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Morning Joe Tag

Posted by Mark Finkelstein on February 15, 2017 34 Comments
As far as Mika Brzezinski is concerned, Kellyanne Conway should not be permitted to appear on Morning Joe. Said Mika this morning: "Joe was just saying that she books herself on these shows, we know for a fact she tries to book herself on this show. I won't do it. Because I don't believe in fake news or information that is not true." Later, Mika laid down a personal marker, a virtual ultimatum. Warning Conway not to contact the show, Mika said: "I will say, Kellyanne Conway does not need to text our show. At least, as long as I'm on it. Because it's not happening here."

Posted by Mark Finkelstein on February 13, 2017 39 Comments
If Morning Joe had a hook, they would have yanked presidential advisor Stephen Miller off the set of the Sunday shows he appeared on yesterday. Today's Morning Joe devoted a long segment to eviscerating his performance. The essence of the criticism was two-fold. First, that Miller spoke too much about his personal views rather than those of the president he serves. Second, that in declaring that the powers of the president to protect the country "will not be questioned" he was expressing an undemocratic view running counter to the principle of judicial review.

Posted by Mark Finkelstein on February 09, 2017 32 Comments
Morning Joe came down with a bad case of the vapors this morning, clutching its collective pearls [to mix metaphors] over President Trump's comments about the court currently hearing the case on the executive order on immigration. Jon Meacham said that Trump was "messing with the Magna Carta," of all things! Joe Scarborough upped the anxiety ante, saying "the historical precedents are chilling. I don't even want to mention their names, but some of the dangerous autocrats of the 20th century, their two goals were to, first, undermine an independent judiciary and, second, to undermine a free press." Gee, wonder with which "dangerous autocrat" of the 20th-century—whose name one dared not speak—Scarborough was lumping Trump?

Posted by Mark Finkelstein on February 03, 2017 11 Comments
Larry O'Connor's suggestion was so brilliant that . . . Rachel Maddow is almost sure to ignore it. On today's Morning Joe, Weekly Standard editor and radio talk show host O'Connor suggested that Rachel Maddow, accompanied by Dem senator Cory Booker, should escort onto campus Milo Yiannopoulos and other conservative speakers who have been confronted with violence. Maddow should make the point, suggested O'Connor, that violence is "not what we do in America." O'Connor argued that by their silence, Dems are being hurt by the protests because Americans are seeing opposition to Trump as "violent thugs."

Posted by Mark Finkelstein on February 02, 2017 13 Comments
To listen to Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards on today's Morning Joe, you'd think her organization was mainly about "health care" for women—not about being the nation's largest abortion provider. As you'll see in the video clip, Richards manages to mention "health care" seven times in her interview with Mika Brzezinski. The word "abortion" only passes Richards' lips twice. The first time, to insist that the federal government doesn't pay for abortions [as if the federal funds PP receives aren't fungible], and the second to claim that to reduce the abortion rate, more access to PP should be promoted.

Posted by Mark Finkelstein on January 31, 2017 36 Comments
Day Deux of Joe Scarborough's tirade against the Trump admin's handling of the executive order on immigration. On today's Morning Joe, Scarborough condemned the admin's accusation that acting AG Sally Yates had "betrayed" the Justice Department by refusing to enforce the executive order. Scarborough repeatedly called the use of the word "frightening," suggesting it was worthy of an "autocrat" in a country like Venezuela. Scarborough then turned the tables, saying that Stephen Miller, Steve Bannon, and Trump himself had "betrayed" Defense Secretary Mattis, DHS head John Kelly, and others by failing to provide them details of the order before it was made public. Scarborough expressed outrage that Stephen Miller and others in the administration apparently believed they could not trust those heroes with a secret.

Posted by Mark Finkelstein on January 23, 2017 71 Comments
An extraordinary first half-hour of Morning Joe today. The thesis was that President Trump had gotten off on a seriously bad foot by failing to look back at history in his inauguration speech, sending a first and ungracious tweet about the Women's Marches, sending Sean Spicer out to berate the press over crowd-size reporting, and above all for a self-referential, boastful, angry speech, referencing crowd size, given while standing in front of the wall of fallen heroes at the CIA. And the message, delivered repeatedly and in the starkest terms, by Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, was that those aides who abetted President Trump, who counseled him to adopt a combative tone, should be fired and leave immediately. View the video to see the myriad ways in which Joe and Mika pummeled the presidential aides who did not advise President Trump to moderate his remarks.

Posted by Mark Finkelstein on January 20, 2017 30 Comments
Joe Scarborough reported something stunning on today's Morning Joe—an insight into just how blatantly, consciously biased one of America's leading newspapers was in its effort to elect Hillary Clinton. Said Scarborough:

"There was somebody that held an extraordinarily important position in print media who brought their people together after Hillary Clinton lost and literally said, 'we did the best we could do. We tried and we failed. But we did the best we could do.'"

