Joe Scarborough and Mark Halperin criticized the double standard for Republicans and Democrats, saying that if a Republican said something like what Hillary Clinton argued in comparing pro-life Americans to ISIS the “world would come to a halt.”
On Friday’s “Morning Joe” Scarborough insisted Hillary’s comments “to be so hyperbolic and insulting, and quite frankly, it’s gutter politics at its worst to compare people to radical terrorists that cut off people’s head and blow up grandmoms.”
Mika Brzezinski: All right, the RNC was quick to respond to the comments but I’ll let you do it first.
Joe Scarborough: It was disgusting, it was absolutely disgusting. Hillary Clinton saying—
Brzezinski: I was trying to be careful.
Scarborough: No, I mean, just let’s tell the truth. She wanted us to talk about this. She wanted to throw a bright shiny object out there.
Brzezinski: Look at the bird, is what I said when you were sitting right here.
Scarborough: So they don’t talk about the email scandal. And so she has to be so hyperbolic and insulting, and quite frankly, it’s gutter politics at its worst to compare people to radical terrorists that cut off people’s head and blow up grandmoms.
Brzezinski: Alright.
Scarborough: No, it’s not all right and we have seen by reporting what these terrorists do to young girls. The sexual slavery is absolutely appalling, and what Hillary Clinton did is compare somebody who is pro-life, which is close to 50% of Americans, to radical terrorists. This is like Barack Obama. I mean, is this the radicalism? We have been talking ability the craziness of the Republican Party. But is this the sick radicalism that is now infecting the Democratic Party, that if you’re Barack Obama, you compare Chuck Schumer to people shouting “death to America” in Iran? if you’re Hillary Clinton, you compare pro-life Democrats and Republicans to ISIS? What Happened here yesterday? This is so over the top.
Mark Halperin: If a Republican did this, the world would come to a halt.
Scarborough: The world would come to a halt.
Halperin: It should be condemned in strong terms. And I’m hoping and I’m suspecting she’ll may take it back today.
The morning after Al Sharpton was booted to the Sunday morning desert from his evening show, and not long after Ed Schultz and Alex Wagner were relieved of their hosting duties, Joe Scarborough has profusely thanked NBC News honcho Andrew Lack for making those changes.
On today's Morning Joe, Scarborough was discussing stunning poll results in which the first word that came to voters' minds about Hillary was "liar." Asked what was the worst thing said about him in such polling, Scarborough said "he works for MSNBC was always the worst." But Joe then added, his hands steepled in a gesture of gratefulness: "not any more though, cause things have changed. Thank you, Andy. Thank you very much."
MARK HALPERIN: They asked an open question: what's the first word you think of when you're asked the name of a presidential candidate? The leading answer for Hillary Clinton was "liar." The leading answer for Trump was "arrogant." And the leading word for Jeb Bush, Bush.
JOE SCARBOROUGH: That may be a problem.
NICOLLE WALLACE: It may be, it may not be. I mean, Bush is also the last name of one of our most popular former presidents, Bush 41, his father. I think the Republican primary voters are well aware of that. I would rather be known as Bush than a liar.
OE: Or arrogant. These are unprompted by the way. These questions, though, what happens is they ask in these polls, what. It's the part of these polls that always scared me the most because they were the most instructive. They're called verbates.
WALLACE: Like a focus group.
JOE: What's the first thing you think of when you think of Joe Scarborough. And then you have to sit there and read the sentences, and you go oh, my God!
MIKA BRZEZINSKI: How did you do? What were some of the worst?
JOE: He works for MSNBC. That was always the worst. Not any more, though, because things have changed. Thank you, Andy. That was the past, this is the now. Thank you, very much.
Donald Trump said during an interview with MSNBC’s Morning Joe that he believed a low minimum wage was a good thing for America, because it helped the country compete with foreigners.
“Your slogan is ‘Make America Great Again,'” host Mika Brzezinski noted. “I’m curious on the issue of wages ,which have been flat for years now… do you think the minimum wage should be raised across the board?”
