Notable Quotables: Gleefully Hyping Hillary’s Vacuous Campaign Launch

Now online: the April 20 edition of Notable Quotables, MRC’s bi-weekly compilation of the latest outrageous quotes in the liberal media. This week, reporters attempt to manufacture excitement over how newly-declared Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton used Twitter, rode around in a van and ate lunch at a Chipotle ("fun and new," opined Bloomberg's Mark Halperin).

And, even as the media drooled over Hillary, MSNBC's Mika Brzezinski disparaged GOP candidate Marco Rubio as a "little boy," while fellow MSNBC host Ed Schultz trashed Rand Paul as someone who is "arrogant, demeaning, disrespectful and clearly doesn't know how to run for president." Highlights are posted below; the entire issue is posted online, with 24 quotes at www.MRC.org.

Gleefully Hyping Hillary’s Vacuous Campaign Launch

“Yesterday she stopped at a Chipotle, a campaign aide sharing with us that she had a chicken burrito bowl with black beans and guacamole and an iced tea. And you know what that kind of detail tells you — it says, ‘She’s just like us. She eats at Chipotle.’”
— Correspondent Brianna Keilar on CNN’s New Day, April 14.

“We’re told this whole thing was her idea — a political Where’s Waldo....Just two public sightings in two days. One at this Pennsylvania gas station, posing for a picture with this family, and another at an Ohio Chipotle, caught on security camera ordering a chicken burrito bowl. The former Secretary of State wearing sunglasses. No one even recognized her.”
— ABC correspondent Cecilia Vega on Good Morning America, April 14.

“The two words she needs are ‘fun’ and ‘new.’ And part of why yesterday was so successful is she looks like she’s having fun and she’s doing, for her, new stuff. We’ve never seen her get a burrito before. Fun and new.”
— Mark Halperin, co-host of Bloomberg TV’s With All Due Respect, on MSNBC’s Morning Joe on April 14.

“Experienced, Accomplished” Hillary vs. “Little Boy” Rubio

“You measure up accomplishments, an ability to weather the storm, an ability to have had experience that might apply to this job....This is not even a conversation. She eats him for lunch....Hillary Clinton and Marco Rubio. There is no comparison. Maybe this is my ideology, but I’m sorry — that’s a little boy, and that’s an experienced, accomplished woman who’s been elected to the Senate twice, who served First Lady, who served as Secretary of State.”
— Co-host Mika Brzezinski on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, April 14.

Ed Schultz Lectures Rand Paul on Respecting Women Journalists

“There is evidence Rand Paul has a real problem with women reporters. He has a history of talking down to women on television....The early assessment is that the Senator from Kentucky is arrogant, demeaning, disrespectful and clearly doesn’t know how to run for president, at least not early on he doesn’t. This is really a guy who has a hard time finding the high road.”
— MSNBC host Ed Schultz on The Ed Show, April 8.

vs.

“Like this right-wing slut, what’s her name, Laura Ingraham? Yeah, she’s a talk slut.”
— Schultz on his May 24, 2011 radio show, comments that earned him a brief suspension from MSNBC.

Opposing Tax Hikes = “Speaking-in-Tongues Madness”

“The one very sensible cost-saving measure that Christie doesn’t include in his plan, notably, is the progressive idea to lift the ‘cap’ on payroll taxes, so that the top percent of American earners pay more than a fraction of their wages into the system. Here Christie falls short of most reform proposals, but it’s not hard to see why; raising any tax creates a kind of speaking-in-tongues madness among the activists inside his party.”
— Yahoo! News national political correspondent Matt Bai writing about New Jersey Governor Chris Christie’s plan to fix Social Security, April 14.

Pay No Attention to Those Chants of “Death to America!”

“After marathon negotiations, Iran’s Foreign Minister Javad Zarif arrived home a hero, especially among the young who hope the new deal will bring their country in from the cold. At Friday prayers, there was the usual chant of ‘Death to America,’ but more habit than conviction.”
— Correspondent Elizabeth Palmer on CBS This Morning: Saturday, April 4.

Fearing Americans Will Spoil Castro’s Communist Paradise

“On the one hand, it is great to reopen these relationships. On the other hand, I worry about American tourists and the ways we can sometimes be a plague on the rest of the world, particularly in these nations that become high-tourist economies. And I’m wondering if there is a downside to our economic ties opening up with Cuba, for Cuba.”
— Host Melissa Harris-Perry on her eponymous MSNBC show, April 11.

Making Excuses for Clintons Calling Secret Service “Pigs”

“Now, I think people who didn’t grow up in the ’60s wouldn’t know — now, I’m not defending it, of course — but that word ‘pigs’ has a particular meaning for people in the ’60s. They [Bill and Hillary Clinton] worked in the McGovern campaign, they were against the police and the Chicago police riots and all that. So when they say, ‘pigs,’ that’s a very ’60s term.”
— MSNBC’s Chris Matthews on the April 9 Hardball, talking to author Kate Anderson Brower about her new book The Residence: Inside the Private World of the White House and revelations that Chelsea Clinton referred to Secret Service agents as “pigs” and told an agent that her parents used the same term.

Only “Morons” Deny Climate Change

“People don’t really get it [the drought in California]. It’s awful out there. Any climate change deniers are morons. It’s happening, big time.”
— Actor/comedian Billy Crystal on CBS’s Late Show with David Letterman, April 14.

To read the entire April 20 edition of Notable Quotables, please visit www.MRC.org.