“a person who differs markedly (as in social adjustment or sexual behavior) from what is considered normal for a group”

One would be curious as to what O’Donnell meant as Bill Clinton would be a hard act to top when it comes to sexual deviancy in the White House. But I digress….

Lawrence O’Donnell says Donald Trump’s lies are finally catching up with him as Republicans break rank and say that there’s no evidence to support his claims that President Obama wiretapped Trump Tower.
— MSNBC, 3/16/17

Granted this is nothing new as Mr. O’Donnell’s Twitter feed is pretty much insult after insult and retweets of other insults. WMAL’s Chris Plante pointed out on the 17th that O’Donnell was also aided by yet another deceptive video edit (courtesy of the artisans at NBC News) designed to make Donald Trump appear to be a liar via a recent conversation Fox News’ Bret Baier and Speaker Paul Ryan were having about the STILL unproven, Democrat accusation that the Russians influenced the 2016 presidential election. MSNBC edited a portion of that segment and inserted to make it appear that Ryan was saying there was no proof that Trump was wiretapped during the election.

If you consider the intended audience, the fact that Lawrence O’Donnell believes he can use a 13-day-old video clip on a topic unrelated to a rant almost two weeks later illustrates how easily those who hate President Trump are to tweak and the condescension O’Donnell has for the intelligence of his audience.

It now comes with a sense of irony that the same Ashley Judd was approached and subjected to a very muted example of what Trump supporters and Republicans receive from those on her side of the aisle and it left her… “scared”.

She shared her horrific experience with a post on Facebook, excerpted below.

#NoPoliticsHere

I’d like to share with you and experience I had today. It’s uncomfortable and scary for me and I have a hunch that some of you have had experiences like it. It may be attempting to put me in a different position as a so called public person, and the reminder is, like all of us, I’m just human and navigating this at times terrifyingly polarized post election climate.

An older man with white hair came up to me at my seat today at a basketball game. He said “May I take your picture? I said “Yes.” And before I could offer for him to be in the picture with me, 6 inches from my face, he took my picture with his phone. He said “I’m from Big Stone gap.” I said, “I love Big Stone Gap! What a beautiful town, I loved making the movie there.” I went on to say how good the cooking is, mentioning, of course, the pineapple upside down cake and pumpkin pie!

In my mind I was getting ready to ask him about the national parks and if he ever spends time in especially the Thomas Jefferson National Park – but something inside of me was already clenching and I concluded by simply saying “I like Big Stone Gap. “

He said to me with open hostility as he was backing away, “We like Trump.”

Of course, it’s very clear now that as I was being friendly and talking, his affect was angry, and he certainly didn’t respond in anyway to my general enthusing about his little Appalachian town. And it’s also clear that his entire approach to me and aggressive sticking his phone 6 inches in front of my face to take my picture was a part of his plan to treat me with rudeness, aggression, and disrespect. Who knows, maybe he’s already done something undignified with the picture or maybe it was just a pretense so he could say something menacing to me.

I feel very sad that this happened, and frankly scared. We absolutely need apolitical spaces in this country where we come together for something that is beyond who voted for whom and the platforms, beliefs, and agendas of respective candidates.
— Ashley Judd, Facebook post, 3/11/17

So, liberals can intentionally stop traffic, get in people’s faces with cellphones mere inches from Trump supporters’ faces, destroy public and private property, all in the name of resisting President Trump, hiding behind the 1st Amendment guarantee of freedom of speech and assembly.

Yet when someone gets in her face with a “menacing” cellphone without physical contact, Ashley Judd recoils into a pile of self-pitying mush longing for a safe space she can retreat to as she has to endure being anywhere close to people who have the audacity to not share the same belief system as her.

Some strong, “nasty” woman.

Meanwhile, the law is clear.

26 U.S. Code § 6103 – Confidentiality and disclosure of returns and return information
(a) General rule Returns and return information shall be confidential, and except as authorized by this title —
(1) no officer or employee of the United States,
(2) no officer or employee of any State, any local law enforcement agency receiving information under subsection (i)(1)(C) or (7)(A), any local child support enforcement agency, or any local agency administering a program listed in subsection (l)(7)(D) who has or had access to returns or return information under this section or section 6104(c), and
(3) no other person (or officer or employee thereof) who has or had access to returns or return information under subsection (e)(1)(D)(iii), subsection (k)(10), paragraph (6), (10), (12), (16), (19), (20), or (21) of subsection (l), paragraph (2) or (4)(B) of subsection (m), or subsection (n),
shall disclose any return or return information obtained by him in any manner in connection with his service as such an officer or an employee or otherwise or under the provisions of this section. For purposes of this subsection, the term “officer or employee” includes a former officer or employee.

No respectable editor would ever allow the tax returns of an individual be published without their written consent. It wouldn’t matter if someone left it in a mailbox or in a public bathroom, the law is clear NO one (outside of pertinent IRS personnel) is allowed to view or share the confidential tax returns of anyone else, let alone publish it for world dissemination.

Your Privacy Rights
The IRS is committed to protecting the privacy rights of America’s taxpayers. These rights are protected by the Internal Revenue Code, the Privacy Act of 1974, the Freedom of Information Act, and IRS policies and practices.

And please note, there is no exemption for the media but there ARE rules for legally obtaining a return: you just have to fill out the appropriate paperwork and wait for approval or denial.

§ 601.702 Publication, public inspection, and specific requests for records
(B) News media requester. Any person actively gathering news for an entity that is organized and operated to publish or broadcast news (i.e., information about current events or of current interest to the public) to the public. News media entities include, but are not limited to, television or radio stations broadcasting to the public at large, publishers of periodicals, to the extent they disseminate news, who make their periodicals available for purchase or subscription by the general public, computerized news services and telecommunications. Free lance journalists shall be included as media requesters if they can demonstrate a solid basis for expecting publication through a qualifying news entity (e.g., publication contract, past publication record). Specialized periodicals, although catering to a narrower audience, may be considered media requesters so long as they are available to the public generally, via newsstand or subscription.

