Given the Morning Joe reviews, if President Obama's terrorism speech were a Broadway show, it would have closed after one night. From Richard Haass to Richard Engel, Joe Scarborough to Willie Geist, the prez's performance was universally panned.
And in the cruelest comment of all, Mika Brzezinski reported that "I watched it with my youngest daughter who's very, very interested and we were waiting for the address, and sat together and watched. And when he was finished she got up and left. She goes: I don't really know what the point of that was." Mr. President, when you've lost Mika's daughter . . . But hey, look at the bright side: you could fire up Air Force One and still make an afternoon tee time in Palm Springs.
Note: right after the speech last night, we reported on Richard Engel damning it as more of the same policies that have already failed.
Note II: When Tom Brokaw came on in a subsequent segment, he admitted "I find almost no one who's very happy with his war policies." Brokaw mentioned "I was with some friends last night, very committed Obama backers when he was first elected, and now they're saying 'I don't get it.'" So Brokaw hangs with a bunch of "very committed Obama backers." Surprise!
JOE SCARBOROUGH: Did you hear anything new last night?
RICHARD HAASS: Not on the foreign policy side. That was basically stay-the-course.
. . .
JOE: Richard Engel, it sounds like on the foreign policy front, the president just reiterated what a lot of people are saying isn't working now.
RICHARD ENGEL: Well, he laid out this four-point plan. So he didn't talk about just staying the course, he talked about staying the course we've already been on that hasn't been working.
JOE: Status quo abroad. As Richard Engel said, it's staying the course that has not worked. And his own intel community is saying it's not working.
. . .
JOE: And so Willie, so many people were watching last night, saying "is that really it?"
. . .
WILLIE GEIST: I think what he didn't realize is the urgency of the American people, who see things like Paris and San Bernardino, and think ISIS is here right now, ISIS is on our doorstep, not something that we can wait for: a political reconciliation process in Syria. We can't wait for Saudi Arabia to come along. I don't think he sees the urgency.
. . .
MIKA BRZEZINSKI: ISIS in Syria and Iraq are anything but contained. That's for sure. According to a new intelligence report, officials tell the Daily Beast that the White House-commissioned report predicts that ISIS will spread world-wide and grow in numbers unless it suffers a significant loss of territory on the battlefied in Iraq and Syria. Important to note, the report was commissioned before the president's declaration the threat of ISIS had been contained.
. . .
MIKA: I watched it with my youngest daughter who's very, very interested and we were waiting for the address, and sat together and watched. And when he was finished she got up and left. She goes: "I don't really know what the point of that was." And left.
JOE: I heard that, Mika, from so many people --
MIKA: -- it was everything she knew.
JOE: Why did he do that speech last night?
