Typical performance by Huckabee, who has regularly made offensive comments about women over the past decade. I seem to recall his “Uncle Sugar” bit from a couple of years back…

The more interesting information here is that Huckabee has, as predicted, wormed his way back onto the payroll at Fox News. I have a feeling they’ll re-establish his show by the fall. I also have a feeling there was a handshake agreement to do this when Huckabee amiably left Fox to pursue his doomed campaign. This is a very smart move by Huckabee. He knows what Trump’s chances are this fall, and going back to Fox News means he has a guaranteed paycheck and platform for the next four years.

Something tells me Ted Cruz was gritting his teeth when he found out. It’s no secret that the two men have issues with each other, or that Huckabee would want to block Cruz from taking his perch at Fox. This means that Cruz will need to find a different media outlet for his Huckabee-styled show once he’s out of the Senate. Looks like he’ll wind up at Glenn Beck’s outlet, assuming that it’s still operating in 2018.

I must first say thank you to Ellen. And I must acknowledge she did a fair amount of work herself on this one. I personally thought it was significant enough that she should either share or have the ownership of the original post.

As for Ramsay, I’m honestly confused by the tone of his last posts. For someone who claims legal expertise, he seems to not understand how libel works and thinks that pointing out that reality must be some kind of threat rather than a statement of law. But no matter.

The record is thankfully preserved as to what this thread intended, and how various individuals such as Ramsey attempted to hijack it. It is regrettable that he had nothing other than what sounds like angry rants to offer, once his arguments had been fully rebutted. I do appreciate that he acknowledged that he had learned something here.

One has to wonder how Fox News will spin the “too close to call” idea in the morning – considering that Clinton was actually nearly 16 points ahead. Once again, Fox News has been badly embarrassed. Will they try to call next Tuesday the same way…?

I doubt that the majority will actually sit on their hands. The most extreme ones will, but they’re never a large number. Most of Bernie’s people will switch to Clinton at his request.

It’s likely that some of his supporters wouldn’t have voted had he not been a candidate now, but I don’t know that they’ll stay out of the situation once involved in it. Some probably. And some will vote Green.

I’ve just been fascinated how far Trump has polarized the Republican voters. I’m more convinced that Cruz supporters will never vote for Trump than I am that Bernie voters will never vote for Clinton.

To mj -

Ellen is correct. My original post noted that Jesse Watters and Megyn Kelly’s shows on the same night regarding Trump’s numbers would appear to have happened on different planets. The national numbers for Trump when put up against Clinton have been sobering for the GOP. Watters’ solution was inventive, to say the least.

I just became extremely irritated after watching Tarlov repeatedly play into Watters’ obvious plan. I would have preferred to see her make the point that he was offering a false premise that does not reflect what’s actually happening.

The situation is going to be a lot clearer after next Tuesday. And even more so after the following Tuesday.

Wallace admitted on Jesse Watters horror show last night that he absolutely went for the right wing talking points at every opportunity. He tried to get President Obama to attack Clinton, specifically in reference to the emails. The obvious point of the interview was to subject Obama to as many nonsensical right wing red meat tosses as Wallace could fit within a 30 minute window for his interview.

I’m tending to agree with Truman and Joe here.

I don’t doubt that Kelly has not enjoyed being a target of Trump’s wrath, and I don’t doubt that it has made her uncomfortable at times. On the other hand, Ellen correctly notes that Kelly’s vicious attacks on other people are infamous. I would also include her nonsensical obsession with the allegations about the Black Panthers at the polling station and her outrageous treatment of Kirsten Powers at that time.

If Kelly truly was feeling sadness about the state of politics in our country, and about how Fox News has fostered such meanness and closed-mindedness, we’d see a difference in her coverage. We haven’t. She’s just as calculating now as she was before. She’s certainly not appealing for fairness in treatment of Democrats on her program. I would also argue that she’s had issues with right wing attacks on her before – I remember her going after Erick Erickson and Lou Dobbs on the air on one occasion and going after Mike Gallagher on the air on another. But the thing that sent her into orbit wasn’t that what these guys had said was intrinsically or morally wrong – it was because she saw their comments as attacking HER. And in the case of Trump, he’s been absolutely attacking her in the most personal ways possible.

It seems to me that Kelly is less concerned about the state of the country and our culture and more concerned about the fact that Trump is being mean to her and her own colleagues at Fox News aren’t all standing up for her. Ailes has been very careful to do so, but Kelly appears to be angry with O’Reilly’s failure to do so. I’d be curious if we ever see any on-air fall out of that, to be honest.