“Mika, it’s such a nasty question because the answer has to be nasty,” Trump said. “We’re in a global economy now. It used to be companies would leave New York State or leave another state and go to Florida, go to Texas, go to wherever they go because or lower wages…”
But now, Trump noted, the United States is competing with much lower wages in other countries. “We can’t have a situation where our labor is so much more expensive than other countries that we can no longer compete. One of the things I’ll do if I win, I’ll make us competitive as a country.”
“I want to create jobs so you don’t have to worry about the minimum wage, they’re making much more than the minimum wage,” he said. “But I think having a low minimum wage is not a bad thing for this country, Mika.”
MSNBC’s Mika Brzezinski, after a nearly 10-minute discussion on Morning Joe of Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton turning over her private email server, said Thursday she was “frustrated” with Clinton’s campaign for its numerous errors and potentially derailing the historic nature of her candidacy.
“If you’re managing a campaign, you haven’t done a very good job helping put this behind Hillary Clinton,” Brzezinski said. “You just haven’t. Now the FBI’s involved.”
“There’s a very obvious answer to why they used a private email server,” said New York Times reporter Nick Confessore. “To keep their emails private. Everyone knows that. It’s obvious, so just say that. Acknowledge it. Instead of, ‘It’s for convenience.’ Not so convenient now, by the way.”
Brzezinski wrapped up the segment by admitting Clinton’s conduct was bothersome since it could keep a woman from capturing the White House.
“I’m frustrated by this,” she said.
“It’s very frustrating,” Huffington Post’s Sam Stein said, nodding.
“She could be an incredibly strong candidate,” she said, sighing. “She’s got the experience, could make history.
”
“I think you’re speaking for a lot of people who feel the same way,” Stein said.
MSNBC contributor Donny Deutsch said on Morning Joe that the greatest problem with Hillary Clinton’s Democratic presidential campaign is that the American people are simply tired of her.
“The emails are actually just a symptom of the problem of Hillary,” Deutsch said. “Americans are just tired of Hillary Clinton. There comes a point in time where she comes on the TV — Hillary Clinton is very competent and very bright, just Americans have fallen out of like with her. It’s that simple.”
“Are you tired of her?” host Joe Scarborough asked.
“Yes,” he replied. “I think Hillary at this point, regardless of her skill set, would not be an effective leader because her fault or not, the country is polarized. She cannot lead effectively, because she’ll not be able to bring this country together.”
Deutsch, who identifies as a liberal, said he was basing his observation in part on his conversations with powerful New York City establishment Democrats. “That’s Democrats,” Scarborough pointed out. “That’s not Republicans. These are around the dinner table, around the lunch table powerful Democrats saying ‘We just can’t do this.’
Donald Trump appeared on the Today show Monday morning and lashed out at hostsSavannah Guthrie and Matt Lauer for “misrepresenting” his comments about SenatorJohn McCain’s war heroism.
Trump claimed he never denied McCain was a war hero. “You misrepresent, just like everyone else,” Trump told Lauer.
“Savannah started it by saying I said he wasn’t a war hero,” he continued. “If you would have let it run another three seconds you would have said — that I said he is a war hero. I have no problem with that. What I do have problems with is he called 15,000 people that showed up for me to speak in Phoenix — he called them crazies because they want to stop illegal immigration. They were insulted. They were great Americans.”
Lauer said that the network had played the entirety of Trump’s comments. He asked Trump specifically about his line that he “prefers people who aren’t captured.” Trump reiterated his bizarre theory that he meant nobody pays any attention to soldiers who didn’t end up POWs.
On Morning Joe this morning, McCain declined the possibility of an apology from Trump, but said the candidate did owe it to other POWs.
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said that “five different sources” told him that Mexico’s government is sending people to the US on Wednesday’s “Morning Joe” on MSNBC.
Trump was asked, “Do you believe that Mexican immigrants are rapists and murderers?” He said, “Illegal immigrants are causing tremendous problem[s] coming in. I want legal immigrants, illegal immigrants are causing tremendous problems, Mika. There’s crime. It’s a crime wave. It’s a disaster. Do I believe many people — I mean, look, as far as I’m concerned, I hire, I have hundreds and hundreds of Mexicans working for me. I love Mexican people. I love their spirit. The problem we’re having with Mexico is that their government officials and negotiators are far smarter than ours, like from a different planet. And they are negotiating deals, trade deals, the border, everything else. We are getting the short end of the stick in every single instance. And we are having a big problem. Let me just tell you just to finish, Mexico is sending a lot of their people over that they don’t want. And that includes people that should be in Mexican prisons and you know it and I know it and nobody wants to talk about it.”
