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By Nicholas Fondacaro
Early Thursday morning, President Trump teased a big announcement that would be made at his campaign rally in West Virginia later in the day. Like many things in Washington lately, the announcement leaked early and it was one liberals couldn’t stand: Jim Justice, the governor of the state, was changing his party affiliation from Democrat to Republican.
It’s rare for sitting governors to change their party affiliation, but that didn’t matter to ABC’s World News Tonight and NBC Nightly News who ignored the news altogether.
CBS was the only network in the Big Three to give the story any time. But during CBS Evening News, Anchor Anthony Mason down played the development with a mere 13-second-long news brief:
The President is promising a big announcement at a rally this evening in West Virginia. Spoiler alert: The news is the governor of West Virginia is switching parties. Democrat Jim Justice is becoming a Republican.
Perhaps the party switch was too hard for ABC and NBC to swallow. Especially since the switch further solidified the Republican party’s dominance in the 50 states. With the affiliation swap of Governor Justice, the GOP now controls the governorship in 34 states.
And on top of that, there are two gubernatorial races set to be held later this year in New Jersey and Virginia. The race in New Jersey doesn’t look good for the GOP to retain it, but the race in Virginia is still anyone’s game.
Instead of reporting on the rare party identification switch of a sitting U.S. governor, ABC World News Tonight thought it was more important to dedicate 17 seconds to a list of the most stolen car models in America. Meanwhile, on NBC Nightly News, Anchor Lester Holt spent 30 seconds reporting on a Boeing test flight that drew an outline of the plane in the sky.
Transcript below:
CBS Evening News
August 3, 2017
6:38:54 PM Eastern [13 seconds]
ANTHONY MASON: The President is promising a big announcement at a rally this evening in West Virginia. Spoiler alert: The news is the governor of West Virginia is switching parties. Democrat Jim Justice is becoming a Republican.
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By Kyle Drennen
After Wednesday’s network evening newscasts rushed to slam President Trump’s immigration reform proposal, on Thursday, the morning shows of NBC, ABC, and CBS continued the work of trashing the “hardline” policy and framing it as a “major new controversy” for the administration designed to only appeal to the President’s “hardcore supporters.”
On NBC’s Today, fill-in co-host Hoda Kotb proclaimed: “Now to the White House and major new controversies facing President Trump this morning. Topping that list, his push to overhaul the nation’s immigration policy with a merit-based system. And it’s already drawing fierce criticism.”
In the report that followed, correspondent Peter Alexander let the ideological labels fly as he warned viewers: “President Trump declaring America’s immigration system broken....Now embracing a new hardline proposal sponsored by two conservative Republican senators that would slash legal immigration by 50% in ten years...”
Returning to the topic at the top of the 8 a.m. ET hour, co-host Matt Lauer derided the move: “President Trump hitting the road today after pushing an immigration bill that plays right to his core supporters.” Correspondent Kristen Welker piled on: “The President is trying to get back to his base today. He’ll travel to West Virginia for a campaign-style rally this afternoon and it comes on the heels of the President backing a sweeping and controversial new immigration bill.”
She touted: “Opponents argue it would actually hurt the economy, potentially limiting workers from industries like agriculture and tourism.”
On ABC’s Good Morning America, co-host George Stephanopoulos announced: “...the White House is facing backlash over that plan to cut the number of legal U.S. immigrants in half.” Correspondent Cecilia Vega declared: “...both Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill say the impacts on the economy from this proposal would be so negative, it’s a non-starter.”
Following Vega’s report, Stephanopoulos turned to Chief White House Correspondent Jon Karl and dismissed the legislative proposal as futile:
And Jon, let’s start out with that poll we just showed it. 33% approval now for the President, an all-time low. And you see this happening as the President is now focusing solely – really on his core supporters, his hardcore Trump supporters, like with that immigration announcement yesterday.
Karl agreed: “Yeah, he still is popular among Republicans and this is clearly aimed at that base because, George, it is not based – is not aimed at actually passing something.”
In another report at the top of the 8 a.m. ET hour, Vega touted: “...critics are not backing down on this one, even the U.S. Commerce – Chamber of Commerce says that cutting legal immigration by half would seriously damage the economy and hurt American jobs.” She later sniffed: “Immigration right now hardly a top priority.”
At the top of CBS This Morning, co-host Charlie Rose parroted the same liberal talking points: “Critics say the plan would hurt families and handcuff key industries.”Introducing a report on the topic minutes later, he observed: “President Trump is backing a Republican plan to cut legal immigration in half. He faces strong opposition over what would be the most significant change to our immigration system in more than half a century.”
Fill-in co-host Margaret Brennan threw the coverage to White House correspondent Major Garrett by saying this: “Major Garrett is at the White House with the bill that many critics are denouncing.” Garrett sneered: “President Trump toyed with the idea of pushing comprehensive immigration reform, but for now is focusing on just one part of the system, the part appears least broken and has the most bipartisan support.”
