Bad if you long for the days when you could only hear from these folks.
Posted on 09/17/2019 8:01:45 AM PDT by yesthatjallen
ABC News, NPR and PBS journalist and political commentator Cokie Roberts has passed away at age 75, according to a network announcement.
"Cokie Roberts will be dearly missed," said James Goldston, president of ABC News. "Cokie's kindness, generosity, sharp intellect and thoughtful take on the big issues of the day made ABC a better place and all of us better journalists."
From 1996-2002, Roberts co-anchored ABC’s "This Week" with Sam Donaldson. She also served as a political commentator and chief congressional analyst for "This Week" during her tenure at ABC dating back to 1988.
SNIP
Bill Clinton vs. Donald Trump: Cokie’s Double Standard on Sexual Assault Accusations
By Kristine Marsh | October 27, 2016
https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/kristine-marsh/2016/10/27/bill-clinton-vs-donald-trump-cokies-double-standard-sexual
Thursday morning on ABC’s Good Morning America, anchor George Stephanopoulos and commentator Cokie Roberts repeatedly cast doubt on the idea that Donald Trump’s sexual assault accusations could be false. After being grilled by Stephanopoulos, Trump dismissed the accusations as made up stories but that wasn’t adequate for ABC’s Cokie Roberts who reacted skeptically.
“[N]obody has ever wanted fame for sexual assault,” Cokie stated on Thursday morning’s GMA. “And he says it’s been debunked but it hasn’t been debunked so I think that, you know, a lot of people have trouble believing him on that front,” she added.
Funny enough, Cokie made almost the opposite claims about Bill Clinton’s accusers.
On an October 10 Nightline from this year, Roberts asked viewers to keep an open mind on whether or not Clinton’s accusers were telling the truth. “The women have awful stories to tell, but we don’t know if they’re true,” she stressed.
This wasn’t the first time Roberts doubted Clinton’s accusers. She was doing the same thing throughout the ‘90s.
On Kathleen Willey she said on March 16,1998 episode of NPR’s “Morning Edition”:
ROBERTS: There are others who question Ms. Willey’s account, and that’s important to keep in mind.
Again, on Paula Jones, in an April 2, 1998 broadcast she gave a sigh of relief that Jones’ case was thrown out. “[W]ith any luck, no [more] stories about the president’s body parts!” she remarked. “To have [the case] thrown out is a great victory for the White House,” she added, as the panel actually chuckled about Clinton’s various scandals. The NPR panel showed the same dismissive, annoyed tone to Paula Jones on another show four days later:
BOB EDWARDS: You already miss Paula Jones, don’t you?
[laughter]
COKIE ROBERTS: Well, the president’s interview is quite interesting because he says, in answer to most questions, that it’s all up to the lawyers and he doesn’t know anything until he reads it in the newspapers. Which in the case of invoking executive privilege is sort of interesting, since he’s the only one who can do it. But there it is, Paula Jones is gone.
Roberts also urged the media to “move on” from Clinton’s scandals because the public really didn’t “care” about the accusations. In another NPR broadcast from March 1, 1999 she said:
ROBERTS: Well, actually lots of members were asked, and the answers were all pretty much the same which is, I don’t know anything about that. ‘Let’s move on’...Unfortunately, it hangs there, and what they don’t know is whether there’s gonna be something else to come. And they really did think that once impeachment was over and the trial was over and the president was not found guilty, that they really could now stop all of this, but there is a concern now that it will just drag on and on and on.
[Y]ou have allegations like this, these are serious allegations. And so then the question is, you know: Do you not report them? Of course you report them. But where does it go? And I think that that’s a question that nobody quite knows how to answer. And does anybody care? And that’s another question that is, you know, very interesting. You have, in the one scientific poll that’s been done so far, 62 percent of the people believing Juanita Broaddrick, but as with all of the other allegations against the president, basically not caring.
Roberts and her fellow journalists were also quick to bash Republicans and defend Bill Clinton. In 1999, Cokie Roberts told anchor Peter Jennings that Republicans were just trying to “embarrass” Clinton, by continuing his trial before the Senate on the Monica Lewinsky scandal. After his State of the Union address, Roberts came to Clinton’s defense again, gushing as anchor of Good Morning America:
[I]t was a remarkable performance last night. He’s always remarkable in these performances but this one was stronger than usual, and I think that he certainly put Republicans in a position where he hit every popular theme there was to hit and what are they not going to do now?
Even so, Roberts continues to spin her past coverage of Bill Clinton’s accusers as tough and fair journalism. On that same episode of Nightline, she stated, “Nobody was harder on Bill Clinton when he was president than I was.” The evidence seems to show otherwise.
Roberts also took the same approach to the Trump accusations as to the ones made by Anita Hill against Clarence Thomas. Roberts said on an ABC This Week roundtable May 22, 2014:
[O]ne of the things that we have been way too slow to change on, but finally slightly getting there, is listening to women when they make these complaints.
Apparently the media thinks the only women worth listening to are the ones making accusations against Republicans.
ABC’s Cokie Roberts Blasts Palin Pick: ‘Basically a Laughingstock’
I agree be-baw, she could be really nasty!
Bless her little heart.
Amen, IronJack
Cokie Roberts Agrees With Guest That ‘America First’ Is Really ‘White America First’
By Scott Whitlock | February 13, 2017
https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/scott-whitlock/2017/02/13/cokie-roberts-agrees-guest-america-first-really-white-america
Veteran ABC journalist Cokie Roberts on Sunday agreed with a Democratic strategist’s smear that Donald Trump’s “America First” mentality really means “white America First.” Appearing on a This Week panel, Jamal Simmons attacked, “The thing about this all that is so concerning to me is that the President is undermining all these American institutions. He’s going after the press, he’s going after the judiciary.”