David Cay Johnson, the so-called investigative journalist says he found Donald Trump’s tax return in his “mailbox”.

Q: How did DCReport.org obtain Trump’s 2005 federal income-tax return?
A: It was mailed to us anonymously.
— DCReport.org, 3/14/17

Who really gets anything of value in their mailbox nowadays? Puh-leez.

Q: Are you sure it’s real?
A: The White House confirmed the authenticity of the return. If we learn more, we will let you know.

Translation: Mr. Johnson, you have released a confidential tax return of the President of the United States to the world. You’re in trouble.

He won a Pulitzer in 2001 as a “beat reporter” (and it appears it’s been quite awhile since he’s walked a beat), and in the video above told Rachel Maddow that every president has released his tax return. That’s 100% not true. Only ten out of the forty-five presidents have voluntarily released their tax returns.

Q: What’s the agenda of the person who sent the return to you?
A: We have no idea. We presume he or she is a patriot who believes, like us, that Trump’s employers, the citizens of the United States, have the right and need to know about his finances. We have put a lot of effort into uncovering the sources of Trump’s income because of our concerns about national security and integrity in the White House.

Johnson justified the public’s right to know with speculation of President Trump’s potential financial entanglements that may later pose problems. Funny how Mr. Johnson didn’t do a similar colonoscopy of Hillary Clinton’s potential financial entanglements within the Clinton Foundation and while she was running the State Department, but for $400k a year writing for a nonprofit… maybe we should see HIS tax returns!

Q: Is it legal for you to publish the return?
A: Yes. If we did not solicit the return or coerce someone into giving it to us, we are free to publish. This was made clear last fall when the New York Times published Trump’s 1995 returns, which were also mailed to the paper anonymously.

Sorry, a friendly Obama administration taking action against a friendly New York Times would be like a brother calling the cops on his sister. The situation is a tad different now even though the law has always been the law.

26 U.S. Code § 7213 – Unauthorized disclosure of information
It shall be unlawful for any person to whom any return or return information (as defined in section 6103(b)) is disclosed in a manner unauthorized by this title thereafter willfully to print or publish in any manner not provided by law any such return or return information. Any violation of this paragraph shall be a felony punishable by a fine in any amount not exceeding $5,000, or imprisonment of not more than 5 years, or both, together with the costs of prosecution.

If the media wants tax information, there is a process to request that information which probably requires the return’s owner to give written consent. MSNBC actually showed graphics of President Trump’s return on air (with his social security number redacted) and as of 3am Wednesday, the other media channels did not… yet.

It will be interesting to watch this play out as we’re not talking about federal law enforcement run by Eric Holder or Loretta Lynch. The media will scream bloody murder if the Trump Administration goes after MSNBC and Johnson, ignorantly hiding behind Constitutionally-protected press freedom, but everyone who physically held a copy of the tax return in question or published it on air may want to lawyer-up.

But that’s what you get when you let poly-sci majors and others pose as journalists.

Individual income tax returns — including those of public figures — are private information, protected by law from unauthorized disclosure. Indeed, the Internal Revenue Service is barred from releasing any taxpayer information whatsoever, except to authorized agencies and individuals.

NYT columnist urges IRS employees to unlawfully leak Trump’s tax returns

Nicholas Kristof, take note you’re asking someone to break they law and you could be breaking the law as well.

Like all other citizens, U.S. presidents enjoy this protection of their privacy. Since the early 1970s, however, most presidents have chosen to release their returns publicly.
— Tax History.org

While only ten presidents in our nation’s history have voluntarily-released their tax returns, Trump’s opponents are still demanding to invade his privacy and make it public to the world, a situation a Democrat in 2008 did everything she could to avoid.

Again, until there is some kind of legislation or maybe even a Constitutional Amendment to make the release of a private citizen’s tax returns public, this is nothing but a phishing expedition for any information that can be used to smear President Trump.

Let’s be clear, the Federal Election Commission only requires the candidate’s committee to file the quarterly financial information of a campaign, not the candidate’s personal tax filings.

Then again, maybe politicians aren’t that stupid because if you can require a president to release tax returns, what’s to stop any state or federal entity from creating laws that could demand the same of a United States Congress and/or Senate candidate all the way down to a local candidate for a town selectboard?

That would be oh-so intrusive, right?

While being dismissed because it can’t be confirmed nor denied, the media is claiming this is a Trump Administration attempt to deflect from the whole Attorney General Jeff Sessions debacle.

Without offering any evidence or providing the source of his information, Mr. Trump fired off a series of Twitter messages claiming that Mr. Obama “had my ‘wires tapped.’” He likened the supposed tapping to “Watergate/Nixon” and “McCarthyism.”

Ben Rhodes, a former top national security aide to Mr. Obama, said in a Twitter message directed at Mr. Trump on Saturday that “no president can order a wiretap” and added, “Those restrictions were put in place to protect citizens from people like you.”

Mr. Trump was said to be frustrated about the decision by Jeff Sessions, his attorney general, to recuse himself from participating in any investigations of connections between the Trump campaign and Russia. Mr. Trump has said there were no such connections.
— New York Times, 3/4/17

Okay, “no president can order a wiretap” but it stretches credibility that one month before a presidential election, such an action would be taken by an agency without the knowledge of the president and no career government employee would make such a call without it being discouraged from high up the chain.

What IS clear is President Trump is now privy to what’s been going on in the “swamp” and that appears to have made a lot of people on the Hill very nervous.

The media is not outright dismissing President Trump’s claim because it appears an attempt to obtain a FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978) warrant to tap his campaign was attempted, at least two times.

