Free Republic

Kathleen Matthews, Marriott International’s executive vice president and chief global communications and public affairs officer, and wife of MSNBC’s Chris Matthews, is planning to run for the seat of Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.). Van Hollen announced Wednesday that he’ll seek the seat being vacated by Sen. Barbara Mikulski. ... Matthews, who has long talked about running for office, advocated Marriott’s move toward more progressive policies, including sustainability and LGBT friendliness. ... She’s on the boards of Catholic Charities Foundation, Ford’s Theatre and

MSNBC host Thomas Roberts challenged Media Matters for America founder David Brock and his hair for his insistence that the scrutiny surrounding former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s use of private emails was a “manufactured controversy,” asking why the American people didn’t have a right to know what their officials were up to. (RELATED: Media Matters Attacked ‘Obamacare Enrollment Truthers’: Turns Out ‘Truthers’ Were Right)“So you don’t think it’s of any alarm that a cabinet-level official runs their own e-mail operation out of their private home, through their personal account with no oversight from the president?” asked a skeptical...

MSNBC’s Chris Matthews saw a nefarious aim behind Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech before a joint session of Congress on Tuesday, claiming his discussion on the Iranian nuclear talks represented nothing less than a “takeover attempt” by a foreign leader. “Let me get to the heart of this now,” he told host Thomas Roberts. “This man, from a foreign government, walked into the United States legislative chamber and tried to take over U.S. foreign policy.” “Mm-hmm,” Roberts said approvingly. “He said, ‘You should trust me, not your president, on this,’” Matthews continued. “‘I am the man you should trust, I...

MSNBC “Hardball” host Chris Matthews accused Republicans of letting Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu try “to take over US foreign policy” on Tuesday’s “MSNBC Live.” Matthews began by saying that Netanyahu “implied that he would be a better bargainer than the president, but no one believes that.”

How unhinged has Howard Dean become? So bad that an MSNBC host had to gently walk him back off the ledge. On Chris Hayes' MSNBC show tonight, Dean claimed that Scott Walker says Barack Obama was "born in Kenya." It took Hayes two attempts to break through Dean's blather, but eventually he was able to politely point out: "I should note, you mention the Kenya thing, he has not been asked that." View the video here.

Sen. John McCain is charging the Obama administration’s foreign policy is “delusional” and says Secretary of State John Kerry’s global diplomacy has “accomplished nothing except mileage.” In an appearance on MSNBC, the Arizona Republican also calls Russian President Vladimir Putin a “meglomaniac” and “pariah.”

There have been some rumors this week that Al Sharpton is losing his MSNBC show as part of an ongoing schedule shake-up. Well, Sharpton has officially shot down those rumors and said he isn’t going anywhere. Sharpton told The Daily Beast, “I am pretty certain that I am solid at the time period that I’m at for the next foreseeable future. And any rumors to the contrary are totally unfounded.” And an MSNBC spokesperson corroborated Sharpton, saying, “There are no plans to move Rev. Sharpton’s show.”

Entertainment Studios CEO and former TV talk show host Byron Allen tore into Al Sharpton, President Obama, and Comcast for their manipulation of African Americans for their own political and financial purposes. “Al Sharpton is nothing more than a black pawn in a very sophisticated white economic chess game,” Allen said. “He’s not even bright enough to know he’s on the chess board and he’s being used by his white masters at Comcast…” Allen’s comments came in a discussion with The Daily Caller about the $20 billion lawsuit filed this week against Comcast, Time Warner Cable, the NAACP, the Urban...

MSNBC’s Melissa Harris-Perry said during an address at Cornell University this week that she hopes 17-year-old Trayvon Martin “whooped the s--t” out of gunman George Zimmerman during their fatal encounter in 2012. Harris-Perry’s speech, titled “We Can’t Breathe: The Continuing Consequences of Inequality,” was delivered during the university’s annual Martin Luther King, Jr. Commemorative Lecture. She said the following of Martin’s death: “I hope [Martin] tried to stay alive. I hope he knew that he lived in a state with a ‘Stand Your Ground’ law.’ ” Zimmerman was acquitted in 2013 on murder charges. Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” law was...

