CNN's Tapper Shames Earnest For Not Watching Undercover Abortion Videos

CNN's Jake Tapper went after Josh Earnest on Monday's The Lead, after the White House press secretary admitted that he hadn't seen any of the undercover Planned Parenthood videos released by the Center for Medical Progress, and was "relying on news reports that I've seen" about the controversy. Tapper pointed out that "the whole video is put up on the website of this anti-abortion group that put them out." When Earnest blasted the pro-life group for their "ideological games," the anchor retorted that "somebody at the White House should maybe watch the videos in full."

Tapper raised the issue in the middle of his interview of Earnest. He also ran clips from the first four videos that the Center for Medical Progress released. The journalist first noted that "the Senate...is going ahead with a vote to try and defund Planned Parenthood. The White House has threatened to veto any measure like that." He then asked the press secretary, "Is it your contention that there's nothing in these secretly-recorded videotapes of Planned Parenthood officials discussing what sounds like profiting from fetal tissue and organ sales – there's nothing in these tapes that bothers you and anyone in the White House?" -

Earnest replied that "these videos...were released because of their shock value, and there's no doubt that's what depicted on these videos is shocking. I know that based on the news reports that I've read about the videos – I haven't actually looked at them." He continued with one of Planned Parenthood's talking points – that "people...have raised significant questions about whether or not these videos are credible – about whether or not they've been selectively edited in a way to grossly distort the position and the policies of Planned Parenthood." 

The CNN anchor followed with his point about the whole videos being available on the pro-life organization's website. The White House official responded with more liberal talking points about the administration wanting to "make sure that there is not an ideological effort to wholesale defund Planned Parenthood that provides those important health care services to women all across the country.

" The transcript of the relevant portion of Jake Tapper's interview of Josh Earnest from Monday's The Lead on CNN:

JAKE TAPPER: Josh, I want to ask you about a couple other issues, as long as I have – the Senate, as you know, is going ahead with a vote to try and defund Planned Parenthood. The White House has threatened to veto any measure like that-

JOSH EARNEST, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: That's right-

TAPPER: Is it your contention that there's nothing in these secretly-recorded videotapes of Planned Parenthood officials discussing what sounds like profiting from fetal tissue and organ sales – there's nothing in these tapes that bothers you and anyone in the White House?

EARNEST: Well, Jake, I got to tell you – you know, these videos are – were released because of their shock value, and there's no doubt that's what depicted on these videos is shocking. I know that based on the news reports that I've read about the videos – I haven't actually looked at them. But people who have looked at them have raised significant questions about whether or not these videos are credible – about whether or not they've been selectively edited in a way to grossly distort the position and the policies of Planned Parenthood. And if you consider the source-

TAPPER: The whole – the video – the whole video is put up on – on the website of this anti-abortion group that – that put them out. I mean, you can – you don't have to watch just the edited version. You can watch the whole version.

EARNEST: Yeah. Well, listen, I'm relying on – on news reports that I've seen of people who have taken a look at this and raised questions about the videos themselves. And there's no doubt that this is an organization that has targeted Planned Parenthood for some time. So, they clearly have an ideological axe to grind.

What we know to be true is that Planned Parenthood provides regular health care for millions of Americans across the country, and Planned Parenthood is not able to use federal funds to perform abortions. That is written into the rules. That is a rule that this administration has not just followed, but actually supported.

So it's clear that there are some ideological games that are being played here, and what this administration and this president has long fought for is protecting access for women to health care. And that's exactly why we want to make sure that there is not an ideological effort to wholesale defund Planned Parenthood that provides those important health care services to women all across the country.

TAPPER: Well, somebody at the White House should maybe watch the videos in full.

Via: Newsbusters

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Exclusive: More MSNBC Changes Coming with Three Shows Out, Hard News and Chuck Todd Back

A well-placed source tells me MSNBC will announce today major changes to its afternoon lineup…arguably the most significant revamp the network has made at one time in its 19-year history.

Out: The Cycle at 3:00 PM. Now with Alex Wagner at 4:00 PM. The Ed Show with Ed Schultz at 5:00 PM (all times eastern).

In: Chuck Todd at 5:00 PM. Similar to Jake Tapper at CNN doing both weekday afternoons (hosting The Lead) andanchoring Sunday morning’s State of the Union, Todd will also continue to work weekends as moderator of Sunday’sMeet the Press. Todd’s MSNBC show will likely take on its old name The Daily Rundown, but that is not a guarantee.

More interesting: Andrea Mitchell will keep her program at noon (Andrea Mitchell Reports). Thomas Roberts will continue to anchor his midday news program from 1:00-3:00 PM. The programs being cancelled at 3:00 PM (The Cycle) and 4:00 PM (Now with Alex Wagner) will be replaced by a straight news program (similar to Roberts’ two-hour newscast preceding it). Whether that 3:00-5:00 PM slot goes to Brian Williams is not known at this time, but it would certainly make the most sense to put Williams directly up against Fox’s Shepard Smith (Shepard Smith Reporting) and CNN’s Brooke Baldwin (CNN Newsroom) for the first hour in a similar format.

