“Do you include those barely concealed, racially-charged divisive comments about the president being a food stamp’s president?” Bashir fumed. “There’s nothing racial about that, he is a food stamp president,” Judson shot back. “He’s gotten more people on food stamps!”

RELATED: Gingrich Would Tell The NAACP To ‘Demand Paychecks And Not Be Satisfied With Food Stamps’

“That’s untrue. George W. Bush had more people on food stamps!” Bashir exclaimed. “Not this president. That’s a lie.”

“I will check the information,” Judson replied.

“Don’t use that as an assertion!” Bashir snapped.

“Regardless. Newt Gingrich wants to get people off of food stamps,” Judson concluded. “That’s the anti-racist position. If you want somebody on food stamps, you ought to have your head examined!”

PolitiFact examined Newt Gingrich’s assertion that “more people have been put on food stamps by Barack Obama than any president in American history” and found his statement to be “half-true” — explaining that while Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) beneficiaries were at a record level, placing sole blame on President Obama was an oversimplification.

Based on PolitiFact’s statistics, it would appear Bashir would be wrong to claim President Bush had “more people” on food stamps. Though, on the other hand, it should be noted that FactCheck.org supports Bashir’s assertion.

UPDATE: Martin Bashir responded to being called wrong by linking to FactCheck.org’s article:

PolitiFact’s Louis Jacobson stands by his original finding that Gingrich was right to assert that “more people have been put on food stamps by Barack Obama than any president in American history.”

“On this one, we disagree with our colleagues at FactCheck.org (a relatively unusual occurrence, but the kind of thing that happens periodically when you have two different outfits analyzing complicated and nuanced charges),” Jacobson explains.

“My understanding is that they interpreted the statement by Gingrich — “more people have been put on food stamps by Barack Obama than any president in American history” — to mean total, raw numbers of people during one president’s tenure. By contrast, we interpreted it to mean that under Obama, food stamp usage per month has reached all time highs. Both approaches have merit, and neither is entirely perfect, but of the two choices, we prefer ours.

If you use raw numbers for a president’s entire career, as FactCheck did, you run into a problem — Bush accumulated his food stamp users over eight years, compared to three for Obama. Bush had lower numbers overall, but had two to three times the amount of time to add more people to the rolls. That strikes us as a bit of apples and oranges. By using snapshot totals by month, as we did, you avoid the apples-oranges problem.”

Watch the segment below via MSNBC:

Williams is the former chairman of the Tea Party Express, which, despite having been discredited within the Tea Party community, continues to be granted legitimacy by the mainstream media. The group even co-sponsored a Republican debate with CNN in September. Mark Williams’ website boasts that he is “Proud to be a Tea Party ‘Terrorist’… er, “Hobit(sic)!”… um, ‘Barbarian!’”

In his Crosstalk appearance, Williams trots out the garden variety talking points that Republicans use to try and diminish President Obama’s key foreign policy successes, insisting that his actions regarding Libya and the killing of Osama bin Laden were simply the culmination of Republican policies. Schecter ably rebuts that thinking by reminding Williams of how conservatives like to credit Ronald Reagan with single-handedly ending the Cold War, and of George W. Bush‘s “Mission Accomplished” victory dance over Iraq, nearly a decade too early. He also criticized the President for trying to work with Republicans, despite their steadfast recalcitrance.

More interestingly, though, Williams later trots out the popular conservative meme that President Obama is “not a friend to Israel,” and that he has “thrown Israel under the bus.”

This is a theme that has been heavily abetted by the mainstream media, most effectively through repetition of the lie that President Obama advocated a “return to the 1967 borders” as a condition of an Israel/Palestine peace deal. While the Libya and bin Laden narratives are unlikely to gain any traction with voters, the campaign of misinformation about Israel could actually have some resonance with voters.

Schecter points out that noted friend of Israel Ed Koch has recently endorsed President Obama’s Israel policy, which has received high marks from actual Israelis, and more damningly, challenged the notion that the Tea Party can lay any claim to friendship with Israel. Citing a recent Bloomberg report, Schecter reminded Williams that “(The Tea Party’s) big funders, the Koch brothers, has been using subsidiaries in Europe to trade with Iran against our embargo.”

