By Mark Finkelstein | August 28, 2015 | 9:49 AM EDT

So who's Hillary's enforcer? Last week we asked "who got to Donny Deutsch?" when he suddenly became supportive of Hillary whereas just the week before he had been very critical of her.

The same thing has happened with Ed Rendell.  Just yesterday, the former DNC Chairman and Pennsylvania governor was quoted in the New York Times saying Hillary has handled the email scandal "poorly, maybe atrociously, certainly horribly." But on today's Morning Joe, Ed was suddenly singing a different tune, claiming Hillary is doing everything right and plaintively suggesting that there is no problem. That led Mark Halperin to observe "I'm not saying he woke up with a horse head in bed with him," but "he was contacted . . . by what we like to call Clinton associates."  

By Mark Finkelstein | August 25, 2015 | 8:23 AM EDT

If you're Hillary Clinton or one of her supporters, this should make your blood run cold.  On today's Morning Joe, Joe Scarborough said that the unequivocally pro-Biden statement from Obama spox Josh Earnest yesterday not only sent "a strong, strong message to Hillary" but, echoing the Wall Street Journal, "you wonder whether they're sending a message to the Justice Department as well."

Has there ever been anything quite like this in the history of American politics? It's one thing for a president to encourage his veep's presidential ambitions. It's entirely another for a president to put his 800-lb. thumb on the political scales by suggesting to his Justice Department that he'd like it to launch an investigation of the veep's main rival.

By Jeffrey Meyer | August 21, 2015 | 3:04 PM EDT

On Friday’s Morning Joe, Mika Brzezinski confronted Danny Shea, Huffington Post Editorial Director, over his liberal website’s decision to cover Donald Trump’s presidential campaign in its entertainment section rather than in politics. After Brzezinski told Shea that his website “made a mistake,” the Huffington Post editor attempted to justify why they cover the GOP frontrunner as entertainment: [O]ur big statement is that Donald Trump is not a serious candidate, he's an entertainer.”

By Mark Finkelstein | August 21, 2015 | 9:37 AM EDT

Finally! Something from a New York Times reporter you can absolutely, positively believe: that no matter the mounting evidence, he will not condemn Hillary Clinton for her email malfeasance.

On today's Morning Joe, Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough repeatedly tried to get Jeremy Peters to state whether he agreed with the federal judge who yesterday declared that Hillary had not "followed government policy" regarding her email.  After haplessly trying to do anything but answer the question, an exasperated Peters finally sputtered: "you want, you want me to indict and damn Hillary?  I'm not going to do that."

By Mark Finkelstein | August 20, 2015 | 10:26 AM EDT

Hard for staffer interviews not to be a disaster when telling the truth could land Hillary in the hoosegow . . . Yesterday, this NewsBuster was gobsmacked by the spectacle of senior Hillary aide Jennifer Palmieri suggesting that the FBI would be happy to discover that Hillary's infamous email server had been scrubbed clean. We wrote about it here.

Today's Morning Joe picked through the smoldering ashes of that interview with the participation of John Heilemann, who conducted it.  Joe Scarborough said that "everybody" he talked to called the interview a "disaster." Heilemann suggested that top Hillary staffers are "in the dark."  The cruelest cut came from Mika Brzezinski, who said "there are no good answers."  So where does Hillary go from here?

By Mark Finkelstein | August 13, 2015 | 8:30 AM EDT

Did Rush Limbaugh force Fox News, in the wake of the Donald Trump/Megyn Kelly dust-up, to back down and welcome Trump back on its network?  That's what New York Times reporter Nick Confessore suggested on today's Morning Joe.

Asked by Mika Brzezinski who was the most powerful person in the media today, Confessore responded: "I think Fox or Rush Limbaugh [whose last name Confessore pronounced "Lim-bow], right? In this primary, right? There were two institutions that could have put a stop to Trump, talk radio and Fox. And talk radio likes him and Fox backed down."

By Mark Finkelstein | August 12, 2015 | 9:16 AM EDT

Partisanship oozing out of Howard Dean's wherever! On today's Morning JoeMika Brzezinski, exasperated by Howard Dean's dead-ender defense of Hillary on the email scandal, told him "your partisan whatever is just ooz[ing.]"

You know Hillary is in hot water when even Andrea Mitchell had to report that there are "big" problems for Clinton on the email front. But Howard Dean has apparently decided to go down with Hillary's ship, clinging to his claim that the email scandal is "hooey" and declaring "you're just not going to get me to give on this." 

By Mark Finkelstein | August 11, 2015 | 8:45 AM EDT

Well, she did stop short of accusing Chuck Schumer of being worried about losing donations from co-religionist contributors . . . But on today's Morning Joe, Mika Brzezinksi repeatedly claimed that Schumer was acting out of politics in opposing the Iran deal.

Battling with Bill Kristol, an exceptionally exercised Brzezinski broke out the over-the-top adjectives, branding opposition to the deal "ludicrous," "crazy" and "calamitous." What explains Mika's unusual outburst on this subject?

By Connor Williams | August 10, 2015 | 11:32 AM EDT

On the August 10 edition of Morning Joe, host Mika Brzezinski criticized opponents of the Iran deal and defended President Obama’s harsh rhetoric. She claimed that supporting the deal was a “no-brainer” because, in her mind, there are no alternatives. The Morning Joe personality lauded the president for “being sharp” in trying to gain support for the deal. 

By Spencer Raley | August 10, 2015 | 11:21 AM EDT

MSNBC’s Morning Joe made a humorous blunder on Monday during their latest coverage of the Donald Trump saga. While discussing the effect Trump’s latest controversial comments might have on his campaign, senior MSNBC political analyst Mark Halperin, of Bloomberg, quoted a tweet supposedly from the North Korean news service. The twitter handle "@DPRK_News" belongs, however, to a parody account. And they vowed their revenge on the “U.S. television stooge.”

By Connor Williams | August 4, 2015 | 3:27 PM EDT

Tuesday morning, Joe Scarborough slammed Elizabeth Warren for her attacks on the opponents of Planned Parenthood. The Morning Joe host objected to the Democratic Massachusetts senator’s contention that defunding the women’s health organization would send women back to the 1950s or 1890s. Scarborough implored Warren to “stop insulting our intelligence.” 

The former Florida congressman was angered about the way the conversation about Planned Parenthood has been framed: “It has been set up that way so you can't have this discussion without being against women's health. But you can be against the funding of Planned Parenthood without being against the support of women's health care. Nice try Elizabeth, nice try Elizabeth Warren. Nice try.”

By Mark Finkelstein | August 3, 2015 | 12:59 PM EDT

On today's Morning Joe, Josh Earnest said that President Obama believes that picking Biden as his VP was the "smartest decision he ever made in politics." Joe Scarborough drew the mischievous-but-logical inference that Obama must thus believe it was smarter than picking Hillary as his Secretary of State.  Though Mika interrupted to say that's not what he meant, Earnest never said boo to counter Joe's interpretation.

Earnest later said that if Biden chooses to run, he could make a "strong" case for his candidacy.  He added that other Dem candidates could make "quite" a strong case. Note the qualifier. And Earnest never paid Hillary the honor of mentioning her by name, just lumping her with "other Democratic candidates" not named Biden. Add in the fact that Joe reported that there is "outrage at the White House" over Hillary's email and foundation foul-ups, and a picture emerges of an Obama jumping towards Joe.  This could get very interesting!