Two separate sources with links to the counter-intelligence community have confirmed to Heat Street that the FBI sought, and was granted, a FISA court warrant in October, giving counter-intelligence permission to examine the activities of ‘U.S. persons’ in Donald Trump’s campaign with ties to Russia.

Contrary to earlier reporting in the New York Times, which cited FBI sources as saying that the agency did not believe that the private server in Donald Trump’s Trump Tower which was connected to a Russian bank had any nefarious purpose, the FBI’s counter-intelligence arm, sources say, re-drew an earlier FISA court request around possible financial and banking offenses related to the server. The first request, which, sources say, named Trump, was denied back in June, but the second was drawn more narrowly and was granted in October after evidence was presented of a server, possibly related to the Trump campaign, and its alleged links to two banks; SVB Bank and Russia’s Alfa Bank. While the Times story speaks of metadata, sources suggest that a FISA warrant was granted to look at the full content of emails and other related documents that may concern US persons.
— HeatStreet, 11/7/16

The carefully-worded response from the Obama camp is telling.

In a statement, Kevin Lewis, a spokesperson for Obama, rejected Trump’s assertion.

“A cardinal rule of the Obama Administration was that no White House official ever interfered with any independent investigation led by the Department of Justice,” he said. “As part of that practice, neither President Obama nor any White House official ever ordered surveillance on any U.S. citizen. Any suggestion otherwise is simply false,” he added.
— CNBC, 3/4/17

The FBI is NOT a “White House official” and President Obama didn’t have to order surveillance; just be aware and nix the whole thing if he saw it unnecessary.

Chances are, IF such a warrant WAS granted, if there was any nefarious activity gathered we would have heard about it by now. As President Trump has access to much more information than he did as a private citizen, he must have been told and was waiting for the best possible opportunity to send the disruptors loyal to Barack Obama a very clear message.

Let’s hope we don’t soon find that the FISA logs from 2016 have suddenly disappeared or have been deemed “classified”.

3/5/17 UPDATE

t looks like President Trump’s tree-shaking is worrying some in Obama’s inner circle.

Former Director of Intelligence James Clapper has left a window open of “plausible deniability”, former Attorney General Loretta Lynch has been commenting on other things while both Lt. Col. Tony Schaffer and Mark Levin have verified our speculation that Obama HAD to have been briefed on the wiretaps.

Things must be getting a bit thick amongst those within Obama’s tight circle.

What’s laughable is the media’s unison response with the former administration that there’s “no evidence” that President Barack Obama had any knowledge of a Donald Trump wiretap while spending the last few months declaring Russian influence in the presidential election while many in the know have repeatedly said there’s “no evidence” such ever happened.

Intel chiefs presented Trump with claims of Russian efforts to compromise him
Classified documents presented last week to President Obama and President-elect Trump included allegations that Russian operatives claim to have compromising personal and financial information about Mr. Trump, multiple US officials with direct knowledge of the briefings tell CNN.

The two-page synopsis also included allegations that there was a continuing exchange of information during the campaign between Trump surrogates and intermediaries for the Russian government, according to two national security officials.

During March 3rd’s CNN “New Day”, anchor and Democrat cheerleader Alisyn Camerota again ran the edited confirmation hearing clip. We have presented the confirmation hearing segment and CNN’s deceptive edit of the complete question by Senator Franken to Jeff Sessions in context.

Attorney General Sessions was clearly responding to Franken’s question about the CNN “story” and should have NEVER recused himself from any investigation of Russian hacking that supposedly denied Hillary Clinton her rightful place as President of the United States.

And as luck would have it, later in the day House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi got caught telling a whopper herself….

The California Democrat told POLITICO Playbook on Friday morning that she had never met with the current Russian ambassador to the U.S., Sergey Kislyak. A file photo from Pelosi’s 2010 meeting with then-Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, however, shows Kislyak at the table across from her.
— Politico, 3/3/17

Politico: Photo contradicts Pelosi’s statement about not meeting Kislyak
CBS News: Trump tweets about Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi photos with Putin, Russian envoy
ABC News: Trump accuses Pelosi of ‘close ties to Russia,’ demands investigation

As of March 4, 8:30am EST, no mention of the Pelosi lie on CNN’s front page.

It’s going to be a long weekend.

In 2009, she was the political director of Texans for Ted Cruz, Ted Cruz’s 2010 campaign for Texas State Attorney General.

In 2012, Isgur Flores advised Mitt Romney in his 2012 presidential campaign bid. She was in charge of the Romney campaign’s election day operations and provided legal consultation for the campaign.

From 2013 to 2014, Isgur Flores acted as deputy communications director for the Republican National Committee (RNC).

In January 2015, Isgur Flores took up the communications position with Carly Fiorina’s super PAC, Unlocking Potential.

In May 2015, Sarah Isgur Flores transitioned from Carly Fiorina’s super PAC to her presidential campaign as deputy campaign manager.

After Fiorina dropped out of the presidential race, Isgur Flores spoke with MSNBC about the potential for a convention challenge to Donald Trump, saying, “I will certainly hope for a contested convention, and if not I hope that someone will offer an alternative.” According to the Daily Caller, Isgur Flores also said that her disapproval of Trump was based on her belief in conservatism: “For a lot of us, this isn’t about party. This isn’t about winning for the sake of winning for our team. This is about our country. And it’s about a belief system. And I’m a conservative before I’m a Republican.”

Beginning in mid-December 2016, Isgur Flores advised Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), Donald Trump’s nominee for U.S. Attorney General as part of his preparation for confirmation hearings in the U.S. Senate.
— Ballotpedia

Let’s not forget, Ted Cruz named Carly Fiorina as his presidential running mate.

And now, Isgur Flores is “Director of Public Affairs at the Department of Justice” under Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

If loyalty is a prerequisite to a post in the Trump Administration, how did THIS happen?