The biased coverage across the three networks was brought to viewers by Xfinity, Honda, and Crest.
Here are excerpts of the August 3 morning show reports on NBC, ABC, and CBS:
Today
7:08 AM ET
 HODA KOTB: Now to the White House and major new controversies facing President Trump this morning. Topping that list, his push to overhaul the nation’s immigration policy with a merit-based system. And it’s already drawing fierce criticism. We have two reports from the White House, starting with NBC National Correspondent Peter Alexander. Hey, Peter, good morning.
PETER ALEXANDER: Hey, Hoda, good morning. This new plan, the President’s latest effort to cut the number of immigrants coming to the U.S. It would prioritize English speakers as well as those with higher level job skills, marking what would be the biggest changes to this country’s legal immigration system in decades. But this remains a long shot, with some members of the President’s own party already saying it is a non-starter.
[ON-SCREEN HEADLINE: Heated Exchange Over Immigration; WH Clashes With Reporter Amid Plan]
President Trump declaring America’s immigration system broken.
DONALD TRUMP: It has not been fair to our people, to our citizens, to our workers.
ALEXANDER: Now embracing a new hardline proposal sponsored by two conservative Republican senators that would slash legal immigration by 50% in ten years, moving the U.S. to a system based on merit.
TRUMP: This competitive application process will favor applicants who can speak English, financially support themselves and their families, and demonstrate skills that will contribute to our economy.
(...)
Good Morning America
7:01 AM ET
 GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: But we are going to begin with the latest news from Washington, where the White House is facing backlash over that plan to cut the number of legal U.S. immigrants in half. There was heated debate in the briefing room yesterday over the Statue of Liberty and its meaning.
And this comes as a new poll shows the President’s approval rating at an all-time low. Just 33% of Americans think the President is doing a good job now. 61% disapprove.
ROBIN ROBERTS: And President Trump will meeting with his supporters tonight at a campaign-style rally in West Virginia. That rally of course coming as questions grow over the new immigration bill and our Senior White House Correspondent Cecilia Vega has the latest from Washington. Good morning, Cecilia.
CECILIA VEGA: Hi, Robin, good morning to you. President Trump says the legal immigration system in this country has not been fair to American workers and citizens, but both Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill say the impacts on the economy from this proposal would be so negative, it’s a non-starter.
(...)
7:06 AM ET
GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: Let’s get more now from our Chief White House Correspondent Jonathan Karl this morning. And Jon, let’s start out with that poll we just showed it. 33% approval now for the President, an all-time low. And you see this happening as the President is now focusing solely – really on his core supporters, his hardcore Trump supporters, like with that immigration announcement yesterday.
JON KARL: Yeah, he still is popular among Republicans and this is clearly aimed at that base because, George, it is not based – is not aimed at actually passing something. That bill was first introduced by those two Republican senators back in February. It still doesn't have any other co-sponsors. I think that if that were brought up for a vote right now in the Senate, it would be lucky to get more than 30 votes. Certainly no chance of actually passing.
(...)
CBS This Morning
7:03 AM ET
 CHARLIE ROSE: President Trump is backing a Republican plan to cut legal immigration in half. He faces strong opposition over what would be the most significant change to our immigration system in more than half a century.
MARGARET BRENNAN: The bill sponsored by Senate Republicans Tom Cotton and David Perdue is tilted toward highly trained immigrants. But it would make it harder for immigrants in the U.S. to bring their families along. The President spoke yesterday as a new poll shows 61 percent of Americans disapprove of his job performance. Thirty three percent approve. Major Garrett is at the White House with the bill that many critics are denouncing. Major, good morning.
MAJOR GARRETT: Good morning. Candidate Trump promised over and over to fix immigration. President Trump toyed with the idea of pushing comprehensive immigration reform, but for now is focusing on just one part of the system, the part appears least broken and has the most bipartisan support.
DONALD TRUMP: This legislation demonstrates our compassion for struggling American families who deserve an immigration system that puts their needs first and that puts America first.
GARRETT: President Trump called for deep cuts in legal immigration endorsing a bill that prioritizes green cards for wealthier applicants who speak English and have sought after job skills. The bill would also limit so-called chain migration where family members gain entry to the U.S. through lawful green card holders.
TRUMP: It's not been fair to our people, to our citizens, to our workers.
GARRETT: The proposal would reduce legal immigration from one million annually now to 500,000 annually within a decade. The administration argues the current system drives down wages for working-class Americans. But critics say favoring highly skilled workers creates a shortage of low wage workers.
(...)
