On Wednesday’s Morning Joe, two normally reliable liberal commentators did not hold back in their criticism of Hillary Clinton’s performance during her first national interview on CNN.
MSNBC regular Mike Barnicle observed that Hillary’s candidacy still “has a lot of rust” on it and unlike her husband who looks “fearless on the stage” “she is fearful.”
Watching Mrs. Clinton’s interview it became obvious that “[h]er eyes are just, seem frightened at every word she says. She is weighing and measuring every word that comes out of her mouth” Barnicle argued before he tried to defend the Democrat’s paranoia:
Now it's understandable because she is right about the onslaught of criticism over the most picayune things involving the Clintons. But not a great moment yesterday.
Co-host Joe Scarborough seemed perplexed at Clinton’s performance, especially over her accusations that the “right” was solely behind the criticisms against her considering “it's the New York Times it’s the Washington Post, it's the Wall Street Journal, it's a lot of top newspapers that are asking these very tough questions.”
Washington Post columnist Jonathan Capehart had a similar response to the Clinton interview as he noted that “she looked annoyed, especially talking about the e-mail, the e-mail controversy.” However, the liberal MSNBC contributor did his best to justify why Mrs. Clinton may have felt “annoyed” by questions about her e-mails:
Clearly it seemed to me that she's just tired of answering these questions and feels that she's answered those questions not just to the best of her ability, but, you know, truthfully and she is still getting hit with these questions.
Capehart highlighted how Clinton was “battle scarred” as a result of being "under the media microscope since at least 1991-92 when President Clinton ran for president the first time” but he eventually conceded that the likely Democratic presidential nominee needed to improve her performance quickly:
But she’s running for president a second time. She's been through this once before. And we'll see as Barnicle says, there's a lot of rust on this vehicle. We're still many months out from when she really has to get her game back on.
See relevant transcript below.
MSNBCs Morning Joe
July 8, 2015
MIKE BARNICLE: Well, a couple things popped out at least at me watching that interview. There is still a lot of rust on this political vehicle, Hillary Clinton’s candidacy. She is still in spring training phase, I think of getting her message out. The other element is the difference in we're used to hearing and seeing her husband who's been with us forever on the political stage. He is fearless on the stage. Fearless.
She is fearful. Her eyes are just, seem frightened at every word she says. She is weighing and measuring every word that comes out of her mouth. Now it's understandable because she is right about the onslaught of criticism over the most picayune things involving the Clintons. But not a great moment yesterday.
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JONATHAN CAPEHART: Well, you know, to jump on something that Barnicle just said that Secretary Clinton looked fearful, to me she looked annoyed, especially talking about the e-mail, the e-mail controversy. Clearly it seemed to me that she's just tired of answering these questions and feels that she's
answered those questions not just to the best of her ability, but, you know, truthfully and she is still getting hit with these questions. The other thing is I don't -- she didn't exactly say it was a vast right-wing conspiracy.
She talked about -- she's been under attack, she and her husband have been under attack about it media for a very long time. And that's true. They have been attacked. She's been under the media microscope since at least 1991-92 when President Clinton ran for president the first time. So what we're seeing here is someone who is battle scarred, who has been through the crucible of controversies time and time again. Most of them not born out. But she’s running for president a second time. She's been through this once before. And we'll see as Barnicle says, there's a lot of rust on this vehicle. We're still many months out from when she really has to get her game back on.
