Morning Joe

Over the past week, the media have been obsessively attributing the GOP’s election loss to the party’s embrace of conservatism. It began with a predictable assault on the standard bearer of conservative thought over the airwaves, Rush Limbaugh. On election night, NBC’s Brian Williams opined that Rush was a liability for the GOP. And it didn’t stop with Williams.

On MSNBC’s Morning Joe David Frum seconded that sentiment by claiming that Republicans were “fleeced, exploited and lied to” by the “conservative entertainment complex,” another obvious dig at Limbaugh and talk radio. Scarborough agreed, proclaiming that the GOP needs to stop listening to the “most extreme people” in the Party. Rounding out the week on Sunday, the all-liberal panel on NBC’s Meet The Press, piled on the anti-Limbaugh message: the loss was due to Limbaugh and the “loons and wackos” of the conservative base.

Should Debbie Wasserman Schultz lose her DNC job, there's always a stand-up gig waiting at the Laff Shack . . .

On Morning Joe today, DSW managed to maintain a straight face while claiming that if women ruled Washington, they'd be able to fix the fiscal cliff because they "build consensus" and "put aside petty differences."  The litany of Wasserman Schultz's hyper-partisanship is long, exemplified by her allegation back in March that by adopting voter ID laws, Republicans want to "literally drag us all the way back to Jim Crow laws." Oh, then claiming not to have said it.  View the chuckle-worthy clip from today's Morning Joe after the jump.

Andrea Mitchell was willing to peddle the Obama party line regarding the Petraeus matter . . . but Joe Scarborough wasn't buying.  On today's Morning Joe, Mitchell dutifully reported that "according to all the officials involved," President Obama was not informed about Petraeus until the Thursday after the election.

Scarborough dropped something of a bombshell, saying he "heard about something like this coming several weeks ago."  Said Scarborough emphatically: "don't tell me the White House didn't know.  That is not true."  View the video after the jump.

MSNBC's token Republican Joe Scarborough appeared on ABC's The View, Friday, to do what he does best: Trash conservatives. The Morning Joe co-host lectured the Republican Party to "stop listening to the most extreme people." Naturally, the bashing of his own party delighted the mostly liberal View panel. [Video to appear soon. See MP3 below.]

Elisabeth Hasselbeck seriously asked Scarborough if he would "consider being on the [2016] ticket." Scarborough didn't dismiss this as silly. He simply suggested such an undertaking would mean he'd "be home even less" than he is now. When asked by liberal comic Mario Cantone what the solution is for the GOP, Scarborough seethed, "They've got to stop listening to the most extreme people in their party." A delighted Whoopi Goldberg marveled, "Say it one more time. One more time. One more time, Joe, please say it."

David Frum blames the media for Mitt Romney's loss. Not the liberal media, of course--we are talking David Frum, after all. No, Frum blames the conservative media, or as he calls it, "the conservative entertainment complex."

Frum touted his upside-down take on the media during a Morning Joe appearance today while promoting his instant e-book, "Why Romney Lost." Joe Scarborough liked the line so much he asked Frum to repeat it. Frum refused to name names, saying he does so in his book, but do we doubt whom he was targeting? View the video after the jump.

Pseudo-conservative and liberal media darling Joe Scarborough is known for his whacky theories but on Thursday’s Morning Joe he posited a new one that puts the icing on the cake.

Speaking with co-hosts Mika Brzezinski and Willie Geist, the MSNBC host said that if the GOP had selected former Utah Governor Jon Hunstman, the Republican Party would have done much better against President Obama.   [See video below break.  MP3 audio here.]

Should Republicans unilaterally disarm in the media-bias wars?  Joe Scarborough seems to think so. Arguing that it distracts Republicans from performing the political blocking-and-tackling needed to win elections, Scarborough has called on Republicans to "stop blaming the media."

Saying "let's makes this personal," Scarborough cited as an example of the supposed distractions to which he was referring the controversy over the tape Morning Joe aired in September from a Romney campaign stop.  Readers will recall that the clip seemed to show Romney asking the crowd, which had been chanting "Romney!", to change to "Romney/Ryan."   But Scarborough suggested just the opposite: that the crowd had been chanting "Ryan!" and that Romney asked them to change to "Romney/Ryan."   View the video after the jump.

Stop the presses! Stop the presses!

Dan Rather, the former CBS Evening News anchor who presented a forged document on the air about President George W. Bush weeks before the 2004 elections, said on MSNBC's Morning Joe Tuesday, "Something in my gut tells me that it’s going to be a good day for Romney" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

The mainstream media are attempting to create a self-fulfilling prophecy that Hurricane Sandy has saved Barack Obama's re-election chances.

On MSNBC's Morning Joe Thursday, Politico's Mike Allen said, "You're already hearing Republicans hint that if Mitt Romney loses, that he'll blame the storm" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Appearing on Monday's NBC Today, MSNBC Morning Joe co-hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski asserted that impending Hurricane Sandy would help Barack Obama in the election, with Scarborough proclaiming: "Mitt Romney had momentum….This was Mitt Romney's best weekend, and it stops. The momentum stops."