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By Curtis Houck
With Don Lemon taking some vacation, CNN Tonight has featured New Day co-host Chris Cuomo, so Wednesday’s show went as well as you’d expect with liberal propaganda, a full defense of Jim Acosta after being thrashed by Stephen Miller, and unchallenged fake news by April Ryan.
Let’s first take Cuomo’s first minute or so, because that in of itself could serve as a piece worthy of ridicule. The show started with a live shot of the Statue of Liberty with Cuomo declaring: “There she is, lady liberty. A symbol of America's benevolent invitation.”
“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free. But the new White House policy on immigrants calls that promise into doubt. Let's take into question of who exactly we are and what this country is about,” Cuomo continued.
Just like many of his comrades throughout the day, Cuomo acted as if the poem by Emma Lazarus sets the country’s immigration policies alongside the Constitution or any other law. And this is the same industry that sides with liberal judicial activists when it comes to the U.S. Constitution being an ever-evolving document. But a poem is rock solid?
Referring to the President, Cuomo added:
He proposes changing the signature promise of our country to welcome those in need by creating a merit-based system that would have kept people like me, my family and many of you from ever being here. When CNN's Jim Acosta put these concerns to White House senior policy adviser Stephen Miller, it got heated.
Once video replaying a significant portion of the debate ended, Cuomo seemed disgusted with Miller as he implored viewers like Acosta was riding high horse:
Let's just put the theater of the absurd to the side for a moment and get to the main point. The words, the poem was added later, Miller said. The words being the signature promise of this country from the poem The New Colossus by Emma Lazarus. Of course they were added later. The pedestal on which the words were placed came after the gift of the statue.
Cuomo must have been auditioning for a speechwriter position if his brother and Democratic New York Governor Andrew Cuomo runs for president as he proclaimed that the President’s plan “would brush aside America's greatest strength, the diversity of people who have sacrificed to come here with nothing except a passion of purpose to make better lives and to make this country great.”
“They're not just words added later. They are a solemn vow that was supposed to endure forever. So let's talk about what this policy could mean...You know, I got where you were going with this. Who are we? What is our definitional premise about who we want in this country,” Cuomo wondered to Acosta.
Acosta responded that it wasn’t exactly “a highly skilled performance, if I could borrow a term there from the president's immigration policy on the part of Stephen Miller.” Two words, Jim: Fake news.
When you’re granted airtime on an hourly basis to defend yourself while your colleagues state their support, you’ve lost the debate.
“It was very much attack the messenger and, you know, who would have thought that the Statue of Liberty doesn't mean what the Statue of Liberty means because a poem was attached to it later on and wasn't originally inscribed with those words. I think most Americans understand, Chris, what the Statue of Liberty is all about. It's odd to see the White House, the United States of America try to redefine what the Statue of Liberty means,” Acosta foolishly stated.
So, Acosta conceded that he didn’t have his facts right about the Statue of Liberty poem. But no matter! Acosta simply moved the goal posts on the debate, which is what the left always does when they’re losing, have lost an argument, or looking for more out of their adversaries.
Fake news was referenced at the top as something that transpired during CNN Tonightthanks to Ryan’s foolish claim about the level of decorum she had seen at a White House briefing room:
CUOMO: I saw the look on your face there, April. What was this about for you? Where are we in terms of the level of discourse between the free media and the White House?
APRIL RYAN: Well, the level of discourse today, it reached a new low when -- especially when he laid into Jim saying he was ignorant. I've never heard anything like that from a White House principal in that room.
Speaking of the word “ignorant,” a basic Google search would yield this result about Jay Carney using that word to refer to people critical of ObamaCare.
Here’s the story that now-Washington Examiner writer Becket Adams wrote on July 10, 2013 when he worked for The Blaze:
White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said Wednesday that critics of the Obama administration’s decision to delay the so-called “employer mandate” in the Affordable Care Act are being “willfully ignorant.”
Mr. Carney’s comments were made in reference to Republican criticism and Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) saying of the delay: “This was the law. How can they change the law?”
“People who suggest that there is anything unusual about the delaying of a deadline in the implementation of a complicated law are either sticking their heads in the sand are just willfully ignorant about past precedent,” Jay Carney said.
Whoops. For someone like Ryan who’s been in the White House press corps for decades, one would think she’d have more hindsight.
Cuomo eventually moved on to other topics (like the state of the West Wing under new chief of Staff John Kelly), but not before he gave Acosta and Ryan a brief pep talk: “Now, Jim Acosta, one of the things that you've got to love about you and April, you just #PressOn. Keep doing the job. Keep reporting. Keep getting it out there.”