Simmons sneered, “It’s starting to make it seem a little bit, also, like ‘America first’ is really ‘white America first.’” Journalist Roberts agreed: “But I think there’s a lot of truth to that. And it’s interesting because the President himself keeps undermining the possibility of anything seeming normal.”
Roberts then fretted that Trump is “constantly undermining the media.” She lamented, “Congress is not going to stop this president.”
A partial transcript is below:
JAMAL SIMMONS (Democratic strategist): The thing about this all that is so concerning to me is that the President is undermining all these American institutions. He’s going after the press, he’s going after the judiciary, things we’re talking about. It’s starting to make it seem a little bit, also, like “America first” is really “white America first,” because if you look at what he’s doing, he’s going after immigrants. Even in his administration, the only reason we know who Colin Powell and Condi Rice are is because a Republican president appointed them to significant jobs. This President doesn’t even have any African Americans, Latinos, in unusual jobs in his cabinet. This is something I think we all have to worry about, because the United States of America has been moving in a direction for last 30 or 40 years, where everybody gets to participate. We have been teaching our children that. And the reason you see so many Democrats, Progressives, and also independents on the streets is because this president is moving us away from the direction we’ve been headed.
COKIE ROBERTS: But I think there’s a lot of truth to that. And it’s interesting because the President himself keeps undermining the possibility of anything seeming normal. So for instance, yesterday, when there were all of these roundups of undocumented people in the country, the — the ICE people are saying, “Look, we’re doing exactly what happened in the Obama administration. It’s not anything unusual.” Then the President tweets, “I’m keeping my campaign promises. I’m getting all these people out of here.” And, those tweets are very damaging. What Katrina said is absolutely right. Today, again, he tweeted against the courts. If you start undermining the court system and constantly undermining the media the Congress is not going to stop this president. So you really try to get — any check on him.
Thanks for reminding me that Cokie may not have been the kind of smear monger that we see in the media today, but never the less, a smear monger.
Cokie Roberts Blames Trump/Sessions for Sending ‘Signals’ to Racists
Following the horrific domestic terrorist attack in Charlottesville, Virginia on Saturday, the media was on the hunt to cast blame on someone and lump them in with the racist that carried out the attack. And during Sunday’s This Week on ABC, commentator Cokie Roberts found her target in President Trump and Attorney General Jeff Sessions. According to her, they were to blame because they were sending silent signals to white supremacists to empower them.
“The President has to share responsibility,” she exclaimed. “The fact is, through that campaign, he blew all kind of whistles that those of us who grew up in the Jim Crow south, like I did, recognized immediately.”
“It was just calling out to these white supremacists who then felt empowered by it,” Roberts added.
Bad if you long for the days when you could only hear from these folks.
That is a real Rogues Gallery.
It's true, but then Steponallofus became one of her best friends, and he was the Great Enabler.
I judge her by the company she kept: Martha Radish, Zorba, Smug Donaldscum, every judgmental Leftist motard mandarin you saw sit there looking glum on the ABCNews set Election Night 2016. Also Steve Roberts is a doofus.
So, she didn't marry well, she didn't pick her friends well.
Back in the day when news gals would dress modestly. Always thought she should be the Drug Czar with that name. RIP.
On Roberts specifically: she and her husband ‘wrote’ a syndicated column that was a clockwork warmed-over rehash of that week’s DC talking points, specifically what media types were saying to each other. In print and on TV Roberts bore false witness against any and all the majority of the time and usually delivered her falsehoods with a cloying ivory-tower smirk. She will have to answer for it now.
On Roberts’ generation: because they are on stage, in the klieg lights, on Twitter feeds, etc. the media and the public continue to whistle past the graveyard (literally in some cases) where the age and infirmity of their candidates and their ‘movement’ in general are concerned. Yes, Joe Biden is taking a deserved beating for being physically and mentally unfit for any office let alone the presidency but what about Sanders and the rest?
It was clear to any rational being that Hillary Clinton was also unfit to serve. Presidential campaigns are far too long but the reality is that hers lasted about 2 years and was attended by an army of so-called reporters and journalists. They dutifully downplayed, cropped or ignored the paltry turnouts at Hillary campaign stops - when she could manage to crawl out of bed to attend them. They had the brass neck to act surprised at her 9/11 memorial collapse despite knowing - how could they not? - that Hillary’s brown transport van was, in fact, an ambulance in disguise.
The point is that the postwar generation - who are STILL boring us with their stories of watching the Beatles on Ed Sullivan and of Woodstock and Vietnam - who claim(ed) an exclusive license on idealism actually cashed in that idealism when they discovered that living the high life on someone else’s dime was preferable to VW vans and tinned beans. Roberts is among the ‘early departures’ but she will soon have company and lots of it. The entrenched left are top-heavy with oldsters.
Sorry to hear about that. She was an old time liberal Dem. At least 30% rational.
She would have had to make or fake big political and philosophical changes to fit in with the current CRAZY LIBERAL MARXIST DEMOCRAT PARTY AND LEADERSHIP..
If one has nothing nice to say...
I never saw any journalism issue from her. She was a predictable, boring, reliable, utterly conventional tool.
Oh, please!
Roberts was the daughter of Hale Boggs a Louisiana congressman. He died in a plane crash and his wife Lindy took over the seat. I would describe her as a Jack Kennedy Democrat
Funny how none of the obits I’ve seen mention her father being a long-time Southern Democrat Congressman. Or her mother inheriting the office.
What are they hiding?
Met her once at a DC area restaurant. Lovely lady, very polite even to riffraff like me ... don’t agree with her and her family’s political views at all. Nevertheless, RIP.
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