As America braces for a wild 2024 election after the second assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump, voters should be reminded why they shouldn’t trust legacy media talking heads like ABC’s The View co-host Ana Navarro who downplayed it. Many of the prominent figures in the media are explicitly connected to Democrats.
MRC Business took a trip down memory lane and compiled a list of 13 media figures who hold (or who have held) top positions in shaping America’s news diet in recent years across legacy outlets like ABC, CBS, CNN, NBC, MSNBC and the taxpayer-funded NPR. The personalities range from anchors, to correspondents, to media executives, to analysts and TV hosts whose connections to the Democratic Party clearly decimate any veneer of objectivity their networks have ridiculously tried to convey to the general public. But these same individuals either continue to or have previously worked for media organizations while feigning impartiality. As former CNN flunky Chris Cillizza ludicrously bleated in a 2016 tweet: “Let me say for the billionth time: Reporters don't root for a side. Period.” Cue the gut-wrenching laughter.
Let me say for the billionth time: Reporters don't root for a side. Period. https://t.co/dhH8eherOR
— Chris Cillizza (@ChrisCillizza) October 16, 2016
- George Stephanopoulos. ABC This Week host and Good Morning America co-anchor George Stephanopoulos is notorious for being the White House Communications Director under President Bill Clinton. In the 1993 documentary The War Room, Stephanopoulos, then the communications director for the Clinton campaign, is depicted as a fierce partisan Democrat salivating over his boss’s ascendancy to political prominence. Stephanopoulos has repeatedly undermined his objectivity as a journalist as a result. In 2015, The New York Times reported that Stephanopoulous gave $75,000 to the Clinton Foundation over a three-year period while covering the Clintons, which sparked major backlash for violating journalistic ethics.
- Gayle King. CBS Mornings’s most notable co-anchor Gayle King has a history replete with deep connections to Democrats. In fact, she has donated at least $33,000 to the DNC and at least $7,300 to former President Barack Obama between the years 2008 and 2011 just before joining CBS News. She also donated $1,000 to Democrat Harold Ford Jr. If that wasn’t telling enough, King also had a particularly cozy relationship with the Obamas in particular. She has even vacationed with them on their yacht in 2017, drawing ire from her colleagues. “The ‘Capital J’ journalists are pissed and raving mad that she was on a yacht with the Obamas over the weekend. The old-school people were talking about it. She shouldn’t be doing that. She’s an anchor of a news program that covers the White House,” a source told New York Post’s Page Six at the time.
- Jake Tapper. CNN’s The Lead host Jake Tapper’s connections to Democrats is also a case in point. Before his media role, he previously served as press secretary for Rep. Marjorie Margolies (D-PA). But that doesn’t exhaust his connections to Democrats. Tapper became embroiled in controversy in 2015 while at CNN when the Clinton Foundation listed him as a “speaker” for a Clinton Global Initiative event in June of that year on its website. After USA Today reportedly reached out about the event, Tapper’s name was scrubbed from the Clinton Foundation site. Tapper’s journalistic scandal occurred while Hillary Clinton was running for president.
- Jen Psaki. Most know MSNBC Inside host Jen Psaki for her role as top propagandist for President Joe Biden’s White House as his press secretary. Previously, Psaki showcased her radical leftist bona fides when she served as court packing advocacy group Demand Justice’s senior advisor prior to her appointment to the Biden-Harris administration. Her connections to both the Biden-Harris administration and Demand Justice yielded dividends, as it was Demand Justice that would be responsible for putting massive pressure on the U.S. Senate to confirm its preferred judicial nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court after Psaki was elevated to the White House.
- Ana Navarro. CNN commentator, ABC The View co-host and pseudo “Republican Strategist” was exposed twice for contributing to Democrats during the 2020 electoral cycle. She donated to both then-Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) and then-former Vice President Joe Biden. Navarro was belligerent on Twitter upon being called out for potentially violating ethics. “Damn right, I donated to @JoeBiden. I want a President who believes in science and doesn’t suggest Americans ingest Lysol. Let me remind you, the so-called 'Republican President' donated to many Democrats, including Pelosi & Hilary, a guest at his wedding...3rd one. #Hypocrites.” Navarro — the “Republican Strategist” — also gave a speech at the 2024 Democratic National Convention, praising Harris while denigrating Trump. FEC records suggest that Navarro contributed at least $250 to Harris’s 2024 presidential campaign. It should be no surprise then that Navarro would publicly scoff at elected officials who decried the ongoing violence against Trump. Watch:
- Katherine Maher. NPR President and former head of the Soros-funded Wikimedia Foundation Maher became notorious for peddling vile tweets against former President Donald Trump in addition to tweets justifying the rampant looting during the 2020 Black Lives Matter riots. She also has a checkered history of donating cash to radical Democrats like failed Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Adams, Tom Perriello (unsuccessful run for VA governor), Matthew Brown (unsuccessful run for RI governor), Jennifer Carroll Foy (unsuccessful run for VA governor) and Maya Wiley (unsuccessful run for NYC mayor).
- John Lansing (former NPR President). Just before National Public Radio President John Lansing assumed his role at the leftist taxpayer-funded radio giant, MRC Business uncovered that he had just contributed cash to prominent Democrats Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) and then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s (R-KY) challenger Amy McGrath (D) in 2019. The records indicated that Lansing made his contributions while he was still CEO of the similarly taxpayer-funded U.S. Agency for Global Media. Lansing would lead NPR’s leftist news coverage for roughly three years before retiring at the end of 2023.
