On Monday’s edition of MSNBC’s Morning Joe, co-host Mika Brzezinski called presidential candidate Mike Huckabee’s recent comments about the recent Iran deal “ugly, callous, shocking and deeply disturbing,” and angrily declared that this should be a “deal breaker” for his campaign. She goes on to discuss with a panel how the GOP hopeful’s comments are the worst thing anyone has said so far this election cycle.
Brzezinski is referring to recent comments where the former Arkansas governor called out President Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran, which he claimed would “take the Israelis and march them to the door of the oven.” Huckabee is a strong opponent of this deal considering Iran is the leading state-sponsor of terrorism and a vocal opponent of Israel's existence. The treaty lifts crippling sanctions off the Middle-Eastern country, limits the United State’s ability to conduct surprise inspections of nuclear facilities, and releases $100 billion in sanctioned funds.
The Morning Joe program ignored the concerns that triggered Huckabee’s controversial comments, but offered blistering criticism non-the-less:
MIKA BRZEZINSKI, Host: Okay. Mark Halperin, is there any comment that we've ever seen on both sides of the aisle on this campaign, on the campaign trail anywhere, anything that's ever been said that's worse than that comment?
MARK HALPERIN, Guest: I think Ian is right that it's the leader in this current cycle. But I'll say in the past Mike Huckabee said outrageous things that people should and would apologize. To my recollection, he never does. And it's incumbent upon Republicans and Democrats and people here to speak out and say it's really well beyond the line.
BRZEZINSKI: I think if candidates have been so up in arms about other candidates and what they've said, and had speeches written by speechwriters, and gone on the offense about offensive comments, this needs to be tamped down by every single candidate on both sides of the aisle.
HALPERIN: Including Jeb Bush.
BRZEZINSKI: And called out for being ugly, callous, shocking and deeply disturbing.
And Brzezinski didn’t stop there either. When the show returned from break, she offered one more fiery attack on the ardent supporter of Israel:
BRZEZINSKI: So we were just talking, and Joe, you're right. Here's the response that I have to Huckabee's comments. If you've been to Auschwitz, if you’ve been to Birkenau. If you have been to any of these places where people were killed, and you see the piles of glasses, the piles of hair, the piles of shoes, and the piles of clothes, and every bit of their humanity that had to be stripped away, handed over, as they went and then burned to their deaths along other things, it's really not a good comment to say. It's a deal breaker. It should be over for him. You don't say that, and by the way, if you said it by mistake, that's a sign of who you really are. That's all I have to say. You wanted me to say it on the air. I just did.
There is little doubt or debate that Huckabee’s comments are controversial and surprising for someone running for President– it’s kind of an unspoken rule that candidates just avoid any references to the holocaust. But it is also notable that the liberal MSNBC program didn't offer similar outrage over recent comments made by the leaders the Obama administration made deal this with. Comments that actually called for the annihilation of Israel and America– a literal genocide.
AYATOLLAH ALI KHAMENEI: “You heard ‘Death to Israel’, ‘Death to the US.’ You could hear it. The whole nation was shaken by these slogans. It wasn’t only confined to Tehran. The whole of the nation, you could hear, that was covered by this great movement. So we ask Almighty God to accept these prayers by the people of Iran.”
Not only did they avoid touching on the radical, much more disturbing comments of the world leader they defend, they didn't even cover the entirety of Huckabee's comment.
MIKE HUCKABEE: Nothing has been asked of the Palestinians – nothing. Not one thing. And until there is some understanding that there must be recognition by the Palestinians of the Jewish state’s right to exist, I’m not sure what there is to discuss or negotiate.
More recently, the supreme leader of Iran tweeted a silhouette of President Obama, with an American flag pin highlighted, holding a gun to his head. Included in the graphic was the text “If any war happens, the one who will emerge loser will be the aggressive and criminal U.S.”
It becomes difficult to take Mika Brzezinski seriously when she is willing to thoroughly and emotionally condemn a Republican presidential candidate, yet conveniently avoid the far more disturbing issue he was trying to urgently address with his controversial comments. There just isn't enough balance and fairness to take MSNBC seriously on topics like this where partisanship is involved.
