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Former President Donald Trump has explained his decision not to debate Vice President Kamala Harris for a second time saying that he clearly won their first debate. He used the metaphor of a defeated boxer who immediately demands a rematch to prove that Harris, who has called for a second debate, lost it. But on Friday's Morning Joe, the exclusively liberal panel tried to turn the tables on Trump, breaking out a string of boxing metaphors to assert that their candidate won the debate instead - and beat Trump badly. Co-host Willie Geist also found humor it: “I think the...

David Frum did stop short of banging his fists or stamping his feet. But on today's CNN This Morning, the Trump-detesting Canadian could not contain his frustration at the prospect that, thanks to the "probably stupid" rules of the Constitution, Trump could win the election with an Electoral College majority despite losing the popular vote count. Frum was responding to a statement by Edward-Isaac Dovere that some in the Kamala camp believe that if the election were held today, she would lose. Frum began by claiming: "We need to be more specific about what we mean by 'lose." Depends on...

If it had been up to Kasie Hunt, host of CNN This Morning, the rest of today's show could have been ditched, replaced by a non-stop loop of Trump making his claim, during last night's debate, that migrants are eating the pets of residents of Springfield, Ohio. She cited leftist late-night jester Stephen Colbert, and smirked at Trump "spouting baseless allegations about migrants eating pets." After playing it once, Hunt begged a show director: "Can we, can we just, Jimmy in the control room, can we play the pets bite one more time? Can we just watch that one more...

What's happened to Willie Geist? He used to be a relatively sane balance to the rabid liberal partisanship of Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski. But in recent times, he has been going increasingly hard left. On today's Morning Joe, Willie called Kari Lake the "residue" of Trump, and called NC GOP guv candidate Mark Robinson "crazy."The "residue?" That's tantamount to calling Kari Lake a lingering stain. Serious question: Could Joe and Mika be getting ready to hang up the spurs, and does Willie want to establish his liberal street cred to take over the show?

On today's Morning Joe, a furious Mika Brzezinski accused the so-called "mainstream" media of "sanewashing" Trump -- never confronting him with his alleged affronts to democracy as described by Dick Cheney in his statement explaining why he, like his daughter Liz, will be voting for Kamala Harris. [snip] Scarborough wondered whether Trump's lead is due to all the "disinformation" that is leading almost half of Americans to support Trump. That led to this answer from an angry Mika: MIKA: Well, it's a mixture of that and a lot of other things, including, I think, the mainstream media that claims to...

On CNN This Morning, CNN Chief National Affairs Correspondent Jeff Zeleny uttered a very cynical "why not?" on the question of whether Joe Biden should pardon Hunter. The show had played the clip of Biden flatly telling ABC's David Muir that he would not pardon his son. But hey! That was then, when Biden was running for president. And this is now, with Biden out of the race. So, yeah, "why not?" Biden breaking his promise would give a new meaning to a favorite line of his: "On my word as a Biden." Zeleny used the tried-and-true MSM dodge of...

If this had been a boxing match, the ref would have stopped the fight.... On today's CNN This Morning, Republican communications strategist Erin Perrine demolished Dem Brad Woodhouse. [snip] And finally, the climactic Round 3. Woodhouse, already wobbly on his feet, clung to the "four-and-a-half minute standing ovation" that Democrats gave Biden at the DNC.Perrine delivered her knockout blow: "After they took him out back like Old Yeller."Get the rest of the story and view the video here.

Q. What do you call Hamas murdering six hostages, including an American? A. A political "headache" for Biden-Harris. That's according to CNN regular Toluse Olorunnipa, also the Washington Post's chief White House correspondent. Olorunnipa won a Pulitzer Prize as co-author of His Name is George Floyd: One Man’s Life and the Struggle for Racial Justice. Olorunnipa also fretted that the continuing murder of American hostages would make it harder for Harris to claim the mantle of Commander-in-Chief. Get the rest of the story and view the video here.

Q. When is a flip-flop not a flip-flop? A. When it's a Democrat who's gone flipped like Simone Biles, and a liberal-media member is defending it! On Saturday's edition of MSNBC's The Weekend, MSNBC political analyst Kimberly Atkins Stohr insisted Kamala's "quote-unquote" [see air quotes in screencap] policy changes were not a "shift." It was just "pragmatism."Get the rest of the story and view the video here.

Playing both offense and defense for Kamala Harris in one CNN This Morning appearance, CNN.com White House reporter Stephen Collinson more than earned his Team Kamala stripes today. In commenting in his snobbish British accent on Jack Smith's recycled Trump indictment, Collinson kvetched that it's taken too long to bring Trump to trial over January 6th. "It raises the question of how has it been so difficult to bring a president who tried to subvert democracy to account before the next election in which he's standing.... When future generations look back at this, they will puzzle about the question of...

To comment on Kamala Harris's convention-closing speech, CNN This Morning stacked its panel today with three Democrats -- four, if you count host Kasie Hunt -- to lone Republican Scott Jennings. [snip] Former Obama official Elliot Williams took the praise of Harris to absurd heights, crowning Kamala a born-again Iron Lady. Referring to Harris's remarks on foreign policy, Williams said: "They had a woman standing on stage saying, this is a paraphrase, in the battle between U.S. and tyranny, I know where I stand and where the USA belongs. That is the rhetoric—that's Margaret Thatcher, dude."Elliot's Harris hyperbole was so...