I also note that as a consequence of Kelly’s anger toward Trump, she’s been more open to showing the actual numbers concerning his campaign. There was an astonishing moment last week where she had Larry Sabato on and proceeded to completely demolish any case for Trump winning a general election against Clinton. (Sabato currently shows Clinton with a 150 Electoral College lead over Trump – which would spell a landslide against him.) Kelly made sure to buttress that case with leading questions to Sabato so they could dismiss the notion that “more Republicans are energized and enthusiastic for Trump than Dems are enthusiastic for Clinton”. (Sabato admitted that Trump’s appeal is mostly limited to angry straight white males, and countered the talking point with the reminder that Trump was also energizing votes AGAINST him by every other voting group.) By the end of Kelly’s segment with Sabato, there didn’t look like even a shred of optimism about the results of a Trump/Clinton matchup.

Past Kelly’s concerns about people being unfriendly to her, it frankly makes sense that she’s looking to have an even cushier position at Fox News with her renegotiation next year. She’s going to tout her numbers and her fame as part of the discussions, essentially telling Ailes he needs to up her deal. I don’t see Ailes giving her O’Reilly’s slot, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see her get a significant raise. Not more than O’Reilly, of course, but she may get close. All the rest of the discussion by her with this interview is just to give her cover in the event the discussions don’t give her the deal she wants. I truly feel for her that she wants to spend time with her kids – but let’s be honest – she’s not working a 12 hour day, and even she admits that Ailes has always been more than accommodating to her. The reality is that she’ll always make time for her kids, and she’ll also be getting a better deal from Fox News next year as a result. I honestly don’t see her trying to get an anchor position at CNN, and MSNBC will never take her. No standard network will take her either – the problem with Fox News is that it taints anyone who works there – particularly anyone who has repeatedly demonstrated as much extreme partisanship as she has.

Hannity’s behavior here was vicious. I note that it followed a horrifying discussion with Newt Gingrich wherein Gingrich referred to President Obama as our first “anti-American President” without any challenge or discussion.

With Ramos, Hannity offered a sneering disrespect he would never have demonstrated with someone like Gingrich, repeatedly yelling at Ramos “I don’t need to be lectured by you!” and interrupting him before he could complete a sentence.

I note that Hannity deliberately ignored Ramos’ appropriate question about how Hannity could fail to address Donald Trump’s offensive comments about women in general and Megyn Kelly in specific.

I would offer that there’s a clear reason why Hannity is so angry with Jorge Ramos, and why his tantrum this evening had such a particular panic flavor to it. The right wing knows that Donald Trump is unlikely to carry any voter base other than angry white straight men. The right wing knows that one of the major reasons that Mitt Romney was humiliated in 2012 was because he couldn’t get Latino voters to choose him in the ballot box. So one of their goals has been to get more Latino/Hispanic/Chicano voters to go for a GOP candidate. Except that they’ve never figured out that insulting this group will not convince them to vote for you. So it must be Jorge Ramos’ fault that Donald Trump has repeatedly insulted non-white voters. Sure, that must be it.

One can only imagine what the fall campaign is going to be like. Endless name calling at Hillary and Bill Clinton. Endless shouts about how nobody is being fair to him. Endless brays from the GOP about what will happen if they lose the Senate, etc. Who knew that we would turn Presidential politics into a crass reality show?

At this point, Hillary Clinton is somewhere north of 350 delegates ahead of Sanders, and that’s without getting into the superdelegates. Mathematically, it’s impossible for him to catch up. He would have to shut her completely out in multiple contests just to make up the deficit, and then continue that trend in order to pull ahead. He no longer has the luxury of trading baskets, as it were.

Which brings us to the situation we pretty much knew was coming – Hillary Clinton will be the nominee for the Democrats and it now appears pretty certain that Donald Trump will be the nominee for the GOP, whether they want him or not.

I would prepare for an extremely nasty fall campaign.

There’s a part of me that would love to see what would happen if Clinton named Kasich as her VP. That would bring in all the sane GOP voters to join with the Dem voters…

And I’m still hoping against hope that she’ll appoint Barack Obama to the Supreme Court as a way of teaching the GOP obstructionists in the Senate the lesson they so clearly need.

This is really getting childish now.

It’s been fairly clear that Trump has been fanning the flames of his supporters, encouraging them to act out and clearly approving of their angrier instincts. He does not get to just hide behind crocodile tears after he gets called out for his behavior.

And he does not get to play the “I’m rubber and you’re glue” game when he is properly held accountable for his terrible behavior. If he doesn’t want to be chastised for encouraging violence, then perhaps he should stop doing so. This really isn’t that hard to figure out.