Here’s the relevant portions of the transcript from August 2's CNN Tonight:
CNN Tonight
August 2, 2017
10:00 p.m. Eastern
CHRIS CUOMO: There she is, lady liberty. A symbol of America's benevolent invitation. Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free. But the new White House policy on immigrants calls that promise into doubt. Let's take into question of who exactly we are and what this country is about. This is CNN Tonight. I'm Chris Cuomo in for Don Lemon. Here's the main point. There's a new White House proposal that seeks to cut the flow of immigrants, legal immigrants in half but it is how our president wants to do that that is a concern. He proposes changing the signature promise of our country to welcome those in need by creating a merit-based system that would have kept people like me, my family and many of you from ever being here. When CNN's Jim Acosta put these concerns to White House senior policy adviser Stephen Miller, it got heated.
(....)
10:05 p.m. Eastern
CUOMO: Let's just put the theater of the absurd to the side for a moment and get to the main point. The words, the poem was added later, Miller said. The words being the signature promise of this country from the poem The New Colossus by Emma Lazarus. Of course they were added later. The pedestal on which the words were placed came after the gift of the statue. But that's not what Miller was really trying to brush aside. He was trying to brush aside their significance. This isn't about calling illegal immigration or bad hombres, as the president likes to say. This is about changing not just how many but who gets to come in legally. Restrictions that would brush aside America's greatest strength, the diversity of people who have sacrificed to come here with nothing except a passion of purpose to make better lives and to make this country great. They're not just words added later. They are a solemn vow that was supposed to endure forever. So let's talk about what this policy could mean. Let's bring in CNN's Jim Acosta now along with CNN political analyst April Ryan. That was kind of a bizarre exchange. You know, I got where you were going with this. Who are we? What is our definitional premise about who we want in this country?
JIM ACOSTA: Right.
CUOMO: And Miller wanted to dance. You know, talking about numbers and what you know and don't know. But at bottom, what do you think this policy is about for the White House?
ACOSTA: Well, I'm not sure it was a highly skilled performance, if I could borrow a term there from the president's immigration policy on the part of Stephen Miller. It was very much attack the messenger and, you know, who would have thought that the Statue of Liberty doesn't mean what the Statue of Liberty means because a poem was attached to it later on and wasn't originally inscribed with those words. I think most Americans understand, Chris, what the Statue of Liberty is all about. It's odd to see the White House, the United States of America try to redefine what the Statue of Liberty means.
(....)
10:10 p.m. Eastern
CUOMO: I saw the look on your face there, April. What was this about for you? Where are we in terms of the level of discourse between the free media and the White House?
APRIL RYAN: Well, the level of discourse today, it reached a new low when -- especially when he laid into Jim saying he was ignorant. I've never heard anything like that from a White House principal in that room.
(....)
10:12 p.m. Eastern
CUOMO: Now, Jim Acosta, one of the things that you've got to love about you and April, you just #PressOn. Keep doing the job. Keep reporting. Keep getting it out there.
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By Curtis Houck
On MSNBC Wednesday night, the Hardball Roundtable circled the wagons to defend CNN’s Jim Acosta after he got his clock cleaned by Stephen Miller on immigration. New York Times reporter Yamiche Alcindor led the way, treating the Statue of Liberty poem like a legally-binding document we have to abide by and blaming Ronald Reagan for supposedly pro-white pandering.
“So, Stephen Miller — today’s exchange was extraordinary, because Stephen Miller literally questioned whether or not the poem inscribed on the Statue of Liberty was something that was actually a mission of this country, whether or not we actually mean that we want to bring people’s poor and people’s weary,” Alcindor complained.
Oh, and what’s the Constitution then? What’s the immigration laws on the books compared to this poem? They’re all equal or something? Give me a break.
She also lamented that the Trump White House made the sinister determination that “we’re not going to try to even hold our tongues and say that we’re trying to be egalitarian or trying to be fair here.”
Politico’s Annie Karni wasn’t any less partisan, suggesting Trump supporters are so inept that fights with the media keep them happy:
No, but the fireworks in the briefing, the audience of this isn’t just Trump. It is an audience of a base that’s scared of immigrants and hates the media. And they see yelling with CNN and yelling with The New York Times and they think that it is going well. The show is the point.
Turns out, conservatives and Trump supporters enjoy plenty of things besides taking on the liberal media. Lower taxes, stopping MS-13, withdrawing from the Paris climate agreement, appointing conservative judges, and spurring economic growth are just a few of the things people not on the left enjoy.
“In the Left's America, Emma Lazarus' poem on the Statue of Liberty is to be read literally as law, but the Constitution is vague poetry,” conservative and Daily Wire editor-in-chief Ben Shapiro tweeted.
Shapiro’s point is excellent. For the left, the Constitution is seen as a living, breathing document, but this poem? No, no! That is and will remain impenetrable!