Since coming on four months ago, relatively new NBC News Chief Andy Lack is obviously making his presence felt. Ratings are in the toilet…it somehow finished 5th in a four-horse race recently. Staffers and talent are walking on eggshells. And unless your last name is Matthews, Maddow or your first name Joe or Mika, nobody appears safe, as Mediaite’s Andrew Kirell reported exclusively earlier this week.

Once self-dubbed The Place for Politics, MSNBC goes back to its 1996 roots: More news, less talk.

The place for politics pertains only to mornings and prime-time now. Lack quickly realized that the lack of balance via almost all opinion programming and very little hard news offerings was killing the network as audiences ran to CNN and Fox in droves when any big breaking story was happening. The good news for fans of the network is the Lack’s actually doing something about it…all while tapping resources from the NBC Mothership to help make it happen without breaking the bank.

Fixing dayside was a no-brainer. 6:00 PM and 8:00 PM are likely next. Some old faces may be returning. MSNBC will soon look very different, courtesy of the biggest change in its lineup in nearly two decades.

And Andy Lack isn’t done shaking things up at 30 Rock…not by a long shot.

Via: Mediaite

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‘THIS IS NOT WHAT MEMORIAL DAY WEEKEND IS ABOUT’ – JAKE TAPPER NAILS THE DEMOCRATS ON DUMB ‘TRIBUTE’

Jake Tapper is one of the few national anchors that seems to play things close to the middle, and he’s also very respectful of the military. He’s spending this weekend tweeting tributes to individual military members who died in service to the country, but he interrupted that to criticize the Democrats’ official account:

The DemocratsVerified account‏@TheDemocrats

Happy Memorial Day weekend, everyone!

• RETWEETS220
• FAVORITES199
• 

11:43 AM - 22 May 2015

Via: The Right Scoop

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1. 
   I don’t think Jake Tapper understand that to Democrats, Obama having to eat ice cream in front of cameras is just as grave a sacrifice as any military member losing their lives. Poor guy.

I don’t think Jake Tapper understand that to Democrats, Obama having to eat ice cream in front of cameras is just as grave a sacrifice as any military member losing their lives. Poor guy.

To pass health plan, Obama and Dems kept mum about its downsides

The journalist Jonathan Cohn, an ardent supporter of Obamacare, recently wrote in The New Republic that problems with the rollout of the Affordable Care Act should be "an opportunity to have a serious conversation about the law's tradeoffs — the one that should have happened a while ago."

Cohn is right that there was no serious conversation about those tradeoffs back when Congress was considering the law's passage in 2009 and 2010. But why was that? It was because President Obama and his Democratic allies could not speak seriously — and honestly — about those tradeoffs and still pass their bill.

So instead, Obama assured Americans they could keep health care policies they liked. And it wasn't just Obama. "One of our core principles is that if you like the health care you have, you can keep it," Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said in August 2009. "If you like what you have, you can keep it," said then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in October of the same year.

Many, many Democrats promised the same thing. They had to. If they had declared openly that millions of Americans would lose their current coverage and face higher premiums and deductibles — if Obama and Democratic leaders had said that, they would not have been able to maintain party unity in support of the bill, and the Affordable Care Act would never have passed Congress.

It would not have mattered that Republicans opposed the bill unanimously. A frank public discussion of Obamacare would have divided Democratic support, with the result being no new law at all.

But now, as the reality of Obamacare begins to present itself in the lives of millions of Americans, the president and his party can no longer avoid an honest look at the law they passed. And one part of that honesty will be examining what they said when they passed Obamacare. There will likely be a lot of accountability in coming months.

FRIEND: NAVY YARD SHOOTER LIBERAL, SUPPORTED OBAMA

Tuesday, on CNN's "The Lead with Jake Tapper," Michael Ritrovato spoke at length about his friend, suspected Navy Yard shooter Aaron Alexis. After expressing his condolences to the victims and their families, Ritrovato then expressed his shock over the actions of a man he described as being "like a brother to me" and a "good-natured guy."

Ritrovato  went on to explain that two of them had a close relationship based in part on their differences, specifically race and politics. Alexis was black, Ritrovato is white. Ritrovato described himself as conservative and Alexis is "more of a liberal type" who supported Barack Obama:

I would say things like, 'You know, you are my brother from another mother.' And he would say things like, 'You're my Italian mafia guy from New York.' So we had things we joked about: Aaron wasn't conservative like I am. He was more of a liberal type; he wasn't happy with the former [Bush] administration. He was more happy with this [the Obama] administration -- as far as presidential administrations.

Ritrovato said he hadn't seen Alexis in a while. The last time they spoke was by phone, where the Alexis talked about his frustration with the company he worked for. Apparently, the company was "slow to pay." There have been other media reports about Alexis being with upset his company regarding some expenses incurred during a trip to Japan.

Ritrovato said that Alexis' fondness for "violent video games" was the only red flag he saw in retrospect.

