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MSNBC Tag

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."

Posted by Mark Finkelstein on January 02, 2017 24 Comments
Whatever happened to those 'Question Authority' and 'Dissent is the Highest Form of Patriotism' bumper stickers that flourished on liberals' cars during the dark days of George W.'s administration? Now, in the waning days of a Dem presidency, a touching trust in the judgment of the president is in evidence on the left. On today's Morning Joe, Prof. Eddie Glaude Jr., chair of Princeton's African-American studies department, said he is "struck" that anyone would question President Obama's judgment that sanctions against Russia are warranted. After all, argued Glaude, the president "has sworn to protect this country."

Posted by Mark Finkelstein on January 01, 2017 38 Comments
A former Obama White House adviser to President Obama, Karine Jean-Pierre, said this morning that "the thing about Donald Trump is that he is the known. He is, it is very reminiscent of cross-burning in front of your house. Of the KKK." Jean-Pierre made her outrageous remark in response to a question from Al Sharpton, on his MSNBC show, as to what justice will be like under President Trump. The supposed Republican on the panel, Elise Jordan, rather than refuting Jean-Pierre, essentially seconded her, saying Trump "spends more time decrying a New York Times reporter than these white supremacists who are going out and committing these horrible acts."

Posted by William A. Jacobson on December 31, 2016 15 Comments
I have a dirty little secret -- I've been watching MSNBC since the election. It's just so glorious to see them suffer. Is that bad of me? The Free Beacon posted the other day a supercut of the Worst of MSNBC 2016.

Posted by Mark Finkelstein on December 28, 2016 30 Comments
Then why did Barack Obama get so many things so wrong? That's the question that inescapably arises in response to the claim by NBC correspondent Chris Jansing on today's Morning Joe that Obama's decision-making style is "very professorial, thoughtful, in-depth." Jansing said that Obama and Trump "could not be more different in the way they approach problem solving," describing Obama admin concerns about Trump's supposed "shoot-from-the-hip" style. Mike Barnicle weighed in to wonder whether Trump would be up to the task of comforting the nation after tragedies such as the Newtown, Connecticut school shootings.

Posted by Mark Finkelstein on December 23, 2016 10 Comments
It was the strangest of settings for some very serious breaking news. There was Mika Brzezinski, cuddled up in her flannels on Morning Joe's special Christmas set. In the previous segment, Joe Scarborough had grilled Sean Spicer, whom President-elect Trump yesterday named as his White House spokesman, over Trump's tweet of yesterday in which he said that the US needed to greatly strengthen its nuclear arsenal. Spicer repeatedly refused to say that the Trump tweet came in response from a statement by Vladimir Putin, just hours earlier, announcing Russia's intention to strengthen its own nuclear arsenal. When the show returned after a break, Spicer was gone, but Mika and Joe announced that during the break Spicer had been on the phone with Trump, that Mika had posed a question about the nuclear tweet, and that in response Trump told her: "let it be an arms race because we will outmatch them at every pass and outlast them all."

Posted by Mark Finkelstein on December 21, 2016 49 Comments
"There, I said it. Mark it Down. Write it." That was Joe Scarborough on today's Morning Joe predicting that Republicans will be "wiped out" in the 2018 elections if they govern as far right as the Trump cabinet selections suggest. Scarborough drew the analogy to the 1994, and more specifically to the 2010 midterm elections, when Dems suffered cataclysmic losses after an emboldened Obama admin governed from the left in its first two years. Scarborough misses an important point, in the view of this Insurrectionist. Dems didn't get punished in 2010 because of some abstract notion that they governed too far to the left. They lost because their liberal policies failed. The economy remained in the doldrums. And people could see that Obamacare was heading for failure.

Posted by Mark Finkelstein on December 20, 2016 18 Comments
In the wake of yesterday's terror attacks, including the one in Berlin in which 12 people were killed and many more injured, Donald Trump tweeted that the civilized world must "change thinking." A disdainful Joe Scarborough reacted on today's Morning Joe: "I don't know exactly what the civilized world is going to do about trucks, unless we're going to ban trucks. But again, some of the deadliest attacks have been with vehicles."

Posted by Mark Finkelstein on December 19, 2016 32 Comments
Shades of "other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you enjoy the play?" . . . On today's Morning Joe, Mike Barnicle claimed that Barack Obama had a "great, outstanding" presidency, "with a few minor ripples like Syria." So the death of hundreds of thousands of civilians, traceable to Obama's abandonment of his red line, is a "minor ripple?" How callous can Barnicle be? And as bad as was Obama's failure on Syria, it is just one of a string of fiascos at his feet, from the rise of ISIS, to Iran, Libya, and on the domestic front, a record number of people out of work and on food stamps, and the slowest recovery in modern history.

Posted by Mark Finkelstein on December 14, 2016 1 Comment
Some feuds die hard. Joe Scarborough and Keith Olbermann have one going back to at least 2008, with another flare-up in 2012. Scarborough's got the bigger mic now, and he wielded it on today's Morning Joe to mercilessly mock Olbermann as someone suffering from delusions of Nazi tomatoes that talk to him. The context was Mika Brzezinski role-playing Rex Tillerson being questioned during his Senate confirmation hearing. Joe played the committee chairman, but couldn't help himself from launching into an Olby impression, with his trademark "Sirrr!", then riffing "you do know that he calls tomatoes, that he thinks are staring ominously at him, Nazis? You know he does that? . . . Because they keep talking to him in German. The tomatoes in his kitchen. It really disturbs him."

Posted by Mark Finkelstein on December 13, 2016 13 Comments
"Absolute disaster": that's how Joe Scarborough described the prospect of John Bolton serving as Deputy Secretary of State on today's Morning Joe. Scarborough blamed "neo-cons" for boosting Bolton, singling out Sheldon Adelson. Said Scarborough: "he needs to tell Sheldon Adelson, sorry, I love you buddy, and I'll play blackjack out at your casino, but I can't let you destroy US foreign policy because you like this guy." Scarborough's beef with Bolton focused on his hawkish approach to foreign policy, noting that he was one of the few in the foreign-policy community still saying that the invasion of Iraq was a good idea. Scarborough suggested that Bolton's stance would put him at odds with Trump, who made his opposition to the Iraq war a key element of his campaign.
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