Morning Joe

As NewsBusters reported earlier, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman and MSNBC's Joe Scarborough had quite a heated discussion about the budget, debt, and the economy on PBS's Charlie Rose Monday evening.

Near its conclusion, Scarborough actually scolded Krugman for pompously behaving like a sighing Al Gore (video follows with transcript and commentary):

New York Times columnist Paul Krugman and MSNBC's Joe Scarborough had an at times heated discussion about budget deficits, debt, and the economy on PBS's Charlie Rose Monday evening.

At one point Krugman got so rattled by the facts that he actually said Scarborough quoting what he had said in the past was making an ad hominem attack against him (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Ping-pong diplomacy worked with China, so why not b-ball diplomacy with North Korea? Mika Brzezinski is clearly not buying that line of logic. On today's Morning Joe, Brzezinski confessed to being "angry" with George Stephanopoulos for having the extraterrestrial otherwise known as Dennis Rodman on This Week to discuss his recent trip to North Korea, which included meeting with its new leader, Kim Jong Un.

Mika didn't spare her fellow MJ panelists, calling them "idiots" when they persisted in discussing Rodman's trip and TW appearance.  View the video after the jump.

Bob Woodward is a legend in modern journalism, especially for fellow liberal reporters. But that all is for naught now that Woodward has committed the cardinal sin of criticizing the White House for an operative's use of what apparently is a fairly common tactic: a harsh bullying of the press in order to demand even more favorable coverage than the Obama-friendly press already lavishes on Team Obama.  It centers on Woodward reporting that sequestration was the White House's idea.  This morning Matt Lauer, on the Today Show, questioned Woodward's judgement, saying "I'm a little surprised you've gone public with this."  Even, the New York Times offered no refuge for Woodward.

He isn’t the only one.  Clinton operative and op-ed columnist Lanny Davis has received similar treatment, and veteran White House reporter Ron Fournier at National Journal also reported threatening emails and calls. But in today’s broadcast of Morning Joe, co-host Mika Brzezinski decided to give deference to Obama acolyte David Axelrod’s days as a journalist for the Chicago Tribune in order to portray Woodward as going over the line in his reporting on Gene Sperling's harassment:

David Axelrod has written Gene Sperling off as a political lightweight lacking the tonnage to have intimidated Bob Woodward in their dust-up over the sequester. 

Appearing on today's Morning Joe, Axelrod sarcastically asked "what is Gene Sperling going to do to Bob Woodward?  Bob Woodward, who faced down H.R. Haldeman as a young man, feels intimidated by Gene Sperling?"  You really have to hear the sneer in Axelrod's voice as he pronounces the name "Gene Sperling" to appreciate just how far under the bus Axelrod was willing to throw a fellow member of Team Obama.  View the video after the jump.

How do you go from being a gutsy hero of the MSM to a wuss in one minute? Take on a Democrat president instead of a Republican.  Using her most sarcastic scared-little-child voice, on today's Morning Joe Mika Brzezinski mocked Bob Woodward for saying the White House threatened him over his reporting on the sequester.

Mocked Mika:  "is he really afraid of a little aide who said that to him? Really?"  View the video after the jump.

The Morning Joe panel was tough today on the Obama White House for threatening Bob Woodward by telling him he would "regret" his reporting that it was the Obama administration that had devised the sequester,   In the course of the opening segment, various panel members described the Obama White House response as "mickey mouse," "pathetic" and "childish."

But at the same time, a theme emerged that there was nothing unusual about a White House trying to intimidate reporters.  Mark Halperin said "the Bush White House regularly would engage in the same kind of tactics." And Joe Scarborough and Andrea Mitchell shared stories of having been threatened by the Bush and Reagan White Houses, respectively.  Andrea named names.  Scarborough did not.  H/t readers Ray R. and cobokat. View the video after the jump.

The Washington Post's Bob Woodward continues to break ranks with his Obama-loving colleagues by holding the President's feet to the fire concerning the looming budget sequester.