Via: Breitbart

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Kirsten Powers: More Americans will be put in danger if the media doesn’t start challenging the White House on Libya

A few reporters have stepped up, of course. Eli Lake at Newsweek has done a bang-up job, CNN has stuck with the story all week, Tapper had a solid report last night about who knew what and when. But perhaps we’re asking too much from the media generally; there are, after all, Romney gaffes to be covered. And if there’s one thing that America wants and needs from its media right now, it’s more navel-gazing horse-race election dreck.

Not KP, though. Good lord, I think she’s gone rogue:

There are so many unanswered questions, not just about Libya, but also about Cairo. Who is it that Rice thinks “widely disseminated” this “movie”? Surely she can’t believe that the Egyptian Coptic Christian who made the video had the capacity or even desire to put it in the hands of the people who did the inciting. Also, has the administration noticed that the mob in Cairo, so spontaneously upset about the video, just happened to be carrying an Islamist flag to hoist over our embassy? On 9/11. What a massive coincidence.

Also, where did Rice get her very detailed information about the attack in Libya? She referred to the attackers as “a small handful of heavily armed mobsters” who merely took advantage of a growing protest over the video, a protest that now appears never to have occurred, as was reported three days before her appearances. The administration is careful to point out that Rice couched everything she said as being the best assessment at the time. Fine. But where did that assessment come from and how could it have been so wrong, especially when all signs pointed to a terrorist attack?

We know now that before the attacks on 9/11 that killed 3,000 Americans, more attention should have been paid to attacks against the U.S. overseas. These were warnings of what was to come. They say curiosity killed the cat. In this case, lack of curiosity on the part of the American media very well may kill more Americans.

In a different political environment, if Congress wasn’t back home campaigning for reelection and demands for answers from the top weren’t fated to be met with screeching about how the GOP is “politicizing terror” before the big vote, I think the House would already be moving towards holding hearings about what the White House knew. As it is, I wouldn’t expect them to pursue this even after election day; they’ll be consumed with hashing out a compromise on the Bush tax cuts and the sequester. This seems fated to end up off the public’s radar sooner rather than later. Like the man said, a bump in the road.

Here’s KP on Wednesday’s “Special Report” previewing her Newsweek op-ed today. Click the image to watch. Exit quotation from Mike Huckabee: “This White House has been discredited and its credibility, certainly the promises of transparency, have been completely decimated by their actions.”

Via: Hot Air

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Cutter: An incomplete is a totally awesome grade after four years

We’ve been waiting for the Barack Obama re-election campaign to come up with a new slogan ever since they added a period to “FORWARD.”  If the last 24 hours are any indication, the new slogan is either “INCOMPLETE” or possibly “GIVE ME ONE MORE CHANCE.”  After Barack Obama gave himself an “incomplete” on the economy in a Colorado Springs TV news interview last night, ABC’s Jake Tapper asks Team Obama deputy campaign manager Stephanie Cutter whether that “cut[s] it” as an answer.  Absolutely, Cutter responds:

TAPPER: “So President Obama was asked recently about the grade he would give himself. And once again he gave himself an incomplete. It’s been four years. Does that answer cut it? An incomplete after a full term?”

CUTTER: “Yeah, it does, because, you know, once again I’ll remind you of what life was like when he took office. 800,000 jobs were lost in that month alone. 3.5 million in the 6 months prior. And, you know, pretty quickly he was able to turn job loss into job growth. But when he’s saying incomplete, it means a number of different things. One: we’re on a path forward. You know, we’re on our way up. And there is a lot more that he wants to get done. He’s not done yet.”

We’re moving forward?  Really?  Unemployment has been above 8% since before the recovery began, and we’ve only averaged an additional 66,000 jobs per months since — far below the level needed to keep up with population growth.  Once again, here’s the latest from the BLS on the civilian participation rate, which started at 65.7% when Obama took office and was at the same level when the recovery began in June 2009 — but has plunged ever since, to a 30-year low:

Cutter says, “He’s not done yet.”  That’s what keeps many of us awake at night.

Via: Hot Air

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Head Propaganda Czar Jay Carney: We “Haven’t Rejected” The Keystone Pipeline…

(CNSNews.com) – White House Spokesman Jay Carney said that the Obama administration had not “rejected” the Keystone pipeline, despite the fact that the president did, in fact, cancel the project after congressional Republicans forced him to make a decision.

“First of all, the Keystone Pipeline is a process. We haven’t rejected anything,” Carney told reporters Thursday.

Carney had been asked by ABC News’ Jake Tapper why the White House used the term ‘all-of-the-above’ to describe its energy policy when it had rejected Republican ideas like Keystone.

“It’s a process that is underway at the State Department that was delayed because – for two reasons – one because of concern by folks in Nebraska including the Republican governor about the original proposed route and then because of Congress’ [and] House Republicans’ insistence on including it as part of the payroll tax cut extension,” Carney continued.

However, the White House did reject the Keystone Pipeline in January, formally denying the application of TransCanada – the company hoping to build the pipeline – to begin work on the project. Federal permission was needed because the pipeline crossed national boundaries – running from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico.

Via: CNSNews

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