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As the Obamacare fiasco deepens and broadens, and one watches the panic enveloping Team Obama, which strategy looks more desperate: Defending the indefensible or savaging critics as somehow responsible for this mess? The spin control is actually amusing when you consider that it isn't Team Obama trying to influence the media. It's the media doing damage control for Team Obama. Both the offensive and defensive approaches are being tried at NBC and MSNBC. Even as journalists softly acknowledged that Obama's you-can-keep-your-insurance pledge was a cruel lie, the president's super friend and NBC anchor Brian Williams was all about the damage...

President Obama's narcissistic hits just keep on coming. Yesterday, we noted that in his interview with NBC's Chuck Todd, President Obama cast himself as the victim of the ObamaCare mess, complaining that "I've been burned" by the bad website. In a new clip from the interview that Todd aired during today's Daily Rundown, President Obama bragged "I can guarantee you that I have been more deeply involved in our intelligence operations on a whole set of areas where there real threats against us than just about any President." As with his victim whine, the prez caught himself and amended his...

OBAMA: So, the majority of folks will end up being better off, of course, because the website's not working right. They don’t necessarily know it right [now]. But, even though it's a small percentage of folks who may be disadvantaged, you know, it means a lot to them. And it's scary to them...

NBC News Chief White House Correspondent and MSNBC host Chuck Todd reported on Monday that tea party figures like Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin helped scuttle a potential deal to raise the debt ceiling over the weekend when they led World War II veterans to march on the White House. Todd reported that the tea party Republicans are “doing everything they can” to keep the shutdown and debt ceiling standoff “alive.” “While the non-tea party Republicans are desperately trying to end this standoff, the tea party Republicans are doing everything they can to keep it...

NBC News political director Chuck Todd on Thursday labeled the new NBC miniseries about Hillary Rodham Clinton a “total nightmare” for the network’s news division — adding another voice to the increasing backlash against the project. “This is why this miniseries is a total nightmare for NBC News,” Todd said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” “We know there’s this giant firewall. We know that we have nothing to do with it. We know that we’d love probably to be as critical or whatever it is going to be, if it comes out.” Todd added, though, that regardless of whether the Clintons...

First Chuck Todd, now Andrea Mitchell and even former Obama spox-turned-NBC-analyst Robert Gibbs agree: NBC's decision to produce a miniseries about Hillary Clinton is a "bad idea." Gibbs and Mitchell lamented the series on Andrea's early-afternoon MSNBC show today. View the video here.

Reporting the breaking news on Wednesday's NBC Today that President Obama had named U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice to be national security advisor, chief White House correspondent Chuck Todd portrayed Rice as a victim of Republican attacks: "Rice, who had become a Republican punching bag during the whole Benghazi controversy....this is a bit of a defiant move by the President to his Republican critics." [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump] Later on his 9 a.m. ET MSNBC show, The Daily Rundown, while discussing GOP opposition to Rice's promotion – and her nominated replacement as U.N. ambassador,...

Sure, it was just one of those tongue-tied moments we've all experienced. But if it had been George W. Bush mispronouncing the name of a world leader who is very much in the news, imagine the field day the MSM would have had with it. At his press appearance with British PM David Cameron today, aired on MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell Reports, President Obama was seen pronouncing the name of the Syrian dictator Bashir Assad as "Bassar Ashad." PBO pauses before pronouncing, seeming to sense he's about to get it wrong, but deciding to press ahead. There's another priceless moment: when...

Chuck Todd has defended the Obama admin's decision not to send more special ops to Benghazi. Appearing on today's Morning Joe, NBC News political director Todd claimed that the decision to send only two special ops to Benghazi was "very rational." He also literally laughed off the notion that Benghazi could boil into a major scandal. View the video after the jump.

NBC's Chuck Todd made some stunning statements Sunday about recent revelations concerning Syria's use of chemical weapons on its people. Appearing on Meet the Press, Todd first said the Administration regrets President Obama's claim that this would be a "red line" adding "They didn't want to go public last week that they had this early evidence" and only did so because "they knew Congress was going to get this briefing and it was all going to get out" (video follows with transcript and commentary): Chuck Todd: Obama Didn't Want To Go Public With Syrian Chemical Weapons Evidence CHUCK TODD: I...