Trump was then asked how he knew the Mexican government is sending people to the US, he said, “Because I heard from five different sources. And if you speak to the border guards, who I’ve spoke to many of, if you speak to border guards, and these guys are terrific. They’re almost crying, they’ve almost got tears in their eyes when they explain that they’re not allowed to do their job.”
After he was asked by panelist Mark Halperin what these five sources were, Trump stated, “I’ll reveal my sources when you reveal your sources, Mark. I have a lot of information on it, and so does everyone else. And you probably do, too. And for some reason they don’t want to put out this information. Mexico — and if you remember, many years ago when Fidel Castro opened [his] prisons and sent the people over, and everybody knew it. We never sent them back. We took these — all of these prisoners. Mexico, in a far more sophisticated way, is doing something very similar. They’re sending tremendously — you look at the man that killed Kate. You look at Jamiel, Jamiel Shaw, you look at so many — thousands of instances where illegals are coming in, and it’s a crime wave. And, frankly, Mexico doesn’t care, from the standpoint that they don’t want to house these people for a long period of time in their prisons. They say, ‘Let the United States take care of them. Let the United States put them in their jails. Why should we pay for it?’ And believe me it’s happening, and it’s happening big league, and this country doesn’t know.”
Earlier, Trump said of the Iran deal, “It’s a ridiculous deal. Even a thing like, you know, nuclear’s so important, and stopping nuclear proliferation, which this deal, I think will enhance, but so important. But something like at the beginning, when they were discussing it, we had three prisoners. We now have four prisoners. Automatically you say, ‘Listen, not going to do you any good. Release the prisoners.’ We’d send a great signal to everybody, you don’t care about them, but we do, important for the United States, just release the prisoners. Now, if that’s delivered by right messenger, they would have done it a long time ago. Amazingly, they — I don’t even think that Kerry brought it up. It sounds like he never even brought it up. He said one thing has nothing to do with the other. The other thing is giving billions and billions of dollars to them, releasing the money before you even do the deal, where they’re getting billions of dollars, they are going to be so rich and so powerful. And when you talk about the deal itself, anytime, anywhere, you have to go in and inspect anytime anywhere. Now, they have a 24-day notice provision. Give a 24-day notice to go in and inspect? I think it’s made by people that are incompetent. And it might very well get by, because probably the veto is, you know, it’s going to be — he’s in pretty good shape in terms of that. But I think it’s a disgrace. And we should have doubled up the sanctions, and we should have made a deal where they caved. We were dealing from desperation. We look so desperate, and it’s a disgrace. … I love the idea of a deal, by the way, but it’s not a well-negotiated deal. We should have doubled up the sanctions and made a much better deal.”
Trump was then asked if he’d read the deal, he answered that he had “seen the deal,” had “seen it broken down in every newspaper you can imagine” and had read “the good points and the bad points. And the good points aren’t very strong.” Trump was then questioned about whether the US could have held the sanctions together, he responded, “If you had a president that was a leader, he would be able. He can’t even talk. When you look at where we are with countries, with — as an example, with Russia, they can’t even talk together. Putin can’t stand him, in all fairness, he can’t stand Putin. But Putin doesn’t respect him. It’s about leadership. You have to hold the sanctions together. And if they — if we had the right leadership, it would be something much different. You know, Russia is a big beneficiary of this deal. There are numerous places that are going to be big beneficiaries of this deal.”
The goal going into the talks with Iran was to dismantle its nuclear program, Sen. Lindsey Graham said Tuesday, but instead, the Obama administration has "ensured they've become a nuclear nation" and created a situation that will lead to nuclear proliferation throughout the Middle East.
"This is the most dangerous, irresponsible step I have ever seen in the history of watching the Middle East," the South Carolina Republican and presidential candidate told MSNBC's "Morning Joe" program. "You have put every Sunni Arab in a terrible spot ... with the passage of time, this industrial-strength program we have locked in place will become a nuclear program."
