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H/t reader cgb1. There was probably a dose of WWF at work, but surely also some authentic animosity in the heated exchange between Joe Scarborough and David Shuster on today's Morning Joe. Scarborough ultimately accused Shuster and his MSNBC colleagues of being Democrats, their independent political registrations notwithstanding. A news segment about Iraqi President al-Maliki's call for the withdrawal of US troops touched off the skirmish. Shuster snidely suggested to Joe that "your party, the Republican party" mocks those who call for withdrawal. All hell ensued. The entire seven-minute exchange is worth viewing, and I'll be posting the video soon....

Not that there was any doubt that McCain walked away the winner from Rick Warren's forum, but when David Shuster cracks that Obama was lucky not too many people were watching . . . Subbing for Chris Matthews on this evening's Hardball, Shuster kibitzed Saddleback with Dem Steve McMahon and Republican Todd Harris. Shuster made his surprising remark at segment end. DAVID SHUSTER: I think it also revealed that John McCain's going to be a much better debater than a lot of people think. And maybe also in some sense, Barack Obama is lucky in a way that Saturday night...

David Shuster, arbiter of journalistic standards? The MSM didn't bother to pursue the Edwards story, yet Shuster, he of "pimped out" fame, has had the chutzpah to look down his nose not once but twice on the National Enqirer during an interview this afternoon with Barry Levine, its Executive Editor. Levine laid out a number of open issues, including paternity and the source of funding for Rielle Hunter's living arrangements. BARRY LEVINE: I think this story is far from over in that regard. DAVID SHUSTER: And finally I mean, I mean, as a newsman, and I sort of, take that...

Forget Hardball. Dodgeball's more amusing . . . As we'll detail below, David Shuster literally laughed in the face of a senior Republican today, and earlier on MSNBC Andrea Mitchell blithely dismissed the McCain energy plan as unrealistic. But there was one point of light, you might say, on the network's afternoon coverage. When Shuster briefly held a Dem congresswoman's feet to the fire on the question of Obama's vote for the 2005 Bush energy bill, what ensued was one of the more hapless—and ergo entertaining—dodges of the political season. Shuster's guest was Allyson Schwartz, a Dem congresswoman from Pennsylvania....

Serious question: can David Shuster possibly be this clueless? Wherever you come down on the issue of who's playing the race card, one thing is glaringly, blindingly, incandescently obvious: when Barack Obama says McCain will point out Obama doesn't look like the other guys on the currency, the Dem candidate is doing much more than making the innocuous point that he is the first black major-party presidential nominee. Yet that is precisely how David Shuster chose to misinterpret Obama's remark on today's Morning Joe. Fortunately, Tiki Barber was there to run to daylight through the gaping hole in logic Shuster...

The things people will do for love. Take David Shuster. Please. So eager is the Obama inamorato to cover for his man, he's willing to sacrifice all semblance of reason. Faced with the implacable fact that Obama was wrong in opposing the surge, Shuster has been reduced to claiming that Americans don't care about the surge's success. Shuster made his descent into abject sycophancy on today's Morning Joe. The jumping off point was a clip from an interview of Obama by ABC's Terry Moran [Brent Baker has the full report on the interview here]. TERRY MORAN: If you had to...

Is it the province of a "correspondent" of an ostensibly objective network to proclaim the tactics of a presidential candidate "inappropriate"? Apparently so, when the network is MSNBC and the correspondent David Shuster. The frequent sidekick to Chris Matthews and Keith Olbermann got into it with Pat Buchanan on today's Morning Joe. Shuster spoke out against Hillary's rough-'n-tumble end-game tactics, while a feisty Buchanan defended Clinton's right to go down swinging. Shuster sounded less the reporter and more the DNC member concerned about damage to the party's presumptive presidential candidate. When Mike Barnicle got into the act, he wanted to...

Joe Scarborough and David Shuster came not to praise Penn but to bury him . . . Chatting on today's Morning Joe, the host and the MSNBC political correspondent agreed that the mistake in firing the chief Clinton campaign strategist was that it didn't come nearly soon enough. JOE SCARBOROUGH: For the Clintons, not a good weekend. Mark Penn, bounced out, my question is why now? They should have done it a long time ago. Good news, bad news?

