House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan appeared on Fox & Friends Wednesday morning to discuss the White House’s decision to cut and ration Medicare spending. “The President and his party leaders’ rhetoric never match up their agenda,” Ryan told host Gretchen Carlson, adding that he thinks things will be just fine for Republicans “once the dust settles” on budget discussions concerning Medicare.

GOP hopeful Newt Gingrich, campaigning in Ohio, was a guest on Fox & Friends Tuesday morning, and hit on topics ranging from his disdain for attack ads to a possible rise in the polls for Rick Santoum. Host Steve Doocy, however, started the segment off by asking if Gingrich would ever follow in the footsteps of Mitt Romney and belt out a pro-America tune anytime soon.

Those of you who didn’t use Madonna’s Super Bowl halftime performance as an excuse to go out and buy another bag of Extreme Buffalo Chili Cheesesteak Pizza Doritos might have noticed that singer M.I.A. — one of the 812 performers who joined Madonna onstage for her medley — saw it fit to give viewers the middle finger during her performance.

Indiana governor Mitch Daniels made an appearance on Fox & Friends Friday, where he spoke optimistically on the future of his state, this weekend’s Super Bowl, and made a subtle dig at a certain reality TV host.

Socialite and celebrity muse Punxsutawney Phil woke up this morning to the sound of his name, looked down at his “I Hate Mondays” T-shirt, and considered going back to sleep. He’d grown tired of the routine, weary from the pressure, disillusioned with his celebrity. But Phil is nothing if not a dutiful little groundhog, and so he allowed himself to be pulled out of a bed on this brisk February morning.

GOP hopeful Rick Santorum was a guest on Fox & Friends Tuesday morning, and gave new meaning to the phrase “The Lord works in mysterious ways,” thanking the national media for “bugging” him to release his tax returns. “Had I not done that, I wouldn’t have been home” to care for daughter Isabella during her recent health crisis.

At a recent debate, Santorum told moderators he would release his taxes next time he got home, because he does them himself, and are on his home computer.

In a segment asking whether media coverage of the GOP election is biased, Fox & Friends showed a clip of Andrea Mitchell on MSNBC, expressing the need for an alternative to Newt Gingrich because of “desperation” among the Republican elite.

Following his “prebuttal” of the President’s State of the Union Address yesterday, Mitt Romney appeared on Fox and Friends this morning to give his “postbuttal” (What? That’s just called a “rebuttal”? Oh, I see). However, the conversation soon turned to Romney’s highest polling opponent in the GOP nomination race, Newt Gingrich. And, while Romney seemed more interested in talking about President Obama.

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) made a guest appearance on Fox & Friends Wednesday, and railed against the policies of President Barack Obama, saying that the President had a Democratic House and Senate for 2/3 of his presidency, and only has failed policies to show for it.

Col. Alan West, a Republican congressman from Florida, joined Fox & Friends Monday morning to talk about his state’s upcoming GOP primary, Congressional doings, and the President’s shortcomings. Host Brian Kilmeade began the interview by asking West what Newt Gingrich had to do to win the primary in Florida. West suggested that the candidates channel Ronald Reagan, and ask the people if they’re better off now than they were three years ago.

Newt Gingrich came out this week swinging at the media this week, from Juan Williams to John King to the crew at Fox & Friends this morning, and it seems to be paying off in spades in South Carolina. On Fox News today, Neil Cavuto– who defended King– commented on the Fox & Friends assault, and found the tactic effective as it is worrisome. “You’re not really doing anyone a favor,” he told Gregg Jarrett, “except throwing a bone at a crowd that likes red meat.”

Former Fox News contributors Newt Gingrich wasn’t very happy with Fox News this morning. The Republican frontrunner in the 2012 campaign visited the weekend crew of Fox & Friends to chat about debate dynamics and ended up challenging the network’s “fair and balanced” logo over a question on Mitt Romney‘s taxes. Has Gingrich taken this whole hate-the-media thing a step to far by attack, of all people, Fox & Friends hosts?

Chris Christie, who has been pretty much living on cable talk show sets this week, paid a visit to the folks at Fox & Friends Thursday morning, where the Romney supporter weighed in on what Rick Santorum‘s possible win in Iowa means for the race (“Nothing.”), and what the future holds for Mitt Romney.

Author and former political consultant Dick Morris visited Fox & Friends this morning to weigh in on the upcoming primaries in South Carolina and Florida. The show’s hosts wanted to know, specifically: “Can Newt Gingrich make a comeback?”

