Morning Joe

**UPDATED WITH VIDEO**

This morning on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough broke the news that – are you sitting down? – the media are biased against Sarah Palin.

The comic potential for this revelation is nearly unlimited.

The Morning Joe Brew Crew provided some very interesting insight, however.  Scarborough led Brzezinski into talking about the insider’s view of the main-stream media attitude toward Palin after her introduction as the Republican VP candidate:

Harold Ford, Jr. is the epitome of the equivocating politician who tries to play things both ways.  But that strategy came a cropper for the MSNBC contributor on Morning Joe today. 

Ford claimed that though Letterman was wrong to make sexual jokes about Sarah Palin's teenage daughter, somehow the Palins are "unique," and thus presumably an understandable target. Mika Brzezinski came down on him.  A clearly uncomfortable Ford was soon seeking cover.

Ever since Liz Cheney schooled the Washington Post's Eugene Robinson on enhanced interrogation techniques and national security issues on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" a few weeks back, she's become a fan favorite here at NewsBusters.

Given the respectful way she's treated by the folks on "Morning Joe," one gets the feeling her demeanor and grasp of the facts is quickly making her a very serious conservative pundit.

With that in mind, seeing as this show is on very early, and the likelihood many missed her this morning discussing President Obama's Cairo speech, below the fold for your entertainment pleasure is embedded the video of her appearance (h/t Hot Air):

In what could be a new record for the Morning Joe crew, Joe Scarborough exploded into an anti-media rant today – a mere six minutes and forty-one seconds into the show.  From review of the tape, it is clear that Scarborough had not missed his morning coffee – so that was apparently not the reason for his detonation.  What, then, set Scarborough off?

This Scarborough eruption was brought to you by the past (and continuing) failure of the main-stream media to cover President Obama fairly.  In Mika Brzezinski’s morning news rundown, there was (what was supposed to be) a short segment on President Obama’s comments yesterday; regarding the latest in a series of auto-maker bailouts:

JOE SCARBOROUGH: How can he say that with a straight face? Seriously. This is one of the things that's troubling about this President is he can say things with a straight face that the media does not call him on.

After arguing the details of the President’s proposal at length (length for a TV show...), Brzezinski provided this gem:

Hmm, I wonder what's changed?

Former ad man turned pundit Donny Deutsch has proclaimed that "positivity" is the new in thing for the media—"the new black" as he puts it.

Deutsch appeared with Tom Brokaw on today's Morning Joe.  The former NBC anchor was touting his new USA Network series, "American Character Along Highway 50," featuring encounters with "real Americans" he meets on the road.

That set Deutsch off on his paean to positivity.

Dick Cheney's daughter Liz was a guest on Tuesday's "Morning Joe," and she took the opportunity to wipe the floor with the Washington Post's Eugene Robinson.

Earlier that day, Robinson had published a column at the Post harshly critical of the former Vice President:

Can't we send Dick Cheney back to Wyoming? Shouldn't we chip in and buy him a home where the buffalo roam and there's always room for one more crazy old coot down at the general store? 

For the final act of his too-long public career, Cheney seems to have decided to become an Old Faithful of self-serving nonsense.

Liz clearly wasn't pleased by such disrespect to her father, and after the curtain opened, showed Robinson who the crazy old coot was (video in two parts embedded below the fold, h/t Marc Sheppard):

Former New Yorker editor Tina Brown appeared on Tuesday's "Morning Joe" to rail against the "crazy jihad" and "one-man...hate-fest" of Dick Cheney. Brown, who is now the editor of the Daily Beast website, trashed the former Vice President for constantly appearing on cable news programs to attack the current administration and for claiming that Barack Obama is making America less safe. [Audio available here]

After asserting that Cheney is about as popular as Pakistan's President, Brown sneered, "In some ways, I kind of admire this kind of crazy jihad, this one man, kind of, hate-fest that he runs on cable shows. I mean, I guess he feels he has to defend what he did." Remarking on the Vice President's claim during Sunday's "Face the Nation" that he prefers Rush Limbaugh over Colin Powell, the liberal journalist mocked, "'Cause when he said on that show that Rush Limbaugh, rather than Colin Powell, was the face of the party, it was like once again, that huge, fat crazy frame fills the screen and becomes the face of the party."

Here’s a shocking statement about the behavior of the White House Press Corps at the Correspondent’s Dinner: “What I saw the other night was like a bunch of teenage girls waiting for a Bay City Rollers concert, ready to scream at their the top of their lungs.”