It’s hard to imagine MSNBC could manage to limbo below its own low credibility bar, but America’s most shamelessly partisan cable “news” channel has really pulled it off. There’s always stiff competition for bias in America’s slavishly left-loving media. Think of Dan Rather’s “fake but accurate” Bush-bashing National Guard story, Newsweek’s flushed Korans fable and Candi Crowley’s assist for President Obama in the 2012 debates.

In a classic example of phony political jujitsu, an MSNBC contributor has tried to turn the patriotism issue back against Republicans. Appearing on today's Ed Show, Steve Clemons attacked the "patriotism" of GOP congressional leaders, accusing them of "undermining the security of the nation." This because Republicans have attached amendments to the DHS funding bill denying funds for President Obama's executive amnesty. Of course neither Clemons nor Schultz revealed that in a potential DHS "shutdown," all essential personnel, including those at TSA, Customs and Border, Secret Service, FEMA and Coast Guard, would continue to work. Only non-essential personnel, mainly office...

Bad news, everyone. According to reports and rumors, MSNBC’s Red Wedding is only growing bloodier. Al Sharpton’s MSNBC program Politics Nation, on the air since 2011, is headed for the chopping block. For now, that’s just a rumor, but the confirmed details of a lawsuit targeting both Sharpton and his employer are far more troubling for both than merely the floundering ratings of the cable host slash political activist. A lawsuit targeting Comcast and Sharpton last week, filed by the National Association of African-American Owned Media, alleges that both parties engaged in systematic discrimination against black-owned media outlets. This...

The Brian Williams suspension has caused a shake-up at MSNBC. The Daily Beast is reporting that Rev. Al Sharpton may lose his nightly time slot. “Politics Nation with Al Sharpton,” has aired since 2011 and has had a successful run. At issue is a steady slide in viewership....Chris Hayes is to be replaced by the “Rachel Maddow Show.” Maddow moves from 9 p.m. to 8 p.m., while a search is underway for a new host for the vacant time slot. Sharpton’s show is rumored to be moving from nightly 6 p.m. to weekend-only. Sharpton attracts a solid 35 percent Black...

MSNBC might like to replace "Lean Forward" with a new slogan: "Dissent Is Unpatriotic." On today's Morning Joe, discussing the Rudy flap, Mika Brzezinski said: "I question the patriotism of someone who questions the president's patriotism." Joe Scarborough retorted that for years on MSNBC, Keith Olbermann got away with saying much worse about W without criticism from Mika or others in the MSM. View the video here.

In a country of 330 million Americans, only 11, 000 people in the key 25-54 year old demographic were watching the afternoon programming on the disaster known as MSNBC in the last rating period. These horrific ratings were the lowest registered by the network in a decade. It was not much better at the other time periods for the early January ratings for the broadcast day on MSNBC averaged only 55,000 viewers. Compared to last year, total viewership on MSNBC is down 20 percent in the daytime and 23 percent in prime time. The yearly declines are even greater in...

It was hardly a surprise Thursday when ratings-challenged MSNBC announced the cancellation of the poor-performing afternoon programs hosted by Ronan Farrow and Joy Reid after less than a year, with veteran news anchor Thomas Roberts stepping in to preside over the two-hour block from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. Until a permanent replacement is named for Roberts’s 5:30 a.m. program Way Too Early, the 6 a.m. Morning Joe hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski will temporarily take up the slack by starting a half-hour earlier. But according to knowledgeable sources at the Comcast-owned cable network, Thursday’s moves were only the...

