Image 01 Image 03
Sign In or RegisterLogout

MSNBC Tag

Posted by Mark Finkelstein on October 25, 2016 39 Comments
Could Donald Trump pull a Brexit, confounding elite opinion by winning the election with votes that the polls didn't pick up? On today's Morning Joe, Joe Scarborough and Chris Cillizza of the Washington Post agreed it could happen. Scarborough said that people are still whispering to him as they leave the room that they're voting for Tump, but are embarrassed to tell pollsters given the coverage of his comments about women, etc. There are limits to the phenomenon: in Cillizza and Scarborough's view, the hidden Trump vote is unlikely to exceed 1.5%. But if Trump can continue to tighten the race in these two final weeks . . . it could be a very interesting election night.

Posted by Mark Finkelstein on October 21, 2016 18 Comments
On last evening's Hardball, when Trump surrogate Steve Cortes said that voters across America don't care about Donald Trump's refusal to blindly accept the election outcome, Chris Matthews shut him down. After calling Cortes an "elitist," Matthews declared "this isn't going to work," cut Cortes off, and moved to reliable liberal Ruth Marcus of the Washington Post. By coincidence, in this morning's Quick Hits, this Insurrectionist wrote "the liberal echo chamber has contracted a bad case of the vapors over Trump's statement, but hard to believe many actual voters out in America give much of a darn." Guess elitist minds think alike ;-)

Posted by Mark Finkelstein on October 20, 2016 25 Comments
That was ugly! Today's Morning Joe offered a prime example of the notion that the bitterest political fights are the ones between members of the same party. Joe Scarborough and Bill Kristol got into a nasty spat over Kristol's accusation that in the early days of the campaign, Morning Joe had been supportive of Donald Trump, and by extension bears some responsibility for his rise. An angry Scarborough shot back "you lied!" and laid out the case that he had declared early on that he wouldn't vote for Trump, had analogized his call for a Muslim ban to Germany circa 1933, and said that Trump's reluctance to reject David Duke's endorsement was disqualifying.

Posted by Mark Finkelstein on October 20, 2016 22 Comments
Every couple of weeks, Joe Scarborough rebuilds lost conservative street cred by going on a good rant against liberals and the MSM. He did so in spades on today's Morning Joe, comprehensively crushing libs for their hypocrisy in "freaking out" over Trump's wait-and-see answer at last night's debate to the question of whether he'd accept the results of the election. Excerpts: "the media got something they can absolutely freak out about and claim that he is an agent of Vladimir Putin and destroying democracy in America and it's just another example of the media having to find a little phrase and freak out when as a Republican I have listened to Democrats talk about the only two times we won the White House in like 800 years that we stole both elections . . . hell, even Bernie Sanders supporters just six months ago were saying that Hillary Clinton was rigging the election."

Posted by Mark Finkelstein on October 18, 2016 44 Comments
Remember Wendy Davis? She was the Texas Democrat who became an MSM darling for her filibuster against a state law restricting abortions. Davis exploited her 15-minutes of fame by running for Governor of Texas in 2014. But despite the backing of an adoring press, Davis got demolished, losing by more than 20 points to Greg Abbott. For the record, my home county of Hood showed its scorn by awarding Davis all of . . . 18.9% of the vote. So when on today's Morning Joe, Politico co-founder Jim VandeHei claimed that Hillary Clinton is so far ahead that she has a better shot at winning Texas than Trump has of winning the presidency, this adopted Texan had to laugh.

Posted by Mark Finkelstein on October 14, 2016 19 Comments
If it's up to the liberal media, Blessed Teresa of Calcutta is just going to have to take a back seat: there's a budding new saint in town, and her name is Michelle Obama. Morning Joe began the canonization process today, beatifying the First Lady for her speech trashing Donald Trump over the stories about his personal behavior that have recently emerged. All the ongoing glorification of Mrs. Obama on the Morning Joe set was leavened with some unintentional humor from Joe Scarborough, who said of the First Lady's speech that "there was nothing calculated about it. This wasn't to help Hillary Clinton." Right. A speech delivered three weeks before the election. At a Hillary Clinton campaign event. At a podium festooned with a 'Clinton-Kaine' banner. But it was strictly "about daughters and mothers and women all across America." Hand another hanky over, will ya?

Posted by Mark Finkelstein on October 11, 2016 40 Comments
During the opening 6AM segment of today's Morning Joe, Joe Scarborough accused NBC of having "cooked" its current poll to favor Hillary Clinton. But at 8AM when Morning Joe replayed that opening segment, Scarborough's criticism of the NBC poll . . . had disappeared. Instead, the video jumped ahead to Mika Brzezinski's reading of the poll results themselves, which showed Hillary Clinton with an 11-14% lead. Scarborough's point was that NBC sampled only during the height of the hot mic hysteria, but didn't include sampling from after the debate, widely viewed as having been won by Trump. Joe obviously knew he was skating on thin network ice, prefacing his criticism by saying "we work here. We really love working here. We love this place."

Posted by Mark Finkelstein on October 10, 2016 42 Comments
The headline's not a typo: avowed Hillary supporter Mika Brzezinski has torn into Republicans who withdrew their support for Donald Trump over his hot mic comments, calling them "pathetic, weak and spineless." On today's Morning Joe, Mika's point was that for anyone who had bothered to look, there was, long before Friday, tons of negative material out there about Trump. So anyone pretending to be shocked by the most recent disclosure must have been willfully blind. And based on his strong debate performance last night, Mika predicted that they might now "have to come back." Joe Scarborough graphically made the same point, saying that "halfway through the debate, they [the dump-Trumpers] were looking at their TV saying oh . . . shoot."