In regards to Israel, Graham said, "You have taken their biggest threat on the planet, who constantly chants 'Death to Israel,' and you have created a possible death sentence."
And as for the United States, "you have taken our chief antagonist, people who have killed hundreds of Americans in Iraq, toppled pro-American governments throughout the region, including Yemen, and given them capability to become a nuclear nation."
Graham blamed the deal on a "dangerously naive" President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry, who have effectively brought new levels of chaos to the Middle East.
"Any senator who votes for this is voting for a nuclear arms race in the Mideast, and is voting to give the largest state sponsor of terrorism $18 billion," said Graham. "What do you think they'll do with the money? It's going to go to [Syrian President Bashar al-] Assad, to Hezbollah and Hamas."
Graham said he would have been more open to a deal that tied Iran's enrichment programs to a change in its behavior, including inspections and finances.
"I would never relieve inspections until there was a certification that Iran is no longer the state sponsor of terrorism," said Graham, adding that he also would never have agreed to lifting the arms embargo "until they changed their behavior."
The deal is also a "virtual declaration of war against Sunni Arabs," said Graham. "You're making every Sunni Arab nation recalculate. You have locked in an industrial-sized nuclear program on behalf of the Iranians."
Further, the deal ensures that "every Sunni Arab nation who can get a nuclear weapon will because now they must," Graham said. "The goal President Obama set out [to achieve] I shared — to dismantle the program, to give them a nuclear capability consistent with a peaceful power program, and to require them to change their behavior before you gave them weapons or a nuclear capability. The goal has not been achieved."
Instead, he said, "With this deal, you've ensured that the Arabs will go nuclear. You have put Israel in the worst possible box. This will be a death sentence over time for Israel if they don't push back. You put our nation at risk."
And at the end, "every goal the president expressed two years ago has absolutely not been met, and you put the arms embargo on the table at a time when they're destroying the Mideast with their conventional weapons program," Graham said. "This is a terrible deal. It's going to make everything worse, and I really fear that we have set in motion a decade of chaos."
Even though the agreement's details have not yet been made public, Graham said he has been to the Middle East enough to know that the deal is a disaster, as it will "lock in a nuclear program that is mature over time without behavior change because that's going to push every Arab to get a weapon."
Graham said he considers Kerry a "good man," but he and Obama "want a deal so bad" Kerry is not listening to the Arabs or to Israel, as they are "are telling him something he doesn't want to hear."
The deal will now move to the Senate for a 60-day review period, and Graham said he plans to argue to his colleagues that it will initiate a nuclear arms race, and that giving Iran cash means "they're going to put it in the war machine, which puts us at risk."
He said he will also "tell the president to go back and try to get a better deal. Tell them there's a better deal to be had."
Graham also had a warning for Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton: "If you think this is a good deal, you're dangerously naive." But still, he said even she could broker a better deal than the one at hand.
"I think she could negotiate a better deal than this," he said. "I think everybody on our side could, except Rand Paul."
And he said that if the Senate cares about Israel, "you will not put her in this box," and if it cares about the United States, "you will not allow our chief antagonist to become a nuclear threshold nation ... If you care about Americans, you will not give this regime one penny." Via: Newsmax Continue Reading....
From the man who brought you malaise, now an even more depressingly negative view of America . . . On today's Morning Joe, Jimmy Carter declared that America is in "inevitable decline." But no finger-pointing at President Obama, please: Carter declared that the decline is "not because of any defect or fault on the part of the President of the United States."
Cue the Cole Porter: it's just one of those things. Carter was on to promote his latest book, looking back on his 90 years of life. Carter's grim prognosis notwithstanding, decline is not inevitable. It is due to weak leaders like Carter and Obama who fail to stand up for America and defend the principles that made it great. -
WILLIE GEIST: I know this is a big question with a long answer, but, drawing on your 90 years, how is the United States doing right now? Where are we?