Noooooooooooo!!! Say it ain't so! Where oh where will your humble correspondent get his Brony updates? The sad day has finally arrived. MSNBC, as has been completely expected, has dumped both Ronan Farrow and Joy Reid. What kind of cruel world is this that a TV show can be cancelled merely due to horrible ratings? Dylan Byers at Politico delivers the sad funeral oration:

In addition to canceling Joy Reid‘s daytime show The Reid Report, which MSNBC sources confirmed to Mediaite earlier today, the network is also canceling Ronan Farrow’s show and moving Way Too Early’s Thomas Roberts back to a dayside role, anchoring a straight news show from 1-3 p.m. ET daily. Neither Reid nor Farrow have been fired by the network. Reid will become MSNBC’s national correspondent, producing original reporting for on air and online programming. Farrow is expected to host a new series of primetime specials for MSNBC and will be featured as a special correspondent across the network’s schedule. The...

Words are everything, even in the global warming debate. TV personality Bill Nye the “Science Guy” told MSNBC’s Joy Reid to use the phrase climate change, not global warming, when it’s so cold out. “Let’s not confuse or interchange climate change with global warming,” Nye told Reid on Monday. “Global warming – The world is getting warmer. There is more carbon [dioxide] holding in more heat.” “So when the climate changes, some places get colder,” Nye added. “And the thing that’s really consistent with climate change models is this variance where it’s cold, it’s warm, it’s cold, it’s warm… So...

On Monday's Morning Joe on MSNBC, Joe Scarborough suggested that having a literal interpretation of the Bible could lead Christians to violence in a similar manner as radical Islam. Oddly enough, Scarborough hoped to avoid being "torn to shreds online" by equating the two, but made the comparison anyway. The morning's panel centered on the violence of ISIS and its undeniable ties to the tenets of Islam, but Scarborough felt compelled to find a link between Islam and Christianity. He said: “A very crude way to put it is, this would be the ultra fundamentalist Christians who believe every single...

Climate change enthusiast Bill Nye appeared on MSNBC, Monday, to lobby the network for more global warming cheerleading and the importance of linking all weather events to the phenomena. Talking to Joy Reid about the cold and snow hitting much of the country, he implored, "...Just say the word climate change. Just, like, 'It could be climate change. It's a possible connection to climate change. Is this evidence of climate change?'" Nye demanded, "Could you just toss that in now and then?" A compliant Reid agreed: "Absolutely. I would like to toss that in every single time." Nye then stated...

The U.S. can’t defeat the Islamic State by “killing them,” State Department Spokesperson Marie Harf told MSNBC’s Chris Matthews on Monday night. “We’re killing a lot of them, and we’re going to keep killing more of them. So are the Egyptians, so are the Jordanians. They’re in this fight with us. But we cannot win this war by killing them. We cannot kill our way out of this war,” Harf said. Instead, she said the U.S. needs to focus on the “medium to longer term to go after the root causes that leads people to join these groups,” such as...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK) Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's receiving encouragement to run for president from an unlikely source — Rev. Al Sharpton. The MSNBC host and civil rights leader tweeted that during a meeting on the red carpet at the 40th anniversary episode of Saturday Night Live on Sunday, he encouraged Palin on Twitter to make a bid for the White House — but not with the intention of winning. Reverend Al Sharpton ✔ @TheRevAl I saw Sarah Palin on the red carpet and we talked to Xtra together. I urged her to run in 2016 and help the Democrats out. 9:24...

On Joe Scarborough’s MSNBC show this past week Yale-educated Howard Dean added a new word to the lexicon of Democratic condescension, “unknowledgeable.” “Scott Walker, were he to become president, would be the first president in many generations that did not have a college degree,” said Dean of the Wisconsin governor. “And that's a problem.” Scarborough countered later in the conversation, “Well, nobody is accusing Scott Walker of being dumb because he didn't graduate from college except you.”