Just days after he wrote a piece in the Post exposing the inconvenient truth that it was indeed the White House that initially proposed sequestration during the 2011 debt ceiling debate, Woodward appeared on MSNBC's Morning Joe Wednesday saying that Obama's decision to not send the USS Truman to the Persian Gulf as a result of these deliberations was "a kind of madness that I haven't seen in a long time" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

In what has become a recurring theme on MSNBC, Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough railed against the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) for failing to invite Governor Chris Christie (R-N.J) to the event.  On the February 26 edition of the program the self-described “true conservative” Scarborough slammed CPAC as not being about winning elections, but instead being an echo-chamber that focuses on “hate” and “anger.”

The segment began with liberal co-host Brzezinski expressing shock over the line-up of speakers at CPAC, including Sen.Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and former Alaska governor Sarah Palin, prompting Scarborough to throw out that, “It shows just how sick some elements of the conservative movement are.”  [See video after jump.  MP3 audio here.]

Call her MoveOn.Mika . . . Bob Woodward has demonstrated that President Obama was not telling the truth during the third presidential debate when he flatly stated that "the sequester is not something that I've proposed. It is something that Congress has proposed.” In fact, it was two Obama aides who devised the plan, and Obama himself who approved it.

But when Joe Scarborough wanted to get those facts on the record this morning, Mika Brzezinski repeatedly declared that discussing Obama's failure to tell the truth was "silly." Things got heated between the co-hosts at one point as Mika cut Joe off, saying "I need to talk."  And trying to end the uncomfortable discussion, Mika actually announced "I'm moving on." View the video after the jump.

Woody Guthrie was an American original who wrote some enduring music and did a lot to publicize the plight of the people of the Dust Bowl.  There's just one little inconvenient truth about Guthrie: he ran in Communist circles.  Though it's reported that he never officially joined the party, he's quoted as saying that the "the best thing that I did in 1936 was to sign up with the Communist Party." He also wrote 174 columns for the Communist Party's Daily Worker newspaper.

But nary a mention was made of Woody's Communist connections on Morning Joe today.  Instead, Mika Brzezinski giggled like a schoolgirl over the numerous, explicit sex scenes contained in a recently-discovered novel that Guthrie wrote, House of Earth.  View the video after the jump.

Sadly, MSNBC cannot follow sister network NBC’s lead in reporting the story of disgraced Democrat Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-Ill) and his impending prison sentence for illegally using campaign funds for personal usage. 

On the February 20 edition of NBC Nightly News as well as on the February 21 edition of Today, both shows correctly identify Jesse Jackson Jr. as a Democrat, but their MSNBC morning show Morning Joe skipped the important detail.  [See video after jump.  MP3 audio here.]

Mika Brzezinski immediately asked her producer if the seven-second delay had worked.  It hadn't.  On today's Morning Joe, praising the "authenticity" of the New Jersey governor, an unbleeped Mort Zuckerman said there's "no bull****" about Chris Christie.

Joe Scarborough sought to slough off the incident, saying no seven-second delay was necessary: "you got a lot of farmers saying that in western Pennsylvania. That's no big deal."  Mika begrudgingly mouthed agreement but her tone and body language left no doubt that she was uncomfortable with Mort's excursion into the scatalogical.  View the video after the jump. H/t NB reader Cobokat.

On Tuesday's MSNBC Morning Joe, host Joe Scarborough blamed conservative media outlets for recent Republican electoral defeats: "...for conservatives that think they have to stay in their own little media world, since Rush Limbaugh went on the air and became a national figure, Republicans have lost five out of the last six presidential elections in the popular vote. Since Fox News went on the air in 1996, Republicans have lost four out of five." [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump]

Co-host Mika Brzezinski snidely chimed in: "Please keep doing what you're doing." Scarborough continued his rant: "So when Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon had to go up against a media culture that absolutely hated them, that despised them, that mocked them, that ran them into the ground every night, and there was no conservative outlet, they won 49 states....But for people that think...they have to stay in this little box, I've got bad news for you. It's not working."

Chuck Todd can't imagine what could ever have given conservative politicians the idea that the MSM is unfriendly to them. C'mon Chuck: we know you're a NewsBusters reader.  Every day here, we document the liberal media's hostility to conservatives.

On today's Morning Joe, NBC political director Todd repeatedly spoke of a supposed "mythology" among conservative politicians and their staffs that the "big, bad non-conservative media" is "out to get conservatives."  That in turn explains why, according to Todd, conservative officials are reluctant to appear on non-Fox shows.  View the video after the jump.