With all of the qualified, experienced people who have been the loyal conservative boots-on-the-ground to choose from, another political hack has moved up the ranks who proudly engaged in the #NeverTrump movement to steal candidate Trump’s delegates, spoke ill of the party’s presidential nominee and was ultimately rewarded with a cush job in the very administration of the man she publicly trashed.

We’ve always had issues with Reince Priebus being installed as President Trump’s chief of staff because many of the RNC fat-and-comfortable types would be absorbed into the administration and many of them were vocal adversaries of the Republican party nominee during the campaign.

And for some strange reason, Sarah Isgur Flores has appeared to have purged her Tweets prior to July 27, 2016, possibly so she could pass a background check to get into the Trump Administration. If her views were so “conservative” and “principled”, why aren’t they here for all to see anymore?

The president also needs to question Priebus’ contributions to his administration, especially those who’ve fought against his campaign and nomination who’ve been comfortable in the swamp that is now seeping into the White House.

Think about it: if for some reason Jeff Sessions were removed as AG, who would be next in line for consideration? Ted Cruz? Wouldn’t that be cozy!

UPDATE

Months after Jeff Sessions’ departure from the DOJ, Sarah decided it was time to ask for another job.

2/19/19: CNN hires GOP operative with no journalism experience to coordinate its 2020 coverage

Interesting how many “journalists” we currently have who were initially hired with no broadcast experience, but now standards must be observed. Given the liberal outrage, Sarah’s terms have been modified….

3/8/19: Sarah Isgur Flores Revises Planned Role at CNN

So, now she’s going to be an “analyst” which is a nice way of saying she’s going to be asked what she thinks, she’ll get to blab, and as long as she sticks it to President Trump, she’ll be just fine.

Like they say in sports, “Do what got you there.”

Once again Democrats have again publicly demonstrated how they make up alternative facts, still rewrite history, display humorless partisanship, their reflex to label all Republicans racists, and say what they really think about the proper position of women in the workplace.

Liberals don’t like debating because it would require intellectually defending a position without name-calling as a stall tactic, and now that they’re totally out of power and the Trump administration is loosening the noose the left has put around American necks, all they have left is to take to the streets and disrupt wherever possible. The problem is liberals are so intellectually retarded, they even have to be told how to protest with a truly organic concept they had to copy.

About 30 staffers from Congress and not-for-profit groups have created the Indivisible guide, which offers very specific advice for “resisting the Trump agenda”. “Unless you worked in congress the summer of 2009, you cannot fathom the volume of phone calls (that came in),” said Sarah Dohl, co-author, spokeswoman for the Indivisible guide and, between 2009 and 2013, a communications staffer for Lloyd Doggett, a Democratic Texas congressman.

Aww…

Office phones would ring with Tea Party-aligned voters complaining from the moment staff arrived at the congressman’s office to well after they left, said Dohl. The office’s voicemail was always full.
— The Guardian (UK), 1/8/17

At least the Tea Party didn’t disrupt traffic in the streets and/or commit mass acts of vandalism of public and private property… ever. Unlike the left, conservative rallies leave their places of protest cleaner than when they first arrived, never took to the streets with signs saying Barack Obama wasn’t their president, but let’s not get into inconvenient weeds.

Anyway, if you have the time and patience, the following is a video followed by the audiobook of the Indivisible guide created for the reading-challenged amongst the anti-Trump, liberal base.

Like true leftists, they’re using deception to create narratives, busing in protesters, and creating general havoc all because Hillary didn’t know how to count to 270, and was apparently too arrogant and lazy to think she even needed to “fight” for that magic number.

If progressives have to rely on cringe-worthy chants from the 60’s because they’re truly originality-challenged, liberal Democrats will always be at least one step behind which is why they lost the House, the Senate, statehouses across the nation, now the presidency, and no matter how many times they stomp their feet in a collective hissyfit, reality will always be another thing.

For some, nepotism and/or sexual favoritism didn’t hurt either.

How dare anyone challenge the credibility of the professional media! In fact, not only do they enjoy 1st Amendment protection from political retribution, but it appears the media also believes they have a 1st Amendment right to be heard and believed by the public.

I think it’s dangerous. We’re in a dangerous phase right now, where too many millions of Americans aren’t listening at all to what the press tells them.
— Megyn Kelly

This not a laughing matter. I’m sorry, delegitimizing the press is unAmerican. Press bashing may feel good to folks but when it’s done by people in power, it’s corrosive. Take off your partisan hats for a second.
— Chuck Todd

How the hypocritical arrogance oozes….

While there are many thousands of real journalists who received legitimate training (don’t rule out the well-documented liberal indoctrination in academia), it appears political science majors are enough for those who are raking in big bucks to steer partisan narratives, while having little-to-no formal journalism training, worked for politicians, or had the right door-opening relative.

Seeing how most the college journalism/communications classes are dominated by opinionated, liberal teachers 20-to-one, whenever you view a “panel” discussion on any of these news networks, remember you are really witnessing a pro-Democrat political science strategy session, NOT an honest journalistic dissection of any given event.

Chuck Todd • NBC News
Todd attended George Washington University from 1990 to 1994. He majored in political science and minored in music, but never graduated. Todd earned practical political experience on initiative campaigns in Florida and various national campaigns based in Washington, D.C. While in college, Todd worked for the 1992 presidential campaign of Senator Tom Harkin (D-Iowa).

Anderson Cooper • CNN
Cooper was born in New York City, the younger son of the writer Wyatt Emory Cooper and the artist, fashion designer, writer, and heiress Gloria Vanderbilt. Cooper attended Yale University, where he resided in Trumbull College, and was inducted into the Manuscript Society, majoring in political science and graduated with a B.A. in 1989.

Martha MacCallum • Fox News
MacCallum earned her bachelor’s degree in political science from St. Lawrence University and also studied at the Circle in the Square Theatre School, founding the Miranda Theater Company in New York. MacCallum next worked as an associate in corporate relations at Dow Jones & Company.