A few minutes later, Alcindor returned and blamed Ronald Reagan for starting the campaign by Republicans to engage in white identity politics:
[B]ut at the end of the day, his base is sticking with him....The Republican Party, going back to Reagan, was about this idea that you have to challenge whether or not white people are being in some ways discriminated against, whether or not trying to reset, trying to pass civil rights issues and trying to really go after civil rights and justices, whether or not that is somehow hurting middle- class white Americans who are watching Trump and voting for Trump and saying, we want to be taken care of. Some people really thought the country is going in a direction that’s leaving behind white people, essentially.
Here’s the relevant portion of the transcript from MSNBC’s Hardball on August 2:
MSNBC’s Hardball
August 2, 2017
7:34 p.m. Eastern
 YAMICHE ALCINDOR: One of the truest things that Stephen Miller said was that this is what people voted for and that this is what they were promising.
MATTHEWS: The red meat.
ALCINDOR: Exactly. So, Stephen Miller — today’s exchange was extraordinary, because Stephen Miller literally questioned whether or not the poem inscribed on the Statue of Liberty was something that was actually a mission of this country, whether or not we actually mean that we want to bring people’s poor and people’s weary. So, what they’re doing really is saying, look, we’re going to go back to our basics and we’re going to give you exactly what you said. And, by the way, we’re not going to try to even hold our tongues and say that we’re trying to be egalitarian or trying to be fair here.
MATTHEWS: Go back to the — it goes back to the beginning, Annie. Half this country spoke German, as well as English. German was a really big language. So, we weren’t all English speakers when we started.
ANNIE KARNI: No, but the fireworks in the briefing, the audience of this isn’t just Trump. It is an audience of a base that’s scared of immigrants and hates the media. And they see yelling with CNN and yelling with The New York Times and they think that it is going well. The show is the point.
MATTHEWS: By the way, Sabrina, I think he was playing to one audience, Mr. Trump. Trump loved that explosion of id. He just lost Scaramucci. He has got to figure that — fill that hole.
(....)
 7:36 p.m. Eastern
ALCINDOR: Yes, but there’s a lot of talk about approval ratings with Trump, but at the end of the day, his base is sticking with him. The people are saying, this is exactly the person that we want and these are exactly the policies. And I was talking to some experts today who said this is also not just Trump. The Republican Party, going back to Reagan, was about this idea that you have to challenge whether or not white people are being in some ways discriminated against, whether or not trying to reset, trying to pass civil rights issues and trying to really go after civil rights and justices, whether or not that is somehow hurting middle- class white Americans who are watching Trump and voting for Trump and saying, we want to be taken care of. Some people really thought the country is going in a direction that’s leaving behind white people, essentially.
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By Kevin Baker
Politico accused Stephen Miller in a new article of being a Soviet anti-Semite following his exchange with Jim Acosta on Wednesday. Entitled “The Ugly History of Stephen Miller’s ‘Cosmopolitan’ Epithet,” Jeff Greenfield goes on to explain how ‘cosmopolitan’ was originally a term used by Josef Stalin that served as an excuse “to purge the culture of dissident voices.” This, of course, leads him to caution readers to beware of the evil, nationalistic voices within the Trump administration seeking to stamp out the freedom-loving opposition to them. This accusation is particularly ironic given the fact that Stephen Miller is, in fact, Jewish.
Greenfield writes:
“So what is a “cosmopolitan”? It’s a cousin to “elitist,” but with a more sinister undertone. It’s a way of branding people or movements that are unmoored to the traditions and beliefs of a nation, and identify more with like-minded people regardless of their nationality. (In this sense, the revolutionary pamphleteer Thomas Paine might have been an early American cosmopolitan, when he declared: “The world is my country; all mankind are my brethren, and to do good is my religion.”). In the eyes of their foes, “cosmopolitans” tend to cluster in the universities, the arts and in urban centers, where familiarity with diversity makes for a high comfort level with “untraditional” ideas and lives.
For a nationalist, these are fighting words. Your country is your country; your fellow citizens are your brethren; and your country’s traditions—religious and otherwise— should be yours. A nation whose people—especially influential people—develop other ties undermine national strength, and must be repudiated.
One reason why “cosmopolitan” is an unnerving term is that it was the key to an attempt by Soviet dictator Josef Stalin to purge the culture of dissident voices. In a 1946 speech, he deplored works in which “the positive Soviet hero is derided and inferior before all things foreign and cosmopolitanism that we all fought against from the time of Lenin, characteristic of the political leftovers, is many times applauded.” It was part of a yearslong campaigned aimed at writers, theater critics, scientists and others who were connected with “bourgeois Western influences.” Not so incidentally, many of these “cosmopolitans” were Jewish, and official Soviet propaganda for a time devoted significant energy into “unmasking” the Jewish identities of writers who published under pseudonyms.”