Brzezinski eagerly predicted how the President would be perceived during the storm: "…expect command centers up and down the east coast and the President to be very visible at all of them, telling people about the federal dollars that are on the way, and that will be advantage Obama." Meanwhile, she claimed Romney would be “in an awkward situation," and that "anything he does might look so blatantly political and almost needy, because he’s just not in the equation when the country’s under siege from a massive storm."

On Saturday, NewsBusters asked if it would be fascinating if Barack Obama's interview with MSNBC's Morning Joe ended up being an easier one than he recently got with the ladies of ABC's The View.

We got our answer Monday, and in the end, co-hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski asked absolutely nothing of the President that could be perceived as a hardball (video follows with transcribed highlights and commentary).

Having not done a press conference since June, Barack Obama has instead appeared on ABC's The View, CBS's Late Show with David Letterman, and NBC's Tonight Show with Jay Leno.

Apparently feeling MSNBC's Morning Joe will present him with similar softballs and friendly confines, the President is doing an interview with Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski Saturday to be aired Monday just eight days before Americans go to the polls.

Over the past several months, MSNBC has been on a tirade criticizing attempts by mostly Republican state legislatures to ensure voting integrity by requiring a photo ID in order to vote. 

As NewsBusters has documented, one of the leaders of the anti-ID movement is none other than the host of the 6 p.m. Eastern program Politics Nation, the Rev. Al Sharpton, who on numerous occasions has suggested that such laws are thinly-veiled, racially animated attempts to depress minorities of their right to vote.  [See video below break.]

It appears as though MSNBC has gone into overdrive covering up for the Obama administration over the terrorist attack on our consulate in Libya.  Following emails uncovered by CBS News late Tuesday evening showing the White House knew within two hours that the attack was terrorist related, MSNBC has run a grand total of two stories on these shocking developments. 

Unlike yesterday, NBC's Today did provide a news brief on the emails Thursday morning as well as a story during Wednesday night’s Nightly News, but their sister cable network MSNBC has only covered the story once today, on The Daily Rundown at 9:00 a.m. Eastern.

**UPDATE** At 2:30 p.m. EDT, MSNBC mentioned the damaging emails for the first time, coupling it with breaking news of an arrest in the attack on our Libyan consulate.   

Following in the footsteps of its sister broadcast network, MSNBC has continued to ignore the shocking revelation that the White House knew on September 11 that the U.S. consulate in Benghazi was under a well-coordinated terrorist attack. 

As NewsBusters’ Matthew Balan noted, NBC's Today was the only broadcast network morning show this to ignore the story altogether, with MSNBC following suit by remaining silent as well throughout the day.  In contrast, both Fox News and CNN have run numerous stories Wednesday morning.

Some serious fur flew on the Morning Joe set today, as Joe Scarborough clashed with David Remnick, editor of The New Yorker.  Setting Scarborough off was the magazine's endorsement of Barack Obama that lauded the president for relieving the "national shame inflicted by the Bush administration."

Scarborough saracastically asked Remnick "who got paid the bonus for being able to squeeze in, quote, 'the shame of the Bush years?'" Scarborough went on to scald Remnick for the left's hypocrisy in giving President Obama a pass for pursuing many of the same policies that it had accused Bush-Cheney of undermining the Constitution for establishing.  Remnick feigned ignorance of what Scarborough meant by "the left," and accused Joe of having "within two seconds, leapt down my throat" about the endorsement.  View the video after the jump.

Just how pathetic are people that watch MSNBC?

On Tuesday, a 9 1/2-year-old girl was booed during an on-location live broadcast of Morning Joe because she had the nerve to say Mitt Romney should win the election (video follows with transcribed highlights and commentary):

Talk about the law of unintended consequences . . . On today's Morning Joe, Willie Geist interviewed an audience member sporting a T-shirt reading "Mika Made Me Republican."

The good-natured fellow explained that his daughter had made the T-shirt for him, that he was an independent who had voted for Perot, and that he watches Morning Joe daily because he likes to hear what the other side has to say.  Whatever it was that Mika has been saying, it has apparently driven him into the Romney camp.  View the video after the jump.

Coming down the stretch of the presidential campaign, it looks like NBC political director Chuck Todd has put getting it right over any personal or network partisan leanings.  On Morning Joe today, Todd declared that seven out of ten challengers in Mitt Romney's position in the polls win the election.

In an assessment sure to send shivers down Obama-camp spines, Todd added that "Romney appears to have the advantages going into the next couple of weeks."  View the video after the jump.

On Monday's NBC Today, political director Chuck Todd analyzed the state of the presidential race following a series of new national polls showing a slight Romney lead: "Well, look, the first debate really did sort of shift things....the numbers I've seen, and in talking to both campaigns, something shifted fundamentally."

