CNNChrisCuomounloadsonJonStewart:‘He

CNN Chris Cuomo unloads on Jon Stewart: ‘He shouldn’t pretend’ to be a journalist

posted at 8:01 am on July 28, 2014 by Noah Rothman

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CNN’s New Day anchor Chris Cuomo was among the first major cable news network personalities to travel to a variety of European nations in the wake of the attack on Malaysia Airlines Flight 17. While reporting from Europe, Cuomo has filed a variety of provocative reports and secured important interviews including his recent exclusive with the self-proclaimed Prime Minister of the Donetsk People’s Republic, Alexander Borodai.

Cuomo’s reporting has received mostly plaudits and few critiques, but the CNN anchor does not take even mild critiques lying down.

One recent example of that kind of soft criticism recently came from Comedy Central host Jon Stewart. In an interview with outgoing Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI), Cuomo asked if he could “shoot down” the theory that Ukrainian forces were responsible for the attack on MH17. Stewart presented that clip without commentary as one of his program’s closing “Moment of Zen” segments:

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The Washington Post’s Erik Wemple recently asked Cuomo for his take on that moment. The CNN anchor’s statement was, by any objective assessment, disproportionate relative to the offense to which he was responding:

“I made a mistake,” says Cuomo. “In terms of who reacted to it and how, it’s strictly a case of consider the source.” Stewart is a comedian who indulges in takedowns of the mainstream media, and bloggers “are what they are — they traffic in snark and negativity,” says Cuomo. Later in the chat, Cuomo circled back to that comedian: “If it seems like I’m being disrespectful of Jon Stewart, it’s only because I am. He’s funny but he doesn’t do the job we do and he shouldn’t pretend he does.”

That is a fair critique of Stewart who regularly blurs the line between comedian and news presenter, but it does not seem deserved in this instance when the Comedy Central host added no commentary to accompany this clip.

Cuomo is developing a bit of a reputation for not letting criticisms roll off his back. After a contentious recent interview with Kremlin-funded RT personality, Cuomo’s twitter account was bombarded by pro-Russian accounts accusing him of downplaying the non-existent evidence that Ukraine was responsible for the attack.

Cuomo told one Twitter user that he had crossed a line when he appeared to accuse Ukraine of exploiting those children who were killed in that attack for their propaganda value. “[I]f u r mocking dead kids, I won’t just block you, I will find you,” Cuomo ominously warned the Twitter user.

He later suggested that remark was out of line and requested another user “forgive” him.

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Tags: Chris Cuomo, Jon Stewart, Russia, Ukraine

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Hillary’spollyannaforeignpolicy postedat9:21

Hillary’s pollyanna foreign policy

posted at 9:21 am on July 18, 2014 by Jazz Shaw

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Each new crisis around the world, including the scab scraping problems in Ukraine following this week’s plane downing, seem to demonstrate that foreign policy will be a much bigger factor in the next presidential election than I’d once imagined. Americans will still focus on a host of domestic issues, but it’s impossible to ignore the deteriorating state of affairs around the globe and America’s place on that larger stage. This made it all the more curious to examine Hillary Clinton’s statements about American foreign policy given on, of all places, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Setting jokes aside for a moment, Stewart asked Hillary, what is our foreign policy anymore? Her answer was remarkable for its lack of depth.

What I found when I became secretary of state is that so many people in the world—especially young people—they had no memory of the United States liberating Europe and Asia, beating the Nazis, fighting the Cold War and winning, that was just ancient history. They didn’t know the sacrifices that we had made and the values that motivated us to do it. We have not been telling our story very well. We do have a great story. We are not perfect by any means, but we have a great story about human freedom, human rights, human opportunity, and let’s get back to telling it, to ourselves first and foremost, and believing it about ourselves and then taking that around the world. That’s what we should be standing for.

Peter Beinart at The Atlantic first brought this to my attention, and he found the former Secretary of State’s response lacking, though for different reasons than I did.

As a vision for America’s relations with the world, this isn’t just unconvincing. It’s downright disturbing. It’s true that young people overseas don’t remember the Cold War. But even if they did, they still wouldn’t be inspired by America’s “great story about [promoting] human freedom, human rights, human opportunity.” That’s because in the developing world—where most of humanity lives—barely anyone believes that American foreign policy during the Cold War actually promoted those things. What they mostly remember is that in anticommunism’s name, from Pakistan to Guatemala to Iran to Congo, America funded dictators and fueled civil wars.

