Vladimir Putin

In a spurt of schadenfreude, Joe Scarborough gloats over perceived Republican woes. He plays an extended clip of a Republican congressman getting booed and jeered at a town hall in ultra-liberal Asheville, North Carolina, revels over the stock market having another bad day, and reports on Putin saying "no" to a ceasefire proposal.

On Morning Joe, Mika Brzezinski describes as "disastrous" the Oval Office meeting among Trump, Vance, and Zelensky. But Morning Joe regular Elisabeth Bumiller of the New York Times admits though "hard to watch," it was a "pressure tactic that got us somewhere." Mika responds with a curt "all right" and quickly moves on.

MSNBC’s weeknight viewers got a preview of a new show on Monday as Symone Sanders-Townsend joined Inside with Jen Psaki guest host Michael Steele for a panel on the political ramifications of Elon Musk’s budget-cutting initiatives. The fact that the ex-RNC chairman is so at home on MSNBC, he is guest hosting the Biden White House press secretary’s show aside, Sanders-Townsend alleged…

On her first day as host of CNN This Morning, Audie Cornish assembles a panel consisting of Never Trumper Jonah Goldberg of The Dispatch, and two New York Times journalists.  The panel pushes a pool on how long Marco Rubio will last as Secretary of State, based on the notion that the views he is obliged to promote in the position are antithetical to his historical views.

After Michael Steele, co-host of MSNBC's The Weekend, accuses President Trump of a planned "ambushing" of Zelensky, MSNBC contributor and Never Trumper Charlie Sykes claims that under Trump, the United States is no longer the leader of the free world, and to the contrary, in many cases "might be an adversary."

White House correspondent Peter Baker indulged his paranoia in a story in Friday’s New York Times: “In Trump’s Washington, a Moscow-Like Chill Takes Hold -- A new administration’s efforts to pressure the news media, punish political opponents and tame the nation’s tycoons evoke the early days of President Vladimir V. Putin’s reign in Russia.” The odious Russia comparison is not just a…

The cast of Friday’s PBS News Hour was not interested in subtlety, nuance, or level-headedness as they discussed recent media news. Host Amna Nawaz wondered if “we’re in much more sinister territory now” due to the changes surrounding the White House press pool. Both Washington Post associate editor Jonathan Capehart and New York Times columnist David Brooks agreed,…

On Morning Joe, historian, and former occasional Biden speechwriter Jon Meacham, who called the prospective US-Ukraine deal, and by extension Trump, "imperialist."  Joe Scarborough analogized the deal to the Treaty of Versailles, which imposed heavy reparations obligations on Germany for having instigated WWI.

On CNN This Morning, substitute host Jim Sciutto suggested that if Americans don't pay attention to Trump's handling of Ukraine, it could lead to another 9/11. For the second time during his current run as a fill-in host on the show, Sciutto chose Joe Walsh as his "Republican" on the panel, a rabid Trump antagonist who, while attending the 2024 DNC to show his total support for Kamala Harris,…

On CNN This Morning, Dispatch co-founder Jonah Goldberg says Trump has a "goldfish's memory" of history, but that he subscribes to a 19th-century notion of spheres of influence. He thus sees the US's sphere of influence as the Americas and Europe, while Putin and Xi have their spheres of influence, in which Putin gets Ukraine, Xi gets Taiwan, and the US gets Panama. Per Goldberg, Trump…

Morning Joe devoted a segment today to fretting over Trump arranging peace talks with Russia on Ukraine without, at this stage, the participation of Ukrainian officials.  But the show ignored Zelensky's stunning statement: that Putin is "afraid" of Trump and that while Putin is a "liar," Trump can push him into peace negotiations because he is "scared" of Trump, who is "strong."

Jon Stewart and John Oliver’s claim that America has entered its “monarchy era” under President Donald Trump may not have been the craziest moment from Monday’s edition of The Daily Show on Comedy Central. Instead it might have been New Yorker editor David Remnick’s claim that the country is at risk of turning into Vladimir Putin’s Russia because of the relationship between…

When the late night comedy shows took to the air on Monday to lament Donald Trump’s return to the presidency, three main themes emerged. The first was that Trump is going to be a national nightmare. The second was that they have gone all in on embracing former President Joe Biden’s “oligarchy” warnings. Finally, it was deemed ironic that Inauguration Day happened to fall on Martin Luther King…

As President-elect Donald Trump celebrated being named Time magazine’s person of the year for 2024, MSNBC’s Joy Reid tried to throw cold water on the occasion by pointing out that not everyone who has won the award historically has done so because they made the world a better place. The ReidOut host claimed “we all know” which side Trump is on, and it is the one with “Adolf…