Ronald Reagan

Apropos of Wednesday night’s Republican debates, Esquire’s Charles Pierce worried that political reporters may be treating the race for the party’s presidential nomination as if it were a Brad Thor novel rather than a highly consequential real-world event. “How do you cover a campaign in which 15 candidates are running on the basis of things that simply are not true…that simply do not exist?”…

View co-host Whoopi Goldberg on Thursday used the Republican presidential debate as an excuse to trash Ronald Reagan, assuring people that “he wasn’t all that.” Reading from note cards, Goldberg began: “I just want to point out that, you know, he did some things that were not particularly good for the country.” In a humorous moment, the View crew vainly struggled to remember Reagan’s 1984 “…

Closing out Wednesday’s NBC Nightly News, liberal correspondent and MSNBC host Andrea Mitchell played the role of Ronald Reagan biographer in using the late former president to attack the current Republican presidential field and ruled that Reagan’s “message was infused with sunny optimism” and represents “the flip side of today's angry rhetoric.”

In a report for MSNBC’s Morning Joe on Wednesday, political correspondent Kasie Hunt used the upcoming Republican debate at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California to proclaim the GOP to be “all but extinct” in the Golden State.

Gordon Gekko of Wall Street would be a popular choice of liberals for the 1980s movie character who best illuminated the supposedly ugly truth about the Reagan era, but he’s not Andrew O’Hehir’s choice. In a Monday analysis of the films of the late Wes Craven, O'Hehir stated that Freddy Krueger, from Craven’s 1984 movie A Nightmare on Elm Street, was “the most potent pop-culture signifier of the…

Well, he may have been a "cynical figurehead," a "sinister puppet master" and "saber-rattling menace," but he did have nice hair. President Ronald Reagan is still a reliable figure of mockery in the liberal entertainment world, and a compliment about his hair was the most flattering thing in a New York Times story on the current crop of Reagan impersonations on 1980's-themed shows.

During a segment on Thursday’s The Last Word about Jimmy Carter’s cancer diagnosis, MSNBC national correspondent Joy Reid complained that voters rejected “Carter’s decency and goodness” in the 1980 presidential election in favor of the “bluster” possessed by “cowboy” Ronald Reagan. 

On Friday, in his desire to help his employer outdo Politifact as the last place to go for accurate fact-checking, the Associated Press's Josh Lederman "fact-checked" Jeb Bush's belief that the U.S. economy can grow annually at an average rate of 4 percent. As seen in my Friday NewsBusters post, when the AP reporter "fact-checked" assertions that really are facts, specifically Bush's claim that…

The New York Times Magazine cover story by political correspondent Jim Rutenberg, "A Dream Undone -- Inside the 50-year campaign to roll back the Voting Rights Act," is a 10-part, 10,000-word doorstop (issued with the baleful threat "The first in a series") comparing current attempts to stop voter fraud as a return to Jim Crow, with particular focus on North Carolina. Rutenberg also relayed more…

Liberal MSNBC anchor Lawrence O'Donnell on Thursday night slammed Ronald Reagan, sneering that he was the "Donald Trump of his time." O'Donnell asserted that, just like Trump and Sarah Palin, Reagan was a liar on subjects like Medicare. Comparing Reagan to Trump, O'Donnell insulted, "One of the loudest opponents of Medicare was actor Ronald Reagan, who was then the Donald Trump of his time, a…

According to Larry King on Tuesday, the modern Republican Party is so conservative that it would reject Ronald Reagan. The former CNN anchor interviewed struggling Democratic candidate Lincoln Chafee. After King wondered "what happened to your party, you old party," the former Republican sneered, "It moved south. Back in the '60s, President Nixon had what they called the southern strategy." King…

Amid mounting evidence of Bill Cosby’s depraved behavior, many have changed their minds about Cosby the person. Should they also reconsider, for very different reasons, their affection for his megahit sitcom, The Cosby Show? Lefty writer Chauncey DeVega thinks so. In a Sunday article for Salon, DeVega opined that the series “lied to its white viewers about the nature of racism, white supremacy,…

Reviewing Reagan: The Life, by historian H.W. Brands, USA Today White House reporter Gregory Korte recited tired anti-Reagan cliches favored by liberals as he complained about “some notable omissions” in the book. In his piece which appeared in the “Life” section of Thursday’s newspaper, Korte regretted that “Brands makes no mention of Reagan’s 1980 ‘states rights’ speech in Philadelphia, Miss.”…

In a column at ForeignPolicy.com, a former Obama administration defense official who "served as a counselor to the U.S. defense undersecretary for policy from 2009 to 2011" has asked: "Can Gay Marriage Defeat the Islamic State?" Rosa Brooks, who "is a law professor at Georgetown University," is serious. Her earnestness and deep ignorance are especially troubling, because it's clear that there…