“It was the Reagan administration that helped arm Iran,” Schecter continued, “it’s the Koch brothers that are trading with Iran. Frankly, if the right would stop doing business with Iran, maybe they wouldn’t be as strong as they are right now.”

Here’s the video, from RT America’s Crosstalk:

First off: How will the Republicans candidates respond to President Barack Obama‘s jobs plan? Ifill made the point that Obama has carefully set up the rhetoric concerning his jobs plan in such a way that anyone who would oppose it would in essence be seen as opposing helping the unemployed and that “anyone who disagrees with him is only playing politics.” Chalian then wondered whether Obama himself is not playing politics right now, despite setting it up as an “unseemly” course of action.

Talk eventually turned to the debate in Tampa. What did they make of the fact that the Tea Party Express is co-sponsoring the event along with CNN? For Woodruff, the collaboration means that “the Tea Party is here to stay, at least in the near term of our American politics.” Ifill echoed Woodruff’s assessment that the candidates would be, essentially, facing scrutiny from members of the Tea Party movement, and ventured that Tim Pawlenty‘s recent endorsement of Mitt Romney so soon after calling his plan “Obamaneycare” is a strategic move to “close ranks” against the likes of Rick Perry.

Check out their discussion below, courtesy of the Rundown blog:

h/t Rundown

The ongoing debate over the debt crisis has brought intense pressure on political leaders of all stripes, but the Democrats (and President Obama) seem to have been the sole recipient of intra-party squabbling as a result of compromising with the other side of the aisle. Well, not any more, now that the Tea Party is vociferously expressing its disenfranchisement with the leadership of the House GOP, going so far as to suggest he should step down.

Perhaps this is the first positive sign of real compromise between both sides in this stalemate? As Maureen McGovern belted out, “There’s got to be a morning after!”

Watch the clip below, courtesy of Fox News:

Rallying the troops is one thing, but advertising your own irrelevance is quite another. Check out the full email after the jump.

It is important to note that, despite the support and participation of former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, the Tea Party Express is viewed with a great deal of suspicion among many within the movement. In April, Politico got ahold of an internal TPE memo that explicitly laid out the group’s plan to exploit the movement. More recently, Tea Party Express organizer Mark Williams drew fire for a response to the NAACP’s Tea Party resolution in the form of a letter to Lincoln from “colored people,” after which he was widely denounced within the movement.

Here’s the full text of the Tea Party Express fundraising email:

This morning we put a call out to 400,000 patriots across this nation – including yourself.  Our plea was to get constitutional conservatives such as yourself to pitch in to our final election push as we are just 1-week away from Election Day.

Our goal:  to raise $1 MILLION so that we could push the best constitutional candidates in the country over the top to victory.  We’d then with the House, and perhaps even the Senate.

But we failed – all of us.  As of this evening only 250 people made a contribution.

This is one of the greatest failures we here at the Tea Party Express have ever had in terms of raising money for a campaign push, and this is the worst possible time for us to fail:  just 1 WEEK out before Election Day.

We MUST do better.  Everyone can pitch in, and everyone can forward this email to all their friends, family members, colleagues etc…  If EVERYONE pitches in, and if those of you who can afford a more generous contribution can please do so, then we can reach this goal and help take our country back.  The stakes couldn’t be higher, and we cannot accept failure at this point.  We simply can’t – our country’s future is on the line here.

We basically have a socialist in the White House who believes in the redistribution of wealth and government intervention and control into the lives of Americans.  We can only stop him if we first take back Congress.  But 250 people contributing – versus the hundreds of millions we’re up against from lobbyists, special interests and labor unions – that won’t cut it.

If every person reading this email can make a contribution today we will meet our goal.  Some of you will be able to afford a more generous contribution of $100, $250, $500, $1,000 or more up to the $5,000 allowed maximum contribution.  This is it – our last chance to win these races.  We are counting on you for your support.

Please support this effort by making a contribution online – HERE.

Again, to those of you who can contribute a larger amount of $250, $500, $1,000, $2,500 – or up to the maximum allowed contribution of $5,000 per individual (married couples can contribute $5,000 each for a total of $10,000) – please help us out.  We’re running out of time in this campaign, and yet we still have so much to do.