- John Avlon. CNN’s infamously belligerent senior political analyst John Avlon left the network to run for Congress as a bona fide Democrat in the 2024 election, linking himself to the party permanently. He won his primary in June 2024.
- Symone Sanders Townsend. MSNBC’s The Weekend co-host Symone Sanders Townsend’s Democratic bonafides are extensive. She served as press secretary for socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders’s (I-VT) 2016 Democratic Party presidential campaign, became a spokesperson for the Biden-Harris 2020 campaign and worked as Vice President Kamala Harris’s chief spokeswoman.
- Jeff Shell. When it was announced that NBC Universal film and Entertainment Chairman Jeff Shell was set to become CEO of the entire NBC empire, including its news divisions in 2019, MRC Business uncovered that Shell was a prolific donor to Democrats, giving tens of thousands of dollars spread between the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and 2020 presidential candidates Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) and Sen. Michael Bennet (D-CO). Shell led the NBC Universal empire until he was ousted in 2023 following an internal investigation of inappropriate conduct.
- Chuck Todd. NBC News’s Chief Political Analyst Chuck Todd’s connections to the Democrats is no secret, and that haunts his coverage every time he goes on one of his on-brand rants against the right. Todd’s wife, Kristian Denny Todd, is a Democratic campaign consultant and founder of Maverick Strategies and Mail. Her profile openly boasts how she “created and designed the direct mail program” for Sen. Bernie Sanders’s (I-VT) presidential campaign in Iowa during the “Democratic Presidential Primary.” Open Secrets records indicate that she’s also contributed thousands of dollars to former Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA).
- Steven Brill. The co-CEO of website traffic cop NewsGuard already leads one of the most notorious, leftist censorship enterprises on the internet. However, Brill has not taken care to make sure that there’s no paper trail leading back to the Democratic Party. In fact, Brill is a Democrat donor. The Washington Post reported in 1998 that Brill and his wife “donated $2,000 to the 1996 Clinton-Gore campaign and $4,000 to three Democratic congressional candidates.” In fact, according to a 2018 analysis by MRC Business, Brill personally doled out at least $23,190 as of 2018 to Democrats like Hillary Clinton, Obama, Bill Clinton and Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS), dwarfing the just over $5,250 he contributed to GOP candidates. Brill became especially notorious for falsely labeling the Hunter Biden laptop bombshell story by the New York Post a Russian “hoax” during the 2020 election. Watch:
- Kristen Welker. NBC’s Meet the Press moderator Kristen Welker is notorious for overseeing presidential debates for the network despite her family’s deep connections to Democrats. During the 2020 presidential race, the New York Post reported that Welker “comes from an established Democratic family — who have poured cash into party coffers, and to Trump opponents, for years.” Specifically, according to the Post, Welker’s parents “have donated tens of thousands of dollars to Democratic candidates and close to $20,000 to Barack Obama alone.” In addition, “There was also $3,300 for Joe Biden’s 2020 campaign and $2,100 for Hillary Clinton’s doomed 2016 presidential effort against Trump. Another $7,300 was contributed to the Democratic National Committee between 2004 and 2020,” the Post reported. To add insult to injury, the Post also noted that Welker and her family even spent the 2012 Christmas celebration with the Obamas at the White House. Welker herself reportedly was also a registered Democrat during that time.
The Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics states that journalists should “Avoid conflicts of interest, real or perceived. Disclose unavoidable conflicts.” The problem is that ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC, CNN and NPR have a dirty track record of violating that principle over and over again by hiring people who have shown clear affinities for Democrats and the left’s pet causes. These biased media giants have constantly peddled to the public that they’re somehow still objective sources of news.
MRC’s News Analysis Division took another recent dive into the past and unearthed statements from still-active media figures that still make people with functioning prefrontal cortexes scratch their heads in confusion. Here are a few:
“I have never witnessed a concerted effort by any news organization to take a stand one way or the other on a political issue, to damage one particular party or help another.” — CNN White House correspondent Jim Acosta in a June 11, 2019 Publishers Weekly interview.
“One of the mistakes we in the mainstream media made during when these false allegations against us for being biased for 40 years happened is we started believing, ‘Oh, maybe we are biased. And wait we can’t look biased.’ So we created a lot of false equivalency issues.” — Then-Host Chuck Todd on MSNBC’s MTP Daily, August 30, 2018.
“Our President is often loose with the truth but this is the thing at CBS, what we pride ourselves on is giving you the news and letting you make your own decisions....So when I hear him say ‘fake news,’ I just sit there and go, ‘Oh, is he not talking about us.’ I never feel that.” — CBS This Morning co-host Gayle King on CBS’s The Late Late Show with James Corden, June 11, 2020.
“It disgusts me when we are referred to as ‘fake news.’....We are the people who tell the truth!...Anyone who is dumb enough to confuse the occasional media mistake with media bias would be dumb enough to confuse today’s weather with the climate. We report the facts.” — Dallas, Texas ABC affiliate WFAA sports host Dale Hansen accepting Lifetime Achievement Award at Radio Television Digital News Association dinner, March 13, 2019.
Americans would do well to detox from the leftist propaganda mill that gets recycled week-to-week under the false pretense of unbiased news, especially as they get ready to head to the polls.
Conservatives are under attack. Contact ABC News (818) 460-7477, CBS News (212) 975-3247 and NBC News (212) 664-6192, MSNBC at (800) 952-5210, CNN at 404-827-1500 and demand they stop being mouthpieces for the Democratic Party. Also contact your representative in Congress and demand they #DefundNPR.