At least seven times today in the show's opening minutes, CNN This Morning ran the clip from last night's DNC of Tim Walz's son Gus getting emotional and pointing to his father as he spoke: "That's my dad!" The panel collectively teared up, with Mark McKinnon saying "I've teared up every time I've seen the clip. I tear up thinking about the clip. I mean, talking right now about it I'm tearing up. Do you have any tissues?" McKinnon also swooned over Walz's speech, declaring, "I'm telling you, in all my experience, I have never seen anything as authentic as...

On today'sKate Beningfield Bakari Sellers Kasie Hunt Shermichael Singleton Alyssa Farah Griffin CNN This Morning 8-20-24CNN This Morning, the panel from Kate Bedingfield to Bakari Sellers, to Shermichael Singleton, to host Kasie Hunt herself, all praised Joe Biden for being "selfless" in stepping aside. It's all a tired repeat of fervent over-praise of the president after he was dragged kicking and screaming to the door, with Nancy Pelosi threatening to publicly humiliate him if he refused to go. As the New York Post reported [emphasis added]: "Pelosi reportedly threatened to publicly trash her longtime friend and political ally if he...

On today's CNN This Morning, host Kasie Hunt gushed over how "beautiful" Kamala Harris is. They played off a soundbite of Donald Trump talking about the embarrassing artsy Time cover of Harris and telling a rally crowd that he's better looking. Hunt repeatedly cited a Peggy Noonan column about the "beautiful" Harris, including this line: The excitement here, he was technically responding to a Peggy Noonan column that was at the beginning of August, where Noonan says "She is beautiful. You can’t take a bad picture of her. Her beauty, plus the social warmth that all who have known her...

Talk about setting the bar high! On today's Morning Joe, Mike Barnicle predicted that Kamala Harris will finish Trump off in their debate: "You wonder how long will it be before he really goes out of control. And I think what's going to happen is that when that debate occurs, and he's in the ring with the Vice President of the United States, a woman, a very sophisticated, very intelligent, woman, and she hammers him like a prosecutor, and doesn't let him off the hook, he will go -- I can't say it. But something will snap [see screencap] in...

The Trump = Hitler analogy is getting old. We've been in desperate need of some fresh material! Unsurprisingly, Trump-loathing journalist David Frum appeared on CNN This Morning today to supply it. Frum dug up, and approvingly quoted, this line from Republican consultant Mike Murphy -- or to be completely up to date, "Republican Voters Against Trump" consultant Mike Murphy. "Asking Donald Trump to talk about policy, it's like teaching Charles Manson to foxtrot. He can manage a step or two, but then he's going to put a pencil in your eye, because he's Charles Manson. And Donald Trump is Donald...

Have you ever wondered, given how much Joe Scarborough despises Donald Trump, if there were any Democrat Scarborough wouldn't support over the Don? Scarborough went a long way in answering that question on today's Morning Joe, saying: "If Mike Pence were president or Bernie Sanders were president, I'd worry much less than if Donald Trump were president."So, since Scarborough prefers Bernie Sanders over Trump as president, might he push the envelope even further? Sadly, Ilhan Omar's out of the running, not being a natural-born citizen [but hey!—constitutional amendment, anyone?] Rather than Trump, how's about a President AOC, Joe? Or why...

On today's Morning Joe, Conway self-owned, that he's been "yammering" on these same vicious anti-Trump themes for years. But Conway's accusations reached their apex today. Playing off Trump's Truth Social posts claiming that Kamala Harris's Michigan crowd size had been fabricated, Conway called Trump a delusional narcissistic psychopath, adding that if his family cared about him, they would have him committed to a psychiatric hospital.Working in the obligatory Nazi analogy, Conway compared Trump to Hitler in his final days in the bunker, moving around divisions that didn't exist. Get the rest of the story and view the video here.

In The World According to Morning Joe, Kamala is Reagan, Trump is Biden. Joe Scarborough kicked off today's show by approvingly quoting this bit from Peggy Noonan's current Wall Street Journal column [emphasis added]: "For the first time this week I thought people were wondering about the impact of Mr. Trump’s age. He is 78. He hasn’t been able to focus, make his case. Is he, in another irony of 2024, turning into Joe Biden?"A bit later, Katty Kay claimed: "There's a lot more kind of sunny Reagan about the Democratic ticketat the moment then there is about the Republican...

If this is the best that Dem MSM hacks can come up with to defend Tim Walz's claim that he carried weapons "in war," Kamala Harris's VP pick could be in some real trouble. On CNN This Morning, host Kasie Hunt put it to former Hillary spokesperson Karen Finney, now a CNN commentator: "So, Karen, Walz did say that I carried in war. And we do know that doesn't seem to be the case. But he did, would have trained extensively in preparation for it, with these types of weapons." Finney latched like a drowning woman onto Hunt's mention of...