"THE CHRIS PLANTE SHOW" - 8 to 10 p.m. - 630 WMAL, Washington, D.C. TOPIC #1 - FIRST HOUR - ROMNEY BACKS MCCAIN. TOPIC #2 - SECOND HOUR - IS HILLARY CLINTON ABUSING HER OFFICE BY SENDING A LETTER TO NBC ON CAMPAIGN LETTERHEAD?

Debate threat. Last week, MSNBC suspended David Shuster for saying, “Doesn’t it seem as if Chelsea [Clinton] is sort of being pimped out in some weird sort of way?” A search through MSNBC’s archives quickly uncovered a glaring double standard: Last September, MSNBC host Keith Olbermann accused President Bush of “pimping General David Petraeus.” It’s the same analogy — these days, the word “pimping” is slang, meaning to use in an unseemly way. Olbermann wasn’t reprimanded, but Shuster was suspended for two weeks and forced to apologize. Why? The most logical answer is that Shuster’s words jeopardized a lucrative opportunity...

OK, it was probably just a Freudian slip by someone with the Potomac Primary on the noggin. But perhaps big-government loving MSNBC should consider it as its official new sign-off. In any case, here's how David Gregory said goodbye at 3:59 PM ET at the end of his stint as network host this afternoon: DAVID GREGORY: That's going to do it for me. My colleague Norah O'Donnell will take over our coverage. I'm David Gregory, thanks for Washington. Thanks for watching, rather. Stay with MSNBC -- all day coverage of Chesapeake Tuesday. Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews will host coverage...

As Mark Finkelstein reported on Newsbusters on the 7th, MSNBC's David Shuster made a rather interesting comment about Chelsea Clinton as he was hosting "Tucker" that evening. Shuster asked if Hillary Clinton's use of her daughter on the campaign trail seemed "like Chelsea's sort of being pimped out in some weird sort of way?" Well, NBC has now announced that they've suspended Shuster over the comment.... so much for free political speech. In a press release, NBC says the following: On Thursday's "Tucker" on MSNBC, David Shuster, who was serving as guest-host of the program, made a comment about Chelsea...

NBC NEWS STATEMENT REGARDING CHELSEA CLINTON COMMENT: On Thursday's "Tucker" on MSNBC, David Shuster, who was serving as guest-host of the program, made a comment about Chelsea Clinton and the Clinton campaign that was irresponsible and inappropriate. Shuster, who apologized this morning on MSNBC and will again this evening, has been suspended from appearing on all NBC News broadcasts, other than to make his apology. He has also extended an apology to the Clinton family. NBC News takes these matters seriously, and offers our sincere regrets to the Clintons for the remarks.

David Shuster: not just an MSNBC "correspondent" anymore -- now a Dem campaign consultant too! In the opening segment of today's Morning Joe, Shuster offered a kernel of consulting wisdom to the Obama campaign, and the message was clear: Barack needs to get nastier with those mean-spirited Republicans. MIKA BRZEZINSKI: We did get some comments from Barack Obama yesterday about Mitt Romney dropping out. WILLIE GEIST: I thought that was very interesting. Obama was responding to the comments we just heard earlier where Mitt Romney said Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton will "surrender to terror." Here was Obama's response. Cut...

Appearing on Tucker Carlson's show a few days ago, Hillary fan Lanny Davis observed that Tucker's is "about the only show on MSNBC that consistently allows a Clinton perspective to be expressed." But maybe not so much when, as this evening, David Shuster is the guest host. Employing one of the more graphic metaphors to be heard about a Clinton from the MSM, Shuster tonight claimed that Chelsea Clinton is being "pimped out" by her mother's campaign. The jumping off point was a clip in which three members of The View mentioned having been called by Chelsea on behalf of...

With Joe Scarborough away, the cats did play during the opening segment of today's Morning Joe . . . WILLIE GEIST [facetiously]: David, I know how you like to speak for Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and the rest of that group. MIKA BRZEZINSKI: He's going to the [CPAC] convention. GEIST: You're the voice of that community, but can you make sense out of this? Are they willing, the conservatives, the Limbaughs, the Hannitys of the world, to concede the election, to not have John McCain be president, to take Hillary Clinton over them, just to take a principled stand? View...