I’m not going to debate Beinart as to how people in various parts of the world view the United States and our history of foreign involvement. There are as many answers to that question as there are nations. But this pollyannaish view that our major shortcoming is our failure to tell our story well enough just smacks of the Obama Doctrine. Everybody will like us if we just sufficiently explain why we’re so darned likeable!

The world is what it is, and there are, sadly, as many evil actors out there as there are noble people deserving of our help. If you want to lead this nation, what I believe we are looking for is someone who can articulate precisely what our goals are, where are resources can best be put to use and where we need to keep a hands off position. A real leader should be able to articulate how we are defining who our friends are and who we must be ready to move against, as well as the circumstances under which such action would be undertaken. And most importantly – in terms of communications – they will need to able to let the rest of world, friend and foe alike, know what they can expect from us both as ally and enemy, and be ready to deliver on those expectations.

Hillary Clinton’s answer was a clear demonstration of the opposite. This is not an advertising campaign to be managed by a smooth spokesperson. We’re talking about the responsibilities of the sole remaining superpower on the planet and how those challenges will be met. Home team cheerleading is not any sort of basis for foreign policy.

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Tags: foreign policy, Hillary Clinton, Jon Stewart, The Daily Show

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HillaryClinton’scoyflirtationwitha2016run

Hillary Clinton’s coy flirtation with a 2016 run is getting old

posted at 12:01 pm on July 16, 2014 by Noah Rothman

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“She’s setting herself up for the biggest anticlimax announcement ever,” CNN anchor Chris Cuomo observed on Wednesday of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s endless, self-aggrandizing book tour cum presidential campaign roll-out. In the end, Cuomo’s prediction may prove to have been an understatement.

Now in week seven of Clinton’s journey of self-actualization, after a rocky commencement from which she seems to have recovered, the former secretary saved her most fawning interlocutor for what everyone must hope is last.

In a Tuesday evening appearance on The Daily Show, Jon Stewart made sure that his line of questioning of Clinton implied that he was in on the joke. What’s the joke, you ask? That no one is even remotely interested in Clinton’s book. All they want to hear is her finally pulling the trigger on a presidential campaign.

Stewart accurately observed about the book Hard Choices, “no one cares.”

“They just want to know if you’re running for president,” he added with equal candor.

What followed was an excessively coy display of false modesty in Clinton’s responses to questions aimed eliciting the former secretary’s thoughts on the he next career move. Questions like “Do you have a favorite shape for that home office?” Or, “Would you like that office to have corners or not to have corners?”

The whooping automatons in the audience, who are really just happy to be there, responded to all of Clinton’s toying responses with hysterical enthusiasm, but it’s hard to believe that the viewers at home received this performance in the same way. Clinton’s act has grown old fast.

In committing to this book tour, Clinton made the calculation that her popularity among Democrats, the weakness of the 2016 field of possible Democratic alternative candidates, and her unique stature as a figure in American politics for more than two decades would allow her to forget the lessons of Rudy Giuliani’s campaign.

Giuliani, you’ll recall, began to campaign for the 2008 presidential race in earnest in late 2006. By the time the first primary ballots were cast, enthusiasm for Giuliani was tapped. The concerns of GOP primary voters about the former mayor’s positions on a variety of issues, litigated ad nauseam on cable news and in print for months before the candidates hit the first debate stage, were only confirmed when Giuliani was challenged on them by his fellow cast of 2008 aspirants.

And just 30 days after the first caucus ballots of the 2008 race were cast, after spending nearly 18 months at the top of the field of GOP candidates in the public polling, Giuliani was knocked out of the race.

Clinton has chosen to ignore that lesson. She has decided that it is one which does not apply to her, and she may be correct. Then why the artificial shyness? This is not the 19th Century when appearing outwardly ambitious was seen as a ghastly impropriety, and a prospective presidential candidate had to lobby behind the scenes for the job, only to feign weary and burdened capitulation when “drafted” at the nominating convention. No one would begrudge Clinton an announcement now. In fact, it might be considered an act of authenticity – a trait the Clintons are often seen as lacking.

“Giuliani did not collapse under the weight of a failed strategy,” wrote the former mayor’s pollster Frank Luntz in a postmortem in the Los Angeles Times. “It’s that this incredible communicator had no theme. No focus. No discipline. And no campaign team with the heart and guts to fight to keep the campaign message on track within a chaotic political environment.”

Clinton’s theme thus far for her campaign, to the extent that she has one, is that she is a woman and that the presidency is her due. The most interesting thing about her candidacy is that she has not yet announced it. That is a dangerous place to be for a candidate. What happens after she does?