Katy Tur • NBC News
Tur is the daughter of journalists Hanna Zoey Tur (formerly Robert “Bob” Tur) and Marika Gerrard. She graduated from Brentwood School in 2001, and from the University of California, Santa Barbara in 2005 with a BA in Philosophy.

Rachel Maddow • MSNBC
Maddow earned a degree in public policy at Stanford in 1994. At graduation, she was awarded the John Gardner Fellowship. She was also the recipient of a Rhodes Scholarship and began her postgraduate study in 1995 at Lincoln College, Oxford. This made her the first openly gay or lesbian American to win an international Rhodes Scholarship. In 2001, she earned a Doctor of Philosophy in politics at the University of Oxford.

Norah O’Donnell • CBS News
O’Donnell holds a Bachelor of Arts in philosophy and a master’s degree in liberal studies from Georgetown University.

Ashleigh Banfield • CNN
Banfield obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree in political science and French from Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, in 1988 and continued her studies in French at the University of British Columbia, in Vancouver, British Columbia, graduating in 1992.

Chelsea Clinton • NBC News
Clinton obtained a B.A. degree in history, with highest honors, at Stanford in 2001. In the spring of 2010, Clinton completed a Master of Science in public health degree at the Mailman School of Public Health of Columbia University.

In November 2011, NBC announced that they had hired Clinton as a special correspondent. One of her roles was reporting feature stories about “Making a Difference” for NBC Nightly News and Rock Center with Brian Williams. It was a three-month contract and allowed her to concurrently continue working for the Clinton Foundation and pursue her education. Clinton’s first appearance was on the December 12, 2011, episode of Rock Center. Although she received some negative critical reviews for her work, Clinton’s contract with NBC was renewed in February 2012. Rock Center ended in May 2013, and she left the network in August 2014. Clinton reportedly earned an annual salary of $600,000 for her work at NBC.

Amy Goodman • Democracy Now!
Goodman graduated from Radcliffe College in 1984, with a degree in anthropology. Goodman spent a year studying at the College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor, Maine.

Chris Matthews • MSNBC
Matthews is a 1967 graduate of the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts, and did graduate work in economics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Matthews was also a visiting fellow at Harvard University’s Institute of Politics.

Matthews served on the staffs of four Democrat Members of Congress, including Senators Frank Moss and Edmund Muskie. In 1974, Matthews mounted an unsuccessful campaign for Pennsylvania’s 4th congressional district seat in the U.S. House of Representatives in which he received about 24% of the vote in the primary. Matthews was a presidential speechwriter during the Carter Administration, and later worked for six years as Chief of Staff to longtime Speaker of the House of Representatives Tip O’Neill.

Kate Bolduan • CNN
Bolduan graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 2005 from George Washington University with a bachelor’s degree in journalism. During her time at the university, she walked on to the women’s volleyball team and acted with the student theater organization.

Megyn Kelly • NBC News
Kelly earned an undergraduate degree in political science from Syracuse University in 1992 and earned a J.D. from Albany Law School in 1995.

Tom Brokaw • NBC News
Brokaw matriculated at the University of Iowa in Iowa City, Iowa, but dropped out after a year as he apparently failed to keep up in his studies, in his words majoring in “beer and co-eds”. In tribute to his fun-loving freshman year, the Airliner Bar has named a booth in his honor. He received his Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from the University of South Dakota in 1964.

Lou Dobbs • Fox Business
Although accepted at the University of Idaho and Idaho State University, he was persuaded by the staff at Minico High to apply to Harvard University, where he was accepted and later graduated from with a Bachelor of Arts degree in economics in 1967. After graduating, Dobbs worked for federal anti-poverty programs in Boston and Washington, D.C., then returned to Idaho. He briefly attended law school at the UI College of Law in Moscow.

Mike Barnicle • MSNBC
Graduated from Boston University in 1965.

In 1998, Barnicle resigned from The Boston Globe amid a controversy over two columns, written three years apart. The first column of more than 80 lines of humorous observations had a few lines that bore similarity to jokes in the 1997 book “Brain Droppings” by George Carlin. In a subsequent Globe review of all of Barnicle’s many years of work, a second column was called into question.

Lester Holt • NBC News
Holt attended California State University, Sacramento, and majored in government, though he never graduated.

Kimberly Guilfoyle • Fox News
Guilfoyle graduated magna cum laude from the University of California, Davis, and received her Juris Doctor from the University of San Francisco School of Law in 1994. While in law school, she interned at the San Francisco district attorney’s office. She also modeled for local department stores, including Macy’s, and modeled Victoria’s Secret lingerie in a bridal magazine. She also studied at Trinity College, Dublin in Ireland. While there, she published research in international children’s rights and European Economic Community law.

Matt Lauer • NBC
Lauer is a graduate of the School of Media Arts and Studies (formerly the School of Telecommunications) of Ohio University. In 1997, he received his undergraduate degree from Ohio University at the age of 39. He had dropped out of Ohio University’s School of Telecommunications in the Spring of 1979.

Lauer was terminated from NBC in November 2017, following allegations of inappropriate sexual behavior towards a colleague. Shortly after, media outlets reported additional women coming forward with complaints of ongoing sexual harassment. Lauer admitted that some of the allegations were true, and apologized to those he had hurt.

Juan Williams • Fox News
Williams attended Haverford College, from which he graduated with a baccalaureate in philosophy in 1976.

Brian Williams • MSNBC
Williams attended Brookdale Community College, after which he transferred to The Catholic University of America and then The George Washington University. He did not graduate, and instead interned with the administration of President Jimmy Carter. (Take his word for it….)