Not that there was much doubt, but let's make it official: MSNBC's Mika Brzezinski is firmly in the Obama camp. The irrefutable evidence came during today's opening segment of Morning Joe. After Chris Matthews offered a plausible explanation for Obama's "present" votes in the Illinois senate, David Shuster used an apt metaphor to describe Barack's less-than-trenchant rhetorical style. DAVID SHUSTER: It's in Barack Obama's interest to say it as sharply as you [Matthews] just did, and his inability to sort of navigate in these debates, like the giant aircraft carrier trying to make a turn. If he could make the...

H/t David Shuster. What's that? David Shuster, liberal MSNBC avenger, now a NewsBusters source? Not exactly, but read on . . . Watching a special Saturday-morning edition of Morning Joe today, I was surprised by CNBC chief DC correspondent John Harwood's willingness to pronounce Fred Thompson's political epitaph even before voters went to the South Carolina primary polls today. Shuster was similarly struck, going so far as to suggest a headline. MIKA BRZEZINSKI: What about Fred Thompson,? Is it the end of the line, John, for him tonight, or is there a way he can rejuvenate his campaign? View video...

Bill and Hillary might be taking flak for the vote-suppressing lawsuit their supporters have brought in Nevada, but the couple can count on at least one supporter in the MSM: David Shuster. Background: this past summer, the DNC in conjunction with the Nevada Dem party agreed that to facilitate participation in the caucuses by the thousands of casino employees who would be working this Saturday, at-large caucuses would be established at the casinos themselves. All was copacetic till a couple weeks ago, when the Culinary Workers Union, thousands of whose members would be attending those casino-based caucuses, endorsed Barack Obama....

To riff off a famous Alice Roosevelt Longworth line: if you don't have anything nice to say about Rupert Murdoch, go sit next to David Shuster. The MSNBCer and former Fox Newser has no love lost for his old employer. Shuster's latest is that Hillary, she of long memory, will be holding a grudge against Murdoch, whose NewsCorp owns the New York Post and Fox News, for the unflattering coverage the Post gave Clinton in the closing days of the New Hampshire primary campaign. View video here.

Candid criticism, or sour grapes towards a guy who's lapping MSNBC in the ratings? In any case, David Shuster and the rest of the Morning Joe crew took out after Bill O'Reilly this morning in the wake of the incident in which the Factor host was, shall we say, energetic in his efforts to speak with Barack Obama at a NH campaign event this weekend. Read accounts of the incident here, here and here. Shuster called O'Reilly a "jerk" and "such a buffoon." View video here. [Recommend story on Digg.com]

Should we call him Mike "Huck-a-unbeatable"? As noted here, on Monday David Shuster predicted that Mike Huckabee would win the White House if matched up against Hillary Clinton. Appearing on Morning Joe today at 6:05 AM ET, the MSNBC correspondent took his optimism about Huckabee's prospects a quantum leap further, saying the former Arkansas governor would defeat any Dem opponent. View video here.

Bona fide prediction, or devious three-dimensional-chess-move-cum- double-bank-shot-jujitsu gambit designed to sow chaos in Republican ranks? Hard to say, but one thing is undeniable: MSNBC correspondent David Shuster has predicted that Mike Huckabee will be the next President of the United States. The surprising prognosis came at the end of an interesting pundits roundtable [that I sense was recorded over the weekend] that took the place of Morning Joe's regular live programming this Christmas Eve morning. Wrapping things up, host Joe Scarborough went around the horn, soliciting predictions from his guests. View video here.

Biting the hand that used to feed him, David Shuster has accused Fox News of being part of the "Republican establishment" and as such, going after Mike Huckabee. Shuster appeared on MSNBC's Morning Joe during the 6:30 AM ET half-hour today. DAVID SHUSTER: What's been so interesting about Huckabee, you're starting to see the Republican establishment, despite him being the "Baby Jesus" candidate [adopting Joe Scarborough's formulation], the Republican establishment is going after him pretty hard now. And you even saw it last night when the, I suppose you could call them the Republican establishment Fox News correspondent was asking...

