MSNBC host Van Susteren smacks down Priebus for downplaying Russian hacks: ‘This is extremely serious’

TOM BOGGIONI/Think Progress

Former Fox News host Greta Van Susteren launched her new show on MSNBC Monday night, lecturing GOP head Reince Priebus for trying to diminish the severity of Russian involvement in the 2016 election.

While Priebus, who will serve as President-elect Donald Trump’s chief of staff, said the new administration would look into the hacks, he attempted to blame the Democratic National Committee instead of the perpetrators.

“As you may know, what the Trump administration is going to do is order a report and a recommendations back within 90 days of the people we have at DNI and then the CIA and Homeland Security and others to look at what we need to do to be better at protecting ourselves from cyberattack,” Priebus said. “But also what recommendation we have an a response to some of the things that have been occurring.”

“What’s getting lost is some of the things I’ve have talk about over the last few days,” he continued. “Yeah, this was a hack and, yes, by foreign entities. But it’s also scaled in magnitude because the DNC had no defenses in place in order to prevent the hack. This is a type of hack, Greta, where someone send you a e-mail that says ‘I’m stranded in Mali, i need $20,000. send it to you me.’ And you have people at the DNC hit the link. The the FBI calls the DNC multiple times over months and the DNC doesn’t respond. I don’t think we would be talking about this if they had some basic defense in place or returned a phone call.”

Van Susteren then pulled Priebus up short, by bring up Russian President Vladimir Putin actions, a topic Trump advocates usually avoid.

“Alright, I used the word mischief and I don’t want the viewers to this is isn’t serious,” the MSNBC host told Priebus. “And even if the DNC could have had better protection, I still see this as extremely serious and I think it’s very bad conduct of Putin towards the  United States showing bad intent even if the DNC could have done better job protecting themselves.”

Watch the video below via MSNBC:

Watch MSNBC Host WRECK RNC Chairman Over Pathetic Excuses About GOP Gov’t Shutdown!

From Americans Against The Tea Party

During an appearance on MSNBC, host Thomas Roberts blasted Republican National Committee Chairman, Reince Priebus, for he and his party’s role in the government shutdown.

Roberts asked Priebus,

“Why do we need to attach the solutions or changes that go along with the law, that has been vetted by the Supreme Court, by a mandate by the people re-electing the President and both houses of Congress, why should that be attached to shutting down the government, and as the President is saying, basically writing a ransom note and asking for some type of goody bag in response for Congress doing its job to govern?”

Priebus’ pathetic response?

“Those are some pretty good talking points.”

“They’re not talking points,” Roberts shot back.

A noticeably frustrated Priebus responded, “It sounds like I’m debating the chairman of the DNC here, Thomas.  Okay, that’s fine.  I’m happy to debate you.”

Roberts took the opportunity to really hammer his point home, saying,

“No, no, no.  These are not talking points. This is specifically about what’s going on right now in Washington, D.C. and why they have to associate the health care law with running our government.  Why not just do a clean CR and get the government back up and running and then take to task, which some Republicans want to do, and then take to task ACA?”

A flustered Priebus offered a slew of excuses, none of which are worth mentioning.

Check and mate.

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Why RNC Chairman Reince Priebus Is Freaking Out Over Pop Culture’s Hillary Rodham Clinton Obsession

BY ALYSSA ROSENBERG/Think Progress

Who’s afraid of Hillary Clinton? Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus, apparently. Now that Hillary Clinton’s become a hot pop culture subject, with USA’s miniseries Political Animals in the rearview mirror, a feature-length biopic, Rodham in the works, Diane Lane starring in an NBC miniseries about the former First Lady and Secretary of State, and CNN working on a documentary about her, Priebus has told NBC and CNN that if they don’t suspend their projects, he will ask his members to agree not to hold debates on the networks or condone debates set up outside the RNC system that appear on NBC and CNN. The Hollywood Reporter explains:

In both letters, Priebus attempts to paint the Clinton projects as little more than lengthy and free campaign ads. In the letter to Greenblatt, he notes that David Cohen, who is an executive vp at Comcast, NBCUniversal’s parent company, has been a major donor to Clinton and other Democrats. “Your company has expressly stated that your choice to air the miniseries in the near future would avoid concerns of running afoul of equal time election laws,” Priebus writes in his letter to Greenblatt. “This suggests a deliberate attempt at influencing American political opinion in favor of a preferred candidate, not to mention a guilty conscience.”

It seems far more likely to me that the decision to order these projects speaks to the networks’ needs for something buzzy–NBC still hasn’t found anything other than The Voice that really works for it, and CNN is undergoing a dramatic renovation at the hands of Jeff Zucker–than it does to any particular affection for the Clintons.

