Greta Van Susteren went slightly ballistic over Tucker Carlson‘s editorial decision to publish a story on Mike Tyson‘s deplorable comments on Sarah Palin– she called him a “pig” and his website “disgusting.” So it wasn’t a surprise that her debate face to face with Carlson tonight was some of the best cable news television in quite a while, with Carlson cornering Van Susteren into explaining how his publication of “prima facie repulsive” comments compares to her friendly chats with Tyson on her program in the past.

Sarah Palin is not Ronald Reagan– that she made clear on tonight’s On the Record, where she delivered her feedback on tonight’s CNN/Tea Party debate. She appeared particularly impressed by Rep. Michele Bachmann, thanking her for going after Texas governor Rick Perry for mandating HPV vaccines for children, which Palin called “crony capitalism” that was healthy to attack, defying Reagan’s 11th Commandment.

If Karl Rove had been trying to hide his complete contempt for Sarah Palin in the past for the sake of Reagan’s eleventh commandment, he all but gave up on it tonight. Speaking to Greta Van Susteren tonight, Rove lashed out at Palin’s statement that his speculation on her candidacy was wrong by repeatedly referring to her “thin skin” and daring Palin to “end the speculation” and say she isn’t running if such speculation upsets her.

It’s a good bet that, when challenged to defend the Tea Party, Sarah Palin won’t balk from the challenge. Tonight, however, that challenge came in the name of a conservative, as Greta Van Susteren pointed out the group is targeting conservative stalwart Sen. Orrin Hatch for being too liberal. Van Susteren asked Palin how she would respond to their attempt to unseat him, to which Palin replied that she had admiration for the “good things” Sen. Hatch had done, and extremist elements were in “every group.”

Add Donald Trump to the list of people that seem to have doubts about President Obama’s national tour. Speaking from his office with Greta van Susteren today, Trump argued that the President takes “more vacations than any human being I’ve ever seen” and that his “fundraising tour” should not fall into the hands of taxpayers, citing a lack of leadership on his part.

Was a situation in which Lawrence O’Donnell and Donald Trump agreed wholeheartedly even possible a mere few months ago? A mere hour after O’Donnell called Standard & Poor’s a “disgrace” for the “incompetence” that led to America’s credit downgrade on Friday, Trump visited Greta van Susteren and used the exact same word, adding with some flair that the “publicity-hungry” leaders of the S&P are “loving this” and capitalizing on a “President who doesn’t have a clue.”

Don’t tell Newt Gingrich where his campaign t-shirts were made. On tonight’s On The Record, the presidential candidate addressed concerns that his campaign t-shirts were being made by foreign companies, along with Herman Cain, Rep. Ron Paul, and others. “That’s bologna!” he told host Greta van Susteren, arguing that most of his t-shirts were made in America and that even bringing up the topic was “junk reporting.”

Sarah Palin was on autopilot tonight. In a strange twist of events rarely seen since 2008, Palin went on the air with On the Record host Greta Van Susteren and went through the motions– without a hitch, without a spark, without making a single unique point. After calling Vice President Joe Biden‘s classification of the Tea Party as terrorists “appalling,” she noted that it should be a surprise to no one that Tea Party Congressmen “were going to fulfill their promises.”

In a fit of anti-Tea Party rage, Sen. John McCain tossed a media exposure lifesaver out to former Delaware senatorial candidate Christine O’Donnell, insulting the Tea Party for having launched her to the Republican nomination. O’Donnell graciously accepted the opportunity to make headlines once again, releasing as epic a statement as we haven’t seen since the Homeric tribute to Newt Gingrich last May.

The nation is at a standstill watching as Congressional leaders threaten to bring their disagreements over the budget all the way to the brink of default. But one prominent political figure seems to be perfectly at ease with August 2: Sarah Palin, who told Greta Van Susteren tonight that she considered the deadline “looming” but did not fear disagreement up to that date.

Well, that didn’t take long: Greta van Susteren took a few minutes out of her Sunday afternoon to respond to a segment earlier today on Reliable Sources, where host Howard Kurtz argued that he did his best to cover scandals at CNN and that those at Fox News should be more vocal in doing the same. But in focusing on the lack of coverage on Fox News Watch, he seems to have forgotten On the Record, which van Susteren was more than happy to publicly remind me of.

Much ado has been made of the reportedly dramatic exit President Obama made from the budget talk meeting last night, and while several attendees, including House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, have noted that his exit was “abrupt,” today on On the Record House Speaker John Boehner made nothing of the situation, noting that, like everyone else, the President was “frustrated,” but that his exit was “fine.”

During the brief period in which Donald Trump somehow became the Republican frontrunner in the 2012 race, many considered his greatest strength to be his reputation as a formidable businessman and experience managing money. Naturally, this meant he had quite a few things to say about the current budget debate in Congress, but despite his disapproval of President Obama, most of his criticism was focused on the “scared” Republicans who he chided for “folding.”