We here at the Tea Party Express will pledge to work morning, noon and night through Election Day.  We just need your support to help achieve a historic result!

Other highlights from the video by Next Action Media include: Palin shooting into the heavens with an automatic weapon, Rove “literally” slinging mud at an unarmed O’Donnell, and Rove spontaneously combusting.

Um, enjoy?

(h/t The Awl)

The Tea Party movement is an abstraction; an amorphous group of citizens who share the similar ideological frustration with what is seen as an out-of-touch, out-of-control, corrupt, and unfair government. While the Tea Party movement has expressed outrage with both the Democratic and Republican parties, its followers are, for the most part, considered right-of-center. Therefore the movement has been co-opted by a number political leaders and opinion media from the right. But there are many, many “sects” of this movement, which Maddow outlines below.

It is true that there are a number of business leaders, thought leaders, and plain old hucksters that are looking to profit off of this “movement,” many of whom Maddow outlines here. Later in the segment, she brings on Washington Post columnist (and MSNBC contributor) Ezra Klein, who questions just how effective the Tea Party movement has actually been. Klein points to Sharon Angle‘s nomination for Republican senate candidate, running against Harry Reid, as an example. Angle got the nomination largely due to Tea Party support, and while Reid was once thought to be a lame duck candidate sure to be voted out, he is now up in the polls.

Williams has since added an intro to the letter and softened it up a little, but the Reid Report blog has the original, plus a pretty thorough rundown of Williams’ previous greatest hits.

While Keith Olbermann focused on Williams’ giddy use of the term “colored people,” I was astonished by this gem, in the 2nd paragraph: (emphasis mine)

In fact we held a big meeting and took a vote in Kansas City this week. We voted to condemn a political revival of that old abolitionist spirit called the ‘tea party movement’.

Really? The Boston Tea Party was significant in American history for a variety of reasons, but “that old abolitionist spirit?” The slave trade in Boston didn’t even end until 1801, which means that, had the British decided to raise taxes on slaves instead of tea, we might be celebrating the Boston Negro Party right now. If you’re going to claim to love your country, at least know something about it.

Williams continues by translating the NAACP’s mission into a series of offensive stereotypes, like a desire for welfare and a “wide-screen TV in every room.” (The latter was excised from Williams’ revised draft.) He signs the letter “Tom’s Nephew,” showing he knows how to insult a black person, even if he doesn’t know what the insult means.

Reactions to the NAACP resolution by the right have been pretty consistent, accusing the group of being the actual racists, and misstating their point. Sarah Palin was “saddened by the NAACP’s claim that patriotic Americans who stand up for the United States of America’s Constitutional rights are somehow ‘racists,’” which is tragic for her, because the NAACP never made that claim.

Perhaps Williams’ letter was designed to make the other hamfisted conservative responses look good by comparison.

In fairness to the Tea Party, I noted, at some length, the successful measures taken by Freedomworks to keep their Tax Day event free of racist signs and rhetoric. Organizers told me this was a high priority, as evidenced by warning signs and frequent public address announcements at the event. This is to their credit, but it also belies the notion that there’s no racist element to keep out.

It has also been my experience that conservatives with whom I have spoken don’t view that racist element as the main villains here, but rather the evil media who dare to show it. They see this as evidence of bias, as though it is common for news cameras to shoot video of houses that aren’t on fire.

As for the NAACP resolution, while I think they have a legitimate point, it’s also not unfathomable that they’re looking for some publicity, too. They are later to this party than a narcoleptic club kid, and have ironically revived the media’s long-flagging interest in the Tea Party movement. The Tea Party could actually end up benefiting from this, as Palin’s persecution-y rhetoric is a powerful recruiting tool for disaffected white folks looking for validation.

Update: Williams has since taken down his letter to Lincoln, leaving in its place a “personal note” saying that Ben Jealous had contacted him with “something of an olive branch,” expressing a wish to “open discussions with tea partiers regarding dialing down the unproductive shots going back and forth.”

