Free Republic

For weeks now, Joe Scarborough has been expressing befuddlement over Ben Carson's appeal. It boiled over on today's Morning Joe, as Scarborough went on an extended anti-Carson rant. Scarborough unleashed after clips were played from town halls in Iowa and New Hampshire in which Republican voters expressed strong support for the notion of Carson as a qualified president. Calling Carson unqualified to be president, Joe railed: "I've seen people like Carson on school boards who got into trouble because they were in "over their heads." View the video here.

A week ago, we noted that—negating Nicolle Wallace's notion that the woman who aided the New York prison break shouldn't do any time herself—Willie Geist observed "you can't help convicted murderers escape from jail." An NB reader remarked: "I get the sense that Willie Geist is a good guy trapped inside the leftwing matrix." Far be it from us to cause workplace problems for Willie by praising him too much, but Geist was at it again on today's Morning Joe, this time making some common sense remarks on gun control. After Eugene Robinson praised Australia's "very serious" gun control laws,...

There was Hillary Clinton, telling Al Sharpton of all people that she found Kevin McCarthy's comments about the Benghazi hearings "deeply distressing." That was too much for the Morning Joe panel, which just had to laugh. As John Heilemann put it, far from being distressed, Hillary surely sees McCarthy's comments—implying a political motive behind the hearings—as a Christmas and birthday gift wrapped into one that sent her "skipping through the park. View the video here.

Did the tragic irony of his statement not strike Jonathan Capehart? On today's Morning Joe, after disclosing that he could not bear to watch the Planned Parenthood videos, Washington Post editor Capehart expressed opposition to cutting off all funding for it. Arguing that "they do so many other things providing health care to women," Capehart continued "on my Twitter feed yesterday there was a woman who tweeted at me and said thanks to Planned Parenthood I'm still alive." Jonathan, have you given any thought to the six million people who will never be able to tweet you because their lives...

Billionaire investor Carl Icahn told Bloomberg News that he's endorsing Donald Trump because he's the sort of leader the US needs at this time. "I disagree on certain points I don’t want to get into, I’m sure those can be worked out, but the basic thing is, you need somebody that can get things going in Congress, and I think he can do it. You need somebody that understands business, and I think he understands it," Icahn told Bloomberg. Shortly after Trump launched his campaign, the candidate appeared on MSNBC's "Morning Joe." On the show, the billionaire real-estate magnate said...

Don't put that popcorn-popper away just yet . . . On today's Morning Joe, Chuck Todd said he felt that in his Meet the Press interview of Hillary Clinton yesterday, she was signalling to her Dem supporters that there could be more damaging revelations to come on the email scandal. Todd was alluding to the moment in the interview in which Hillary agreed with his characterization of a "drip, drip, drip" aspect to the scandal. When Todd asked whether she could "reassure Democrats that there's nothing else here," Hillary's answer was a very un-reassuring "there's only so much I can...

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said on Thursday’s “Morning Joe” Twitter is “amazing,” and that “it’s like owning The New York Times without the losses.” Trump claimed that he likes using Twitter so much because he is able to “fight back” when “a dope like a Rich Lowry goes on, or people like Megyn Kelly says things that are wrong, I’m able to tweet.”

Hillary's standard shtick when asked about her private email server is to claim that it was "authorized" or "allowed" by the State Department. But Joe Scarborough has now contradicted her in stunning fashion. On today's Morning Joe, Scarborough criticized John Dickerson for not challenging Hillary on the matter when interviewing her yesterday on Face the Nation. Said Scarborough: "CBS News knows if they have any sources at the State Department, CBS News knows that nobody at the State Department based on all of our sources at the State Department, nobody authorized it. She did it on her own." View the...

John Heilemann was a rather reluctant witness. But when called on to testify, so to speak, Heilemann confirmed a stunning fact: that during the 2008 presidential race, it was Hillary Clinton who started the rumor that Barack Obama might not be a Christian. The matter arose when on today's Morning Joe. Joe Scarborough ripped Hillary's hypocrisy on Face the Nation yesterday for criticizing Republicans who question Obama's religion, "when it all started with her and her campaign passing things around in the [2008] Democratic primary." When Steve Rattner asked Heilemann, in his role as inside-campaign-baseball expert, to confirm whether Joe's...

It's one thing for conservatives to concur that Carly Fiorina was outstanding at last night's debate. But to hear a string of superlatives about Fiorina coming from committed liberal Mika Brzezinski was breathtaking. Over the course of today's Morning Joe, a stream of praise for Fiorina flowed from Mika, capped by this: "my God, I have never seen anyone like her. Ever." View the video here.