Posted by Mark Finkelstein on January 19, 2017 52 Comments
Mike Barnicle might not bring much to the table, but he is still capable of passing along nasty remarks by unnamed sources. On today's Morning Joe, discussing Nikki Haley's preparations for her confirmation hearing as UN Ambassador, Barnicle said, "I was told by somebody within the world of diplomacy and international relations that Nikki Haley makes Sarah Palin sound like Henry Kissinger." Joe Scarborough seemed to have intentionally teed Barnicle up to take his anonymous shot at Haley, asking him "what are you hearing about her?" After Barnicle's gossip, Scarborough weighed in, saying that he'd been hearing for weeks "real concerns with the people that had been prepping her over her complete ignorance of foreign policy."

Posted by Mark Finkelstein on January 18, 2017 27 Comments
Assessing President Obama's legacy, the panelists on today's Morning Joe seemed in competition to outdo each other with misplaced praise. Historian David Maraniss led off, calling Obama "the Jackie Robinson of American electoral politics." Next up was Joe Scarborough, who upped the ante by placing Obama in the same category as Martin Luther King, Jr. Batting clean up, Walter Isaacson hit one out of the hyperbole park, claiming that "Obama will go down as one of the great presidents we have ever had."

Posted by Mark Finkelstein on January 17, 2017 13 Comments
Mika Brzezinski is an unabashed liberal, someone who pushed Elizabeth Warren to run for president and subsequently became a Bernie Sanders fan. But she has also proved herself willing to criticize her own, be they politicians or, as this morning, fellow members of the MSM. On today's Morning Joe, Brzezinski first criticized CNN's Jim Acosta for his pro-John Lewis speech in the guise of a question to MLK III after his meeting with Donald Trump. A bit later, she expanded on the point in a very pointed way: "we [in the MSM] decipher Democrats and make them sound great. And we make Republicans sound like complete—the word we won't use."

Posted by Mark Finkelstein on January 16, 2017 77 Comments
Is the party—the Republican party, that is—over? That's what Joe Scarborough is predicting. On today's Morning Joe, Scarborough surmised that "Donald Trump, by the end, will blow apart the Republican party" and that people are "going to look at George W. Bush as the last Republican president." Scarborough depicted Trump as "in a sense, the first independent president." Joe also suggested that Bernie Sanders might have the same party-demolishing impact on the Democrats.

Posted by Mark Finkelstein on January 13, 2017 19 Comments
Of all the reporters with whom Donald Trump sparred during his campaign, a favorite target was NBC's Katy Tur. Trump called Tur out by name more than once, as here and here. So it was fascinating to hear Tur, appearing on today's Morning Joe, report that Trump was very friendly to her behind the scenes. She described two anecdotes. In the first, said Tur, Trump tried to pull her up on the stage to wave to the crowd "as if I was his wife or something."

Posted by Mark Finkelstein on January 12, 2017 18 Comments
Cory Booker's shameless gambit of launching his presidential bid by attacking Jeff Sessions has really gotten under this Insurrectionist's skin. From my Quick Hit of this morning: "I reckon he earned the scorn of many of his fellow Dems for his transparent ploy." And so it was gratifying to get confirmation this morning from Joe Scarborough, who on Morning Joe said this of Booker's stunt: "obviously calculated . . . in a way that would have the other senators, especially Democratic senators, wanting to drag him away . . .  a lot of senators irked, especially on the Democratic side. They thought he was launching his bid for the 2020 campaign."

Posted by Mark Finkelstein on January 11, 2017 39 Comments
Of all the Morning Joe crew, you might be surprised to learn that it was liberal Dem Mika Brzezinski who this morning took the toughest shots at CNN and Buzzfeed for publishing unverified stories containing salacious allegations regarding Donald Trump's business dealings with, and personal behavior in, Russia. Mika also speculated that the intelligence community might have propagated the story as payback for Trump having insulted them. Brzezinski first wondered whether CNN and Buzzfeed went with the story "because they hate [Trump] so much, or is the intelligence community literally putting the screws to Donald Trump because he insulted them?"

Posted by Mark Finkelstein on January 06, 2017 14 Comments
On today's Morning Joe, Joe Scarborough ripped as "repulsive" Sean Hannity's "bromance" with Julian Assange, and more generally criticized the Republican change of heart on Wikileaks.  Background on the evolution of Hannity's views on Assange here [note: from Daily Beast.] Scarborough noted that when Wikileaks divulged information about a CIA operation some years ago, Assange became the Republican "enemy #1." In 2010, Donald Trump himself tweeted that WikiLeaks was "disgraceful" and that there "should be death penalty or something."
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