Howard Wolfson’s War with Chris Matthews and Keith Olbermann Continues

Last updated on August 11th, 2014 at 12:01 am

Former Hillary Clinton advisor and current Fox News analyst Howard Wolfson continued his war of words with MSNBC, Chris Mathews, and Keith Olbermann by accusing them of being bad Democrats for being critical of the Clintons over the past two years.

This whole thing flared up again yesterday when Matthews and Olbermann were talking about the Republicans new found support of Hillary Clinton. Chris Matthews said, “Fox News, for example, seems to enjoy it. It’s no accident, for example, that they hired Howard Wolfson. They use him as some sort of, oh, little toy soldier waiting on the shelf.” Keith Olbermann added, “Tokyo Rose was the thought that came to my mind.”

On Fox News today Wolfson fired back, “I’m not gonna take any lectures on how to be a good Democrat from two people who spent the last two years relentlessly attacking Bill and Hillary Clinton every day. “I think it’s unfortunate that a news organization with a great tradition like NBC has been taken over by those kind of antics.” It should be noted that Wolfson is one of those senior Clinton advisors who is blaming MSNBC for her loss to Barack Obama in the Democratic primary.

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Here is the video of Wolfson on Fox News:

Setting aside the never ending MSNBC/Fox feud for a moment, Wolfson’s point about MSNBC is ridiculous, especially when one looks at CNN which became the Clinton News Network, as almost all of its senior analysts had worked for the Clintons. Fox News was shamelessly in the bag for Rudy Giuliani, and then he flamed out, so they shifted to Mitt Romney, but he crashed and burned, so they finally got behind McCain.

The sad aspect of this story is outside of PBS, no network offered objective coverage of either primary. Because of this, the real loser is the American people. If a person only wants straight facts, none of the news networks are the places to go. I watch two newscasts, the News Hour on PBS, BBC’s World News America. I don’t consider any of the other shows newscasts. They are infotainment. That doesn’t mean that they aren’t fun to watch, just that the news is presented as means to entertain, like The Daily Show.

For the billionth time, MSNBC, or any other network, did not cost Hillary Clinton the Democratic nomination. The biggest reason why she lost was the terrible strategy that was designed by people like Howard Wolfson, who demonstrated how to lose a campaign that you should win. If Wolfson wants to blame someone for Clinton’s defeat, he needs to take a long look in the mirror.

Jason Easley

Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.

Awards and  Professional Memberships

Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association