But Priebus’ anxiety is telling. Pop culture riffs on the presidency have a strong bias towards scandal, because that’s what’s sexy. Primary Colors, the first major pop culture take on the Clintons, presented Susan Stanton, its Hillary surrogate, as a bisexual schemer with no particular regard for her own reputation as long as her husband continued to rise. Political Animals was kinder, but it still focused on adultery dramas. Reelz is reopening the Kennedy Assassination file again, because that’s where the ratings are. There’s no particular reason to believe that any of the forthcoming takes on Clinton will be in any way hagiography, and much to suspect that they’ll mostly focus on the conundrum that still seems so overwhelming to so many people: the fact that Clinton was cheated on repeatedly and stayed. But that Priebus is concerned about even portrayals that might not be positive suggests that Clinton’s achieved a particularly Teflon status, where even bad news from her past ends up generating sympathy or respect for her.

And I also wonder if Priebus might have motivations of his own for getting some RNC debates off networks. Given that the Republican Party seems no closer than it was in 2012 to reaching a decisive break between its radical and moderate wings, if I were Priebus, I might want to keep that debate between them as far away from mass audiences as possible. Given how far moderate Republicans like Mitt Romney have had to run to the right during their primary campaigns, one of the things that debates do is generate a vast trove of high-quality clips of things that the eventual nominee will eventually have to try to explain away in a shortened general election season. If I were Priebus, I’d want as few of those debates as possible, and I’d want them to happen further from the public eye so my eventual candidate has less baggage that can eventually be hung around her or his neck.

It’s true that painting the Clintons as the ultimate insiders benefitting from media sympathy, and trying to use the idea of dynastic succession that they avoided during the Bush years is probably one of the better lines of attack the RNC has against Clinton if she decides to run. But going after the mainstream media as biased is a way for Priebus to both throw a bone to the idea that Fox News and other conservative outlets are more balanced than NBC and CNN, while also potentially getting his candidates out of a spotlight that for them, can feel awfully harsh.

How The Right Wing Manufactured A Fake Controversy Over Planned Parenthood’s ‘Infanticide’

By Tara Culp-Ressler/Think Progress

On Wednesday, RNC Chairman Reince Priebus published an editorial lambasting the mainstream media for “covering up” Planned Parenthood’s “support for infanticide.” According to Priebus, the national women’s health organization — in addition to providing contraceptive services, STD testing, cancer screenings, and reproductive care for millions of women across the country — is also in the business of murdering live babies. He claims that a recent committee hearing in Florida proves that Planned Parenthood officials support “the right to post-birth abortion.”

What’s “post-birth abortion”? What exactly happened in Florida? And how did this controversy explode in the right-wing media?

To understand the root of the current smear campaign against Planned Parenthood, it’s important to understand the context of the committee hearing that Priebus is referencing. That hearing was a debate over HB 1129, a politically-motivated piece of legislation seeking to ensure that any infant born alive “during or immediately after an attempted abortion” is entitled to all of the same rights “as any other child born alive in course of natural birth.” The “Infant Born Alive” measure rests upon the fundamentally flawed assumption that this type of situation is a real risk for women seeking to terminate a pregnancy. In fact, Florida does not perform abortions after the fetus has reached viability, so the situation that HB 1129 intends to address is incredibly unlikely.

And the original version of the legislation went even further. In this hypothetical medical situation, where an infant is “born alive” after an incredibly late-term induced abortion, the woman would have also been stripped of all parental rights. The Florida Association of Planned Parenthood Affiliates opposed HB 1129 because of this particular provision, which they believe is simply intended to intimidate and shame women. Planned Parenthood officials pointed out that the implicit assumption is that women who choose abortion can’t possibly be fit to care for a child — and that’s not something that should be codified into state law.

Last week, a lobbyist representing Planned Parenthood, Alisa LaPolt Snow, testified about the organization’s opposition to that aspect of HB 1129. During the hearing, she was questioned by a panel of anti-abortion state lawmakers who demanded that she respond to questions about this highly unlikely hypothetical situation. According to sources from the organization, the Republican lawmaker who sponsored HB 1129 repeatedly insinuated that women who choose abortions cannot be trusted, defending the provision revoking parental rights because “there is at least suspicion that that biological mother may not have the best interest of that born infant in mind.” When posed with a hypothetical scenario in which “a baby is born on a table as a result of a botched abortion,” Snow attempted to make the point that legislators don’t need to get in the middle of medical situations. “We believe that any decision that’s made should be left up to the woman, her family, and the physician,” Snow said.