The content of this statement is not nearly so shocking, however, as who said it – a member of the media, one Joe Scarborough of MSNBC.  That’s right, a member of the media is actually talking about media bias.  And even more bewildering, he wasn’t the only one.  Mika Brzezinski, co-host of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe”, agreed:

BRZEZINSKI: I definitely agree with you, I saw that there, Joe, and even the people running the behind the scenes trying to figure out what shots to put on the air, were like, ooh look at Michelle Obama, she looks so good. Go to him, go to him! What? [...] They were in love.  It was weird.

A BBC America guest, Katty Kay, also concurred:

It appears the love MSNBC feels towards Barack Obama is not unrequited, for last Wednesday, a member of the Administration actually declared in public, "At the White House, as we always like to say, we love MSNBC."

Such occurred at the Atlantic Council Awards Dinner hosted by "Morning Joe"'s Joe Scarborough and Mike Brzezinski.

After they introduced special assistant to President Obama for the arts and culture Kareem Dale, he began (video embedded below the fold, relevant section at 1:50, h/t Hot Air):

In the wake of back to back disappointments the past two elections, as well as Arlen Specter's recent defection to the Democrat Party, liberal media members -- and even some not-so liberal media members -- have been blaming the GOP's supposed demise on Republicans being too conservative.

On Sunday's "Meet the Press," MSNBC's Joe Scarborough took issue with this popular yet obviously debatable theme:

[W]hen I hear Democrats like Arlen Specter and read editorialists like E.J. Dionne saying how liberal--or, or how conservative the Republican Party's become, they've got it backwards. We have not been conservative as a party, we've been radical. 

That was just one of many eye-opening statements by Scarborough during this segment that have been edited together in the video embedded right. Below the fold is a partial transcript of this enlightening discussion that included former RNC chairman Ed Gillespie:

What should President Obama’s impending Supreme Court Justice be?  A thoughtful jurist?  A legal scholar with impeccable credentials?  An experienced, accomplished, wise legal expert to judge whether laws are Constitutional?

Apparently, the most important thing to remember is that this justice should be a Hispanic woman.

Joe Scarborough of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” was conducting pundit interviews this morning for analysis on Justice Souter’s newly announced retirement.  One such pundit was Tavis Smiley, and as a gentle segue into the subject of identity politics, Scarborough brought up Justice Clarence Thomas [emphasis mine]:

As if school kids didn't get enough liberal propaganda. Whether parents know it or not, millions of students across the country have been receiving biased news magazines in the classroom. Without adult guidance, children are at risk to take as fact the consistently liberal views of Time magazine.

Through Great American Opportunities, people can order magazine subscriptions and earn Time for Kids subscriptions for the school of their choice. Kindergarten through sixth-graders will then receive this publication free of charge.

According to its website, "The Time For Kids Program helps schools receive the best in current weekly classroom news magazines for students in grades K-6 at no cost. TFK delivers three weekly news magazines to over 3.9 million students."

This program comes from a magazine that has published articles on how kids are bad for the environment. As CMI noted previously, Time's article on May 8 described this environmental problem:

"Morning Joe" host Joe Scarborough on Thursday attacked misinformation spread by a guest during a segment on the previous day's "Hardball." Ex-CIA agent Bob Baer appeared on Chris Matthews' program on Wednesday to claim that no information was gained from waterboarding and that using the practice on Khalid Sheikh Mohammed left the terrorist "almost brain dead." Scarborough derided this kind of comment as "vomit[ing] out bad information" and later apologized if people were confused by Baer. [Audio available here]

Scarborough quoted a memo by National Intelligence Director Dennis Blair asserting that "high value information" came from waterboarding. This appeared to be a way of educating Baer and, in what sounded like a warning to his MSNBC colleagues "anybody else that books Bob Baer." Scarborough went further and offered an apology that, one would assume, would have to be on the behalf of not just Baer, but also his own network. Looking right into the camera, the host empathized, "And I only say this, because this is the information that gets out on TV and in the newspapers and in magazines and I can understand why Americans are confused and I apologize that people are giving you bad information."

During an appearance on Friday's "Morning Joe," MSNBC anchor Chris Matthews certainly didn't parrot the liberal line while discussing Fidel Castro and Cuban policy. In the midst of a an interview with host Joe Scarborough about the relaxing of certain rules towards the communist country, Matthews growled, "...I just am not a Castro fan. You know, he bought the wrong ticket. He bet on communism. He bet on the Soviet Union." Just getting warmed up, the "Hardball" host derided, "He made the wrong decision, morally, historically, whatever. He's on the wrong side of history. He ought to pay for it." [Audio available here.]