Wait a sec: aren't liberals supposed to be the edgy dudes who like to buck the established order?  The ones who glorify guys with the guts to "speak truth to power"? So what could possibly have turned these hipsters into a bunch of suddenly stodgy sourpusses reaching for their Miss Manners?  Looks like in-your-face is no longer in style when the upstart in question is—horrors!—a conservative!

Continuing his campaign for proper etiquette--and against Ted Cruz--Frank Bruni appeared on Morning Joe today.  The New York Times columnist recently wrote a cranky column calling Cruz an "an ornery, swaggering piece of work."  Bruni took things one stodgy step further, calling Cruz a "whippersnapper." Frank fulminated over Ted's temerity in actually voting against the august John Kerry.  View the video after the jump.

The trashing of Ted Cruz continues apace in the bien-pensant MSM. From the New York Times, to the Washington Post, to Politico and elsewhere, the liberal media has the new Republican Senator from Texas in its sights.

Joe Scarborough is clearly camped out on the Cruz-bashing bandwagon.  Earlier this month, so offended by Cruz was the sensitive Scarborough that he wouldn't deign to mention him by name.  Today, not to be outdone by Frank Bruni, who called Cruz "an ornery, swaggering piece of work," Scarborough declared that Cruz acts like "a carnival barker at a local Republican event."  View the video after the jump.

On today’s Morning Joe, host Joe Scarborough repeated the fib that our country is currently operating without a secretary of defense. After playing a clip of Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) explaining the Republican ill will toward nominee Chuck Hagel, Scarborough unleashed his venom:

You know... for the 66,000 troops currently serving in Afghanistan and for the families all across America this morning, I'm sure they're glad to know that we don't have a secretary of defense in place and we're not going to because of a seven-year-old political grudge. [Video after the break. MP3 audio here.]

Regular viewers of MSNBC know that network's anchors have an almost superhuman ability to find racism in any statement uttered from a conservative or Republican's mouth. Joe Scarborough showed off that talent, on Thursday's Morning Joe, when he claimed a recent op-ed by Wayne LaPierre was "laced with racial overtones" because the NRA president suggested Brooklynites should have the right to defend themselves from Hurricane Sandy looters and border state residents needed protection from violent gangs.

After reciting an excerpt from the LaPierre op-ed, Scarborough ranted: "Wayne LaPierre is suggesting if you are against Americans being able to own assault weapons with 30-round high-capacity magazines, that somehow you're going to-- and he said Hispanic drug gangs are coming to America, and those terrible people in Brooklyn, don't go out after dark. I mean, this is so laced with racial overtones." (video after the jump)

In just 58 seconds, Joe Scarborough has managed to render an imagined response to last night's SOTU that demolishes President Obama's failed economic record.

Delivered on today's Morning Joe, Scarborough scalded PBO's pitiful performance on the economy.  Highlights from the Hall of Shame: four million more Americans out of work today than when Barack Obama became President; average income down 5% since the end of the recession.  View the video after the jump.

Ronald Reagan: RINO?  Cokie Roberts and Joe Scarborough have suggested the Gipper might be viewed that way by the modern-day Republican party, making him unelectable within GOP ranks.

After Joe Scarborough said that it was Reagan who rounded up Republican support for the assault weapon ban in 1984, Roberts exclaimed "I'm not sure Reagan could get elected within the Republican party today."  Scarborough concurred: "I don't know that he could." View the video after the jump.

Sure, you might be cool with Barack Obama calling up a drone strike on an American citizen.  But don't forget: a Republican [shudder!] could become President!

That was the Washington Post editorialist Jonathan Capehart's warning to Donny Deutsch when the ad-man-turned-pundit proclaimed he had no problem with the president, under desperate circumstances, ordering a drone strike against an American.  View the video after the jump.

Barack The First? Wow: who would have thought that perhaps the strongest statement yet in condemnation of President Obama's self-arrogated right to kill Americans abroad would have come from Jon Meacham?  Yet on today's Morning Joe, historian Meacham—who knows something about the use and abuse of presidential power—criticized Obama for ignoring the "rule of law" and actually described Obama as acting like "an American king."

Joe Scarborough seconded Meacham's surprising statement, adding that had this come to light under George W. Bush, impeachment would be in the air.  View the video after the jump.

