LSU football game. Kotb particularly thought the moment was political gold: “I think that wins her votes, personally....I do guarantee you, in Louisiana, that definitely helps. I mean that helps in the vote department. For sure, right?” Landrieu went on to lose the election.
Asking Rand Paul’s Wife if She Needed to Coach Him on How to Talk to Female Journalists
Rushing to Guthrie’s defense after a contentious interview with Republican Kentucky Senator and then-presidential candidate Rand Paul in 2015, Kotb grilled the GOP lawmaker’s wife on whether she had to teach her husband how to speak to women: “...did you give some advice after that? Did you say, ‘Okay honey, here are some ABC’s, let’s go through them.’ Do you do that?” Perhaps someone should have coached Lauer on how to behave around women.
Reminiscing Over SNL Trashing Palin, Hoping Trump Gets Same Treatment
A little over a month before the 2016 election, Kotb offered a full report on Alec Baldwin getting set to mock Donald Trump during the new season of Saturday Night Live. She fondly recalled how Tina Fey’s nasty portrayal of Sarah Palin “helped define Palin’s image among voters” during the 2008 presidential campaign. Turning to Trump, she eagerly wondered: “Now, with fewer than 40 days left until election day, the question is, what impact will Baldwin’s have on the race?”
Even as hosts change , the bias remains the same.