Here we go again with the right wing trying to completely avoid responsibility for this stuff. It’s complete nonsense but Fox News and right wing radio are desperately trying to get viewers to buy that this situation is not what we can clearly see in front of us.

Again, I have to say I’m getting sick of hearing right wingers lying to cover up the misdeeds of people with whom they agree.

The fact is, we can repeatedly see video of protestors being pushed, punched, attacked and threatened in a hateful manner by Donald Trump supporters at his events. This is not just a matter of a protestor being removed from an event, or being told to be quiet. This is a situation where protestors are physically attacked and threatened and Trump’s fans don’t seem to think there’s any problem with it. Because, you know, they were asking for it, right? Because Trump says they started it. Because Trump now says that the protestors are the ones being violent – even though the video plainly shows the opposite. But who do you believe – Donald Trump or your lying eyes? And now we have Rush Limbaugh just this morning sticking up for the guy punching the protestor in this video because, hey, he was an elderly guy who just couldn’t take it any more – you know, all the awful liberal crap and all that, so why shouldn’t he punch this guy? It’s frankly sickening to hear people justify violence, particularly when they do it in such a gleeful and mean-spirited fashion. (And this isn’t the first time we’ve gone through this – one right wing friend of mine was openly happy to see Chicago cops beat the crap out of protestors back in the day – he hated them anyway and loved seeing them get their heads kicked in.)

Let’s call this what it is and be honest about it: It’s hate speech, racism and hate violence. Donald Trump encourages it because it fires up his fan base. His fans love that Trump lets them get away with it – they can let their inner racist fly and nobody tells them no. And right wing media looks for excuses to not call this what it really is. Yes, Kelly noted that Trump needs to “do better”. Yes, Stirewalt correctly noted that Trump is responsible for fanning these flames. But where is the outrage? Where is the counter to Bennett or Limbaugh saying that the violence is understandable because these people are just so angry these days? Where’s the challenge that says – why are they so angry? Is it because they’ve been hearing a nonstop diet of vicious attacks over the past 8 years? Is it because they never wanted to have a black President in the first place? Is it because they believe every ridiculous thing that Limbaugh spouts on his show or Hannity or O’Reilly scream on theirs?

This is yet another example of the negative impact that both Fox News and right wing radio have had on our culture and on our politics. For 20 years, Fox News has actively practiced the encouragement of hate speech on its airwaves. For 30 years, Rush Limbaugh has done the same on his radio show, once he realized it was a shtick that could make him wealthy. For decades, they have demonized anyone with whom they disagreed, sometimes in nakedly racist terms. For decades, they’ve been telling their listeners and viewers that the non-right wing guy in the room isn’t just a person with another opinion. They’ve been feeding the notion that this other person is EVIL and is coming to take your stuff away from you. Fox News and right wing radio have actively led the movement away from discussion, compromise and negotiation. They’ve led the movement toward denial, refusal and obstruction. They’ve provided phony statistics to reinforce their biases, and they’ve given excuses to their viewers to engage in racist behavior. Because, hey, Trayvon Martin started it, didn’t he?

Over and over and over again, we hear nonsense like the talking points that Ted Cruz prattled last night on CNN, once again trotting out the notion that President Obama was on “an apology tour”, that he’s weak, that he doesn’t believe in our military or our police. (Something that if spoken about W. Bush by a left winger would have had that person accused of outright treason by Fox News in 2008) But since they keep repeating it over and over and over again, the listeners and viewers start thinking that it’s true. And then we’re supposed to believe that Fox News is surprised that Trump voters are acting out in violent and racist ways?

The right wing does not get to hide from its responsibility for fomenting this violence. They do not get to pretend that they didn’t just spend 20 years riling up their viewers and listeners with low level hate speech. Trump’s voters didn’t come from out of nowhere. They’ve been listening to Limbaugh and watching Fox News for years.

I’m frankly growing tired of the right wing talking point that Trump’s current flash in the pan is somehow the result of liberal policies or of President Obama. It’s nonsensical in the extreme.

Donald Trump is happily feeding from the anger and hatred of right wing white male voters who have been repeatedly stoked by right wing radio and Fox News over the past 20 years. There is a direct line from the angry listener/fan of Rush Limbaugh and the angry pro-Trump hater who calls people names online and in person. Trump’s loudest voters have regularly been told (sometimes by Trump himself) that President Obama isn’t a true American, that their country is losing, that the rest of the world is laughing at us, that we’re unsafe in our own homes, that the bad people are in the process of invading us.

And to be fair, there are plenty of Trump voters who are fans of his celebrity and his various reality show TV appearances. These are the people who remember him from Celebrity Apprentice or Miss Universe or who believed his hype about his various businesses.