Meghan McCain • Fox News
McCain is the daughter of 2008 presidential nominee and long-time U.S. Senator John McCain and Cindy Hensley McCain. She has been a public figure for much of her life, first appearing at the 1996 Republican National Convention. She attended Columbia University, where she earned her bachelor’s degree in art history. McCain originally planned to become a music journalist and interned at Newsweek and Saturday Night Live.

Michael Smerconish • CNN
Smerconish received his B.A. from Lehigh University and his Juris Doctor degree from the University of Pennsylvania Law School.

Charlie Rose • CBS/PBS
Rose entered Duke University, intending to pursue a degree with a pre-med track; however, an internship in the office of Democrat North Carolina Senator B. Everett Jordan got him interested in politics. Rose graduated in 1964 with a Bachelor’s Degree in history. Rose earned a Juris Doctor from the Duke University School of Law in 1968.

In November 2017, Rose’s employment at CBS was terminated, and his eponymous show Charlie Rose on PBS was cancelled after in-house allegations of sexual harassment.

Laura Jarrett • CNN
Daughter of Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett. Prior to joining CNN to cover the Justice Department and Supreme Court, Jarrett worked as a litigation attorney in Chicago. Jarrett attended Harvard Law School where she was Articles Selection co-chair, an Article Editor, and a Technical Editor for the Harvard Journal of Law and Gender, and published her own articles on the intersection of gender, violence, and the law.

Jamie Colby • Fox News
Attending the University of Miami’s International School of Business, Colby earned a Bachelor of Business Administration degree in accounting as well as a Juris Doctor degree from the University of Miami School of Law at age 22.

Bret Baier • Fox News
Baier attended DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana, graduating in 1992 with a BA degree in political science and English.

Chris Cuomo • CNN
Cuomo is the son of Mario Cuomo, the former New York Governor, and the brother of Andrew Cuomo, the current Governor of New York. Cuomo was educated at Yale University, where he obtained an undergraduate degree, and Fordham University where he obtained his Juris Doctor.

Uma Pemmaraju • Fox News
Pemmaraju graduated from Trinity University in Texas with a Bachelor of Arts degree in political science.

Ana Navarro • CNN
Navarro is a graduate of the University of Miami and obtained a Bachelor of Arts in Latin American Studies and Political Science in 1993. In 1997, she obtained a Juris Doctor from St. Thomas University Law School.

David Gregory • NBC News
Gregory was born in Los Angeles, California, the son of Carolyn Surtees, an account manager, and Don Gregory (originally Don Ginsburg), a film and theatrical producer.

He received a degree in International Studies from the School of International Service.

Bob Beckel • Fox News
Beckel has a BA from Wagner College in Staten Island. While in college, he worked for Robert F. Kennedy’s presidential campaign in 1968.

In 1977, Beckel joined the United States Department of State as deputy assistant secretary of state for congressional relations, becoming the youngest deputy assistant secretary of state in the Carter administration. Beckel was the campaign manager for Walter Mondale’s 1984 presidential campaign. In 2002, Beckel managed the campaign of Alan Blinken, the Democrat nominee for United States Senate in Idaho, until he resigned after being targeted for extortion by a prostitute.

On May 19, 2017, Fox News announced Beckel was released as a result of making a racist remark against another Fox News employee.

Gloria Borger • CNN
Borger graduated from Colgate University in 1974.

Her son is married to Mary Anne Huntsman, daughter of politician Jon Huntsman Jr.

Kennedy • Fox Business
Lisa Kennedy Montgomery attended but did not graduate from Lakeridge High School in 1990. She has a bachelor’s degree in philosophy from UCLA.

Jenna Bush Hager • ABC
Bush is the younger of the twin daughters of the President George W. Bush and former First Lady Laura Bush, and a granddaughter of the President George H. W. Bush and former First Lady Barbara Bush. She attended the University of Texas at Austin and took summer classes at New York University. She was a legacy member of Kappa Alpha Theta, her mother’s sorority.

Shepard Smith • Fox News
Smith attended the University of Mississippi where he majored in journalism, but left two credits away from graduation.

Wolf Blitzer • CNN
Blitzer graduated from Kenmore West Senior High School and received a Bachelor of Arts in history from the State University of New York at Buffalo in 1970. While there, he was a brother of Alpha Epsilon Pi. In 1972, he received a Master of Arts in international relations from the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. While at Johns Hopkins, Blitzer studied abroad at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he learned Hebrew.

Brian Kilmeade • Fox News
Kilmeade attended C.W. Post (Brookville, New York) where he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in 1986.

Mika Brzezinski • MSNBC
Brzezinski is the daughter of Zbigniew Brzezinski, who was the National Security Advisor to President Jimmy Carter and a counselor to President Lyndon B. Johnson. She graduated in 1989 from Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts, where she majored in English, after transferring from Georgetown University as a junior.

Joe Scarborough • MSNBC
Scarborough earned a B.A. from the University of Alabama in 1985 and a J.D. from the University of Florida College of Law in 1990. Scarborough served in the United States House of Representatives from 1995 to 2001 as a Republican from the 1st district of Florida.

April Ryan • CNN
Ryan is a graduate of Morgan State University, however her name is absent from their list of “Notable alumni and faculty”.

Chris Hayes • MSNBC
Hayes attended Brown University for his undergraduate education, where he received a Bachelor of Arts in philosophy and worked with student theater group Production Workshop.

Judy Woodruff • PBS
Woodruff attended Meredith College before transferring to Duke University, where she earned a degree in political science.

Andrea Mitchell • MSNBC
Mitchell is married to former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan and received a Bachelor of Arts degree in English literature from the University of Pennsylvania in 1967.

Trace Gallagher • Fox News
Gallagher graduated from the University of San Diego where he majored in business and played quarterback for the Torreros football team.

Jake Tapper • CNN
Tapper graduated Dartmouth College Phi Beta Kappa and magna cum laude with a B.A. in history, modified by Visual Studies. He briefly attended graduate school at the University of Southern California School of Cinema-Television.

