There was surprising consensus on today's Morning Joe concerning the Washington Post cartoon that depicted Ted Cruz as an organ grinder and his youngs girls as monkeys. From Mika Brzezinski to Joe Scarborough to Harold Ford, Jr., there was universal condemnation of Ann Telnaes' foul image. 

Willie Geist said it best: "people look for moments of bias in the media. Here's one right here. You can't be selectively offended by cartoons. If that had been a Democrat, or God forbid the President of the United States, they would have lit the house on fire. There would have been wall-to-wall coverage on it."

When tagging items at NewsBusters, one of our Media Bias sub-categories is "Sudden Respect." The notion is that to win the affection of the MSM, all a Republican or conservative needs to do is turn against members or positions of his party. A great illustration of the phenomenon comes from today's Morning Joe. During last night's undercard debate, Lindsey Graham repeatedly ripped fellow Republicans for their rhetoric on Muslims, at one point even apologizing to Muslims for Donald Trump's comments.

And that of course caused what Rush might call a GrahamGasm by the Morning Joe crew. Mike Barnicle called Graham "fantastic," Nicolle Wallace said "I adore Lindsey Graham." Most amazing was Mika Brzezinski, who beyond praising him as "incredible" actually declared, sounding like she was choking up, "I feel a connection with Lindsey Graham," causing Joe Scarborough to claim [we presume facetiously] that Mika said "where has he been all my life?" Not to be outdone, Joe called on President Obama to award Graham the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Barnicle summed up the panel's sentiment by saying "thank God for Lindsey Graham."

The last person you'd imagine backing Donald Trump's Muslim ban might be Mika Brzezinski. Yet on today's Morning Joe, a reluctant Mika came close to doing just that. Brzezinski springboarded off the news that the visa screening program failed to stop Tafsheen Malik from entering the country although she was already radicalized at the time.

While professing her opposition to the plan, she called the news "incredibly disturbing." When former Obama car czar Steve Rattner admitted that the process in place "had failed," Mika suggested: "are you saying something that might be in line with Donald Trump's policy?" Mika went on: "I'm not sure Donald Trump's concept is good for our country," but "we just had a slaughter." Concluded Brzezinski: "someone tell me something better than what Donald Trump is saying," adding sarcastically "and there's got to be something better because everybody has been sitting here for days, just lambasting him."

Given the Morning Joe reviews, if President Obama's terrorism speech were a Broadway show, it would have closed after one night. From Richard Haass to Richard Engel, Joe Scarborough to Willie Geist, the prez's performance was universally panned. 

And in the cruelest comment of all, Mika Brzezinski reported that "I watched it with my youngest daughter who's very, very interested and we were waiting for the address, and sat together and watched. And when he was finished she got up and left. She goes: I don't really know what the point of that was." Mr. President, when you've lost Mika's daughter . . . But hey, look at the bright side: you could fire up Air Force One and still make an afternoon tee time in Palm Springs.

Morning Joe on Wednesday discussed the recent remarks by President Obama on Republicans who are “afraid of orphans and widows.” When the discussion turned to David Ignatius for commentary, he gave a defense of Obama. Scarborough would press Ignatius with on using "the widows and orphans" to antagonize Republican governors. While Ignatius conceded there is always room to correct the words used, he thought the President was on point.