An admiring Safer described Baldwin's activism this way: "Liberal politics has always been his passion...He has an impressive grasp of the issues and spends a huge amount of his time and money supporting causes he believes in: animal rights, the environment, the arts." Safer then went on to continue to portray Baldwin as a victim of the right-wing conspiracy: "But his bare-knuckled approach to political discourse- [clip of Baldwin: "Not all Republicans are as insane as these extremist conservatives"] -has made him an easy target for conservative junkyard dogs like Sean Hannity." Safer then played a clip of Hannity speaking about Baldwin: "He's unhinged. Let's be honest, he's not really bright."

     [This item, by Kyle Drennen, was posted Monday afternoon on the MRC's blog, NewsBusters.org: newsbusters.org ]

     Safer went on to describe further right-wing attacks on Baldwin: "And the right went wild when it was reported he said he'd move out of the country if George Bush were elected." Safer then described Balwin's outrageous and offensive comments about conservatives as simply being "excessively eloquent": "Your eloquence, if that's the word, can get you into deep trouble... Well, or you make them perhaps excessively eloquent, as in your description of Dick Cheney, who you said was a sociopath and a terrorist, and you later apologized by just calling him a 'lying, thieving, oil whore and a murderer of the U.S. Constitution.'"

     Despite this controversial material in Sunday's interview, Friday's CBS Early Show had previewed the interview by only highlighting Safer's questioning Baldwin about the controversial voicemail that the actor left his daughter last year. Also mentioned in Friday's preview was Baldwin's suggestion he may run for office: "There's no age limit on running for office to a degree. It's something I might do, one day."

     For a full transcript of the May 11 60 Minutes story, see the NewsBusters post linked above.