JIMMY CARTER: Well, we're in an inevitable relative decline in world-wide influence. Not because of any fault of ours, but it's, as I said, inevitable. I think that the combination of China and India and Brazil and South Africa and others as they increase in economic and cultural influence will replace a lot of the power and pre-eminence that the United States has enjoyed in the past. So we're having, whether we like it or not, to accommodate that necessity of realizing other people are going to be as powerful and influencing as we are in some aspects of life. Not militarily, we'll stay preeminent there for a long time. But I think economically, China will soon, you know, succeed the United States as the #1 economic power in the world. I think influence in politics is also shifting inside the United Nations and in the ability of the United States to use its influence to change situations that we don't like around the world. That's commonly what it is. It's not because of any defect or fault on the part of the President of the United States. It's just happening as an historical, evolutionary, unavoidable circumstance.
MSNBC's Morning Joe welcomed Mary Katharine and me on-set today for a lengthy conversation about our new book, End of Discussion. Given our -- shall we say -- less than glowing assessment of the network in the book, we weren't quite sure how we'd be received. Judge for yourself, but we thought the panel agreed with our central thesis and were quite welcoming and gracious:
Scarborough was clearly on board, and Willie Geist thoroughly endorsed our premise as it pertains to the prevailing winds in academia. Mika, unsurprisingly, was the most skeptical segment participant, challenging us on whether the Right contributes to America's toxic Outrage Industry culture, as well. As we noted, it was a fair question, and one we anticipated. She seemed fairly satisfied with our answer. I'll leave you with another programming note: MKH and I will be guest-hosting the nationally-syndicated Hugh Hewitt radio show this evening from 6-9 pm ET. We hope you'll tune in! Via: Townhall Continue Reading....
The silence was all-too-familiar when Hillary Clinton supporters were asked about her accomplishments as secretary of state.
These Hillary supporters, registered Democrats who plan to vote for Hillary Clinton in 2016, were quizzed by MSNBC contributor Mark Halperin in a segment on "Morning Joe."
Responses ranged from, "I can't name anything off the top of my head" to just plain, "No."
The closest thing to a real answer one of the supporters gave was this: " She's not perfect." This voter played the classic distraction game, pointing to the fact that she is not Wis. Gov. Scott Walker, has been in high offices for 25 years, and has "good" policies.
Tina Brown was on Morning Joe today and suggested that neither Obama nor his administration really understand Obamacare in the first place:
It’s covered in barnacles…this thing is like a big, encrusted ball of mess.
I think that so much of what’s gone down is because nobody really understands it even so. You know there’s all this attacking Obama, obviously, for what he said about…you won’t have to give up your policy. But you almost wonder whether did anybody in there really understand it. Because so many compromises and changes and so on had to be made, that in the end everything was just done in this completely-sort of-screwed-up way…this soup of kinda of, you know, chain-of-command that was just so screwed up.
Who’s to blame for the ObamaCare debacle? “First off all, in fairness,” Howard Dean told the Morning Joe crew earlier today, ou have to blame Republicans for some of this because they delayed everything they possibly could.” First we have to blame the party that (a) didn’t cast a single vote in favor of the ACA and (b) had no control over its 42-month rollout? At which stage in the process do we hold responsible the people who spent $400 million in three and a half years, and who assured everyone all along the way that things were going swimmingly?
Probably 39th. Let’s not raise expectations too high (via Andrew Johnson at The Corner):
Dean went on to blame the Republican governors who wisely decided not to tempt fate with their own exchange systems:
“The problem is they shouldn’t have done a single-size-fits-all for the 36 states,” he continued. “Partly, I have to say, they had to do that because the Republican governors refused to accept exchanges.”
Dean went on to downplay the problems facing the websites, saying the glitches are “not big.”
Dean suggests that the White House should have built regional systems rather than national systems in order to make the process less complicated. How exactly would that have helped? HHS couldn’t even build one system that connects the consumers to the insurers and the IRS properly, but they could have built four or five simultaneously? That sounds like the kind of thinking that went into the Obama administration’s reform policies and managerial efforts on ObamaCare all along.
A Morning Joe panel roundly condemned the rollout of the Affordable Care Act federal exchanges Monday morning, calling the malfunctioning websites “outrageous” and “unacceptable,” and accusing the website developer of incompetence and Health and Human Services of deliberately misleading the public.