Making himself very clear, Matthews summed up, "I hope he dies a communist, ends up that way. I don't want to lift a finger to help that guy or his brother." In perhaps a sad commentary on the state of the left, both Scarborough and co-host Mika Brzezinski seemed surprised at their colleague's fervent anti-communism. Responding to the whole riff, Scarborough joked about a conservative analyst for the network: "Have you been talking to [Pat] Buchanan this morning?" Brzezinski retorted, "I know. Is Pat in the Washington bureau?"

Is this the new politics Barack Obama promised to bring to Washington?  His hand-picked DNC Chairman just went on national TV and denied that the Obama administration requested Georgetown University to cover up the IHS monogram representing the name of Christ.  Confronted with a CNSNews.com article flatly reporting that such a request had indeed been made, Tim Kaine resorted to the hoary dodge of claiming he hadn't seen the story.  Adding insult to injury, Kaine even claimed to be ignorant of CNSNews.com itself, NewsBusters' sister organization.
 
Kaine made his credulity-busting claims during a Morning Joe appearance today.

Has "Morning Joe" host Joe Scarborough had enough of MSNBC's mocking, sexually-laced taunts about "teabagging?" Several anchors on the liberal cable network, including David Shuster and Rachel Maddow, have used crude references and language to deride the tax day protests that occurred on Wednesday. On Thursday, Scarborough complained, "You look at these huge rallies, and I'm not going to mention names of people on networks that made sexual jokes, childish sexual jokes, about tens of thousands of Americans who went out and wanted to get involved in their government."

The MSNBC host continued, "I mean, it was really middle school jokes being made. I didn't hear those jokes being made when people on the left protested over the past eight years." Earlier in the 6am hour, he offered criticism that, one might assume, would have to be directed at his own network: "But, if a media outlet wants to expose its bias, they can mock tea parties, if they like."

Continuing the unnamed critique, Scarborough asserted that he would expect such juvenile actions from liberal bloggers, however, "I would expect more...from news outlets. And it happened on several networks yesterday." (The last part is certainly true. CNN has also engaged in such talk.)

On Wednesday's "Morning Joe," MSNBC co-host Mika Brzezinski twice made it very clear that she has no interest in the revelation that Kathleen Sebelius, Barack Obama's nominee for Health and Human Services, is just the latest pick for the President's cabinet to have tax problems. During a news brief in the 6am hour, Brzezinski related the story and that Sebelius just paid over $7000 in back taxes. She then editorialized to her co-hosts, "Around the table, does anyone care?" [Audio available here.]

"Morning Joe" regulars Mike Barnicle and Willie Geist both replied no. Geist then added, "Get over it." Despite expressing how much she didn't care, Brzezinski repeated the story in the 7am hour and also the same stunt. After briefly explaining the particulars, she complained, "Again, around the table, does anyone care?"

File this one under Liberal Guilt Syndrome.

In the second hour of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe”, correspondent Savannah Guthrie gave a live report on the upcoming G-20 summit from London. This was a fairly straightforward report, hitting on issues that the major parties were interested in hammering out – the French want more financial regulation, for example. And then, at the very end of the report, Mika Brzezinski threw a hanging curveball. Guthrie did not disappoint:

The Fox News Channel has another huge hit on its hands with "The Glenn Beck Show," and the media can't stand it.

As news of Beck's success spreads, his competitors -- especially the liberal wannabes -- are foaming at the mouth.

A fine example occurred on Tuesday's "Morning Joe" when co-host Willie Geist showed a video clip of Beck getting emotional during his monologues which evoked nothing but disgust from fellow co-host Mika Brzezinski and the Daily Beast's Tina Brown.

Even co-host Joe Scarborough couldn't hold back the laughter (video below the fold courtesy our friend Ms Underestimated with transcribed lowlights, file photo):

Major media began shielding Barack Obama from criticism early in the presidential primaries. It's no surprise, then, when they continue to do so today. However, the media's collective, instinctive tone-deafness in regard to grassroots activities continues to stun and amaze.

NewsBusters has so far noted several grassroots efforts that have been ignored – despite similar left-leaning efforts getting fantastic coverage. For example, there was Noel Sheppard's initial entry on the Chicago Tea Parties, and the tiny amount of coverage they received. Then, there was Warner Todd Huston, noting the San Francisco Chronicle's preferential treatment of an anti-Wall Street protest. For the magnum opus, however, we turn to the entire mainstream media's blind eye – pointed squarely at the University of Notre Dame.