In 1992, Tapper served as a Campaign Press Secretary for Democrat congressional candidate Marjorie Margolies-Mezvinsky (PA-13), and later served as her congressional press secretary. Tapper also worked for Powell Tate, a Washington, D.C., public relations firm run by Democrat Jody Powell and Republican Sheila Tate. Tapper also worked briefly for Handgun Control, Inc. (now the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence) in 1997.

Tapper wrote several articles as a freelance writer, and then began his full-time journalism career in 1998 for two years as a Senior Writer for the Washington City Paper. Tapper wrote an article about going on a date with Monica Lewinsky, which skewered Washington’s culture of scandal. Tapper won a Society of Professional Journalists award for his work at the Washington City Paper.

Jim Acosta • CNN
In 1993, Acosta earned a bachelor’s degree in Mass Communication, with a minor in Political Science, from James Madison University.

Martha Raddatz • ABC News
Raddatz attended the University of Utah but dropped out to work at a local station.

Candy Crowley • CNN
Crowley attended Randolph-Macon Woman’s College in Lynchburg, Virginia, where she graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in English.

Tavis Smiley • PBS
In 1982, Smiley enrolled in Indiana University Bloomington. Because Smiley’s parents refused to complete financial aid papers, Smiley entered Indiana University with only $50 and a small suitcase. Administrators let Smiley complete the paperwork to become a full-time student. During his first semester of junior year, Smiley was under academic probation; he blamed his extracurricular activities for interfering with his studies. Smiley didn’t graduate from college at all, because he failed a required course in his senior year and “did poorly in several other courses,” which meant he could not complete his degree on time; rather than stay for an extra term, he chose to leave IU and move to Los Angeles.

In 2003, Smiley officially received his degree from Indiana University in public affairs.

To date, Smiley has received 16 honorary doctorates.

On December 13, 2017, PBS issued a statement saying that it had hired a law firm to conduct an investigation “immediately after learning of troubling allegations regarding Mr. Smiley” and that this investigation “uncovered multiple, credible allegations of conduct that is inconsistent with the values and standards of PBS.

On December 14, Smiley described the PBS investigation as “biased and sloppy” and said he would fight the allegations and the damage to his reputation.

John Berman • CNN
Berman earned a Bachelor of Arts in social studies from Harvard University.

Charles Krauthammer • Fox News
Krauthammer attended McGill University in Montreal, graduating in 1970 with First Class Honours in both economics and political science. The following year, after graduating McGill, he studied as a Commonwealth Scholar in politics at Balliol College, Oxford, before returning to the United States to attend medical school at Harvard, graduating in 1975.

Jon Stewart • Comedy Central
Stewart graduated in 1984 from the College of William & Mary in Virginia, where he initially majored in chemistry before switching to psychology.

John Dickerson • CBS News
Dickerson holds a degree in English with Distinction from the University of Virginia. “On Her Trail”, Dickerson’s book about his relationship with his late mother Nancy Dickerson Whitehead, a pioneering television newswoman, was published by Simon & Schuster in 2006.

Gayle King • CBS
King graduated from the University of Maryland in 1976 with a double degree in psychology and sociology.

Greg Gutfeld • Fox News
In 1987, Gutfeld graduated from the University of California, Berkeley with a B.A. in English.

Nancy Grace • HLN
Grace attended Valdosta State University and later received a B.A. from Mercer University. As a student, Grace was a fan of Shakespearean literature, and intended to become an English professor after graduating from college, but after the murder of her fiancé Keith Griffin when she was 19, Grace decided to enroll in law school and went on to become a felony prosecutor and a supporter of victims’ rights.

Grace received her Juris Doctor from the Walter F. George School of Law at Mercer, where she was a member of the law review. She went on to earn a Master of Laws in constitutional and criminal law from New York University.

Poppy Harlow • CNN
Harlow graduated Magna Cum Laude, Phi Beta Kappa, from Columbia University with a bachelor’s degree in political science and Middle Eastern studies.

George Stephanopoulos • ABC News
In 1982, Stephanopoulos received a Bachelor of Arts degree in political science summa cum laude from Columbia University in New York and was the salutatorian of his class.

In 1988, Stephanopoulos worked on the Michael Dukakis 1988 U.S. presidential campaign. After that campaign, Stephanopoulos became the “floor man” for Dick Gephardt, U.S. House of Representatives Majority Leader; a position held until, along with David Wilhelm and James Carville, he became a leading member of Bill Clinton’s 1992 U.S. presidential campaign. At the outset of Clinton’s presidency, Stephanopoulos served as the de facto press secretary, briefing the press even though Dee Dee Myers was officially the White House Press Secretary. Later following several verbal missteps he was moved to Senior Advisor on Policy and Strategy.

Stephanopoulos resigned from the Clinton administration shortly after Clinton was re-elected in 1996.

Brian Stelter • CNN
Stelter studied at Towson University where he served as editor-in-chief of The Towerlight from 2005 to 2007. While still a student, he created TVNewser, a blog about television and cable news which he later sold to Mediabistro.

Stelter graduated from Towson in May 2007, and joined The New York Times as a media reporter later in July of that year.

John Stossel • Fox News
Stossel characterizes himself as having been “an indifferent student” while in college, commenting, “I daydreamed through half my classes at Princeton, and applied to grad school only because I was ambitious, and grad school seemed like the right path for a 21-year-old who wanted to get ahead.” Although he had been accepted to the University of Chicago’s School of Hospital Management, Stossel was “sick of school” and thought taking a job would inspire him to embrace graduate studies with renewed vigor.

Dana Bash • CNN
Bash’s father, Stu Schwartz, was an ABC News producer who served as the senior broadcast producer for Good Morning America. Bash graduated cum laude with her bachelor’s degree in political communications from George Washington University.