If congressional Republican wanted to make the ongoing controversy surrounding Benjamin Netanyahu even more of a partisan food fight, this is clearly the way to do exactly that. Senate Republicans on Thursday moved to officially welcome Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to the U.S. ahead of his planned speech to Congress next month, the latest development in a saga that has roiled politics in both countries. Almost all GOP senators were listed as co-sponsors of a resolution by Sen. John Cornyn (R., Texas) saying the Senate “eagerly awaits the address of Prime Minister Netanyahu before a joint session of the...

FEBRUARY 11--With its swift and severe punishment of Brian Williams, NBCUniversal declared yesterday that it will not stand for on-air talent lying to viewers. Now that the media conglomerate has delineated that bright line, when does the Rev. Al Sharpton’s suspension without pay begin? In the wake of last year’s lengthy TSG report about Sharpton’s secret work as a paid FBI Mafia informant, the MSNBC host sought to blunt the story’s disclosures with a series of lies told at a pair of press conferences, on his nightly “Politics Nation” program, and in a report on Williams’s own NBC Nightly News...

Imagine a Fox News host making an unflattering remark about some aspect of Hillary Clinton's appearance. Now imagine the MSM going into 24/7 outrage mode. But on tonight's Hardball, Chris Matthews casually referred to Chris Christie as "the fat guy from New Jersey." And in walking back the crack, Matthews actually compounded his mistake. Rather than acknowledging that it's simply wrong to insult someone for his obesity, Matthews instead observed that he shouldn't call Christie a fat guy, because "he's losing weight." So fat cracks are fine if the target is actually fat? View the video here.

Joe Scarborough is shocked by the outpouring of "sheer hatred, snarkiness and snideness" directed at Brian Williams. On today's Morning Joe, Scarborough drew a contrast between himself, who as an opinion person has to expect much criticism, and Williams, who he claimed reported the news in a "straight" way. But as Newsbusters and our parent MRC has carefully documented, Williams has been anything but a "straight" reporter of the news. Like so many of his MSM brethren, Williams had a distinctly liberal slant. View the video here.

No, this is not satire. It's what passes at MSNBC as journalism. Video clip is at the link.

My nomination for Libtard Newser softball question of the year

NBC News anchor Brian Williams' 2006 claim that he saw a dead body float past his hotel window during Hurricane Katrina is drawing fresh skepticism in the wake of his own admission on Wednesday that he lied about being aboard a helicopter that was hit by enemy fire during the Iraq war. Despite a swift apology on his Nightly News program, Williams is at the center of a media firestorm after it emerged that his old war story that he has retold numerous times over the past 12 years has become increasingly exaggerated. Williams was forced to apologize this week...

Serial tax avoidance appears to be a hallmark of Al Sharpton’s operations. But there’s a warning here: Others have gone to prison for lesser amounts. The list includes rock legend Chuck Berry, Grammy winner Lauryn Hill, Ron Isley of the Isley Brothers, Survivor reality star Richard Hatch, hotel queen Leona Helmsely, and baseball’s Pete Rose. According to a New York Times’ review of government records last fall, the MSNBC host and civil rights activist personally faces federal tax liens for more than $3 million in back taxes owed, and state tax liens of $777,657. So in total, Sharpton reportedly owes...

News broke this week about a popular independent bookstore in San Francisco that is going out of business thanks to a citywide minimum wage hike that priced the owner out of business. Effectively, the minimum wage for this store's employees was "raised" to zero, as they are losing their jobs. On Thursday morning, the store's owner Alan Beatts appeared on Morning Joe on MSNBC to discuss his decision to close and how the wage hike negatively impacted his business. The panel was, to say the least, skeptical. The interview began with a hostile inquiry from Mika Brzezinski and only got...

MSNBC registered its lowest full-day rating in nearly a decade on Tuesday, a devastatingly low benchmark that shows just how severe the network's decline has become. The liberal cable news network drew an average of 55,000 viewers in the all-important 25-to-54 year-old demo on Tuesday, its lowest full-day rating since July 2005, according to Nielsen ratings provided by an industry source. CNN had nearly three times as many viewers in the demo; Fox News nearly five times as many.

