Free Republic

“Have you seen what Ted Cruz is doing?” Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough said Wednesday morning. “Ted Cruz is attacking anybody who’s not willing to shut down the government over the government over Obamacare. He’s lambasting fellow conservatives like Tom Coburn—Tom Coburn!—and saying that he serves in the surrender caucus.”“I need to be very careful about what I’m going to say here,” Scarborough continued. “Ted Cruz comes in obviously so completely ignorant about the war that Tom Coburn has been fighting for twenty years, and to say something like this about Tom Coburn—Ted Cruz, he is a total train...

Another day, another bizarre blooper by Joe Scarborough regarding the trial of George Zimmerman. We reported yesterday that Scarborough—ignoring the rule against double jeopardy—claimed that the absence of African-Americans on the jury would subject a verdict to immediate appeal. Today, the Morning Joe host curiously claimed that the prosecution had a big hill to climb because "you don't know who fired the shot." What? Zimmerman has admitted from the beginning that he shot Trayvon Martin, albeit in self-defense. When Al Sharpton [who has actually been more circumspect in his remarks about the trial than Scarborough] pointed this out, Scarborough quickly...

To say that Mika Brzezinski was "moved" by Joe Manchin's ad, responding to one by the NRA criticizing the Dem senator from West Virginia for supporting new gun-control measures, is a decided understatement. Have a look at the ad, which Manchin debuted on Morning Joe today, then have a go at describing Mika's emotional reaction. View the video here.

Looks like Mike Barnicle's not going to let anyone get to his PC-left when it comes to women. On today's Morning Joe, Barnicle claimed that "a lot of men . . . fear the fact--and I think it's a fact--that women are better balanced than men. They have better judgment about things than a lot of men." Barnicle's comment during a discussion about the statement made yesterday by Mississippi Governor Phil Bryant that the decline in educational outcomes for children today is due to the entry of women into the workforce. View the video here.

Do people still mail resumes? If so John Heilemann can save himself the stamp required to send his Vanity Fair, should he ever consider a shift from his current spot at New York. On today's Morning Joe, Heilemann bizarrely trashed—excuse the pun—the staff at Vanity Fair. Said the Game Change co-author: "it's well known Vanity Fair has a congenital, pervasive alcohol dependency problem . . they're all drunk over there." View the video here.

Children are impressionable, and McDonald’s has managed, in the majority of cases, to make children prefer McDonald’s over all other fast food choices. Some people have decided that McDonald’s marketing is to blame for the fact that kids eat French fries and not fruits and veggies. Or, at least, the claim to believe McDonald’s possesses such awesome powers. And they even pretend that they think children are somehow wise leaders in society. Thus, from MSNBC and Morning Joe:“Nine-year-old Hannah Robertson doesn’t want a Happy Meal. She wants a healthy meal. And she’s not shy about saying it: Hannah took her...

Let me preface by saying that I'm not criticizing Bill Karins for his choice of words. Thank, uh, goodness, we live in a country where we're free to believe in any God or no God at all. But I do see Karins' construction as a sign of the cultural times. The Morning Joe meteorologist today aired dramatic footage of the weatherman at the NBC affiliate in Wichita, Kansas ordering his colleagues to take shelter because a tornado was headed right at the station. Said Karins: "By the grace of whatever, God or whatever else, it lifted the second it got...

Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-N.Y.) said Wednesday that he believes President Barack Obama owes the American public explanations for both the seizure of Associated Press phone records by the Department of Justice and the IRS targeting of conservative groups. “I don’t think anyone truly believes that the president has given us a sufficient answer for America, much less the press,” Rangel said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” “I think this is just the beginning and the whole idea of comparing this with Nixon, I really think is just, it doesn’t make much sense. But the president has to come forward and share...

By the end of Tom Coburn's Morning Joe appearance today, a panel member could be heard, off-camera, whistling in astonishment. Not surprising, since the plain-talking Republican Senator from Oklahoma had just unloaded on Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. Coburn called Reid "dishonest" in his dealings with him, saying that Reid was "not truthful" and had "not kept his word." For good measure, Coburn added that Reid had been a "failure" as Majority Leader. View the video here.

Chuck Todd has defended the Obama admin's decision not to send more special ops to Benghazi. Appearing on today's Morning Joe, NBC News political director Todd claimed that the decision to send only two special ops to Benghazi was "very rational." He also literally laughed off the notion that Benghazi could boil into a major scandal. View the video after the jump.

Joe Scarborough has dropped the f-word on live TV. But does he dare drop the I-word: Islam? On today's Morning Joe, Scarborough to his credit rejected the maudlin pseudo-introspection of those [including panelist Richard Haass] who would somehow blame America's failure to integrate the Tsarnaev brothers into society for their decision to bomb the Boston Marathon. Scarborough didn't hesitate to call the Tsarnaevs "evil beasts." Instead of blaming society, Scarborough blamed the brothers' "evil" and "radicalism." But Scarborough stopped short of naming the radicalism for what it is: radical Islam. View the video here.