Here’s the closest he gets to an apology:

To that end and as a reciprocal gesture I have removed the parody letter you came here to read and urge you to fight those who seek to divide us by race, no matter the color of the racist. Our fight is against tyranny and for liberty and to see that this nation continues the lofty goal of equality for all set for us by our founders.  Make no mistake though, there are those for whom peace and progress is poison and they will continue to circulate the several versions of my article (Yes, there were several versions.  As reasonable people pointed out to me wording that I agreed was indeed objectionable it was removed or changed by me personally.)

He calls it a “reciprocal gesture,” implying that his letter was a response in kind to the NAACP’s resolution. In case you think I’m being too cynical, Williams signs off by renewing his charge that the NAACP’s name is racist (hence, an excuse for his use of the term), and calls on his readers to spam them:

I would suggest to those offended by the term “Colored People” (the phrase that made my article so controversial) please contact the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and join me in calling for an end to their use of the racial slur and that Mr. Jealous take me up on my offer to travel with me on the next Tea Party Express so that he may meet all of you in person.  His contact information is below.

I don’t know what Jealous really said to Williams, but if he’s really looking to dialog with the Tea Party, he should pick someone else.

CNN is reporting that Williams will still be involved with the organization but not have the logistical responsibility that being a chairman demands. Instead, he is working on side projects related to the Tea Party movement:

“Williams said his decision stemmed from his involvement in two other major projects. One is opposing the construction of a mosque near the site of Ground Zero in New York, where the twin towers of the World Trade Center were destroyed by Islamist hijackers on September 11, 2001.

The other is leading a recall effort against some members of the Sacramento City Council and running for a spot on the local body himself after the council voted to boycott Arizona over its new immigration law.”

Williams became a cable news staple when he lashed out at Geraldo Rivera personally for attacking the Tea Party movement and generally “being Geraldo.” He also referred to President Obama an “Indonesian Muslim turned welfare thug,” “racist-in-chief,” and the birther nickname “Barry Soetoro,” and justified it by claiming Obama was “acting like it.” Oh, and he called Allah a “monkey god,” but that was in a pro-Muslim post.

Williams appeared on Geraldo at Large on Saturday to discuss the tea partiers along with guest Mike Huckabee and took all his anger at the mainstream media out on host Geraldo Rivera, who was taken by surprise and seemed to be holding back nervous laughter for most of the segment. Williams’ biggest gripe with Rivera was that he had been spinning tea party footage to make protesters seem racist and off-the-charts insane, taking some very personal swipes at the host that had nothing to do with tea party coverage.

It’s pretty easy to go on TV and bully a discredited tabloid hound like Geraldo Rivera around– even if he couldn’t even handle doing that without a misinterpretation of the legacy of William Randolph Hearst. Perhaps that’s precisely why Williams went on the program– to avoid what happened to him in September when he took his schtick to Anderson Cooper 360º and was held accountable for some nasty racist comments he had made online, namely that Obama was an “Indonesian Muslim turned welfare thug” and “racist-in-chief” (Anderson Cooper was generous to him– he left out the fact that, in the same post, Williams refers to Obama as “Barry Soetoro,” a name conspiracy theorists claim Obama used to get financial aid as a foreign student in school).

Williams did not only fail to retract the remarks, but defended them by saying that “that’s how Obama’s acting!” Insult turned into injury when Williams was submitted to James Carville‘s maniacal laughter at his comments for several minutes.

He’s not going to be able to wiggle out of the racist label with those comments and, in retrospect, his treatment of Rivera– who is not only a minority but worked for several years in his youth with radical Puerto Rican separatist groups– seems suspect. He smiles politely at Carville, who is literally laughing at him in his face, and yet explodes with rage at an anchor on a station that is almost universally seen as sympathetic to his movement.

The racism label that continues to haunt the Tea Party movement will remain– whatever the truth may be about their beliefs– as long as people like Williams continue to be in charge of the media relations wing of their campaign, and the fact that they let Williams back on TV after the CNN incident to berate one of the few minority cable news hosts on TV is a sign that they may need more help cleaning up their act than they are willing to admit.

