By Mark Finkelstein | December 23, 2015 | 7:43 AM EST

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."

By Mark Finkelstein | December 14, 2015 | 7:58 AM EST

Joe Scarborough prefaced his remarks this morning by saying "this is the sort of thing that right-wing bloggers get very angry about."  So let's oblige him . . . 

On Morning Joe, Scarborough said "I am shocked by how many Republicans, that have always voted Republican, that have said they're going to vote for Hillary if it's Cruz or Trump running against Hillary. I'm talking Deep South, Southern Baptist. I asked people who I expect to say yes, Cruz, go "hell no. No. I will never vote for Ted Cruz or Donald Trump. I will vote for Hillary Clinton."

By Kyle Drennen | December 10, 2015 | 3:19 PM EST

On Thursday, NBC’s Today seized on a cabdriver in Toronto attacking the car of an Uber driver as a chance to attack the entrepreneurial car service, with co-host Savannah Guthrie proclaiming: “A cabbie confronts an Uber driver and gets dragged 60 feet down the street, as the battle between the car service app and traditional taxis gets ugly.”

By Mark Finkelstein | December 10, 2015 | 8:19 AM EST

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."

By Mark Finkelstein | December 7, 2015 | 7:43 AM EST

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.

By Michael McKinney | November 16, 2015 | 12:17 PM EST

Monday’s Morning Joe began with an evaluation of the actions of the White House prior to and after the attack on Paris Friday night. Joe Scarborough began by demanding to know if the roundtable thought the President actually looked involved and engaged in understanding “the level of threat.” When Mike Barnicle tried to claim the President “looks fully engaged,” Scarborough felt it necessary to confront him on it.

By Michael McKinney | November 9, 2015 | 3:20 PM EST

Even Joe Scarborough, who according to the National Review's Elaina Plott has a "vehement" dislike of Marco Rubio, thinks there's nothing to the Florida Republican Senator's credit card issue. 

By Michael McKinney | November 2, 2015 | 5:11 PM EST

Monday’s Morning Joe featured a discussion with Richard Stengel, the Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs. What proceeded was a discussion of the administration for securing the Iran Deal, without any effort to release Journalist Jason Rezaian, or the other three hostages of the government in Iran. Stengel would try to defend the lack of action, by highlighting that other governments do the same, but the Morning Joe crew was not having any of it.

By Mark Finkelstein | October 22, 2015 | 8:24 AM EDT

Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski were among the first in the media, going back months, to take Donald Trump seriously. In contrast, Bill Kristol had repeatedly declared that we had reached "peak Trump," only to find The Donald confoundingly continuing to climb in the polls.  

Things boiled over on today's Morning Joe.  Despite a fresh poll showing Trump with an astounding 48% of GOP voters in Massachusetts, Kristol blithely declared that Trump "is not going to be the nominee." That elicited sarcastic laughter from Scarborough, who shot back "we can show you clip after clip after clip after clip of your incorrect predictions about Donald Trump and his imminent collapse." Later, Kristol seized on a new poll from Iowa showing Ben Carson having overtaken Trump. Claiming that "you guys have been overestimating Trump and underestimating Carson," Kristol said he was "just trying to be helpful."  An exasperated Scarborough exploded: "you're out of your mind. You're not trying to be helpful.  You're trying to cover your a--.  It won't work with us."

By Mark Finkelstein | October 14, 2015 | 7:30 AM EDT

Wow: an MSMer who not only has "many" conservative friends, but is willing to admit it on live national TV?

On today's Morning Joe, in the course of praising Anderson Cooper's performance as debate moderator, Geist let drop that prior to the debate "many of my conservative friends" thought CNN would go easy on the Dems, but that five minutes in, they told him "oh, I guess he's not going to go easy."

By Mark Finkelstein | October 13, 2015 | 8:21 AM EDT

Michelle might want to gently tap the president on the shoulder and remind him "umm, Barack, you're not in the faculty lounge any more.  You're actually, uh, President and Commander-in-Chief.  So you don't get to criticize your own failed policies as if you're not responsible for them.  They're, umm, your policies, you know?"

Commenting on President Obama's 60 Minutes interview in which he said he was "skeptical from the get-go" about his administration's failed policy of training Syrian rebels, WaPo's David Ignatius on today's Morning Joe called the president's reaction "weird," adding "he spoke almost like a man vindicated when a policy of his own administration had collapsed in failure. And he was, he took the line almost of, see, I told you so."

By Mark Finkelstein | October 12, 2015 | 8:03 AM EDT

Says Joe Scarborough, if Jeb Bush had Donald Trump's poll numbers, the media would proclaim the race "T-K-Over." Yet rather than touting Trump's commanding lead, the liberal media speculates instead on the Donald's "exit strategy." That had Scarborough blasting CNN and other MSM outlets as "Trump deniers" on today's Morning Joe.

Why is the MSM unwilling to give Donald his due?  Scarborough suggested the media should "just admit: we hate him so much, that even when he is trouncing everybody, we loathe this vulgarian from Queens who we've never accepted into our club and screw him, we're never going to give him any sort of respect." Concluded Joe: "I call them Trump deniers."