So, Stephen Miller’s chastisement of Jim Acosta for not understanding past U.S. immigration policy and equating it with a century-old poem amounts to him being in the same camp as Stalin? The same Stalin who systematically murdered millions of Jews just like him? It’s insulting, frankly, how often members of the Trump administration are accused of being anti-Semitic despite President Trump being the first President to have a Jewish daughter, son-in-law, and grandchildren. The fact that men like Greenfield continue to do so showcases their intellectual dishonesty and complete disregard for facts while in the pursuit of their liberal agenda.
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By Kevin Baker
Jim Acosta’s increasingly infamous shootout on immigration with Stephen Miller on Wednesday drew criticism from many, even on the set of Morning Joe. John Podhoretz, editor of Commentary Magazine, offered a blistering statement of Acosta’s performance declaring, “I agree with him, but he's destroying his own argument with his comportment.” Scarborough acknowledged as much and tepidly offered the suggestion that, “maybe we shouldn't have TVs in the press room after all.” He further noted that Acosta’s criticism “went off the rails” in seeming to equate the Trump immigration policy to “something that you would read out of Mein Kampf or something.”
The full exchange went as follows:
JOE SCARBOROUGH: John Podhoretz on Twitter yesterday, I forget your exact tweet, but it was something like Jim Acosta is doing so horrifically today, that I can't believe I agree with him.
JOHN PODHORETZ: I agree with him, but he's destroying his own argument with his comportment.
SCARBOROUGH: What did you mean by that?
PODHORETZ: I mean, I'm a grandson of immigrants. I find it very hard to take a restrictionist policy because if my grandparents wouldn't have come in, they would have been murdered by the Nazis. It's discomforting to me, but having a reporter yammer at a white house official by quoting Emma Lazarus' poem at the base of the Statue of Liberty as though that's the basis for policy, something living in 1883 and we're living in 2017 and keeping going. That was part of it. It was obnoxious.
Miller is obnoxious as you just showed, which is him saying you're ignorant and stupid and foolish. That wasn't -- the moment that Acosta went into terrible territory was he was like lecturing Miller, quoting a poem that he doesn't know. He was reading it from his notebook as though he were -- as though this there were a debate between him and a public official as opposed to being a journalist who was trying to tease out the difficulties and problems with the proposal which would have been perfectly fine. If he'd asked him a substantive question about restrictions in English and how immigrants, many people-- studies show an immigrant can learn English in six months.
TIMOTHY CARNEY: Jim Acosta should meet someone from Jamaica. I mean I'm from New York. I know lots of people from Ghana, from foreign countries that speak English.
PODHORETZ: 1.5 billion people on Earth it is said, 1.5 billion speak English.
CARNEY: And they're not mostly in the UK.
SCARBOROUGH: Where things seemed to really melt down was when Jim Acosta talked. We're certainly not putting this on Jim Acosta. You can watch the clip and choose sides. Or just say as Tim said after, maybe we shouldn't have TVs in the press room after all. But then Jim Acosta used the language of it seems like your policies are trying to engineer racial and ethnic percentages, or something, it sure sounded like something that you would read out of Mein Kampf or something. I mean talking about, oh, it looks like you're engaged in racial engineering and ethnic engineering or something that we would have accused the Serbs of doing back in the early 1990s. At that point it went off the rails.
The fact that even Joe Scarborough has been forced to concede the sheer idiocy of Jim Acosta’s ridiculous tirade just goes on to show how awful it really was. Even among the media, Acosta seems to have begun being recognized as more of a hindrance than a help to the promotion of the liberal agenda. It remains to be seen, however, whether or not his bosses at CNN will move to do anything about it.
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By Nicholas Fondacaro
 MSNBC’s Chris Hayes invited former Vice President and climate alarmist Al Gore onto All In on Wednesday to promote his new climate change propaganda film. While on the show, Hayes invited Gore to hammer and smear the current White House. Gore went to an extremely dark place when he compared the administration was run to a bloody and brutal mass murder in the popular HBO series Game of Thrones.
“Last week somebody said it was like the Red Wedding in Game of Thrones, with people coming and going and I’m going to fire everybody, and it was really wild,” Gore chided, to Hayes’ amusement.
“But wait-- I want to stop you there. Do you watch that like everybody else does and just say, ‘What the heck is going on,’” a very giddy Hayes inquired. “You’re talking about Game of Thrones or the White House,” Gore jokingly asked, drawing the roaring laughter of Hayes and his studio crew.
What made Gore’s comparison, and Hayes’ joy, exceptionally grotesque was that the Red Wedding scene was a massive betrayal and a butchering of people. During the bloody massacre, Queen Talisa Stark, wife of Robb Stark the King in the North, was stabbed multiple times in the stomach with the intent to kill her and her unborn child.
And with a smile on his face, Hayes answered his guest, quipping: “Both, but the White House in this case.” “No, it’s deeply troubling. And for me, the most troubling part of it is that it serves as a set of constant distractions from the problems we should be addressing. Nothing’s getting done,” Gore responded as he began to tout the actions of Congress.
