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Understatement o' the Week: "I don't think you like Donald Trump too much." That was Symone Sanders-Townsend, co-host of MSNBC's The Weekend, speaking today to George Conway, co-founder of the disgraced Lincoln Project. It came in response to the condemnation cascade that Conway had just unleashed on Trump. Even by Trump-hating liberal-media standards, this was an unusually vituperative performance. The heart of Conway's argument was that Trump has no strategy. That as a "narcissistic sociopath," Trump acts purely out of impulse. But er, somehow he's dominating the GOP primaries and leading Biden in many polls. Other candidates who presumably aren't...

Joe Scarborough's tactic is pathetically transparent. The biggest knock on Joe Biden is that he is too old to be president. A recent Associated Press poll found that 77% of Americans believe that—including an astounding 69% of Democrats! So for some time now, Scarborough has been on the counter-attack, trying to paint Donald Trump as also enfeebled. Scarborough's crusade continued on today's Morning Joe, with Scarborough repeatedly describing Trump as "shuffling around," "losing it," "looking lost," "in decline," having lost "5,6,7 steps," "not well." etc.And as you'll see in the screencap, the segment's running theme was about Trump, "Dazed and...

If there was one thing that transformed Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski from mere critics of Donald Trump into savage antagonists, it was Trump's tweet back in 2017 saying that Mika and Joe had begged to be invited to his New Year's Eve party, but he said no, claiming that "Mika was bleeding badly from a facelift." The pair's vendetta against Trump has raged on ever since. Joe and Mika got a measure of bloody revenge today, speculating about Trump apparently bleeding on his right hand [see screencap] after he emerged from a court session in the E. Jean Carroll...

MSNBC analyst and weekend host Katie Phang was a guest on Wednesday's edition of the network's Deadline White House. Phang revealed that "I am friends with E. Jean Carroll, but it doesn't color my legal analysis." Of course not! But Phang had the chutzpah to claim that Carroll—the woman who won a $5 million judgment from Donald Trump in her first defamation suit against him, and is sure to win much more in a second suit—"would have been happy to just get her day in court."Okay then! We'll look forward to E. Jean Carroll announcing the charity of her choice...

And the funny thing is, he didn't really mean it as an insult! On today's CNN This Morning, in a segment analyzing the results of the Iowa caucuses and looking ahead to New Hampshire, CNN commentator Jamal Simmons, who stuck it out for a year as Vice President Kamala Harris's communications director before bailing, said: "Trump is like a walking, talking middle finger, right? People think about him like, oh, this guy is the way we get back at the elites. The way we get back at the people who are in charge, who are leaving the rest of us...

Ya know, Republicans, you keep going after Hunter Biden, and it'd be a shame to see your kids' similar dirt being dragged into public. That seemed to be what Michael Steele was implying on MSNBC this morning. The screencap shows former RNC Chairman Steele pointing his finger and staring directly into the camera, as if talking to his former Republican brethren, as he says: "I'm telling you, they got their own children and relatives who have those same issues. Now, how would you like that to be splayed across the front page of the New York Times or the Washington...

Move over, Algore. There's a new King of Sighs in town, and his name is David Ignatius, columnist of The Washington Post. Gore famously put a dent in his presidential ambitions when he sighed his way through his first debate with George W. Bush in 2000. Those were sighs of disgust, as compared to the sighs of despair Ignatius unleashed on today's Morning Joe. For days, the show had blacked out the scandal surrounding Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin's lengthy failure to inform the White House of his hospitalization and his cancer diagnosis. But Morning Joe could no longer avoid the...

Say hello to my little friend . . . No, not Al Pacino in Scarface. Donald Trump, if he's elected in 2024. At least, if you believe MSNBC guest Harry Litman. Substitute host Alicia Menendez--daughter of scandal-ridden Dem Senator Bob Menendez of NJ--teed up Litman, a former Thurgood Marshall SCOTUS clerk and Bill Clinton US Attorney appointee: "As you well know, Trump's finances, they've been a so-called redline for him, going all the way back to Robert Mueller's investigation. If these rulings, if they do in fact have a profound effect on Trump's finances, are you worried about retribution should...

We have often zinged Joe Scarborough's false-modesty shtick of describing himself as a "simple country lawyer." The egotistical Morning Joe host clearly hopes people will react by thinking--or better yet, exclaiming--"No, Joe. You are one of America's most brilliant legal minds!" On today's show, Scarborough decided to defy the mockery and double-down on his shtick. Three times in one segment, as he reran audio of Trump pleading to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to "find" him 11,780 votes, he pointedly described himself as, yes, a "simple country lawyer." For good measure, Joe upped the false-modesty ante by adding, "I...

"High standards." Yeah, sort of like Claudine Gay's high standards of academic integrity.... On MSNBC's Deadline White House on Friday afternoon, Ian Bassin, a former Obama aide, dug dutifully deep into his bag of superlatives to extol President Biden's campaign speech in the general vicinity of Valley Forge. Enthused Bassin: "I have high standards when it comes to people talking about democracy. And I thought the president was absolutely outstanding today."Get the rest if the story and view the video here.