That was enough for the right-wing media to proclaim that Planned Parenthood endorses “infanticide.” After the Weekly Standard posted a video of that portion of the exchange, it spread throughout conservative outlets — eventually inspiring Priebus’ breathless editorial suggesting that any politician who supports Planned Parenthood may also support infanticide.

Aside from the fact that Planned Parenthood was essentially backed into a corner by Florida Republicans — forced to testify against an unnecessary provision within a misleading piece of legislation, and then forced to respond to an imaginary “botched abortion” procedure that’s already against the law in the state — the organization’s position on caring for infants is already quite clear. Planned Parenthood has a long history of providing professional medical care to women and their children. Abortion opponents often attempt to misconstrue Planned Parenthood as an irresponsible organization that doesn’t adhere to medical standards, but its clinics already provide high-quality primary care and preventative services to millions of people across the country.

The organization responded to the manufactured controversy to clarify this point. “As a trusted health care provider, Planned Parenthood strongly condemns any physician who does not follow the law or endangers a woman’s or child’s health,” a Planned Parenthood representative testified before the Florida House Health & Human Services Committee on Thursday. “And while HB 1129 addresses a situation that is extremely unlikely and highly unusual, if the scenario presented by the legislation should happen, of course a Planned Parenthood doctor would provide appropriate care to both the woman and the infant.”

Perhaps the ultimate irony of the right-wing’s imagined controversy is that — even in states where it’s not against the law to perform late-term induced abortions — Planned Parenthood clinics don’t provide that type of service. Many Planned Parenthood affiliates only perform abortions in the first trimester of pregnancy, when women can either take a pill or have a less-invasive surgical procedure. It’s actually the women who don’t have access to Planned Parenthood clinics, which are under attack across the country as GOP-controlled legislatures do their best to shut them down, who are forced to resort to dangerous, illegal, late-term abortion services like the ones described at the Florida hearing.

GOP Chairman Suggests Mike Huckabee Should Be Party’s Ambassador On Gay Rights

By Igor Volsky/Think Progress

Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus has been pressing the GOP to be more accepting of gay people, arguing that harsh rhetoric alienates young voters and jeopardizes the party’s future. But on Friday, Priebus took a big step backward, telling the National Review that the party should take its cues about social issues from former Arkansas governor and Baptist Minister Mike Huckabee:

Priebus cited former governor Mike Huckabee of Arkansas as an example of someone who could be “a model for a lot of people in our party” in terms of discussing issues like marriage and abortion. “I always tell people: Listen to Governor Mike Huckabee,” he said. “I don’t know anyone that talks about them any better.”

Huckabee — a hard line opponent of marriage equality and abortion rights — uses a warmer and more congenial tone about gay people and women than firebrands like Rick Santorum or Rick Perry, urging conservatives to respect gays and women, even as they organize to deny them legal protections and benefits or access to a full spectrum of health care services. But as the public grows more accepting of same-sex relationships and Roe v Wade, Huckabee’s positions and rhetoric about these issues is out of sync with the nation as a whole and will not serve the party well as it seeks to grow and appeal to more voters:

On Marriage Equality:

– Being gay is a public health risk. “I feel homosexuality is an aberrant,unnatural, and sinful lifestyle, and we now know it can pose a dangerous public health risk”

– Being gay is a sin. “Well I believe it would be — just like lying is sinful and stealing is sinful. There are a lot of things that are sinful. It doesn’t mean that a person is a horrible person. It means that they engage in behavior that is outside the norms of those boundaries of our traditional view of what’s right and what’s wrong. So, I think that anybody who has, maybe a traditional worldview of sexuality would classify that as an unusual behavior that is not traditional and that would be outside those bounds.”

– Marriage equality will lead to polygamy. “If we change the definition to a man or a man and a woman and a woman, why can’t we accommodate a man and two women or a woman and three men.”

On Abortion:

– Supported Todd Akin. “The Party’s leaders have for reasons that aren’t rational, left [Akin] behind on the political battlefield…Is this what the party really thinks of principled pro-life advocates?”

– Would ban abortion even in cases of incest or rape. In 2011, Huckabee traveled to Jackson, Mississippi to raise money for the Yes on 26 campaign, “in support of the Mississippi Personhood amendment, a referendum on the November ballot that would ban abortions in the state” even in cases of rape or incest.

– Compares abortion to slavery. “What are we saying to the generation coming after us when we tell them that it is perfectly OK for one person to own another human being?” Huckabee said. “I thought we dealt with that 150 years ago when the issue of slavery was finally settled in this country, and we decided that it no longer was a political issue, it wasn’t an issue of geography,it was an issue of morality. That it was either right or it was immoral that one person could own another human being and have full control even to the point of life and death over that other human being.”

