Each year, The Washington Free Beacon presents a roundup of MSNBC’s biggest failures or otherwise shoddy reporting and commentary.
As you can imagine, the second year of the Trump presidency provided ample fodder for the left-wing news outlet to smear conservatives and embarrass itself.
The Free Beacon’s David Rutz gathered the material, starting with the Rev. Al Sharpton misspelling the word “respect” in a botched attempt to channel the famous Aretha Franklin song. The video includes throwbacks to some of the worst media moments in 2018 you may have forgotten.
“In the second year of the Trump administration, there were Russia conspiracies galore (John Heilemann asked if Devin Nunes was a ‘Russian agent’), insults to throw around (‘Morning Joe’ host Mika Brzezinski called the secretary of state a ‘wannabe dictator’s buttboy’) and fates to ponder (Katy Tur wondered if her entire life was ‘pointless’ because of climate change),” Rutz wrote.
Host Nicole Wallace tried not to jinx Andrew Gillum as he ran for governor of Florida (spoiler alert: he lost). She also asked how an NBC reporter could resist wringing White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ neck. Later in the video, Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin said Sanders had “no right to live a life of no fuss, no muss, after lying to the press — after lying to the press, after inciting against the press.” Naturally, no such attacks were lodged against President Barack Obama’s own press secretaries, who also routinely lied and stretched the truth to protect the president.
Former Republican National Committee Chair Michael Steel told viewers “your kids could be next” when talking about the Department of Homeland Security “concentration camps” for children whose parents (or smuggler) brought them into the U.S. illegally.
And of course, there were plenty of stories about alleged “collusion” between President Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and the Russian government. Former Republican strategist to Sen. John McCain’s presidential campaign, Steve Schmidt, claimed the unproven collusion conspiracy to be the “greatest crime in American history.” Commenter Malcolm Nance claimed the American public was brainwashed by the Russians into accepting an invasion.
“Who could forget Joy Reid, who survived one of the most bizarre cable news scandals in recent times?” Rutz wrote. “Following Internet hunters uncovering a series of homophobic and controversial posts from her defunct Florida politics blog, Reid—who admitted writing similar things last year—claimed she had been hacked and sent investigators on a wild goose chase. When that proved to be ridiculous, Reid sort of apologized for the hurt she had caused but insisted, “I genuinely do not believe I wrote those hateful things because they are completely alien to me.”
Watch the video below (maybe put in headphones if you’re still visiting liberal relatives for the holidays) and be sure to see what Rutz finds next year!