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Tags: Hillary Clinton, Jon Stewart, Rudy Giuliani

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JayCarney:ThetoughestinterviewObamahadin

Jay Carney: The toughest interview Obama had in 2012 was with … Jon Stewart

posted at 7:21 pm on April 17, 2014 by Allahpundit

Via RCP, think of it. In an election year, by his press secretary’s own admission, the most hard-hitting interview of a sitting president of the United States was conducted by a guy whose show used to follow a show about puppets making crank calls. I wonder if Carney intended this as a giant middle finger to the White House press corps or it just ended up that way while he was focused on pushing his real agenda, namely, denying seasoned reporters more access to Obama. The White House is already spare with that, preferring to do sitdowns with Zach Galifianakis and “Pimp With a Limp” because those people can give them a pipeline to key constituencies in a way that, say, Jake Tapper or Sharyl Attkisson can’t. The more the White House can convince the public that comedians and entertainers are fair substitutes for real reporters, the more they can justify bypassing those reporters and sticking to comedians and entertainers — nearly all of whom, let’s face it, are Obama sympathizers.

But then, so are most of the “impartial” newsmen who’ve interviewed him so let’s not complain too much. Ask yourself: When was the last time you saw a professional journalist get something really interesting out of O during a conversation? Why wouldn’t Stewart, whose job requires him to follow the news closely every day, ask questions that are as challenging as the average reporter’s? To believe otherwise is to agree, implicitly, with the media’s pretense that what it does requires an exalted skill that’s beyond the layman’s grasp. Stewart, frankly, enjoys a freedom that most big-media reporters don’t — he can afford to irritate the White House with tough questions because he knows they covet his young audience and they’re naturally loath to antagonize a guy who gets paid to goof on people in power. (Mostly conservative people in power, but not always.) If you’re Joe Schmo from Reuters, embarrassing O in a tough interview might cost you or your agency your sources in the White House. If you’re Jon Stewart, you can relax knowing that Joe Biden or Michelle Obama or whoever will be back later this year to make the GOTV pitch to twentysomethings on your show. Same goes, say, for Spanish-language media — which is far deeper in the tank for Obama than Stewart is. As American media fragments, politicians will find they get more electoral bang for their buck in dealing with key niche providers than in dealing with mass media. This is one byproduct of that.

Tags: daily show, interview, Jay Carney, Jon Stewart, Major Garrett, tough

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Video:StewartshredsObama’sdonorpicksforambassadorships

Video: Stewart shreds Obama’s donor picks for ambassadorships

posted at 5:21 pm on February 13, 2014 by Erika Johnsen

As Jay Carney so eloquently put it during yesterday’s press briefing in regards to the several well-heeled Democratic donors the president has lately picked out for ambassadorship positions, “being a donor does not get you a job in this administration, nor does it preclude you from getting one.” …Yes, we’d noticed, but as Jon Stewart put it on his show last night, “is there a rule ambassadors can’t have set foot in the countries they are going to ambassador?”

Historically, there is a pretty rich tradition of presidents picking well-connected and well-monied friends and donors who fancy a career change for the most glamorous ambassadorships, and indeed, for a while at least, it wasn’t necessarily the worst system ever created. The idea was that certain countries might actually prefer someone who has the president’s direct ear rather than a career diplomat — but does President Obama really even know these guys in a useful way? The record fundraising level of his reelection campaign created quite the jockeying for position among his many mega-donors, and it definitely looks like the system has gotten more shady and transactional than ever under his leadership. By a long shot.

Addendum: Seriously, the whole thing is just getting painful. Go read this facepalm-worthy piece from Jeffrey Goldberg over at Bloomberg, but here’s an excerpt, emphases mine:

…I suspect that McCain decided to meet the press in Budapest mainly so that the delegation would be asked questions about a woman named Colleen Bell.

Who is Colleen Bell? Bell is a soap opera producer — “The Bold and the Beautiful” is her masterwork — who was nominated by Barack Obama’s administration to serve as U.S. ambassador to Hungary. Bell, one of Obama’s larger fundraising “bundlers,” bought this nomination with more than $500,000 of mostly other people’s money.

At her confirmation hearing last month, McCain asked Bell an exceedingly simple question: “What are our strategic interests in Hungary?”

She gave the following imperishable answer: “Well, we have our strategic interests, in terms of what are our key priorities in Hungary, I think our key priorities are to improve upon, as I mentioned, the security relationship and also the law enforcement and to promote business opportunities, increase trade– ”

McCain interrupted her: “I’d like to ask again what our strategic interests in Hungary are.”