Despite A 0.0002 Percent Rate Of Voter Fraud, Reince Priebus Claims Wisconsin Is ‘Riddled With Voter Fraud’

By Scott Keyes/Think Progress

Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus made a curious claim on MSNBC today, alleging that Wisconsin is a state “that was absolutely riddled with voter fraud.”

The problem? A recent study by the nonpartisan Brennan Center for Justice found just seven cases of voter fraud out of three million votes cast in Wisconsin during the 2004 election, a fraud rate of 0.0002percent. All seven of these cases involved persons with felony convictions who weren’t eligible to vote after being released from prison.

Unfazed by the minuscule incidence of actual voter fraud – comedian Stephen Colbert jokedthat “our democracy is under siege from an enemy so small it could be hiding anywhere” – Priebus went on MSNBC to defend Wisconsin’s new photo ID requirement and yesterday’s anti-voting rights measure passed by the House GOP. When host Martin Bashir pushed the RNC Chair about his party’s motivations for restricting voting rights, Priebus pointed to his home state of Wisconsin and declared, “I come from a state in Wisconsin that was absolutely riddled with voter fraud, okay?”

BASHIR: Just last night Republicans in the House voted to dismantle the Election Assistance Commission, the sole purpose of which is to make sure states meet voting standards that prevent fraud. Why would Republicans do that if they’re honestly concerned about preventing fraud? [...]

PRIEBUS: Well listen, I don’t want to get into the specifics here, but let me tell you something. I come from a state in Wisconsin that was absolutely riddled with voter fraud, okay? They had the smokes-for-votes exchange in Milwaukee. This is something that has nothing to do with constitutional rights of the people who are committing the fraud, it has to do with the constitutional rights of people under our Constitution that one person gets one vote, not two or three or four or five, by not having reasonable voting standards in this country to make sure that fraud doesn’t occur.

Watch it:

Research has found that voters are 39 times more likely to be struck by lightning than commit voter fraud at the polls, and 3,500 times more likely to report a UFO encounter.

Voter fraud certainly ought to be prosecuted in the extremely rare instances when it occurs. But Republicans like Priebus are using the false specter of fraud as a cudgel to disenfranchise millions.

RNC Chair: GOP’s Historic Unpopularity Shows Americans Are Upset With Obama

By Alex Seitz-Wald/Think Progress

A new CNN/Opinion Research poll released today finds Republicans’ popularity badly bruised by the bitter debt ceiling debate, with the GOP’s unfavorable ratings climbing to an all-time high of 59 percent. The party’s favorable ratings, meanwhile, dropped eight points over the past month to just 33 percent. “The Democratic party, which had a favorable rating just a couple of points higher than the GOP in July, now has a 14-point advantage over the Republican party,” said CNN Polling Director Keating Holland.

The network brought on RNC Chairman Reince Priebus this afternoon to respond to numbers. While saying he hadn’t studied poll in depth, Priebus embarked on stunningly brazen spin, blaming the drop in Republicans’ approval on President Obama. Despite host Brooke Baldwin’s repeated attempts to get Priebus to address the GOP’s unpopularity, the chairman kept going back to Obama:

BALDWIN: To what do we attribute this? Fallout from the debt ceiling debacle?

PRIEBUS: First of all, I haven’t really looked at it too deeply, other than the fact that I think it’s true that people are frustrated with a lot of what goes on in Washington. I think, most of all, people are frustrated with the president who continues not to lead during the most important in our country. But it’s not just a matter of leadership, Brooke, it’s a matter of what this president has put in place when he’s had the opportunity to lead. [...] He put in Obamcare.

BALDWIN: Hold on, Reince Priebus. [...] You see the numbers right there. Now versus July.

PRIEBUS: Okay, Brooke, and I told you, I think people are frustrated with politics in general. But the reality is we have a leader in Washington –

BALDWIN: Well, you mentioned the president, but I’m asking you specifically about your party.

PRIEBUS: I think people are frustrated with a lot of people in Washington. [...]And we have a president who is not a willing partner.

Watch it:

Party chairmen are expected to present news in the most favorable light for them and their party, but blaming his party’s unpopularity on the head of the other party is comical. And CNN’s poll is not the first to show that Republican congressional leaders’ intransigence and hostage on the debt ceiling hurt them politically. Americans overwhelmingly disproved of the GOP’s handling of the debt negotiations, and 74 percent of even Republicans thought revenue increases should have been part of the final deal.

Priebus’s comments once again show here’s nothing conservatives aren’t willing to blame Obama for.