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MSNBC Tag

Posted by Mark Finkelstein on January 28, 2017 32 Comments
Chris Matthews gave generally respectful treatment to pro-life activist Abby Johnson, who appeared on last night's Hardball in the context of discussing the March for Life. But Matthews challenged Johnson on the position—generally adopted by the pro-life movement—that the only person who should be punished is the doctor performing the abortion, and not the woman who chose to have one. Said Matthews: "If abortion's a murder and the person who goes to an abortion clinic is given no sanctions, no punishment whatever, there's something that doesn't square there . . . if you believe it's murder, you go after the person who went to the clinic to have the abortion. Or else you treat her like a child, a vulnerable person who's not really a grownup . . . Going after the doctor is a cute way of avoiding the question. If it's murder, act on it. If it's not, stop saying it."

Posted by Mark Finkelstein on January 25, 2017 30 Comments
Question for Cokie Roberts: how many refugees admitted into the US during WWII went on to commit mass-murder terrorist acts in our country? The question arises because on today's Morning Joe, Cokie contended that shutting out Syrian refugees would be like "shutting the Jews out during World War II." Roberts made her remark in the context of claiming that the plans President Trump has announced are "extremely dangerous for the United States of America."

Posted by Mark Finkelstein on January 24, 2017 23 Comments
From the man who brought us "fake but accurate" . . . Dan Rather is possibly the living person least entitled to pontificate about the importance of truth in journalism and politics. So naturally, Chris Matthews invited him on this evening's Hardball to do just that. Hat tip Colleen B. In criticizing Kellyanne Conway's use of the term "alternative facts" to explain White House spokesman Sean Spicer's comments while addressing the press this past Saturday, Rather said: "facts, and the truth . . . are at the very foundation of our democracy."

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 22, 2017 45 Comments
Talk about mansplaining . . . could Michael Moore possibly have been any more patronizing and condescending to women? Appearing on Joy Reid's MSNBC show this morning, Moore approvingly cited and adopted actor John Leguizamo's proposition that women who voted for Donald Trump were "victims" who did so out of "ingrained misogyny and sexism." Those poor, confused women Trump voters who thought they had the ability to make decisions for themselves. The dearies didn't realize that they had been subconsciously programmed and were nothing more than—to use a favorite Rush phrase—mind-numbed robots.

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 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 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 09, 2017 38 Comments
You might think that the Obama administration would be gracious on its way out the door. Fuggedaboutit. Valerie Jarrett—asked by Greta Van Susteren during her inaugural MSNBC show this evening—what was her biggest surprise during her eight years in the White House, gave a nasty, partisan response. Said the senior adviser to President Obama: "what surprised me was the willingness of the Republicans in congress to put their short-term political interests ahead of what's good for the country . . . I thought they would come to the table and really try to work with us to focus on what we could do to move our country forward together. So it was disappointing and surprising that they didn't."

Posted by Mark Finkelstein on January 08, 2017 27 Comments
Rick Santelli, the CNBC analyst whose glorious rant led to the creation of the Tea Party movement, created another memorable TV moment today. On Meet the Press, reacting to reports that the Russians were happy on Election Night because Trump won, Santelli said to Andre Mitchell: "on Election Night, I never saw you so unhappy. You pick sides. Everybody picks sides." An indignant Mitchell, protecting her [illusory] reputation for objectivity, shot back: "That's not true, Rick. That's just not true." Sure, Andrea.

Posted by Mark Finkelstein on January 07, 2017 44 Comments
Appearing on Joy Reid's MSNBC show, intelligence and national security commentator Malcolm Nance said this morning that Donald Trump is "pushing this nation to a constitutional crisis of unprecedented magnitude." Nance accused Trump of working "in the interest of a hostile nation and supporting, to a certain extent, a hostile intelligence service." Nance was reacting to Trump's reluctance to give a full-throated acceptance of the views of the US intelligence community regarding Russian hacking. Nance predicted that Trump will attempt a cover-up and will "gut" the intelligence agencies.

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."

Posted by Mary Chastain on January 05, 2017 16 Comments
NBC/MSNBC continues to grab Fox News people. Former host Greta Van Susteren will join the network only a few days after Megyn Kelly announced her new shows and roles at NBC:
"I'm thrilled to start my next chapter at MSNBC," Van Susteren said. "The network is the right destination for the smart news and analysis I hope to deliver every day, and I look forward to joining the talented journalists and analysts I respect there."

Posted by Mark Finkelstein on January 05, 2017 25 Comments
As soon as Yahoo's Bianna Golodryga said she didn't want to "turn political," you knew that was precisely what she was about to do. But when Golodryga proceeded to criticize the Texas open-carry law this morning, you might be surprised that it was Meredith Vieira who—excuse the expression—shot her down. Vieira was a guest on Morning Joe to discuss a documentary, for which she served as executive producer, about the University of Texas Tower shootings in 1966, in which Charles Whitman shot 49 people, killing 16. The gun-control shoe was bound to drop, and after her "not to turn political," Golodryga launched into a criticism of the new Texas open-carry law, fretting that it could prevent UT from attracting "students and the top talent in teaching for fear of this law." Retorted Vieira: "It's interesting. On that day, the students were allowed to carry on campus and the police relied on them. One of the police -- they didn't have SWAT teams back then and they didn't have the equipment either to get to somebody who was up in the tower. So they were asking students: does anybody have a shotgun? The police themselves didn't have shotguns. And the students helped them."
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