But his primary base of voting support is coming from people who have repeatedly been fired up to vote for Republicans because they were going to stop President Obama or put Hillary Clinton in jail or whatever other right wing fantasy was in play at the moment. These are the people who still think that Fast & Furious was some sinister cover-up, that the IRS bookkeeping situation was a sinister attack, that Benghazi was some cover-up, etc. And I bet if you peel it back far enough, you’ll find the same people will tell you that Ramos & Compean were wrongly jailed heroes too. These are the people who think that the Limbaugh adline “Well SOMEBODY had to have the guts to say it!” is something to live by. The same people who agree with the right winger polled by Frank Luntz some time ago who said that people “can’t even speak the truth anymore or else you’ll be called a racist.” Meaning that they wish they could go back to the days when you just threw around the racist epithets with impunity.

It’s understandable why these guys are so angry. Over the past 15 years, they’ve watched their economic situation slide badly and they don’t earn today what they did back in 2000, or at least what they heard people were making in 2000. The fact that people were maxing out their credit cards and flipping houses they couldn’t afford doesn’t seem to enter into that equation, but no matter. The fact that people were living way beyond their means and not saving anything also doesn’t enter into the equation. Instead, the blame goes to whoever their heroes tell them is at fault. So if Rush Limbaugh regularly tells them that the economy was wonderful under W. Bush and terrible under President Obama, then that must be true. If Fox News regularly tells them how great everything was under GOP presidents and how awful everything is under President Obama, then that must be true. And if both of their choice media outlets tell them that the GOP have been cowards for not doing even more to obstruct President Obama and the Dems, then that’s not only true but an outrage.

It’s interesting that these guys never figure out that that GOP obstruction in Congress actually extended the economic troubles for many people. It isn’t just the credit downgrade and the constant brinksmanship that the GOP uses for campaign purposes. It isn’t just the refusal to extend unemployment benefits. It isn’t even that the Trump voters never figure out that the radio shouters are cherry picking their data to talk the economy down further. (It’s funny how the right wing suddenly discovered the under-employed area of the unemployment stats the moment that President Obama took office, where they’d denied its existence during W. Bush’s term.) The key here is that the Trump voters have not been able to figure out just how much they’re being manipulated – they’ve never understood that the GOP down-talk of the economy was intentional. Of course, it was supposed to get a Republican into the White House in 2012 and spectacularly failed. And now the GOP establishment is surprised that this has helped result in the rise of someone like Trump.

As for Bill O’Reilly’s bogus list, it’s laughable. He ridicules the established facts that various police officers have acted in a racist fashion – sometimes resulting in actual deaths. He misunderstands the border issues and simplifies them down to just wanting the big wall with the moat. He once again plays up the GOP standard talking point about how bad the economy is. He lies about how the Dems deal with terrorism. He repeats a nonsensical talking point about President Obama and golf, without any of the context of what was happening at the time. He repeats a nonsensical talking point about how our culture’s small moves toward tolerance are somehow impinging on people’s religious beliefs. (That’s the REALLY offensive one – the notion that it’s okay to be racist, homophobic or whatever so long as you hide behind your church. The reality is that most spiritually-minded people believe in notions of togetherness, love and mutual respect – the guys O’Reilly is defending are the ones who use the church as a way to divide and anger people.) He repeats the canard about how the legal system is hurting businesses without noting that those businesses are practicing hateful behavior and are breaking various laws. He once again repeats the talking point about how the “liberal media” is somehow keeping the angry conservatives like himself down. (This at the same time that he regularly crows about his household ratings and the right wing radio media always crows about their numbers) He takes a swipe at teachers and presents an almost comical image of them damaging “defenseless children”. And once again, he takes a swipe at the notion of justice for people who have been discriminated against.

We could even see O’Reilly’s list as an actual recounting of many of the lies that have led right wing males to turn to someone like Trump. And it’s yet another repetition of those lies, to help reinforce them. Are we really surprised that right wing male voters are turning to a strong man who says he can solve their problems by standing up to the people they’ve been encouraged to hate? Have we learned nothing from history?

I agree with EOF for the most part. Fox didn’t do the completely brazen red meat toss I expected, but their treatment of these candidates was intended to subtly demean them.

I’m not surprised that the real news networks are ignoring Fox News’ conduct wherever they can. Because Fox News is not a real news network and the other networks are appropriately dismissing them other than to chuckle at the most outrageous moments of right wing bile.

As we noted, Sanders only did this interview as a desperate measure – that it might raise his profile and also embarrass Clinton. Doesn’t appear to have had either effect, and now we’re headed into primaries where his delegate insufficiency will begin to grow to colossal levels.