Mika Brzezinski, co-host of MSNBC's “Morning Joe”, showed her father's aptitude for foreign policy this morning.

The daughter of one of the Carter administration's chief foreign policy wonks started by scolding Robert Gibbs' knee-capping response to former Vice President Dick Cheney's CNN interview, saying that:

BRZEZINSKI: I would have probably wanted to take that on in a big way because many would argue that Cheney made the country more dangerous. Cheney is the one who put us in the position we're in and now has al Qaeda reconstituting around the world. There's some good answers to what Cheney said.

Many would, and they would be proven wrong by that very statement. It was Cheney's policies that destroyed Al Qaeda to the point that they had to “reconstitute” at all. It was Cheney's policies that stopped a long string of al Qaeda attacks. It was indeed Cheney's policies that put us in the position we're in - winning, and safe at home. Apparently, Brzezinski's idea of a better response would have been to attack the policies that have made us safe in the first place.

Former Bush White House press secretary Ari Fleischer appeared on the Thursday edition of MSNBC's "Morning Joe" and stopped the program cold when he challenged the hosts as to whether they were "going after Democrat members of Congress for why they aren't distancing themselves from Keith Olbermann?" Co-anchors Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, who had been discussing the battle between the White House and Rush Limbaugh, were silent for a moment before Brzezinski admitted, "That was a good one. We're all thinking."

Fleischer pressed, "That's my point. It's a one-sided debate because, largely, the press loves it because the press doesn't like Rush." The quip occurred after Brzezinski attempted to trap Fleischer into saying that he would be following the tactics of attacking the radio host, were he in the same situation as the Obama White House. After Fleischer's jibe, Scarborough started sipping from his coffee and attempted to toss the potential network hot potato over to the show's other guest, Mike Barnicle. Scarborough joked, "I'm going to have a – I can't talk right now because I'm drinking. Mike?" A few seconds later, however, the token MSNBC conservative did admit, "No, that was good."

[Special thanks to MRC intern Mike Sargent for transcribing the segment.]

NBC White House political director Chuck Todd appeared on MSNBC’s "Morning Joe" on Monday to dismiss Rush Limbaugh as "looking backward" and deride the radio industry as a "dying medium." Todd (see file photo above), who was talking with co-host Mika Brzezinski about Limbaugh’s role as a leader in the Republican Party, also suggested a linkage between the radio host and far left bomb thrower Michael Moore.  He insisted, "They [Democrats] want to do to the Republican Party what Republicans tried to do to the Democrats with Michael Moore and all that stuff."

Speaking of radio, Todd sniffed, "But, it’s that idea that Limbaugh- even the whole- even the venue that he’s on, radio, not the internet.  You know, it’s very ‘90s.  It’s very backwards- is looking backwards." He added, "And, you know, radio is a dying medium, potentially- as it is just in general."

He concluded, "It is a backward-looking technology." Of course, it’s the newspaper industry that many would call a "dying medium." (The San Francisco Chronicle is just one of many papers to face bankruptcy recently.)

Former Vanity Fair and New Yorker editor Tina Brown appeared on Friday's "Morning Joe" to lament that a new liberal ad featuring Rush Limbaugh would only elevate the status of the "blow-hard bullfrog" conservative host. The liberal group Americans United for Change has a spot running that slams Republicans as a party of no and features a clip of Limbaugh's now famous comment that he wants Obama's liberal policies to fail.

After "Morning Joe" co-host Willie Geist played the ad, Brown asserted of the commercial, "I adore the 'party of no.' I think it is wonderful." She then complained, "The only thing I do regret though is that this giant, you know, blow-hard bullfrog, you know, Rush Limbaugh is being turned into this big icon."

New Yorker senior editor Hendrik Hertzberg appeared on Wednesday's "Morning Joe" and compared Rush Limbaugh to 1960s segregationist and Ku Klux Klan member Bull Connor. He also linked Barack Obama to Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King. According to Hertzberg, "And I'm not saying that Obama is Martin Luther King or that Rush Limbaugh, the leader of the opposition, is Bull Connor. But the dynamic is very similar." [Audio available here.]

Hertzberg, who once wrote for Newsweek, was on the MSNBC program to promote his new article that touts President Obama for embracing "Gandhian hardball" in the mold of the civil rights movement. Specifically, the New Yorker editor asserted that Obama used this strategy in the way that he fought congressional Republicans over the stimulus bill. Hertzberg told "Morning Joe" host Joe Scarborough, "You know, when, when [Martin Luther] King offered non-violence, when the civil rights movement came out and was non-violent and then the other side greeted it with fire hoses and clubs, nobody said, 'Oh, King has failed in his effort to have non violence.'"

