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Thursday marks 50 years since Ted Kennedy, the liberal Democrat from Massachusetts, drove off a bridge on Chappaquiddick Island and left Mary Jo Kopechne to drown in the back seat. For decades, journalists and the TV networks downplayed the incident and portrayed the senator as the victim. Despite the circumstances, New York Times correspondent James Reston’s initial coverage in 1969 framed the story as a "Kennedy family" tragedy, rather than as a tragedy for the Kopechne family. As the Media Research Center's Brent Bozell and Tim Graham explained in a 2015 column: Reston’s first draft on Chappaquiddick began “Tragedy has...

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) on Thursday said she had "no criticism" of former Vice President Joe Biden invoking his past working relationships with two segregationist senators as an example of "civility." “What I think is most important for all the candidates is authenticity, they are who they are, they’ve lived a life and they have grown from their experiences, and I think that’s what he’s trying to tell us," Pelosi told MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell. “I have no criticism of what he believes is his story to tell the American people, that he will work with anyone to get a...

Independent Vermont Senator and Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders lit into President Donald Trump in advance of Trump’s Florida campaign kickoff rally, calling him a “racist” who won’t tell his supporters how he “tried to throw 32 million people off of healthcare.” On Tuesday’s edition of MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell Reports, host Andrea Mitchell asked Sanders for his reaction to the possibility that Trump might live-tweet the Democratic debates. “Well, I’m surprised that he has the time to tweet, I thought he would be watching, you know, some Fox TV program,” Sanders quipped, before really going in on Trump. “Look, he...

Jewish advocacy groups have protested after an American reporter erroneously referred to an uprising against a “Polish and Nazi regime” during World War II.A monument honouring the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising fighters in the Polish capital. Photo: Szczebrzeszynski [Public domain], from Wikimedia CommonsWhile reporting from the Polish capital on Wednesday, Andrea Mitchell, a foreign affairs correspondent for the MSNBC television network, suggested that a World War II-era uprising by Jews in the Warsaw ghetto was staged against “the Polish and Nazi regime.”The American Jewish Committee's Warsaw-based Central Europe office has responded in a tweet that “it is beyond the pale...

In an interview with Andrea Mitchell on MSNBC Thursday, billionaire Santorum backer Foster Friess said that debates over the candidate's personal objections to contraception are overblown, adding that, in his day, "gals" used aspirin as birth control.

“One Thousand Killed in 5 days of Fierce Street Fighting!” read a New York Times headline on Jan 4, 1959. The fake news headline dealt with the (utterly bogus) “battle” of Santa Clara in central Cuba where Ernesto “Che” Guevara earned much of his enduring (and totally bogus) martial fame. “Commander Che Guevara appealed to Batista troops for a truce to clear the streets of casualties,” continues the breathless The New York Times article. “Guevara turned the tide in this bloody battle and whipped a Batista force of 3,000 men!”A year later, Che’s own diaries revealed that his forces (which actually numbered...

On Friday's Andrea Mitchell Reports, host Mitchell asserted that Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen was "blaming the victim" when she correctly warned that it is very dangerous to cross the desert illegally in reaction to recent news of a child dying of dehydration after her father crossed the desert illegally from Mexico. Correspondent Jacob Soboroff suggested that the Trump administration is "forcing" illegals to cross under dangerous circumstances through the desert because of long wait times at legal ports of entry. And, in the segment that lasted eight minutes, no one got around to clarifying that the number of detainees...

Today’s Campaign Update (Because The Campaign Never Ends) Seems like there is a lesson to be learned in here somewhere. – So, lessee here…the pro-Trump Republican gubernatorial candidate in Arizona, Doug Ducey, easily won his race by more than 150,000 votes. Meanwhile, the Trump-avoiding GOP senatorial candidate, Martha McSally, who basically campaigned as the second coming of despicable RINO Jeff Flake, lost her race by about 48,000 votes at the latest count. Hmmmm. How do we explain that? Think maybe there’s a cause and effect kind of thing going on there? Nah, must be something else, because your fake news...

"We should also point out that Brenda Snipes in Broward County is a Republican appointed by former governor, then-Governor Jeb Bush," Mitchell said in a clip flagged by Mediaite. "So, she was put in by a Republican governor after the mess that we all remember from 2000. And she’s hardly a Democratic official, or someone doing the bidding of the Democratic candidates there."

Friday on MSNBC’s “Andrea Mitchell Reports,” former Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele called President Donald Trump’s proposal to end birthright citizenship via executive order engaging “in stupid at a level that we have never seen before.” Steele said, “It is better from Trump’s perspective to have a base that is angry and mad at someone other than him. It is sort of the 1950s racism that has been reintroduced into the body politic, and he is thriving on that. So, you know, a great jobs number, and wages going up, and tax cuts, and Supreme Court appointment s appointments,...