It was then Hayes’ turn to slam Trump, and Republicans in general, by noting a “connection between climate denialism and Trumpism.” In a rambling question to Gore, he asked:
But you know you have an entire movement and political party that rallied around a preposterous conspiracy theory which was that there was a coordinated conspiracy driven by multiple scientists and institutions around the globe to deceive people about the basic science of this matter and if you can believe that, it’s not surprising to me that you would produce a president like this. Do you feel like there’s a connection there?
According to Gore, “Donald Trump is the most extreme form of a trend that actually started earlier.” The “trend” he was speaking of was the sort of dumbing down of society that occurred “when television began to dominate the media space.” He then lamented that we used to make “better decisions than any other country.”
So not only does Al Gore think the White House is run by Lord Walder Frey (the architect of the Red Wedding), but he loathes those who put Trump in the White House. And during all of this, Hayes had no push back for his guest. He was just sitting there enthralled by Gore’s disparaging comments.
Transcript below:
MSNBC
All-In
August 2, 2017
8:53:24 PM Eastern
CHRIS HAYES: You were someone who is very associated in, I would say your public profile, with a certain approach to governance that might be called data driven, technocratic.
AL GORE: Reason based.
HAYES: Right. I just wonder, you were in an administration for eight years. You served in the United States Senate. You were the son of a United States Senator. You’ve been around governance. You’ve been around public service. What it is like to watch the way this White House functions? And from your perspective, there are a lot of people who watch and say I’ve never seen anything like this, you heard the phrase: “This is not normal.” You’re someone who has been around, you’ve been in these meetings. Do you feel the same way watching this White House function the way that it does?
GORE: Oh, yeah. I think in the process, the President has been isolating himself from the rest of the country. You see Republicans in the House and Senate now moving to separate themselves in increasing numbers from the dysfunction and distractions, constant distractions in the White House. Last week somebody said it was like the Red Wedding in Game of Thrones, with people coming and going and I’m going to fire everybody, and it was really wild. But for me--
HAYES: But wait-- I want to stop you there. Do you watch that like everybody else does and just say, “What the heck is going on?”
GORE: You’re talking about Game of Thrones or the White House?
[Laughter]
HAYES: Both, but the White House in this case.
GORE: Yeah, sure. No, it’s deeply troubling. And for me, the most troubling part of it is that it serves as a set of constant distractions from the problems we should be addressing. Nothing’s getting done. That’s why the congress is now moving on its own, or beginning to.
…
HAYES: I think there’s a connection between climate denialism and Trumpism in this respect: That people talk about Trump as being this sort of outlier of Republican Party or the conservative movement, and he is for many reasons he is, partly. But you know you have an entire movement and political party that rallied around a preposterous conspiracy theory which was that there was a coordinated conspiracy driven by multiple scientists and institutions around the globe to deceive people about the basic science of this matter and if you can believe that, it’s not surprising to me that you would produce a president like this. Do you feel like there’s a connection there?
GORE: Oh, yeah, absolutely. I think that Donald Trump is the most extreme form of a trend that actually started earlier.
…
I’ll tell you the break point in my observation, was when television began to dominate the media space.
HAYES: The worst, isn’t it?
GORE: Well… Your show is certainly one of the exceptions, Chris.
…
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By Clay Waters
Jason Horowitz, the New York Times’ most showily left-wing political reporter, made common cause with a piece making the rounds of Catholic intellectual circles singling out “ultraconservative” Trump-supporting conservatives as dangerous, in Thursday’s“From the Vatican, a Warning Shot for Hard-Line Catholics in the U.S.” The text box relayed: “An official journal says the U.S. church is too political.”
Horowitz uses that same “ultraconservative” terminology but loses the quotes:
Two close associates of Pope Francis have accused American Catholic ultraconservatives of making an alliance of “hate” with evangelical Christians to back President Trump, further alienating a group already out of the Vatican’s good graces.
The authors, writing in a Vatican-vetted journal, singled out Stephen K. Bannon, Mr. Trump’s chief strategist, as a “supporter of an apocalyptic geopolitics” that has stymied action against climate change and exploited fears of migrants and Muslims with calls for “walls and purifying deportations.”
The article warns that conservative American Catholics have strayed dangerously into the deepening political polarization in the United States. The writers even declare that the worldview of American evangelical and hard-line Catholics, which is based on a literal interpretation of the Bible, is “not too far apart’’ from jihadists.
Horowitz tilted toward support of that paranoid political premise, and provided an unbalanced selection of quotes
The article and the backlash to it -- accusations of anti-Americanism have been rife, and one prominent American prelate likened the authors to “useful idiots” -- have highlighted the widening distance between Francis and American Catholic conservatives.