Karen Finney • MSNBC
After attending UCLA, Finney served four years as the spokesperson and Director of Communications at the Democrat National Committee. She served as Press Secretary for Hillary Clinton in the early 1990s, then moved into the private sector, working in marketing for the children’s academic book company Scholastic Inc.

In 2001, she managed crisis communications for the New York City Board of Education, and worked for Elizabeth Edwards during the 2004 presidential campaign. On November 25, 2014 Finney joined Media Matters as a senior fellow and consultant. On April 6, 2015, CNN announced that she was selected as Strategic Communications Adviser and Senior Spokesperson for the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign.

Deborah Feyerick • CNN
Deborah Feyerick attended Barnard College where she graduated in 1987 with a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature.

Fareed Zakaria • CNN
Zakaria graduated with a Bachelor of Arts from Yale University in 1986 and later a Doctor of Philosophy degree in Government from Harvard University in 1993.

Tucker Carlson • Fox News
Carlson was born in San Francisco, California, the elder son of Richard Warner Carlson, a former Los Angeles news anchor and U.S. ambassador to the Seychelles, who was also president of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and director of Voice of America. His mother is the former Lisa McNear Lombardi, and his stepmother is the former Patricia Caroline Swanson, an heiress to the Swanson frozen-food fortune (daughter of Gilbert Carl Swanson and granddaughter of Carl A. Swanson) and a niece of Sen. J. William Fulbright.

He studied history at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut.

Joe Johns • CNN
Johns holds a bachelor of arts degree in political science from Marshall University in Huntington, West Virginia, and a law degree from American University in D.C.

Greta Van Susteren • NBC News
Van Susteren graduated from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1976, where she studied geography and economics. She later earned a J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center in 1979 and prior to the start of her television work returned to Georgetown Law as an adjunct faculty member in addition to her full-time legal career. She was awarded an honorary doctor of laws degree from Stetson Law School.

Mara Liasson • NPR, Fox News
Liasson is a graduate of Brown University (class of 1977) with a bachelor of arts degree in American history.

Amy Kellogg • Fox News
Kellogg received her B.A. from Brown University in Soviet studies, and her M.A. from Stanford University in Russian and East European studies. Kellogg is fluent in Russian, Spanish, and French. She spent the second semester of her junior year at Leningrad State University, in the former Soviet Union. After graduating from Stanford, she spent some time teaching English and studying Spanish in Argentina before shifting into the news business.

Katherine Timpf • Fox News
She graduated in 2010 from Hillsdale College (magna cum laude) with a B.A. in English.

Al Sharpton • MSNBC
Attended Brooklyn College, dropping out after two years in 1975. In 1972, Sharpton accepted the position of youth director for the presidential campaign of Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm. Between the years 1973 and 1980 Sharpton served as James Brown’s tour manager.

Shannon Bream • Fox News
Bream attended Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia. While attending Liberty, she entered the Miss Virginia pageant and won the title of Miss Virginia in 1990. She participated in the Miss America 1991 pageant and was one of the ten finalists. Her scholarship award covered much of her education.

After graduating from Liberty University in 1993 with a degree in business, Bream returned to Tallahassee and attended law school at Florida State University. She interned with Florida Congressman Bill McCollum, in the US House of Representatives.

Elizabeth MacDonald • Fox Business
MacDonald graduated with a B.A. with honors from Canisius College in 1984.

Katie Couric • Yahoo!
As a high school student, Couric was an intern at Washington, D.C. all-news radio station WAVA. She enrolled at her father’s alma mater, the University of Virginia, in 1975 and was a Delta Delta Delta sorority sister. Couric served in several positions at UVA’s award-winning daily newspaper, The Cavalier Daily. She graduated in 1979 with a bachelor’s degree in American Studies.

Erin Burnett • CNN
Burnett attended Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts, where she studied political science and economics, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts degree in political economy.

Lawrence O’Donnell • MSNBC
O’Donnell graduated from Harvard College (class of 1974) with a major in economics in 1976.

From 1989 to 1995, he was a legislative aide to Democrat Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan. From 1989 to 1991, he served as senior advisor to Moynihan. From 1992 to 1993, he was staff director of the United States Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, then chaired by Senator Moynihan, and from 1993 to 1995 he was staff director of the United States Senate Committee on Finance, again under Senator Moynihan’s chairmanship.

Joy Reid • MSNBC
Reid studied documentary film making in the Harvard University Visual and Environmental Studies department.

Hallie Jackson • MSNBC
In 2006, Jackson graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Johns Hopkins University with a B.A. degree in political science.

Abby Huntsman • Fox News
Huntsman is the daughter of 2012 presidential candidate Jon Huntsman, Jr.

At age 16, Huntsman worked a behind-the-scenes position at Good Morning America. By her own admission, she disliked it so much that she contemplated giving up on television “forever”. While attending the University of Pennsylvania, Huntsman interned for Diane Sawyer. In 2012, during and after her father’s presidential campaign, Huntsman appeared as a political commentator for ABC News in Washington, D.C., and Good Morning America in New York City. In 2013, she was listed as number 26 on the Forbes 30 under 30 list of up and coming members of the media.

Dagen McDowell • Fox Business
McDowell graduated from Wake Forest University with a degree in art history.

There are notables not on this list because they actually majored in journalism. We also used Wikipedia as a consistent reference because many of the news entities (for some strange reason) decline to include education backgrounds in the posted bios of their on-air celebrities.

And this is just on the broadcast level. There are probably many others on the print/blog side, that have earned the right to be called journalists, sitting right next to those who do not and it’s no wonder why we get “news” and narratives we can’t trust.

BTW: the majority of black on-air personalities today actually had to complete classes/majors in the disciplines of the journalism profession BEFORE they got jobs in the business; a prerequisite many of their white counterparts have successfully bypassed.