Partisanship oozing out of Howard Dean's wherever! On today's Morning Joe, Mika Brzezinski, exasperated by Howard Dean's dead-ender defense of Hillary on the email scandal, told him "your partisan whatever is just ooz[ing.]"
You know Hillary is in hot water when even Andrea Mitchell had to report that there are "big" problems for Clinton on the email front. But Howard Dean has apparently decided to go down with Hillary's ship, clinging to his claim that the email scandal is "hooey" and declaring "you're just not going to get me to give on this."
Note: consider in particular Dean's statement "you're just not going to get me to give on this." Those are truly the words of a dead-ender in abject, damn-the-facts, denial.
MIKA BRZEZINSKI: Howard Dean, you initially blew this off as like hooey.
HOWARD DEAN: And I still do.
MIKA: Come on.
DEAN: I think it's great. I am far happier with the server in the custody of the Justice Department than in the custody of Trey Gowdy and the ridiculous farce that that's become. Look: not one of the e-mails that she has sent or received was labeled top secret or privileged or confidential or any of that stuff, classified. So we'll find out what's in there. If there are some classified e-mails, which apparently there are, I don't think she's going to get the blame for it because she didn't know. It's pretty clear to me. I think this is a good thing. I think it's going to stop a lot of the ridiculous speculation that we've seen in the papers and as I say I much rather have it in the hands of the Justice Department.
. . .
WILLIE GEIST: Howard, is it fair to say if this were a Republican Secretary of State and someone you were not supporting for president you would be troubled by a Secretary of State having a private e-mail server in his or her home?
DEAN: No, I wouldn't be. No, because I used to do that as governor. There's a tremendous number of other public officials who have done the same thing.
GEIST: And would only use a private server for State Department e-mails?
DEAN: Look, whatever Hillary Clinton did was within the constraints of the law at the time.
MIKA: It wasn't in the constraints of the White House operating rules that they had put out for this administration. You do know that, right? You do agree with that, correct?
DEAN: It's not clear that I agree with that.
MIKA [exasperated]: Uhhh!
DEAN: There's a lot of back and forth about this. Look, you know my position in this hasn't changed.
MIKA: It's policy in the White House that e-mails are on a government server.
DEAN: I still think as you quoted me accurately in the beginning, this is a lot of hooey. We'll find out. At least now it's in the hands of some professional people who can look at it and I think that's a good thing.
MIKA [exasperated}: I, I, I, I -- go ahead.
. . .
MIKA: Howard Dean, thank you.
DEAN: Through gritted teeth she says.
MIKA: Well I just, I don't think -- I think you're really you're like literally for the first time truly trying to avoid a true narrative here.
DEAN: Mika, this is like having this discussion about the Patriots and the Jets that you had had on in the last half hour. You're just not going to get me to give on this.
MIKA:You would not be this way if it was like Dick Cheney or Paul Wolfowitz or Donald Rumsfeld. You just wouldn't. Your partisan, whatever, is like, it's just ooz[ing]. Right there.
DEAN: Hillary didn't start a war in which two million people were killed. That's a little different.
MIKA: Oh my gosh.
NICOLLE WALLACE: So she can keep classified material on her e-mail server? Take that defense to the FBI.
MIKA: Oh my Lord, I just love you. But --
DEAN: I think it's great. The FBI is going to give us a report. And I think that's a good thing.
MIKE BARNICLE: I'm sure she does, too.
MIKA: I'm not sure.
DEAN: What cynics you all are.
MIKA: It's just very awkward on the set right now.