Posted by Mark Finkelstein on October 09, 2016 29 Comments
Quick: name the woman who was the object of Donald Trump's crude remarks on the hot mic. Bet most of us can't. Because her identity, while not a secret, has not been featured in the coverage. For example, this Insurrectionist sampled most of the Sunday talks shows this morning and didn't hear the woman's name, or race, mentioned once, nor was her photo displayed. But that won't stop someone determined to drag race and racism into the matter from doing so. Enter Tara Dowdell. The former Apprentice participant, appearing on Al Sharpton's MSNBC show this morning, claimed that there is "more concern and outrage" about Trump's hot mic comments because they were "focused on a white woman." Dowdell's statement amounted to an accusation of racism against Americans at large—you deplorables!

Posted by Mark Finkelstein on October 06, 2016 26 Comments
Right, Donny. Because who could ever come up with an argument against Hillary Clinton, possibly the most corrupt, scandal-ridden, jaded candidate in the history of presidential politics? On today's Morning Joe, Joe Scarborough, to his credit, fulminated against anti-Trump MSM reporters who are supposed to write stories down the middle but are instead "openly cheering for Hillary Clinton." That's when Donny Deutsch defended media bias, saying that reporters have a "conscience" and that "sometimes there's no other side to an argument."

Posted by Mark Finkelstein on October 05, 2016 15 Comments
Still disloyal after all these years . . . Eight years after serving as a Sarah Palin aide, Nicolle Wallace can't stop trashing the woman she was presumably paid to support. On today's Morning Joe, Wallace suggested that if ignorance of foreign policy were an asset, "Sarah Palin would be Vice-President of the United States." Wallace's unworthy remark came in the context of a discussion of Libertarian president candidate Gary Johnson's claim that his own ignorance of foreign policy was an asset, since it makes him less likely to get the country involved in foreign wars.

Posted by Mark Finkelstein on October 05, 2016 12 Comments
How well did things go for Mike Pence and the Trump-Pence ticket tonight? Even Chris Matthews—no doubt to the horror of Rachel Maddow who was helping oversee the post-debate commentary on MSNBC—had to declare Pence the "winner." Perhaps even worse for the denizens of MSNBC and its viewers, Matthews said Pence looked "strong" and like a "grown-up," whereas Tim Kaine came across as "desperate." Ouch!

Posted by Mark Finkelstein on October 04, 2016 5 Comments
Joe Scarborough was probably just trying to make the point that Donald Trump is very unpopular with black voters, but he wound up saying something that some might view as insulting to African-Americans. Interviewing Al Sharpton on today's Morning Joe, he asked about the Rev's view that Hillary has not been doing enough to appeal to black voters. As Sharpton prefaced his remarks by observing that Hillary is way ahead of Trump among black voters, Scarborough interjected "my dog's way ahead of Trump among black voters." It's amusing to watch the video: as Joe gets to the end of his statement, it seems to dawn on him that he's wandered down a dangerous path, but by then it's too late so he plows ahead!

Posted by Mark Finkelstein on October 03, 2016 21 Comments
This Insurrectionist finds Mark Halperin to be among the most cautious and level-headed of pundits. The With All Due Respect host typically avoids wild speculation and is generally of the on-the-one-hand and on the other school of analysis. So it was striking that on today's Morning Joe, Halperin, with some prodding from Joe Scarborough, suggested that Donald Trump might be planning a big October surprise in the nature of a "revelation" about Hillary Clinton. One sensed that Halperin had some inside knowledge of the situation, though all he mentioned in support of his theory is that Trump is surrounded by people such as David Bossie, who has spent a quarter-century investigating the Clintons' personal lives.

Posted by Mark Finkelstein on September 30, 2016 21 Comments
Mika Brzezinski prefaced her remarks by saying she wanted to phrase them "carefully," but then, in the most careless way, Brzezinski clearly accused Donald Trump of being mentally ill. On today's Morning Joe, reacting to a depiction of Trump by New York Times reporter Jeremy Peters as being incapable of taking criticism of his performance, leading his advisers to communicate with him via the media, Mika said that was "very sick" and "it sounds like they're dealing with someone who, doesn't—how do I say this carefully—is very troubled, is very disturbed."

Posted by Mark Finkelstein on September 29, 2016 32 Comments
Mika Brzezinski went on an epic feminist rant on today's Morning Joe, condemning not just Donald Trump for his comments about a former Miss Universe, but raging against the entire beauty pageant culture in which women are judged on their . . beauty. Mika summed up her intellectual argument this way: "you stupid men." Brzezinski considers it unfair that beauty pageant contestants are expected to be trim, whereas men like Trump and Newt Gingrich "can walk around as rotund as all get out." But if those guys had entered the Mr. Universe contest, every inch of their oiled bodies would come under the microscope. But they haven't. Thank God. And if a woman in exercise of her free will enters a beauty contest, that's her choice.

Posted by Mark Finkelstein on September 28, 2016 11 Comments
Perhaps John Warner's biggest claim to fame is a distinction he shares with a good-sized chunk of the older male demographic: having once been married to Elizabeth Taylor. But the former Republican senator from Virginia found another way to get himself some attention today: by endorsing Hillary for president. Interviewed by Andrea Mitchell on her MSNBC show this afternoon, Warner managed to make his endorsement mainly about himself. In the course of their brief conversation, Warner let it be known: that he had been on the lawn for the famous handshake between Rabin and Araft; that he had served in both the Navy and the Marines; that he devoted much of his life "I say with a sense of humility" to national security; that he had been a leader on the Armed Services committee for 30 years; that he had been Hillary's "boss" as the Chairman of the Armed Services Committee; and that the voters in Virginia had "supported me so strongly."
Accessibility by WAH