Previewing the opening of the George W. Bush Presidential Library on Thursday, rather than positively reflect on the legacy of the Bush presidency, MSNBC unsurprisingly chose to mock and minimize his eight years in office. During The Daily Rundown, host Chuck Todd introduced a segment on the former president with a spew of Bush “gaffes." He then mocked, "I miss this part of Bush because Obama never does this stuff." After playing the clips, Todd spun, "Some of the lighter moments there from Bush's time in office. President Obama's always a little more careful. President Bush would dip into some...

CHUCK TODD, NBC NEWS: You know, Peggy, what's been interesting about this week is all of the big polarizing issues of the last two generations culturally all popped up in one week, and one of it had to do with the Supreme Court with gay marriage, with abortion. This culture wars, normally when it comes back, it's something that's helpful to Republicans. Is it good this time for the conservative movement to have these issues out there? PEGGY NOONAN, WALL STREET JOURNAL: I don't know. Yeah, I think, all of these cultural issues, as I guess- we call them, have...

President Obama went after MSNBC host Chuck Todd for asking too many questions at a press conference today in Jerusalem, Israel:

During their joint press conference this afternoon in Jerusalem, President Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu mocked NBC’s Chuck Todd for asking too many questions. The two leaders dropped their own set of jokes to taunt Todd for asking at least five questions in a single sitting. “I want to follow up a little bit on the peace process. You began your term — first term, big fanfare — speaking to the Muslim world, the decision to have a Middle East envoy early, you said you weren’t going to let this slip to your second term.

Via Mediaite, I like this clip because it captures the essence of the Do Something gun-control impulse, even though Todd's not talking about guns. The "Halo" games have sold 50 million copies worldwide. Microsoft estimates that people collectively have spent five billion hours playing them. Violent crime has been declining for 40 years and mass shootings are no more common now than they used to be. I'd bet that, if anything, video games reduce violent crime by providing an innocuous outlet for thrill-seeking. But who cares? The point of Do Something isn't to craft a policy response carefully tailored to...

CHUCK TODD: The problem is there is public opinion in general and there's public opinion in the Republican congressional districts, which is a different America. Anyway, thank you all. (MSNBC's Daily Rundown, December 17, 2012)

NBC News White House correspondent Chuck Todd today called U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice a "victim" of conservative "advocacy media" while addressing her decision to withdraw from consideration for secretary of state. "She became victim of the attacks. ... and it was all driven, in many cases, by conservative outlets who were making her the center of the Benghazi story," Todd told MSNBC's Martin Bashir. "There were legitimate questions to ask about the Benghazi story, but the idea that she belonged in the center of those attacks never made a lot of sense. She sort of became a victim of this....

Q. When is the Obama lead in Ohio a "mountain not a molehill" for Romney to overcome, and when is the race actually much tighter? A. When you first ask Joe Scarborough and then Chuck Todd. On today's Morning Joe, Scarborough, focusing on a Time poll showing Obama with a five-percentage point lead in the Buckeye State, saw an electoral Everest for Romney to climb. Appearing later, NBC political director Todd reported that the Democrats themselves have acknowledged to him that the race has gotten "a lot tighter" in the last week. View the video after the jump.

Coming down the stretch of the presidential campaign, it looks like NBC political director Chuck Todd has put getting it right over any personal or network partisan leanings. On Morning Joe today, Todd declared that seven out of ten challengers in Mitt Romney's position in the polls win the election. In an assessment sure to send shivers down Obama-camp spines, Todd added that "Romney appears to have the advantages going into the next couple of weeks." View the video here.

Last week, Chuck Todd came in for criticism at NewsBusters for sniffing off a Rasmussen poll favorable to Mitt Romney as "slop." But has yesterday's slop become today's sirloin for the NBC political director? Sure looks like it. In a remarkable shift, on today's Morning Joe Todd stated that in recent days he has seen a "structural shift" in the polling data in Romney's favor. With a strong performance at tomorrow's townhall-style debate in which he connects with average Americans, Todd declared that Romney could "win this election" and "close out" President Obama, putting him in a hole too deep...