Veteran Watergate journalist Carl Bernstein appeared on Monday's "Morning Joe" to highlight the "masterful" leadership of Barack Obama in passing a stimulus bill and also to laud Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for her dedication to service. Challenged by MSNBC analyst Pat Buchanan over how much impact Hillary Clinton would actually have as secretary of state, Bernstein, author of the Hillary bio "A Woman in Charge," enthused, "You know, she is somebody who really believes in service. Both Clintons do. Whatever cynicism we might have about the Clintons, she believes in service."

He also asserted that celebrity is important on the world stage and cooed, "And nobody is more celebrated. Nobody is more famous than Hillary Clinton. Nobody can have more effect abroad." Earlier in the segment, the former Washington Post journalist applauded Barack Obama for passing his stimulus bill in a way that maneuvered around a "dysfunctional" Congress. "...The reason Barack Obama is showing such masterful- and I think we can use that word- leadership so far is that he's in the process of solving the problem of the U.S. Congress, the fact that it is a largely dysfunctional institution," he explained.

Despite his tax problems, President Barack Obama's newly minted Treasury secretary, Tim Geithner, was sold to Congress as the one who was going to save the fragile financial system.

However, in what was billed to be a big announcement, and Geithner's first major appearance, he failed to deliver. The Treasury Secretary was slated to outline his plan to rescue troubled financial institutions from the toxic assets they had on their books. But he failed to give specifics and the markets suffered; the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) nosedived 382 points.

CNBC "Fast Money" host Dylan Ratigan had his own description of Geithner's performance. In an appearance on MSNBC's Feb. 11 "Morning Joe," he likened it to "soiling a bed."

With all the populist sentiment generated from the economic slowdown by politicians, CNBC "Mad Money" host Jim Cramer is seeing eerie similarities with the comments of President Barack Obama and the words of a communist revolutionary.

Cramer, appearing on MSNBC's Feb. 2 "Morning Joe," drew comparisons between remarks between the first head of the Soviet Union, Vladimir Lenin, and Obama. Obama criticized Wall Street's moneymaking on Jan. 30, when he said there would be a time "for them to make profits, and there will be time for them to get bonuses. Now's not that time. And that's a message that I intend to send directly to them."

Cramer said that was similar to Lenin's writings. "Let me tell you something, we heard Lenin," Cramer said. "There was a little snippet last week that was, ‘Now is not the time for profits.' Look - in Lenin's book, ‘What Is to Be Done?' is simple text of what I always though was for the communists, it was remarkable to hear very similar language from ‘What Is to Be Done?' which is we have no place for profits."

Most liberal bloggers want to close Guantanamo, and some even want to make those "poor guys in Gitmo" some baba ghanoush. That aspiring terrorist's chef is the "Phoenix Woman" at Firedoglake, who complained about Rudy Giuliani ("everyone's favorite would-be dictator") on MSNBC's Morning Joe. Rudy's offense was citing the New York Times for reporting on a released Guantanamo detainee who is now deputy al-Qaeda commander in Yemen. But she complained:

Again, no names, facts, figures from the torturemongers. Just scare statements. And a chuckle from Rudy as he contemplates the possible deaths of innocents.

Here's the names and facts from the New York Times:  

The militant, Said Ali al-Shihri, is suspected of involvement in a deadly bombing of the United States Embassy in Yemen’s capital, Sana, in September. He was released to Saudi Arabia in 2007 and passed through a Saudi rehabilitation program for former jihadists before resurfacing with Al Qaeda in Yemen.

"Morning Joe" host Joe Scarborough on Thursday aggressively clashed with his liberal co-anchor Mika Brzezinski and Washington Post editorial writer Jonathan Capehart about Guantanamo Bay and the definitions of torture. After Capehart asserted, "I do think there's a way to protect America without violating everything that we stand for and everything that we are," a clearly agitated Scarborough shot back, "That is bull!"

The MSNBC host continued, "What you are doing and, Mika, what you are doing and the rabid left, not you all, but the rabid left has done for the past seven years, is just say, 'We are going to apply new standards to the Geneva Convention.'" An undeterred Capehart retorted, "How about following the Geneva Convention?" This prompted Scarborough to lecture, "Oh, guess what, Jonathan? We are! Al Qaeda terrorists that don't wear uniforms. How about reading the Geneva Convention! Because, terrorists that try and blow up civilians are not protected under the Geneva Convention."