"We'll go to a revival and then go to Guantanamo Bay and torture some people just for fun." -- David Shuster on evangelicals, 12-7-07 So astonishingly malicious were the words of David Shuster [file photo] today that they leave me at a loss for words of my own. So let's just say it simply: David Shuster is an anti-evangelical bigot. MSNBC "correspondent" Shuster was a panelist on today's Morning Joe. For his "must-read" of the day at 7:20 AM ET, Shuster predictably chose the New York Times editorial panning Mitt Romney's speech on faith. Shuster approvingly cited this passage:

David Shuster has hurled a hand grenade in the direction of one of Washington's most venerable political reporters. The MSNBC "correspondent" has alleged that many people don't believe Robert Novak has "any credibility as a journalist." Shuster sat in as a "Morning Joe" panelist today. His comment came in the context of a discussion regarding the Novak column from over the weekend that contained this item:

In the most florid criticism I can recall a network "correspondent" leveling at a major party presidential candidate, MSNBC's David Shuster has branded Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.) a border-control "fanatic." The editorializing came in the course of Shuster's report during today's 5 PM ET "Hardball," which included an update on the GOP primary. DAVID SHUSTER: No television commerical in Iowa is generating as much heat as the one just unveiled by Republican Tom Tancredo, a border-control fanatic. View video here.

Now that Rosie O'Donnell is out of the running as host of a prime time MSNBC show, speculation has started anew about who will be named to host the program. Among the more amusing of these speculations come from Cenk Uygur, host of an Air American morning show. Writing in the Huffington Post on November 7, Uygur scans the field of candidates for the MSNBC slot: I would love to say that the right person for the job is one of the progressives I know either at Air America or in the liberal blogosphere. And all of these people are...

"Bill Clinton: caution, slippery when wet." -- George H.W. Bush, 1992 RNC convention. "The Clintons have a reputation of being slippery and hard to pin down. Last night Clinton underscored that on the issue of whether illegal immigrants should have drivers licenses." -- David Shuster, "Hardball," 10-31-07 Has the world turned upside-down? Is this David Shuster dressing up like George H.W. for Halloween? Be that as it may, on this afternoon's "Hardball" the normally Dem-friendly Shuster did indeed accuse Hillary of underscoring her slippery reputation with her drivers-license debate dodge. View video here. [Recommend story on Digg.com]

This could be a first: someone accusing Paul Krugman of being insufficiently insulting to conservatives. That someone is, unsurprisingly, David Shuster, the rabidly anti-conservative MSNBC "correspondent." Shuster is appearing [was exiled to?] today's "Morning Joe." When it came time to share his "must-read" of the morning, Shuster eschewed Krugman's column, "Gore Derangement Syndrome," observing that "Gore is a little bit passé at this point." Give Shuster credit for sensing that Americans have had enough of Al, thank you very much. But that didn't stop Mika Brzezinski from citing that same Krugman column as her must-read. Figures. View video here.Bubbles read...

Don't look for Shuster to be guest hosting "Tucker" again any time soon. -- from my column of September 26th. Oy, was I wrong! I had figured that David Shuster wouldn't be subbing again for Tucker Carlson after embarrassing his show, and MSNBC at large, with the tasteless game of "gotcha" he played on Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), exploiting the death of a soldier for partisan political purposes. But tuning to Tucker today, there was Shuster, the supposed MSNBC "correspondent." Carlson is certainly no partisan Republican, having mentioned more than once that he didn't vote for W in 2004. Tucker...

The mainstream media is constantly reminding us how we can trust them. They pound into our heads how they are most diligent when it comes to fact-checking. How dare we question their integrity. With that, some of us love it when this happens to the revered members of the mainstream media.... MSNBC's Erroneous Bully By The Prowler Published 9/27/2007MSNBC's David Shuster is a bright reporter, who owes his career largely to being colleague Chris Matthews's waterboy lo these many years. In the past he's built a reputation for enterprise reporting, but earlier this week he attempted to embarrass Tennessee Rep....