On a day largely devoted to remembering Margaret Thatcher, leader of the Conservative Party, would it really have been too much for Morning Joe to have had on at least one conservative guest to discuss her legacy? Apparently, yes. Morning Joe's lineup of political guests today leaned 100% left: Jon Meacham, Al Hunt, Cokie Roberts, Mike Allen, Sen. Tim Kaine, former Obama aides Robert Gibbs and Melody Barnes, Tony Blair, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Mayor Michael Nutter, Eugene Robinson, Maureen Orth and Joe Klein. Joe Scarborough sometimes like to boast in such circumstances that his presence more than counterbalances the liberal avalanche....

Sheesh! Talk about hyper hypocrisy!  Today on Morning Joe, Joe Scarborough slammed Quentin Taratino as a "pornographer of violence." Too bad Joe didn't have even a small fraction of such moral outrage yesterday when he and the Morning Joe crew allowed Robert Redford to ramble on and on promoting his new movie "The Company You Keep" which glorified Weathermen murderers. Watch the video below the fold but the viewer will wonder at what point in Redford's long spiel that Scarborough or anyone else on his show challenges Redford on the fact that his movie gives sympathetic treatment to the murderers...

Seriously: of all editorial writers at the nation's major newspapers, could the Washington Post's Jonathan Capehart be the least conversant with the Constitution? Back in August, we caught Capehart admitting to his unfamiliarity with Enumerated Powers Clause. On today's Morning Joe, Capehart's Constitutional confusion was on display again. Discussing the Supreme Court's possible overturning of DOMA, Capehart complained that it looked like the Court was headed toward doing so not in reliance on equal protection, but on the basis of states' rights, which Capehart called "a legal technicality." Tenth Amendment much, Mr. Capehart? View the video here.

Way to go out on a limb, Harold!. . . Of all the Morning Joe regulars, Harold Ford, Jr. is on my short list of those who bring the least to the table. Ford seems more interested in cultivating friends and avoiding offense than in saying anything interesting or—heaven forfend—controversial. Ford took his penchant for finding something good to say about everyone to absurd new heights on today's show. On the one hand, Harold showed respect for Rand Paul's filibuster. On the other, he actually broke out the hoary "my dear friend" in saying he wasn't as worred about the...

Confession: I yell at my TV while watching The Ed Show and Morning Joe because Twitter spambots are also boosting those programs. Apparently the use of spambots to boost Rachel Maddow's show which was revealed here on Saturday now includes at least two other MSNBC programs: The Ed Show and Morning Joe. This revelation was made by liberal blogger Paul Bibeau at the Goblinbooks blog. First he establishes his liberal bonafides in no uncertain terms before presenting his Twitter spam case against those programs:

David Axelrod has written Gene Sperling off as a political lightweight lacking the tonnage to have intimidated Bob Woodward in their dust-up over the sequester. Appearing on today's Morning Joe, Axelrod sarcastically asked "what is Gene Sperling going to do to Bob Woodward? Bob Woodward, who faced down H.R. Haldemann as a young man, feels intimidated by Gene Sperling?" You really have to hear the sneer in Axelrod's voice as he pronounces the name "Gene Sperling" to appreciate just how far under the bus Axelrod was willing to throw a fellow member of Team Obama. View the video here.

The Morning Joe panel was tough today on the Obama White House for threatening Bob Woodward by telling him he would "regret" his reporting that it was the Obama administration that had devised the sequester, In the course of the opening segment, various panel members described the Obama White House response as "mickey mouse," "pathetic" and "childish." But at the same time, a theme emerged that there was nothing unusual about a White House trying to intimidate reporters. Mark Halperin said "the Bush White House regularly would engage in the same kind of tactics." And Joe Scarborough and Andrea Mitchell...

Woody Guthrie was an American original who wrote some enduring music and did a lot to publicize the plight of the people of the Dust Bowl. There was just one little inconvenient truth about Guthrie: he ran in Communist circles. Though it's reported that he never officially joined the party, he's quoted as saying that the "the best thing that I did in 1936 was to sign up with the Communist Party." He also wrote 174 columns for the Communist Party's Daily Worker newspaper. But nary a mention was made of Woody's Communist connections on Morning Joe today. Instead, Mika...

Hours before the Senate Judiciary Committee held Newtown-inspired gun control hearings, MSNBC's Morning Joe program brought on former Playboy chairwoman and CEO Christie Hefner to warn that warmer weather in Chicago has been a contributing factor in the number of gun deaths in the Windy City. "[W]e are having this climate change effect that is driving" young men in Chicago to commit 500 homicides in 2012 she insisted. For his part, quasi-conservative host Joe Scarborough made no attempt to press Hefner on this outrageous claim, although he did mildly mock it. In doing so, however, he dismissed conservative bloggers with...