With the 2012 primary elections in full swing, this week brought with it some unfinished business from 2008, as Mike Huckabee opened up a can of worms by suggesting that Sen. John McCain encouraged Fred Thompson to stay in the Republican primary to dilute the Huckabee vote. Sen. McCain denied it, while Thompson essentially called Huckabee a liar, and on Fox & Friends this morning, Huckabee noted that he meant no offense, and was a bit confused as why he had to “apologize for thinking they were smart.”

If you have turned on Fox News during any hour of the day in the past several months, you know who Eric Bolling is. The host of Fox Business’s Follow the Money and co-host of The Five can be seen on nearly every program– from Fox & Friends to filling in on The O’Reilly Factor, and his swing-for-the-fences opinions have made him as popular as he is controversial on the network. Bolling opens up to Mediaite about how he ended up in the cable news business, his favorite television moments, and what plans may be in store for the future.

Karl Rove is a regular on Fox & Friends, both the weekday and weekend editions (which have different hosts). It had been a while since he had been on either– not since 2011, in fact– and so he had prepared a cute New Year’s Resolution joke about how he would promise to protect the female host from the other two jokers, except it appears he prepared it for the weekday edition. And so, this morning, he mistakenly promised Alisyn Camerota that he would protect Gretchen Carlson from her co-hosts. Oops!

What happens when you invite WWE legend and current TNA competitor Kurt Angle onto your morning show? You get bodyslammed, naturally. Brian Kilmeade found this out the hard way today on Fox & Friends.

Christmas is a time to be open and forgiving, but not if you work in the world of cable news. And on MSNBC yesterday, Ed Schultz dumped a huge pile of coal on Fox & Friends for focusing on some of the lesser-reported aspects of the holiday season involving possible new EPA regulations and potential lawsuits you could face over the holiday season. I always just assumed the “Psycho Talk” segment was devoted to, you know, psycho talk. But Schultz honed in on the threesome not for anything they said, but for their “unseasonal” tone.

With the Iowa caucuses somehow less than a month away and Rep. Ron Paul inching closer to frontrunner Newt Gingrich in the polls, the question of whether Gingrich will make it into first place and, if he doesn’t, whether it will matter has come to the fore. On Fox & Friends this morning, 2008 Iowa Republican caucus winner Mike Huckabee weighed in on the importance of coming in first there, and on his suspicion that Gingrich may not survive the current “political colonoscopy” his campaign is undergoing.

Does this architectural design look too much like a cloud of smoke joining the two towers of the World Trade Center? The weekend crew at Fox & Friends showed their audience a design for a proposed complex in Korea that looked eerily like the Twin Towers, connected by a cloud of smoke design that served as a footbridge. While the firm responsible apologized, it is not scrapping the project.

If anyone on cable news could claim to have “seen it all” on the campaign trail, it is Karl Rove*, but even the Republican campaign mastermind is having a hard time wrapping his head around the fact that Donald Trump is apparently moderating a Republican presidential debate. “This is weird, isn’t it?” he asked the hosts of Fox & Friends this morning, elaborating that he didn’t understand how someone threatening to run for president as an independent could moderate a Republican debate fairly.

Given yesterday’s festivities, it was pretty easy to miss out on some of the more memorable Thanksgiving moments on cable news– most of us were trying to keep our houses in order, after all. But should you have been awake at 6 AM and watching Fox News, you’d have found the party started way early, with Breitbart.tv’s Larry O’Connor counting down the “Top Five Turkeys Of 2011,” complete with a delicious-looking turkey leg and even more appealing bottle of Wild Turkey bourbon (to drown the pain caused by Rep. Nancy Pelosi.

Back when Mediaite was still in its infancy, when all the writers you know and love were adorable baby versions of themselves being cared for by a mysterious, sock-wearing woman named Nanny, a tradition was formed. Whenever the holidays would roll around, the Mediaite brain trust would choose the big pop cultural event of the year and find all the media counterparts for the various characters. At the time, back in the sepia-toned days of 2009, that cultural event was Harry Potter. Well, now it’s 2011…

President Obama met with CEOs for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit this weekend, and raised some eyebrows when he said that the United States has been “lazy” in trying to attract businesses to the United States. Fox & Friends reported on the story today, and for the life of them, they could not seem to figure out exactly what the president was trying to say. How unclear were Obama’s words? The morning show devoted three separate segments to it earlier today.