Watch the video below:

As it turns out, reporting by conservative Newsbusters seems to confirm elements of liberal Crooks and Liars‘ thesis, or at the very least, that CNN is trying to have it both ways. Let’s all sing “Kumbaya” for a minute.

Update: Newsbusters removed the key email from its post. Screenshot after the jump.

Newsbusters credits CNN for what it considers to be “one of the first to offer fair coverage of the Tea Party movement outside of Fox News,” while bringing up the infamous Susan Roesgen report from a Tea Party last year.

At the same time, they wonder why CNN is pushing the story so hard to conservative blogs, illustrating this with emails from CNN’s PR department. This one was reportedly sent to Michelle Malkin:

“Hi there, I thought this might be an interesting post for you- a behind-the-scenes piece about the Tea Party and how the stereotypes don’t tell the full story. Let me know if you need anything else!”

There’s nothing all that sinister here. This kind of email is pretty standard PR promotion.

However, this next email, sent to Brent Bozell of Newsbusters parent Media Research Center, sets up a decidedly non-neutral, us-vs.-them dynamic betweeen CNN and “the left:”

“Clearly our critics from the left don’t think we should be covering the Tea Party movement in the way we are and clearly CNN thinks it’s a legitimate and important story.

If anyone from Newsbusters is interested in this angle – let me know.”

This sort of email might be perfectly fine coming from Fox News or MSNBC, but it flies in the face of CNN’s self-appointed role as the last bastion of non-partisan journalism.

Update: Reading the comments, I noted that Newsbusters removed the key email to Brent Bozell from its post. Luckily, I saved the page. Here is a screengrab of the passage in question, as it appeared when this story was published. I will try to find out why it was removed.

Upon closer inspection, however, it appears that while the effect of CNN’s coverage may be to promote the Tea Party Express, that’s not the intent. I think CNN is looking for another kind of gold in them thar Tea Party hills.

C&L’s Karoli makes an excellent case that CNN is giving the Tea Party Express Tour a disproportionate amount of attention, and an inflated sense of the “movement’s” size and intensity:

Since the kickoff of the TeaParty Express Tour, CNN has embedded a small press corps in their custom-painted “CNN Express” press bus for the sole purpose of following teabaggers around the country , reporting 3-4 times daily on the activities of the corporate-funded, RNC-connected Tea Party Express.

This clip from Wednesday boggled my mind. You can see how few there are at this rally, but watch as Ali Velshi and Ed Lavandera turn it into a “movement”.

In one short clip, we have two reporters apologizing for low turnouts, promising more, and watching for it to grow as it gets closer to “Washington, DC”.

She’s got a point, here. This tour is drawing smaller crowds than the aftermath of a chili cookoff. It’s fair to ask “Is this news?” Obviously, the Tea Party movement is now a legitimate story, but are the embedded news crew and the bus justified? I’ll get to that in a minute.

Karoli goes on to criticize CNN for not digging into the tour’s organizers, but that’s much more a function of TV news’ birdbath-shallow modus operandi than any desire to cover up for the Tea Party. Besides, such details get in the way of the real prize: This lady.

Visuals like this woman, holding a stuffed monkey and a sign that says “Send Obuma Back to Kenya” are the nuggets of gold that CNN gets to dig out of its Tea Party embeds, while still playing that “down the middle” role that Campbell Brown is so fond of.

The picture comes from this report about Tea Party diversity, and while the script plays it down the middle, the visuals are incongruous with the “some say/others say” style of reporting.

They miss a real opportunity here, and that’s a shame. Tea Party coverage from other networks either paints the events as Klan rallies, or gatherings of persecuted patriots. CNN has the event organizer saying he thinks the movement is “incredibly diverse,” and that he won’t reach out to black voters because they’ll come flocking as soon as they get around to reading their pocket Constitution. On its face, this is more tone deaf than the first day of American Idol auditions. Doesn’t this guy think it might help if they politely asked the birther lady to put her stuffed monkey away?

At this point, though, the monkey lady benefits the Tea Party more than she hurts it. The movement has always depended more on loudness than volume, and the persecution by the “lamestream media” over “isolated incidents” like this only steels the movement’s resolve. It’s like money in the bank.