Pro Tip: If you're ever considering hiring Ken Block to do research for you, consider again. And should you decide to go forward, be absolutely sure to get an ironclad NDA. Otherwise, if Block finds it to his advantage, he might publicly disclose information he discovered while working for you that is contrary to your interests. And might even publicly denounce you as a liar! After the 2020 election, the Trump campaign hired Block to look for evidence of voter fraud. He apparently found none of significance, and now has written a book disclosing his findings, and a column in...

New York Times editorial board member Mara Gay was furious on today's Morning Joe over Harvard's president Claudine Gay (no relation) being forced to resign. Mara Gay proclaimed "This is an attack on diversity. This is an attack on multiculturalism. I don’t have to say that they’re racist, because you can hear and see the racism in the attacks."In fact, it is the Claudine Gays of the academic world who are the biggest enemies of true diversity -- diversity of ideas. CG's the one, for example, who hounded two Harvard faculty members for failing to toe the DEI line. The...

When in 2021 President Biden appointed Kamala Harris his "point person" on immigration issues at the southern border, he said, “I can think of nobody who is better qualified to do this.” Thinking has never been Biden's strong suit, but even so, assuming he meant what he said, then surely Harris would be heading the US delegation to Mexico today to discuss the immigration crisis. So, given that there is a "crisis," that the meeting is considered critical given "the urgency of the moment," and that Biden is sending "top Biden officials, some of his highest-ranking officials," surely that delegation...

Harvard President Claudine Gay is planning to travel to Asia in March for her first international trip since assuming office in July, she said in an interview with The Crimson earlier this month. Get the rest of the story here.

No one explained Trump's 2016 triumph, which so confounded the liberal media, as well as did Salena Zito. She famously said that the press took Trump "literally, but not seriously," whereas Trump's supporters took him "seriously, but not literally." There was an echo of that analysis on today's CNN This Morning. Co-hosts Poppy Harlow and Phil Mattingly were trying to understand why Trump's fiery rhetoric, far from hurting him with Republican primary voters, seems to actually be helping him. First up was Shelby Talcott. Now at Semafor, Talcott worked at The Daily Caller for over three years, including a stint...

Those ungrateful white Americans! Why don't they appreciate all the wonderful things that Joe Biden has bestowed upon them? That was the Boston Globe's message via its cartoonist Ward Sutton on this Christmas Day. As you see, a svelte Santa Biden points to the gifts he's left under the tree for the family: low unemployment, inflation down, recession averted. And Biden says to them: "Look what I brought you folks -- this oughta make things merry and bright!" Get the rest of the story and view the video here.

Today's Morning Joe dropped a MOAB—Mother of All Bombshells. And yet it caused hardly a ripple on the set. NBC News correspondent Vaughn Hillyard blithely reported this: "If the Supreme Court were to affirm the Colorado Supreme Court's decision, and disqualify Donald Trump from the ballot in Colorado, that'll have a far-reaching impact, likely removing him from the ballot in all 50 states. "And of course, the concern of the Republican Party is the potential nullification of Republican electorates' votes as they're selecting their presidential nominee." Wait a second! The concern about nullifying the votes of millions of Americans would...

Who got to Joe Scarborough?/The question arises in light of Scarborough's stunning flip-flop over the Colorado Supreme Court decision kicking Donald Trump off the ballot. Yesterday, we caught Scarborough expressing surprising skepticism over the court's ruling. Scarborough dubiously asked whether the decision should be made by "people on cable news," or by state judges "randomly" deciding. Scarborough suggested that a prerequisite to barring Trump should be a conviction for insurrection in a D.C. court. What a difference a day makes! Twenty-four hours later, there was Scarborough this morning, praising the Colorado decision to the heavens as "the most pro-democratic thing...

[snip] On Nicolle Wallace's show yesterday, Luttig once again played the role of a useful conservative propounding views destined to delight the left. He declared that the decision of the Colorado Supreme Court banning Donald Trump from the ballot, supposedly pursuant to the terms of the 14th Amendment, to be: "a masterful judicial opinion. It is unassailable and irrefutable in every single respect."You could sense liberal hearts swooning from coast to coast! And in a statement that was either deeply naive or deeply cynical, Luttig said of of the Colorado court's decision: "This is not politics. It is certainly not...

Joe Scarborough: self-hating Southerner? Scarborough -- originating from the "cracker counties" of the Florida panhandle -- sometimes likes to stress his Southern upbringing, and describe himself as a "simple country lawyer" who attended two southern state universities. But the Morning Joe host has developed an ugly habit of mocking southern Republicans by putting on their supposed accents. We've caught Scarborough doing that twice in the case of House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer of Kentucky, who at least sports an accent. Check out this instance of Scarborough fantasizing Comer saying [at 0:25], of his supposed lack of evidence against Joe...