Mika Brzezinski: fired up and ready to go . . . for Donald Trump? Not exactly. It isn't that Mika's jumping on the Make America Great Again express. It's just that she wants "intellectual honesty" from her peers when it comes to admitting that Trump has gone from amusing sideshow who's sure to eventually crash to true frontrunner who is now likely to be the Republican nominee. You might not think of Brzezinski as being particularly data-driven, but on today's Morning Joe she repeatedly argued that there is no data supporting a Trump meltdown scenario. Going around the table with...

Morning Joe Panel Pans ‘Horrific’ Clinton Speech: ‘She Should Fire Most of Her Staff’ Morning Joe Panel Pans ‘Horrific’ Clinton Speech: ‘She Should Fire Most of Her Staff’ by Alex Griswold | 8:36 am, September 15th, 2015 VIDEO Morning HJoeThe panel of MSNBC’s Morning Joe gave Hillary Clinton low marks for Monday’s speech before a “Women for Hillary” event, with some even saying she should consider firing most of her staff.

Mika Brzezinski: fired up and ready to go . . . for Donald Trump? Not exactly. It isn't that Mika's jumping on the Make America Great Again express. It's just that she wants "intellectual honesty" from her peers when it comes to admitting that Trump has gone from amusing sideshow who's sure to eventually crash to true frontrunner who is now likely to be the Republican nominee. You might not think of Brzezinski as being particularly data-driven, but on today's Morning Joe she repeatedly argued that there is no data supporting a Trump meltdown scenario. Going around the table with...

My mother had a saying about heeding warnings from others: "if one person tells you you're drunk, ignore him. If two people tell you you're drunk, lie down." So what should Hillary Clinton do when the entire Morning Joe panel tells her that her supposed apology on ABC last night was a total bust? From Joe Scarborough saying it looked like a "hostage video," to John Heilemann saying her apology proved that everything she had said about no one caring about the issue was a "lie," to Mika Brzezinski speaking of the "freakish" control exercised by the Clinton camp, to...

In her "heart?" Some cynical lawyerly types might say that presupposes a fact not in evidence . . . Is Harold Ford, Jr. auditioning for an appointment in a hoped-for Hillary administration? On Morning Joe of late, he's trying out a variety of dubious defenses. Last week, as we reported here, his line was that although Americans might see her as a "liar" and "dishonest," nobody thinks she's "unpatriotic." Today, he claimed that "in her heart" Hillary didn't intend to violate the law. Harold Ford, Jr., heart whisperer. View the video here.

Good news for our own Mark Finkelstein. He will soon have more material to work with according to Mediaite which reports that MSNBC's Morning Joe will be expanding an hour. However what is most significant about the report is what, or rather who, it does not mention. Despite being chock full of information about the many changes coming to MSNBC, the name noticeable by its absence is Brian Williams despite the fact that he is supposed to be an incredibly well paid breaking anchor on that network. Is this part of a not so subtle effort on the part of NBC...

Alan Dershowitz was on Fox and Friends yesterday morning pushing his new book. When asked about Hillary's situation, he suggested that she was in no legal jeopardy because she "didn't know at the time" that the highly information she received, stored and sent was highly classified. I don't believe that for one second. She should have known. It was her job to know. We are left with two choices- either Hillary is bumbling incompetent moron or she is a galactic scale liar. Remember when Hillary said “I did not email any classified material to anyone on my email."? Oh yes...

Donald Trump is "emasculating" former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush with his attacks and his performance in state and national polling, prominent Republican strategist Steve Schmidt said Monday. "Look, Jeb Bush was a very successful governor, he's a thoughtful man, he was a good, conservative governor. But every day, Donald Trump is emasculating Jeb Bush, and Republican primary voters are not going to default to the establishment candidate who is being weakened by these attacks that go unresponded to." -snip- Breaking down the results of the latest Iowa polling on MSNBC's Morning Joe, Schmidt remarked upon the strong performance of candidates...

How bad is it getting for Hillary when the best her defenders came come up with is Harold Ford Jr.'s formulation: okay, so the words most associated with her are "liar," "dishonest" and "untrustworthy" but, hey!—she's not "unpatriotic." On today's Morning Joe, after Ford resorted on Hillary's behalf to the last refuge of scoundrels, Joe Scarborough hit him with a killer question: does Ford think David Petraeus—who was convicted of a crime for improperly passing classified material--is a patriot? Ford had to acknowledge that he is, but when Harold tried to distinguish Hillary's actions from Petraeus', Scarborough swept in to...

You wish he had named names . . . On today's Morning Joe, Joe Scarborough flatly stated "I do blame it on cable news" for "people wearing uniforms being a lot less safe today than they were before Ferguson." So just which cable networks did Joe have in mind? Until last week [when he was relegated to the Sunday morning desert], Scarborough's own MSNBC was the Al Sharpton network. So surely Scarborough was pointing the finger at least partially at MSNBC. But as he continued, Scarborough also identified other unnamed cable networks that he accused of "glorifying" Vester Flanagan and...