“The roll-out is unacceptable,” regular guest Mark Halperin said. “The secrecy is unacceptable. It begins with not saying how many people have enrolled. I don’t understand why they can’t release that figure on a rolling basis. But in addition, you search in vain for answers to lots of questions. Tom Costello, lots of other reporters have asked them every day for basic information. When governments are in crisis, they withhold information, and sometimes they don’t tell the truth.”
“I’m not being ideological,” co-host Joe Scarborough said. “These people want to run our health care system, and they want to be the grand organizers of what’s most important to most Americans over the age of thirty-five or forty. And yet they’re not telling us what’s going wrong with our system that theywant to run?”
Mike Barnicle went one further. “They’re lying about it now,” he said. “They’re not depriving us of information, they are outright lying…about the numbers of who have enrolled, the numbers who have made the process complete, the numbers of people who have actually signed up, a couple others things. The larger point is they keep using the word, ‘unacceptable.’ This is not unacceptable, this is outrageous.”
“Up until recently, they didn’t realize how bad this was going to go out,” Huffington Post’s Sam Steinsaid. “No one beta tested the site, which is almost criminal, when you think about it. The president was caught off-guard, which is really unfortunate and also really kind of messed up. So you need someone who brings accountability to the process; I wouldn’t be surprised if a few people lost their jobs. But this starts with basically explaining to Congress and to the American public what went wrong. I think that’s a very low bar for the administration to hit.”
Kennedy said experts contend the glitches are the result of the Obamacare website being built on 10 year-old technology that may need to be completely overhauled.
Host Joe Scarborough ribbed his liberal co-host Mika Brzezinski, noting the irony that the firm hired by the U.S. to launch the Obamacare website was fired by the province of Ontario in Canada:
JOE SCARBOROUGH: Wow, Mika. I mean, so what we’re talking here Mika — the Canadians fired a Canadian firm that the United States hired to run the biggest governmental launch in a generation. Huh.
MIKA BRZEZINSKI: You know, it’s interesting –
KATY KAY: Speechless.
MIKA BRZEZINSKI: Everybody missed that. They were so busy — I don’t know. I guess they were looking somewhere else. I don’t know.
Liberal media members are clearly overjoyed that there’s – at least for the time being – not going to be a vote in Congress concerning a military strike on Syria.
On MSNBC’s Morning Joe Wednesday, NPR’s Cokie Roberts outlined the left's doomsday scenario saying, “If he had lost this vote, which he was clearly about to do, it would have been everything: immigration would have been down the tubes, you know, ObamaCare defunded, debt ceiling a mess, all of it” (video follows with transcript and commentary):
JOE SCARBOROUGH, HOST: Cokie Roberts, yesterday, let's talk domestic politics. Yesterday, Peter Baker of the New York Times talking about how the President - and it wasn't an overstatement - talking about how the President’s credibility was on the line like no president since Wilson was rejected in 1917. That, you know, he failed on guns, he’s failed on immigration, he's failed on so many things this year that the President's men and women were going to Capitol Hill talking to Democratic lawmakers saying, in effect, “His presidency is on the line, we need your support,” and they ignored that.
COKIE ROBERTS, NPR: That's right.
SCARBOROUGH: This is a big reset not just internationally. It's a big reset domestically for this President.
ROBERTS: If he had lost this vote, which he was clearly about to do, it would have been everything: immigration would have been down the tubes, you know, ObamaCare defunded, debt ceiling a mess...
Things tend to go off the rails on cable news when summer rolls around. People go on vacation, stop paying as much attention and usually there’s less actual “news” happening. Between major Supreme Court rulings in this country and everything happening abroad in Egypt and Syria, the summer of 2013 had more than its fair share of real news to cover. But of course, that didn’t stop America’s cable news networks for airing some absolutely outrageous segments on a long list of ridiculous subjects.
Now that Labor Day has come and gone, kids are getting back to school and Congress is getting back in session, here’s a look back at highlights (or low-lights, depending on your point of view) from one crazy summer of cable news.
Russell Brand Crashes Morning Joe
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Somehow, Mika Brzezinskinot knowing who actor Russell Brand is produced one of the most riveting (and honest) cable news segment of the summer. “Is this what you all do for a living?!” Brand asked the hosts incredulously.