And I agree that this was a small test for Hillary Clinton as a prep for her upcoming debates with Trump this fall. I tend to doubt any of them will happen on Fox News.

And I wouldn’t worry about Ted Cruz. He’s over 80 delegates behind, and will be up to 200 delegates behind within the next week. His interviews now are betraying a growing panic. He’s now frantically trying to beg the other candidates to get out of the race, partly for his own ego, and partly because he knows he’s out of room now and on the verge of a significant humiliation.

What I’m seeing here is a desperation play by Sanders. He’s about to fall even farther behind, as he loses Louisiana by a large margin and struggles to compete in the other states. And he’ll fall another 100-150 delegates behind on Tuesday. By March 15th, even his supporters will have to admit what we knew this past week. But for now, he’s hoping to do something to make a splash.

So, yes, Sanders has agreed to show up on Fox News. From his perspective, maybe he could get some of the anti-Trump GOP guys to pay attention to him as an alternative – in that they hate both Trump and Hillary Clinton, and maybe they’ll give him a look-over. Further, by doing this, he lures Hillary Clinton into the situation. If she had refused to show up, he could campaign that she’s afraid to debate him there. If she does show up, it’s a guarantee that the Fox News group will mount as vicious an attack as they can upon her. Win-win for Sanders, Lose-lose for Clinton. Or so Sanders is thinking.

The problem for Sanders is that this audience is hostile to him as well. He will be asked questions like “Do you REALLY think the American people are going to elect a Socialist to be their President?” and “How much of my money do you think you can tax?” and “Isn’t it true that you weren’t even a Democrat before this race?” and “Shouldn’t you just pack it in since you can’t win?” They may try to soften him up with a couple of introductory balms but after that, expect the right wingers to throw as much mud at him as they can. It’s true that they want to have him as the nominee, since they know they can beat him handily. But that doesn’t mean they’ll hold back when they have him in their paws for an hour.

For Hillary Clinton, this is even worse of an idea. I think she’s trying to justify this mistake by saying that she’ll be able to show how she can stand up to the Fox News people. But she’s not counting on how nasty and personal the attacks are going to be. She’ll be asked for the millionth time about Benghazi. (I wouldn’t be surprised if they plant someone in the audience who can say that they’re a relative of one of the guys who died there, just for that great clip of the person tearfully asking her why she LIED, etc…) She’ll be asked about the email “scandal” and whether she’s concerned about her imminent indictment – particularly from the vantage point of Ted Cruz comparing her to a Mafia Don yesterday. She’ll be asked about the “arriving under fire” story, likely again by someone who will say they were there. She’ll be confronted for the umpteenth time about her husband’s infidelities and about how she’s a hypocrite for not advocating for women like Juanita Broaddrick and Paula Jones. She’ll be repeatedly challenged to show that she accomplished anything at all as a Senator or as Secretary of State. She’ll likely be accused of racism, as they’ll happily bring up anything she or Bill Clinton said during her 2008 campaign against Obama. In short, this will be a bloody mess. I see no way for Clinton to be able to get through this without a bunch of mud landing on her. Her only hope here is to finish the night and be able to say, “I took everything they had, and if that’s all they can come up with, I’m more than ready to deal with them.”

I agree that the appearance by both of them is a huge mistake. I would have preferred for both candidates to offer the Scott Wiener answer: “Fox News is not real news and you’re not a reporter.”

Rove is in denial. Trump has a solid lead and is on track to get the nomination. The only way he doesn’t is if the other candidates can somehow block him from getting the delegates he’s already poised to receive from states like Florida.

A brokered convention is unlikely. The GOP rules were restructured after that last one 64 years ago to make sure it wouldn’t happen again. The GOP brass is now in a situation where it must decide how it will deal with a nominee like Trump. Not a pretty scenario by any means.

I agree again. Cruz was never a national candidate or a serious one even on a more local level. His candidacy was always intended to give him a high-paying media job where he could opine about the issues of the day without ever having to actually do anything. He learned all too well from Limbaugh and the other media shouters.

I no longer think Trump will self-destruct. He’ll get to the general election and hit the wall when he tries to repeatedly make personal attacks against Hillary Clinton. In order to actually win a general election, he’ll need to actually be presidential, which is something he’s never been capable of before. And if Trump actually prevails somehow, this will tell us two important things. The first is a pessimistic outlook for how the populace can handle anything remotely important. The second is that we could well find ourselves on a serious war footing for the first time in decades, given that Trump would be incapable of handling simple foreign policy without insulting and alienating even our allies.

Not sure how I wrote Trubio, but that’s an interesting typo for sure.