However, only four days earlier, on Thursday's Today, Todd argued the debate was "not as helpful to Romney as he might have hoped," leading co-host Savannah Guthrie to conclude: "Alright, so the debate had maybe not as much of an impact." That was as the ABC and CBS morning shows highlighted Romney's clear momentum.

NBC's Tom Brokaw blasted Joe Biden's debate antics on Friday's Morning Joe. "I mean he just can't contain himself," note Brokaw. "And he's become a caricature on the talk shows."

"I just don't think you should be laughing during a discussion about thermonuclear war with Iran," Brokaw called out Biden, who repeatedly shook his head at opponent Paul Ryan while smiling and laughing. [Video below the break. Audio here.]

In her analysis of the vice presidential debate on the October 12 edition of Morning Joe, co-host Mika Brzezinski showed disdain for Paul Ryan and utter adulation for Joe Biden's performance. She was alone in her wildly pro-Joe assessment.

As far as she was concerned, Biden utterly thrashed Ryan, and the liberal MSNBC co-host loved every minute of it: [ video below, MP3 audio available here ]

Don't go there, Donny . . . Donny Deutsch has opened a can of worms—or shall we say, a carton of Clairol.

On Morning Joe today, Deutsch suggested that it looks like Mitt Romney colors his hair, and argued that Americans would lose trust in a candidate who does.  But could Deutsch possibly be unaware of the evidence that his guy Barack Obama has also grabbed the Grecian Formula on occasion?  Video and photo evidence after the jump.

Appearing on Tuesday's MSNBC Morning Joe, NBC political director and chief White House correspondent Chuck Todd discounted a new satirical ad from the Obama campaign mocking Mitt Romney for mentioning Big Bird in the debate: "...this is clearly a, as I was told, 'national cable,' which seems like code for, 'We put it out there hoping a lot of people will play it over and over because we think it's a good snarky conversation.'"

However, only moments earlier, the full ad played on the MSNBC morning show, as well as during the 6 a.m. ET hour. In fact, the ad ran in full on every MSNBC show between the 5 a.m. and 2 p.m. ET hours on Tuesday, for a total of ten times. That included on Todd's own 9 a.m. ET show, The Daily Rundown.

It is one thing to trash Jim Lehrer’s moderating behind his back.  It’s even worse when you then bring him on your show to praise his performance after you trash him.  No one does this better than Morning Joe’s Scarborough who did a complete 180 on his analysis of Lehrer’s moderating skills. 

On the morning after the first presidential debate, Scarborough claimed that “Jim Lehrer got rolled over” as moderator on October 3rd.  Fast forward to Monday’s Morning Joe when Lehrer appeared in person and Scarborough had suddenly wiped his hands clean of any such criticism.  [See video below break.  MP3 audio here.]

Watching Mitt Romney last night as he revived his campaign while demolishing President Obama was surely a bitter pill for Jon Meacham to swallow.  

On Morning Joe today, the former Newsweek editor sought to console himself.  Meacham—twice—pointed out that although Mark Twain famously wrote that rumors of his death were greatly exaggerated, Twain did eventually die.  Nice analogy, Jon!  View the video after the jump.

On the campaign trail, Barack Obama is claiming that if reelected, he would save Medicare while Mitt Romney will kill it.

Yet the Washington Post's Bob Woodward said on MSNBC's Morning Joe Wednesday the president "is proposing cutting Medicare" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Sounding less like a supposed foreign policy expert and more like someone who's been listening to way too much late, late night left-wing radio, Zbigniew Brzezinski claimed to see the outlines of a "conspiracy" in the making of the anti-Mohammed movie trailer.  

Saying "it's not an issue of freedom of speech entirely," Jimmy Carter's former National Security Adviser suggested on Morning Joe today that the makers of the movie could be held "liable" for the deaths of the US Ambassador to Libya and three other Americans. He recommended that the United States should "investigate and crack down" on "evil forces" such as those people behind the movie.  View the video after the jump.

Calling them "Cheetos-eaters living in their mothers' basements," Joe Scarborough, angered by criticism by conservative bloggers of a segment on last week's Morning Joe, has told them to boycott the show.

Last week, Morning Joe ran a clip of the crowd chanting at a Romney campaign event.  Morning Joe superimposed a screen graphic indicating that the crowd had been chanting "Ryan!"  Romney was then seen instructing the crowd to instead chant "Romney-Ryan!"  Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski proceeded to rip Romney for what was depicted as an egocentric display. In fact, there is considerable controversy as to what the crowd was chanting, with various people reporting from the scene that the crowd had in fact been chanting "Romney," so that Romney's action was gentlemanly, not egocentric.  Listen and judge for yourself. On today's show, Scarborough ran a clip of the campaign event, but without the Morning Joe screen graphic that was at the heart of the controversy.  View the video after the jump.

MSNBC and Andrea Mitchell got caught in June selectively editing a video of Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney to make him look like an out of touch moron.

As the Blaze reported Thursday, Morning Joe aired a video this week that has aroused similar suspicion.