Perhaps more damning to CNN is their implication that “disgruntled Democrats” are gravitating toward the Tea Party movement. The basis for this claim is some anecdotal bs that’s completely undermined by their own poll, which found only 4% of Tea Partiers self-identifying as Democrats with a 3% margin of error. Hell, McCain pulled more Democrats than that.

Again, the motivation for this is to keep the story interesting, I think, and not to necessarily shill for the Tea Party.  As reporter after reporter has told me, if there’s a bias in the mainstream media, it’s in the direction of laziness.

The Tea Party movement is often seen by outsiders as one big monolithic force, especially by its detractors (who occasionally use nastier words than “monolithic” to describe it). But lately, there has been a mounting civil war between two rival factions of Tea Partiers.

One big bone of contention: the GOP’s growing involvement with the movement.

The two main parties here are the Tea Party Patriots, the older group of the two, and the Tea Party Express, which was founded by GOP consultants, including Sal Russo and Joe Wierzbecki. The Patriots accuse the Express of being a GOP front organization; the Express accuses the Patriots of being too disorganized to accomplish anything. Now, tensions seem to be coming to a head as one TPPer who did work with the TPE, Amy Kremer, is being sued by the TPP.

From TPMMuckraker (emphasis added):

Emails obtained by TPMmuckraker detail how a rogue faction of Tea Party Patriots is lashing out at the board for going ahead with the suit against Kremer, and challenging the board’s financial management, triggering a state of acrimony that appears serious enough to threaten the upstart movement’s ability to continue to mount an effective grassroots challenge to the Obama agenda — just days after the House passed the health-care-reform bill that the Tea Partiers view as socialism.

In an email to fellow TPPers sent Wednesday, Gerald Merits called the lawsuit “the single most insane act of self destruction I have witnessed since this country elected Obama,” and asked “how much donor money is being spent of (sic) suing Amy?”

For the rest of the day, the email list was consumed with charges and counter charges. In response to Merits, Josh Parker, a supporter of the board, wrote: “Amy created a situation where TPP couldn’t do anything BUT sue her, then she goes on with her poor me crap. She brings this on herself and all the rest of us.”

One side note: it’s odd how the unapologetically left-wing Talking Points Memo has become a small clearinghouse for internal dirt from the right. Last month, the Scozzafava campaign (remember the Scozzafava campaign?) tried to portray The Weekly Standard‘s John McCormack as a nut by leaking their correspondence to TPM; it backfired. Politico also reported on the internal struggle yesterday, but TPMMuckraker has a treasure trove of internal e-mails that underscore the depth of the feud. Given that their style is typically to extensively cover a few topics at a time, the odds are pretty good that if there’s more discord, they’ll find it and publish it.

And while there was a debate for the majority of the segment, Williams essentially described his organization and others are already looking toward “Judgment Day” – next year.

Williams said at the end of the segment, “You are seeing the beginnings. New Jersey, Virginia and the 23rd District of New York are going to be the first three victories in the countdown to Judgment Day, November 2, 2010.”

This is an actual movement, with a website up, and partnerships from FreedomWorks and others. You can even buy “Judgment Day” memorabilia.

According to TVEyes.com, “Judgment Day” has been mentioned on every cable news network within the last two months, in relation mainly to the Tea Party Express, which is the key driver of the term. In fact, it was mentioned in this context last night on MSNBC as well – by Rachel Maddow:

If the language that the RNC is using in that radio ad sounds familiar to you, it may be because you’ve seen it on the side of a Tea Party Express bus rolling through your town. The paint job on the “Judgment Day” bus for the Tea Party Express includes calls to end the bailouts, reduce the size of government, stop the out of control spending, enough is enough. The national Republican party and the Tea Party movement are starting to become one in the same.

With so few meaningful races this year, it makes sense to look toward 2010. But what happens if these first three victories don’t go the tea partiers way? They’ve likely wrapped up the Virginia governor race, but conservatives could conceivably lose in New Jersey and in New York’s 23rd district. But with the language being used, this year doesn’t mean much. It’s all about “Judgment Day” – and that’s not until 364 days from now.

Here’s the Cooper segment last night:

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