At the beginning of the primary season, the Huffington Post infamously consigned coverage of Donald Trump’s campaign to its entertainment section. So it was striking that on today’s Morning Joe, it was HuffPo‘s Sam Stein who chided his fellow liberals for refusing to acknowledge the obvious: that President Trump gave a good speech last night [see Stein’s tweet, below.]
Stein’s take was echoed across the panel. Mark Halperin called it Trump’s best speech ever, an assessment shared by Chris Cillizza. Joe Scarborough, who has been very tough on Stephen Miller, gave him high marks for writing such a good speech. Michael Steele heard echoes of Ronald Reagan. Bob Woodward suggested that Trump commanded the room in ways that even Reagan, Clinton and Obama had not.
Predictably, some of the Dem guests sounded sour notes. Asked twice, Chuck Schumer refused to say that he hoped Trump would be a successful president. Nancy Pelosi called it a “bait and switch” speech and said that some see Trump as a “snake oil salesman.”
Note: Readers will recall that after the Republicans swept to congressional power in the 1994 elections, ABC’s Peter Jennings explained away the results by saying that voters had a “temper tantrum.” Dem Sen. Claire McCaskill echoed Jennings this morning, chalking Donald Trump’s victory up to political “road rage.”
View the edited video to get the full flavor for this morning’s discussion. Please note that the clip is not in strict chronological order. Some comments from the same speaker, though coming at different moments, have been grouped together.
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