Since the 2013 election of Pope Francis, conservatives have worried that he has given short shrift to the social issues that have animated them, among them abortion and same-sex marriage. They have sat through his warnings to steer clear of politics. They have watched warily as Francis has installed pastors in his image while sidelining conservative leaders.
....
Fans of the article said it made clear that the conservatives who ran the American church for decades were out of step with the new Catholic mainstream under Francis.
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The authors of the article argue that American evangelical and ultraconservative Catholics risk corrupting the Roman Catholic faith with an ideology intended to inject “religious influence in the political sphere.” They suggest that so-called values voters are using the banners of religious liberty and opposition to abortion to try to supplant secularism with a “theocratic type of state.”
....
Benjamin Harnwell, a Catholic traditionalist in Rome, fan of Mr. Bannon and confidant of Cardinal Burke’s, said the article’s authors were doing little more than “trolling Steve Bannon.” Mr. Bannon, a former altar boy who once articulated his worldview to a Vatican conference, wrote in a brief email that the pope’s associates “lit me up.”
For Horowitz as well as the authors of the article in La Civilta Cattolica, being inclusive meant shedding conservatives.
Personnel decisions in the Catholic hierarchy are crucial to Francis’ effort to make the church more inclusive, particularly in the United States.
American Catholic conservatives once unacquainted with being out of papal favor have stewed privately and expressed horror publicly on numerous right-wing Catholic blogs. They accuse Francis of wrecking the church and diluting its doctrine.
Liberal American Catholics, bruised by crackdowns under John Paul II and Benedict XVI, are less than sympathetic to conservative complaints and have felt emboldened by Francis. They are delighted with the pope’s promotion of figures like Cardinal Blase J. Cupich of Chicago, who has started a program against gun violence and opposed Republican health care proposals on the ground that they would strip coverage for the weak and poor....
Horowitz let in a little progressive contempt of outlying, enthusiastic newcomers to the faith.
Some progressive Catholics have even begun expressing a previously tacit resentment of the hard-right zeal of evangelical, Calvinist and Protestant converts to Catholicism, among them Newt Gingrich, the husband of Callista Gingrich, the new American ambassador to the Holy See.
“I am so tired of converts telling us that the pope is not Catholic,” Michael Sean Winters wrote last week in the newspaper National Catholic Reporter.
That deep suspicion of evangelical fundamentalism and the fear of politicization corroding the conservative hierarchy of the American Catholic church was laid bare by the article in La Civiltà Cattolica. The authors were the Rev. Antonio Spadaro, the journal’s editor, who is a confidant of Francis’; and Marcelo Figueroa, an Argentine Presbyterian minister who is a friend and longtime collaborator of the pope’s.
Horowitz quoted the essay’s use of “ultraconservatism,” a characterization that the reporter evidently approves of, while letting Spadaro’s left-wing reign:
Father Spadaro cited, by way of example, the fringe Catholic website Church Militant, which the essay described as openly in favor of political “ultraconservatism.” (A related site responded under the headline “Evil Editor of La Civiltà Cattolica Attacks Church Militant.”)
Father Spadaro also said it was important to explore the “apocalyptic narrative which inspires” Mr. Bannon, who has digested the works of often anti-Christian right-wing writers such as Julius Evola, who contend that people had drifted away from a primordial, heroic truth.
Times columnist Ross Douthat read the article and was not impressed:
Their essay is bad but important. Its seems to intend, reasonably enough, to warn against Catholic support for the darker tendencies in Trumpism -- the xenophobia and identity politics, the “stigmatization of enemies,” the crude view of Islam and a wider “panorama of threats,” the prosperity-gospel inflected worship of success.
But the authors’ understanding of American religion seems to start and end with Google searches and anti-evangelical tracts, and their intended attack on Trumpery expands and expands, conflating very different political and religious tendencies, indulging in paranoia about obscure theocratic Protestants and fringe Catholic websites, and ultimately critiquing every kind of American religious conservatism -- including the largely anti-political Benedict Option and the pro-life activism fulsomely supported by Francis’ papal predecessors -- as dangerously illiberal, “theopolitical,” Islamic State-esque, “Manichaean,” a return to the old integralism that the church no longer supports.
Douthat also saw hypocrisy in calling out only one side for politicization.
....the other bizarre thing about Spadaro and Figueroa’s broad brush: As the American Catholic writer Patrick Smith points out, by warning against a Catholicism that takes political sides or indulges in moralistic rhetoric or otherwise declaims on “who is right and who is wrong” in contemporary debates, the pope’s men are effectively condemning not only American conservative Catholics but also the pope’s own writings on poverty and environmentalism, his support for grass-roots “popular movements” in the developing world and his stress on the organic link between family, society, religion and the state.
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