As the Daily Caller reports, the continually sagging ratings at MSNBC, particularly in the afternoon and evening, have Phil Griffin looking at some changes… potentially big ones. Some of the most disappointing numbers have come from their latest additions and shifts in the evening lineup. But who is on the chopping block? Considering a number of their shows are unwatchable — here’s looking at you Chris Hayes and Joy Reid — it’s painfully obvious that MSNBC’s lineup is in need of a serious makeover.According to TheWrap, Hayes’ crappy ratings are even bringing down those of his TV mentor, Rachel...

NBC'S Brian Williams admits on air to lying On 02/04/2015 Front Page,U.S.,World NBC News’ Brian Williams has been caught in a lie and forced to recant. The nation’s top-rated news anchor apologized on the air Wednesday evening for fabricating a story of personal heroics, claiming to have been aboard a helicopter in Iraq in 2003 when it was hit by enemy fire. “I made a mistake in recalling the events of 12 years ago,” Williams said. At the time Williams reported the original incident, he did not claim to be on the Chinook copter that was hit by a rocket-propelled...

When President Obama was reelected in 2012, MSNBC was “leaning forward” and smiling wide as Obama 2.0 propelled it to record ratings and a firm grasp on the No. 2 spot in cable news. Over two years later, the network has fallen backwards. January ratings revealed double-digit declines compared with January, 2014 in all ratings measurements. During the day, MSNBC was down 20 percent in viewers and 37 percent in the advertising-coveted 25-54 demo. In primetime, it fell 23 percent in viewers and 39 percent in demo.

MSNBC registered its lowest full-day rating in nearly a decade on Tuesday, a devastatingly low benchmark that shows just how severe the network's decline has become. The liberal cable news network drew an average of 55,000 viewers in the all-important 25-to-54 year-old demo on Tuesday, its lowest full-day rating since July 2005, according to Nielsen ratings provided by an industry source. CNN had nearly three times as many viewers in the demo; Fox News nearly five times as many. That low reflects a more general decline in recent years.

An explosive new report about “deadbeat politicos” revealed Friday that civil rights activist and MSNBC celebrity the Rev. Al Sharpton owes the federal government tens of thousands of dollars in fines and $880,000 in debt from his ill-fated 2004 presidential campaign. And that’s on top of the $4.5 million Sharpton owes in back taxes.

You say "Jeb Bush," Thomas Roberts says "the Kouachi brothers." It's got to be one of the strangest political Rorschach test results of all time. MSNBC's Roberts believes that Jeb Bush would have a "big onus" around his neck if he runs for president "because if we hear 'Bush' we're automatically going to go to people bringing up the Kouachi brothers and their photos of Abu Ghraib that radicalized them about Iraq." View the video here.

Your show  is at the bottom of a cable network with lousy ratings. So what to do? Take the show that few watch out of the studio, put it on the road, and cross your fingers hoping that the format change will miraculously improve the ratings. That is what is happening with the failed Ronan Farrow Daily (Dully) show on MSNBC. A show with such horrible ratings that TVNewser announced it was watched one Monday last December by only 13,000 people in the 25 to 54 demo during its time slot or less than a sixth of a typical football...

Friday, January 23, 2015 | 2:45 am EST Grant NBC News Launches Website For Black People… Good Idea? By: Grant (Breaking911 Newsroom) January 22, 2015 | 10:06 PM Ahhh, yes. The day has come, where black folks and white folks don’t have to read news from the same website. NBC news has a new website and social media accounts geared towards the African-American community. According to a letter from the editor: “NBCBLK covers stories by, for and about the black community. Our product is meant to elevate America’s conversation about black identity, politics, and culture. We share positive, solution-based journalism...