Tags: ambassador, Barack Obama, diplomacy, donors, entertainment, foreign policy, Jon Stewart, Obama administration

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TheRepublicanPartywouldliketothank…

The Republican Party would like to thank … Jon Stewart?

posted at 2:01 pm on February 9, 2014 by Jazz Shaw

Each week, the GOP provides a set of remarks in response to (or at least in parallel with) the President’s Saturday commentary. They rotate though different speakers from week to week, and long time friend of Hot Air, Andrew Malcolm provides the transcripts at Investor’s Business Daily. This week’s speaker was Senator Richard Burr (R – NC) and he touched on an important topic… the care of returning wounded veterans and their families.

Thankfully, over the past five years, Congress has authorized over $600 billion to VA in robust and sustained increases of government funding for veterans’ programs designed to be part of a more responsive federal support for veterans outreach and care.

This unprecedented level of support has been especially evident in the area of veterans’ benefits, specifically disability payments. The surge in financial support has not been matched with an equivalent surge in responsiveness from the Veterans’ Administration.

The subject of the horrendous backlog in processing veterans’ claims was a damning one for the Obama administration, but as Senator Burr pointed out, it’s finally starting to get better. That’s the point where he thanked a rather unexpected actor in this story.

The now infamous backlog of claims reached a point of national embarrassment last year when a series of biting monologues from comedian Jon Stewart finally elevated the problem to the President’s desk and spurred his VA Secretary into action. It was only then we began seeing some signs of incremental progress.

When it takes a comedian to garner a response from our government, we are in bad shape. While the backlog has begun to decline, we still have nearly 700,000 veterans and their families waiting for answers.

That was fairly generous of Burr, particularly given the treatment which the GOP and conservatism in general usually receive from Stewart. (He has some moments where he takes down liberals and Democrats as well, but that tends to just be some filler material to say, look how fair and balanced I am!) But I saw this series of bits that he did – not going to dig up the clips here today – and he deserves the nod. He interviewed a number of veterans on a panel discussion where they talked about the issues they encountered and sent his “reporters” to DC to talk to the workers trying to process all of the paper forms in an antiquated system.

It apparently lit a fire under a few backsides at the VA and the processing cycle seems to have sped up a bit. (Though still not enough.) Read the Senator’s remarks in full and look into this VA issue. Our veterans deserve better, and it’s good that the GOP is using their microphone to keep attention on the subject. And, yes… my thanks go out to Jon Stewart also.

Tags: Jon Stewart, Republican Party, The Daily Show, veterans

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Pelosi:ObamaCareincompetence“notmyresponsibility” posted

Pelosi: ObamaCare incompetence “not my responsibility”

posted at 10:01 am on January 31, 2014 by Ed Morrissey

This appearance by Nancy Pelosi on The Daily Show starts to run off the rails almost immediately. Jon Stewart starts off by asking Pelosi about why people talk about politics rather than policy, to which Pelosi answers by … complaining about Republicans. Stewart doesn’t take the bait, though, and starts pressing Pelosi for answers as to why big-government politicians can’t produce competent government — and gets stunned by her admission that she can’t explain why ObamaCare failed:

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Stewart said that Democrats are then required to make a stronger case. He said that Democratic governance now appears “chaotic” and their execution of legislation appears to “lack efficiency.” When Pelosi again blamed Republicans for this condition, Stewart became even more agitated.

When he asked why it was so difficult to get a company to execute the Affordable Care Act’s insurance exchange website “competently,” Pelosi replied, “I don’t know.”

“What do you mean you don’t know? How do you not know?” Stewart asked laughing.

To which Nancy Pelosi responded: “It’s not my responsibility.” Hmmm. Who ran the House when the ObamaCare bill passed, with only votes from her party? Who claimed at the time that we couldn’t know how awesome this bill would be until it passed, because you couldn’t expect politicians to actually read a 2800-page bill before they voted on it? Given that this passed entirely on votes from her own party, and with some procedural chicanery thrown in for good measure, does she feel no responsibility at all for the results of this legislation she herself championed?

That’s a pretty good answer to Stewart’s broader point. He cites the ongoing problems at the VA as evidence that there is “clearly something systemic” in government incompetence:

“Do we have a foundational problem? Is there a corruption in the system that needs to be addressed?” Stewart asked. Pelosi went on to detail the issues with bureaucracy and the failure of departments to communicate with each other. “Okay, do something about it,” Pelosi said.

