Jack Welch

During the roundtable segment on Sunday's Meet the Press, NBC's Andrea Mitchell typically acted as Barack Obama's press secretary defending the President from any and all criticism lodged by other panelists.

Apparently having witnessed enough shameless advocacy from a so-called journalist, when Mitchell used the Occupy Wall Street movement to defend Obama's economic policies, former Democratic Congressman Harold Ford Jr. replied, "He's the President. Democrats can't criticize Republicans for catering to the Tea Party and not be, and not say to our Democratic Party you got to look beyond Occupy and be willing to do what's in the best interest of the country" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Yesterday, Joe Scarborough and Jack Welch ribbed Mika Brzezinski for her reading of White House talking points on the oil spill.  But after bloggers including this one reported Mika's admission that she was "working with the White House" on the matter, Scarborough has this morning gone all Sir Galahad.  

The Morning Joe host said he wasn't going to "call them names," but then proceeded to mockingly imitate bloggers fulminating through their Cheetos.

Here was the exchange of yesterday:

So you may have seen the headlines - the United States is slipping from its long-time position of economic dominance. Evidence: news that China is on the verge of become the top global manufacturer. 

But to former General Electric CEO Jack Welch such headlines really don't mean much. Welch, appearing on MSNBC's June 21 "Morning Joe," explained that yes China is about to take the manufacturing "crown" from the United States, what's important is the kind of products the Chinese are making.

"If you look at what China's manufacturing - they're manufacturing low value-added stuff and as long as it stays that way and we keep doing the high-end stuff and moving up the food chain, we'll be all right," Welch said. "Now, we have not moved up the food chain as fast as we should and we need more engineers and we need to be doing all that, but we are not going to be paying people $200 a month and beginning these low value-added products. It is not going to happen. I'm not that worried about it."

Cut out the middle-woman and install Obama's teleprompter on the Morning Joe set . . .

Give her high marks for candor: on today's show, Mika Brzezinski admitted that she has been "working with the White House" on oil spill talking points.  But that still leaves the issue of the journalistic propriety of someone in Brzezinski's position serving as such a blatant shill for the president.  H/t tip NB reader Ray R.

Mika could be seen reading from her notes during exchanges with former GE CEO Jack Welch, who was critical of the PBO's handling of the spill.  After repeated ribbing from Welch and Joe Scarborough over her use of White House talking points, Mika came clean . . .

A lot of journalists have written off the possibility the economy can avert a recession.

However, it isn't conventional wisdom that the economy is heading for a recession outside of the journalism world.

Jack Welch, author of "Winning," appeared on MSNBC's January 14 "Morning Joe" to discuss the economy, the presidential race and professional football. Welch told viewers he didn't anticipate a recession.

"No, I don't think we're going to hit recession, but it's going to feel like it," Welch said. "Things are slowing down dramatically, as everyone knows. But I think we'll weather this thing and the global economy will keep us alive. So, we will not have a technical recession, but it will sure as hell feel like one."

The MSNBC staffers who booed President Bush in 2003 were just following the tradition set in 2000 when those at the NBC News flagship cheered on Al Gore. In the wake of Joe Scarborough's revelation Thursday morning that on his first day at MSNBC, on the night of President Bush's 2003 State of the Union address, “people in the newsroom...were booing the President basically from the beginning to the end” (Mark Finkelstein's post), a look back at how on the night of the 2000 election, NBC News employees were openly “cheering for Gore.”

As the MRC's Rich Noyes reminded me, the MRC's August 31, 2001 CyberAlert recounted:

On the election night, the NBC News control room was full of people “all cheering for Gore,” retiring General Electric CEO Jack Welch told Vanity Fair as he denied he pressured anyone to call the election for Bush, “and two or three of us cheering for George Bush.”