Donald Trump has maintained a regular stream of commentary on the Anthony Weiner situation since the scandal broke, and tonight he joined Greta van Susteren for a post-mortem of sorts on Weiner’s career. Calling the ordeal “a very sad situation,” Trump diagnosed Weiner’s behavior as “suicidal” and found little job opportunities in the former Congressman’s future, noting that “he’s not a lawyer [and] doesn’t have very many friends.”

After suffering a mass exodus of senior staffers last week, rumors began to circulate that Newt Gingrich‘s campaign had been seriously derailed by his wife, Callista. On tonight’s On the Record, Gingrich got a chance to comment on those rumors and condemned these reports, especially from NBC, and demanded an apology on behalf of his wife. He also took the opportunity to note that many of his former staffers had “failed totally” and were on the way out anyway.

Donald Trump, who knows a thing or two about the New York political scene, has already publicly deemed Rep. Anthony Weiner a “psycho” with a “death wish.” Tonight on On the Record, he told host Greta Van Susteren he believed the “very sad and very, very sick” spectacle was actually a best case scenario for Rep. Weiner: “I think the really bad [photos] haven’t come out yet.”

Those who work in the arena of political media have been scratching their collective heads trying to make sense of what Sarah Palin is up to with her One Nation bus tour. In an exclusive interview with Fox News’ Greta Van Susteren , Palin explains that her tour is ‘not about me,’ adding that many in the media are looking for a story that calls this a “conventional campaign-type tour,” which she reminds this is not, “except to campaign on our Constitution, our charters of liberty.”

At this point in the 2012 political scene, it’s no secret that Karl Rove isn’t Sarah Palin‘s biggest fan. But just in case it’s been forgotten, Rove made that once again abundantly clear on tonight’s On the Record, where he compared Palin to failed Democratic candidate George McGovern, questioned her understanding of how presidential primaries work, and told Greta van Susteren he doesn’t see her thinking “the rules apply to her.”

Sarah Palin is inching ever closer to announcing a presidential run. The former governor visited Greta Van Susteren tonight and teased she had “the fire in the belly” to do it, but that much of the criticism from the media was teetering close to too much for her and her family to bear. Van Susteren took the comment defensively as Palin challenged her to “lead” her colleagues away from the harsher reporting, to which Van Susteren replied, “don’t take the bait.”

Fox Business host Eric Bolling may have begun his investigation into Abon’go Malik “Roy” Obama‘s charity organization expecting to bust some corruption, but after a 40-minute series of conversations with the President’s brother, Bolling seems at least partially convinced that all the elder Obama needs to keep his charity in gear is a bit of organizational guidance.

In a first for Fox’s On the Record, Greta Van Susteren broadcast live from North Korea Thursday night, reporting on a potential disaster unfolding in the country, massive food shortages. Van Susteren, making her third trip to the DPRK, is traveling with Rev. Franklin Graham, who said his father–who’s been hospitalized–is “doing well.”

While the Fox News crew wasn’t able to travel freely in the notoriously closed society, they were given access to parts of the country rarely seen by American journalists–including a trip to the Chinese border, and a visit to a cooperative farm where assistance from the U.S. is helping farmers recover from flooding that has devastated the crops.

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin went on Fox News Tuesday night to expand on her blistering comments on Facebook: President Obama, where she asked “when do you ever just ‘roll up your sleeves, unplug the teleprompter’ and do the job of governing and administrating for which voters hired you?” In an interview with Fox’s Greta Van Susteren, Palin accused the president of failing to explain his “befuddled and befuddling” foreign policy and instead spending the week “on the campaign trail.”

Excepting, maybe, Barack Obama, Donald Trump took the crown today as the most ubiquitous cable news personality of the night, appearing both on CNN and Fox News to comment on President Obama’s Libya speech. But while he kept his comments somewhat mainstream for CNN, he continued to pursue the birther issue on On the Record, going out of his way to call birthers “great Americans” and once again demand a long-form birth certificate.

While CNN got the immediate, lukewarm response from 2008 Republican Presidential candidate John McCain to President Barack Obama‘s speech, Fox gave his running mate a few moments to ruminate on the strengths and weaknesses of his statement. Finding none of the former and plenty of the latter, Sarah Palin demanded to know why President Obama refused to declare Gaddafi a personal enemy, and incorrectly stated the military effort is costing $600 million a day.

The Wisconsin state senators hiding out in a remote location of Illinois are still at large two weeks later, and some in the media appear to be getting frustrated with their time out. Greta Van Susteren, for one, took State Senator Lena Taylor to task for continuing to hide out, finding no reason for the group not to return and vote on the bill. Needless to say, Sen. Taylor did not take the criticism sitting down.