“I was actually going to say that to you,” Stewart interjected.

The systemic problem is the fact that big-government regimes like ObamaCare won’t work because central planning of large economies never work, for reasons laid out by economist F. A. Hayek decades ago in The Road to Serfdom. History has only proven Hayek correct over and over again, while utopians keep insisting that the problem is just the people involved in its implementation. And Hayek predicts why incompetents and bullies end up at the top of those systems, too. Maybe Stewart should read it. It’s far too late for Pelosi.

Tags: big government, incompetence, Jon Stewart, Nancy Pelosi, ObamaCare

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Stewart:Say,isObamainanyloopsat

Stewart: Say, is Obama in any loops at all?

posted at 4:01 pm on October 29, 2013 by Ed Morrissey

Does he mean President Ida Know? Jon Stewart skewered Barack Obama personally last night for the White House’s threadbare refrain that the President has no knowledge of what happens in his own administration.  Stewart picks up on the obvious question about the surveillance of other world leaders, which is that we’re expected to believe that Obama never once asked, “Say, where did you get that intel?”   That led to a funny exchange with Jessica Williams, in which she reported that Obama’s staff doesn’t tell him anything because he’s a crier … and worse than John Boehner:

Jon Stewart‘s been going after Obamacare a lot lately, but on Monday night’s Daily Show, he targetedPresident Obama in particular for appearing to be so out of the loop on so many issues, “there appear to be very few loops he’s in.”

Stewart noted how Obama was apparently unaware of the issues with the Obamacare website, comparing it to “if the Charmin bear just found out what people actually do with this toilet paper.”

But even stranger to Stewart was how Obama’s seemingly out of the loop on NSA surveillance, mockingly asking “Does the president believe in surveillance fairies?” and obliquely referencing the “total ignorance of what the administration is doing.”

Stewart opened the show with an update on the improvements at Healthcare.gov, especially the upgrade in the site’s graphics.  At least it’s a little more honest:

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Tags: Barack Obama, incompetence, Jon Stewart, NSA, ObamaCare, surveillance

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Video:JonStewartandthe“SpinningBeachballof

Video: Jon Stewart and the “Spinning Beachball of Health Care”

posted at 12:01 pm on October 22, 2013 by Ed Morrissey

Two weeks ago, Jon Stewart ripped Kathleen Sebelius for lying to him about the ObamaCare rollout during her segment on the Daily Show.  Last night, Stewart pulled no punches in going after the top banana in a ten-minute extended rant over the unfolding disaster.  After playing a montage of Barack Obama claims from yesterday’s Rose Garden pep rally, Stewart quipped, “Ron Popeil kept on selling!” Be sure to stick around to the end, too, for a riff on the age of the underlying software in the system:

Other than a fifteen-second shot at the GOP over post-shutdown polling, there isn’t a hint of a “pox upon both houses” approach from Stewart.  Obama and his fellow Democrats own this debacle entirely, and Stewart doesn’t let up for the entire segment; if anything, he focuses mostly on Obama and his attempts to spin failure into success.

Ron Fournier wonders whether Obama risks losing millenials in this disaster, with their cultural icons expressing more and more anger over the incompetence and dishonesty from the administration:

And two weeks ago, it was Stewart again whom conservative media hosts, pundits, and politicians alike cited after his interview with Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. There, Stewart asked several difficult questions of the administration official leading the health care rollout, including why a one-year delay was granted for some businesses and not for individuals. Sebelius walked around many of the questions, and conservatives jumped on it. …

But with Stewart’s younger audience—a Pew poll in September 2012 found that 39 percent of The Daily Show‘s viewers are under 30—this continued badgering could be problematic for the president. That same demographic, Americans ages 18-29, were split on how well the health care exchanges were working online—37 percent both saying it went well and went poorly, according to a new Pew poll.

And the very people whom the Obama administration needs to sign up for health care exchanges are young, healthy people.

The bigger problem among millenials, at least those over 26 years of age, will be when the exchanges finally work right — and they get the ridiculous bills for comprehensive health insurance that few actually need and which won’t cover the first several thousands of dollars of costs anyway.  In the long run, ridicule from Stewart will be a minor irritant.  The economics of ObamaCare and its massive wealth transfer from young, healthy adults to middle-aged and wealthier Americans will become apparent, and an entire generation will realize they’ve been had. Even Ron Popeil couldn’t fix that problem.

Tags: Barack Obama, exchanges, Jon Stewart, millenials, ObamaCare

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