Colorado Springs, Colo. — From the liberal media’s coverage of my beautiful adopted hometown, you’d think we live in a KKK-infested hotbed where every person of color fears for his or her life. Take a look at these ominous headlines: “Bombing of NAACP headquarters harkens to bad old days” — MSNBC “Colorado Springs explosion recalls violence against NAACP” — the Washington Post “NAACP Bombing Evokes Memories of Civil Rights Strife” — Time magazine “Explosion outside NAACP office could be a hate crime, officials say” — the Los Angeles Times Let me and my brown skin assure you, America: Bull Connor...

The militant Islamic State group (ISIS) is reportedly readying the launch of a 24/7 news channel to spread its jihadist propaganda. According to Variety, the tech-savvy terrorists posted two Arabic-language teasers for an upcoming channel that will be called the Islamic Caliphate Broadcast. Both featured slick images and promised in-depth video, Variety reports. The new channel is expected to feature a new video series by British captive John Cantile, who has already made several videos for the Islamic State, and a daily news program, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz has reported. Also scheduled is "Time to Recruit," a program aimed at...

MSNBC host Ed Schultz delivered a highly-charged monolog to his dwindling audience Monday night focusing on the blockbuster film American Sniper. The movie may have garnered an armful of Oscar nominations and brought in a record $105 million over the MLK holiday weekend, but to Schultz, the film was "disturbing" and highlights "the normalization of Islamophobia" in America. Schultz went on to say the film "underscores how many lives we have ruined because of doing something that was terribly wrong."

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Facebook Inc said on Tuesday it has taken steps to clamp down on "hoaxes" and fake news stories that can spread like wildfire on its 1.35-billion member online social network. The company said it had introduced an option to allow Facebook users to flag a story as "purposefully fake or deceitful news" to reduce the distribution of news stories reported as hoaxes. Facebook said it will not remove fake news stories from its website. Instead, the company's algorithm, which determines how widely user posts are distributed, will take into account hoax reports. "A post with a...

Tuning into the middle of a Morning Joe segment today, at first I assumed that MSNBC's Ari Melber was chatting with the Oscar nominees. But no, turns out Melber had scored interviews with President Obama's SOTU speechwriting team. You'll excuse my confusion. As you'll see, just like the Oscar hopefuls, the SOTU writers appeared to be a panorama of people of pallor. Melber had been given special behind-the-scenes White House access this past Friday night to do his piece. As the cameras roamed around, a couple of presumably relatively junior African-American staffers could be seen. But the senior folks, those...

If you followed the toxic enthusiasm MSNBC hosts and guests displayed for hurling accusations of racism or racial insensitivity toward Republicans in 2012, then a recent segment on that cable news network involving comments made by Bobby Jindal should sound lamentably familiar.During a segment on MSNBC’s Now with Alex Wagner, Arsalan Iftikhar, founder of TheMuslimGuy.com, was asked to weigh in on Jindal’s claim that there are “no-go zones” inside European cities in which Muslim immigrants have refused to allow non-Muslims to travel. This claim is so controversial that Fox News host Jeanine Pirro issued an on-air apology after one of her guests...

Risen: No, they haven't printed it, but again, I don't want to get into The New York Times, one way or the other. Mitchell: But did you have concerns about putting it into your book? Risen: I thought about it, you know. I thought about everything. one way or the other, but I thought that this story was so old, that it no longer really mattered. As I said, goes back to the Clinton years. Mitchell: How do you balance your own role finally? You've broken some major stories here, and critics, the administration will say that it compromises American...

MSNBC host Chris Hayes is not a fan of people criticizing President Obama for not attending the Paris Freedom March this past weekend. So he took to Twitter to slam President Obama’s critics: This made him an easy target for mocking remarks from users of Twitter over Hayes’ “Leave the President alone!” outburst: While some may consider the march a “photo op,” it was still important for the United States to send a high-ranking official to show solidarity with France. After all, France is America’s oldest ally dating back to the American Revolution. France is also an important NATO ally....