Imagine the apoplectic Precious Perfect Special Comment rage Keith Olbermann [remember him?] would have worked himself into had this memo come to light under W . . .

Unusual candor from Mika Brzezinski and Harold Ford, Jr. on the double standard that exists for Republicans and Democrats.  Discussing on today's Morning Joe the Obama administration memo that has been uncovered authorizing the use of drone strikes to kill U.S. citizens abroad, Mika admitted that there would have been a "huge controversy" if such a memo had surfaced during the Bush administration. Ford said that "Democrats have to think now about how they conducted themselves and the questions they raised about Bush administration tactics." Joe Scarborough flatly declared that had the policy come to light under Bush, it would have been "stopped" by the ensuing outcry. View the video after the jump.

The regularity with which Joe Scarborough refers to having won his congressional races has become a matter of mirth on Morning Joe. When Joe did so yet again this morning, he wound up contradicting himself on the issue of the electability of conservative candidates.

Scarborough was criticizing candidates who are supposedly too conservative to win, citing Republican gubernatorial candidate Ken Cuccinelli of Virginia, whom he called "certifiable" on some issues. But—unable to resist a boast—Scarborough then contradicted himself, recalling that when he ran for Congress from Florida, "Newt Gingrich and the the Republican establishment worked against me, because they thought I was too conservative to win my district." Uh, yeah--and yet you won.  View the video after the jump.

Sarah Palin's profile might not be as high as it was a few years ago, but she apparently still serves as a convenient punching bag for the left.

On today's Morning Joe, as Joe Scarborough railed against the allegedly "stupid" arguments NRA leader Wayne LaPierre made on Fox News Sunday yesterday, Mika Brzezinski muttered "something Sarah Palin would say."  Consider that Palin had been in no way quoted, nor had her position on gun control been discussed.  This was nothing more than a gratuitious shot at Palin, obviously still a bogeyman for the MSM. H/t cobokat. View the video after the jump.

Sure, Chuck Hagel might have been a bumbling, stumbling mess at his confirmation hearing yesterday.  But the real story was how awful were the Republicans who questioned him.  That was the collective judgment of today's Morning Joe panel.

For example, so contemptuous was Joe Scarborough of Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, that the Morning Joe host announced that he would not even mention him by name.  "Clown show" was the panel's operative phrase for the Republican performance.  Andrea Mitchell, Mika Brzezinski, Mike Barnicle et al. joined in the Republican roasting.  View the video after the jump.

On today's Morning Joe, host Joe Scarborough said that a Senior Fellow at the Independent Women's Forum testifying in favor of assault rifles looked "like a jackass."

Gayle Trotter, who holds undergraduate and law degrees from the University of Virginia and is the co-founder of a D.C. law firm, testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday.  She argued that having an assault rifle could help a woman defend herself and her children against intruders. Immediately after playing a clip of her testimony, Scarborough said: "if you go out and try to defend assault weapons, then you end up looking like a jackass." Mika Brezezinski agreed: "I'm sorry, but that's true."  View the video after the jump.

Hours before the Senate Judiciary Committee held Newtown-inspired gun control hearings, MSNBC's Morning Joe program brought on former Playboy chairwoman and CEO Christie Hefner to warn that warmer weather in Chicago has been a contributing factor in the number of gun deaths in the Windy City.  "[W]e are having this climate change effect that is driving" young men in Chicago to commit 500 homicides in 2012 she insisted.

For his part, quasi-conservative host Joe Scarborough made no attempt to press Hefner on this outrageous claim, although he did mildly mock it. In doing so, however, he dismissed conservative bloggers with a lame stereotype:

Leave it to NBC News’ liberal sister network MSNBC to continue to criticize Al Gore for his decision to sell Current TV to Al Jazeera, the Arab news network owned by the government of  Qatar.  Appearing on Morning Joe Wednesday morning, Al Gore was sharply criticized from the left by co-host Mika Brzezinski for selling his company to a network funded by oil. 

Speaking to Gore, Mika opened up the interview by asking him, “Is it okay, then, for you personally to -- I'd say profit from oil?”  Nowhere in the interview did Brzezinski or the rest of the panel -- including mildly conservative Joe Scarborough -- challenge Gore for selling Current TV to a network the airs strong anti-American viewpoints.   [See video after jump.  MP3 audio here.]