A couple days ago, describing here the way MSNBC's David Shuster used a fallen soldier to play a tasteless "gotcha" game with Rep. Marsha Blackburn, (R-Tenn.), I surmised that things couldn't "get much lower." I was wrong. They just did.As it turns out, Pvt. Jeremy Bohannon -- the soldier whose name Shuster attacked Blackburn for not knowing -- had not, contrary to the MSNBC reporter's claim, lived in her district. By way of background for those who hadn't read the earlier item, Blackburn had been invited onto "Tucker" ostensibly to discuss MoveOn.org's "General Betray Us" ad. But Shuster, serving as...

Note: read about Shuster's grotesque game of "gotcha" at foot.When Tucker's away, David will play . . . Not that David Shuster exactly hides his liberal light under a barrel when making his "news" reports on "Hardball" and "Tucker," but with Carlson off today and Shuster sitting in as host, the MSNBC reporter really let it all hang out. Chatting with Newsweek's Richard Wolffe and MSNBC analyst Craig Crawford, talk turned to the controversy surrounding the editorial in the Colorado State student newspaper headlined "Taser This: F--- Bush" [f-word spelled out in headline].Wolffe went first, and was patently delighted by...

With the announcement of Karl Rove resigning his position from the White House, it is time to revisit that infamous report by MSNBC's David Shuster who on Keith Olbermann's Countdown show on May 8, 2006 flatly stated: I am convinced that Karl Rove will, in fact, be indicted. When a month later it was announced that Rove would not be indicted, a sheepish Shuster came up with several lame excuses for his monumental misreporting as chronicled by NewsBusters editor Brent Baker in his June 13, 2006 post. Under questioning by Countdown substitute host, Brian Unger, Shuster began by blaming the...

In all the time I've been monitoring the liberal media, rarely have I seen a host assail a guest with the ferocity David Shuster displayed in going after Fouad Ajami today. Shuster, guest-hosting for Chris Matthews on this afternoon's Hardball, was infuriated by a Wall Street Journal op-ed piece Ajami had written that analogized Scooter Libby to a fallen comrade who, pursuant to the Soldier's Creed, should not be left behind. Set forth below are excerpts from Shuster's diatribe against Ajami, the Lebanese-born Director of the Middle East Studies Program at Johns Hopkins. But words alone don't do justice to...

David Shuster Gets Spanked by Iraqi UN Ambassador on ‘Hardball’ Posted by Noel Sheppard on November 30, 2006 - 10:22. How often do you watch a show like MSNBC’s “Hardball” just hoping that one of the guests will spank the host when he makes an obvious misstatement, or is just being rude? Well, such occurred Wednesday when David Shuster, filling in for the vacationing Chris Matthews, tried to bully Iraq’s ambassador to the United Nations Feisal IstrabadiRight from the get-go, it was apparent that Shuster had no intention of showing any respect whatsoever to this dignitary, which of course was...

The screen graphic claimed that Jimmy Carter was playing "hardball." But this wouldn't have qualified as softball. Not even T-ball. This was David Shuster coming down off the pitcher's mound to help his octogenarian guest swing the bat. Guest hosting for Chris Matthews on this afternoon's Hardball, on three different occasions Shuster took up the cudgel for the man he repeatedly referred to as "the 39th President of the United States." I couldn't help but imagine that Shuster was saying to himself - "wow, Chris is away, and here I am, interviewing a former POTUS!"The first instance of Shuster serving...

view edit Posted by Mark Finkelstein on October 9, 2006 - 20:40. The show bills itself as 'Hardball.' But in surrounding himself with regulars who are either certified liberals or renegade Republicans, doesn't Chris Matthews prove himself to be a softy, unwilling or unable to take the high heat from true-blue Republican flamethrowers? Let me say something that might surprise some NewsBusters readers and dismay others. I like Matthews. Not that conservatives are the arbiters of patriotism, but I do consider Chris someone who loves his country and, as misguided as he may be on various policy issues - has...

defense lawyers say they now believe there is a White House insider or former official who has been helping the investigation for months. The lawyers say this is based on information grand jury witnesses heard about the actions of Karl Rove and Scooter Libby well before reporters Matt Cooper and Judy Miller testified White house officials leaked information about an administration critic. The lawyers supporting the White House also point to a sealed legal brief Fitzgerald submitted to the courts more than a year ago that prompted judges to refer to the gravity of the case. According to several news...