In a packed room in College Hall on Wednesday night, former Governor of Florida Jeb Bush gave his first talk at Penn since being named the second Presidential Practice Professor. Bush addressed the partisan nature in politics today and the lack of dialogue that exists across the aisle, urging conservatives to return to the idea that America is the land of opportunity. The event, co-hosted by the Andrea Mitchell Center for the Study of Democracy and Penn Political Union, focused on the state of American democracy and what Bush calls increased “tribal tendencies” in partisan politics in a time of...

During an interview with Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy on Tuesday, MSNBC anchor Andrea Mitchell fretted that the seventh FBI background check into Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh was too restricted. Her hyperventilating over the issue got to a point where she suggested that the Bureau should actually investigate Kavanaugh for being “rude” to Democrats.

On Monday’s edition of MSNBC’s “Andrea Mitchell Reports,” House Intelligence Committee Ranking Member Adam Schiff (D-CA) stated Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein should not resign and it seems as though there is “a slow-moving Saturday Night Massacre.” Schiff said, “Rod Rosenstein should, under no circumstances, resign. If the president intends to obstruct justice, Rosenstein should require him to be fired. He shouldn’t take a step affirmatively and essentially let the president off the hook. This looks to me like a slow-moving Saturday Night Massacre. It seems like the only question is whether these steps take place now or they take...

On Friday afternoon, during one of the rare liberal media acknowledgements of Louis Farrakhan's prominent presence at Aretha Franklin's funeral, MSNBC host Andrea Mitchell gave an odd underreaction as she cited it as evidence of an "inclusive group" being on stage. As her Andrea Mitchell Reports show gave live coverage of the event, at 12:06 a.m. Eastern, the MSNBC host listed several of those appearing on stage. She began: "It's interesting to see the panoply of civil rights leaders. Of course, right there at the church, we see Reverend Al (Sharpton), we see the Reverend Jesse Jackson who has been...

With Senator John McCain's recent passing, the Trump-McCain feud has heated up. It's really a manufactured kerfuffle, as one party is saying little, and the other party has departed from the living, no longer able to participate in the feud, except posthumously via the media. Leave it to the media to resurrect the controversy between the late senator and the U.S. president as a means of bashing President Trump, whom the media detest. It is also a distraction from the stock market breaking records left and right, a new and better trade deal with Mexico, a country that the media...

Among the endless encomiums for John McCain on today’s Morning Joe, one stood out: Andrea Mitchell lavishing praise on McCain for, together with John Kerry, giving political “cover” to “accused draft dodger” Bill Clinton. Mitchell: “One of the most sterling parts of his character is the way he grew and changed and reached not just across the aisle but across huge gulfs. And I am really struck by what I was covering back in the ’90s, which was the growing relationship when I was covering the Senate between John Kerry and John McCain, not likely partners on anything when they...

Can doing something you have the legal right to do nevertheless constitute a crime? Yes . . . according to Andrea Mitchell. On today’s Morning Joe, just moments after acknowledging that President Trump “has the legal right” to have canceled John Brennan’s security clearance, Mitchell continued: “Arguably, some people will say, and I’m not a lawyer, but I’m certain that Mueller is looking into this, that this could be another issue of potential obstruction of justice. Whether it is of criminal import or not, it certainly is a question.”Get the rest of the story and view the video here.

Reporter Andrea Mitchell is celebrating 40 years with NBC News and appeared on Comedy Central's "The Daily Show" to discuss the milestone. Host Trevor Noah suggested that the killing of five people in an Annapolis, Maryland, newsroom could be laid at President Trump's door (he wasn't joking). Mitchell demurred but denounced Trump for calling the media the "enemy of the people." The term certainly has a Soviet echo. That said, conservatives certainly could consider them the enemy. We prefer calling the "objective" media the "opposition party." "It's not benign," Mitchell proclaimed. "You know, this is something that we first heard...

Friday on MSNBC’s “Andrea Mitchell Reports,” former Republican National Committee chair Michael Steele likened President Donald Trump’s rally last night in Wilkes-Barre, PA to a “circus” that is causing “swing voters” to move away from Republicans. Steele said, “Pennsylvania is a bellwether for a number of important races coming up this fall and the fact that the president is so narrowly playing to a base, that he feels good in that setting, he’s having fun, he’s riffing and cussing and doing all this and those folks are loving it. To Charlie’s point, the rest of the country, the independent voters,...

On Friday's Andrea Mitchell Reports, MSNBC correspondent Jacob Soboroff misleadingly claimed that hundreds of illegal immigrants were deported before they were "able" to collect their children without noting that, according to Trump administration officials, many of them declined the opportunity to take their children with them, possibly hoping that the children will succeed in attaining asylum and indefinite residency. MSNBC Misleadingly Claims Illegals Deported Before 'Able' to Reunite w ChildrenReferring to ACLU demands that the government locate deported immigrants who are presumably in their home countries to ask them if they wish to arrange to get their children back, host...