Mark Halperin . . . on a roll!
Yesterday, we noted that the MSNBC analyst was surprisingly respectful to Donald Trump. Today, Halperin offered more refreshingly objective analysis. Commenting on President Obama's budget speech of yesterday, Halperin observed that if a Republican had called a Dem budget un-American, in the same way that PBO pummeled Republican proposals, the MSM "would be up in arms."
Joe Scarborough added that it was simply bad politics for the president to give Paul Ryan a front-row seat, only to insult his proposals as un-American and lacking courage or realism.
View video after the jump.
Watch Halperin tell it like it is about the MSM's double standard.
MIKA BRZEZINSKI: Now, the president did get political in his speech, taking a few veiled shots at Paul Ryan's budget plan. Take a listen.
BARACK OBAMA: This vision is less about reducing the deficit than it is about changing the basic social compact in America . . . Ronald Reagan's own budget director said there's nothing serious or courageous about this plan . . . There's nothing serious about a plan that claims to reduce the deficit by spending a trillion dollars on tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires. And I don't think there's anything courageous about asking for sacrifice from those who can least afford it and don't have any clout on Capitol Hill . . . That's not a vision of the America I know.
MARK HALPERIN: I think if a Republican president called the Democratic proposals on something like this un-American, I think the press would be up in arms.
JOE SCARBOROUGH: They would savage him.
HALPERIN: They would be up in arms. I think that kind of rhetoric: for the president to say, that what Paul Ryan is doing is not consistent with his vision of America, I think that's rhetoric that only added insult, injury to the insult of inviting him to sit in the front row.
SCARBOROUGH: Republicans have said a lot of really, really tough things about Barack Obama. Really tough things. So, it's not even the words, it's not the rhetoric. I think the president does believe that the Ryan plan is not the America that he grew up in or the America he wants. I'm just saying, for negotiating reasons, why invite him to sit in the front row and say that his budget is not serious and is un-American when Paul Ryan's been fighting his entire life for this?
HALPERIN: I totally agree. It seems like a weird decision to make.
