On MSNBC’s Morning Joe on Tuesday, the roundtable turned to the NBC "town hall" Secretary Hillary Clinton had on gun control. Mike Barnicle began the discussion by declaring that it requires courage and hammering gun control for any gun control to be accomplished. Barnicle would then continue on against semi-automatic rifles, in particular the AR-15 and AK-47, because they are "military assault rifles." Mika Brzezinski would bring up the amount of guns owned by the Mercer family, while Joe Scarborough and Eugene Robinson would confront the hardship of parenting and responsibility of adult children.
Willie Geist
By Mark Finkelstein | October 6, 2015 | 7:53 AM EDT
A week ago, we noted that—negating Nicolle Wallace's notion that the woman who aided the New York prison break shouldn't do any time herself—Willie Geist observed "you can't help convicted murderers escape from jail." An NB reader remarked: "I get the sense that Willie Geist is a good guy trapped inside the leftwing matrix."
Far be it from us to cause workplace problems for Willie by praising him too much, but Geist was at it again on today's Morning Joe, this time making some common sense remarks on gun control. After Eugene Robinson praised Australia's "very serious" gun control laws, Willie first cut through the haze, noting that "Australia, to be clear, confiscated guns." He went on to make this observation—as remarkable for its truth as it is for his rarity in the MSM—"there are so many laws out there, and you can make more laws and still wouldn't capture the people, the criminal element, that wants to get his hands on a gun."
By Mark Finkelstein | October 1, 2015 | 8:03 AM EDT
There was Hillary Clinton, telling Al Sharpton of all people that she found Kevin McCarthy's comments about the Benghazi hearings "deeply distressing."
That was too much for the Morning Joe panel, which just had to laugh. As John Heilemann put it, far from being distressed, Hillary surely sees McCarthy's comments—implying a political motive behind the hearings—as a Christmas and birthday gift wrapped into one that sent her "skipping through the park."
By Mark Finkelstein | September 29, 2015 | 11:00 AM EDT
Our NewsBusters readers are a prescient bunch. On an item posted earlier this morning about Nicolle Wallace calling Hillary a "terrible" candidate, one reader commented "Nicolle is pretending to be conservative again. Not to worry, she'll be back to her normal liberal self soon."
And sure enough, just seven minutes later, Wallace was letting her bleeding-heart side show. Discussing the news that Joyce Mitchell—the accomplice who helped two convicted murderers escape—had been sentenced to prison, Wallace said "I feel bad for her. Can't she just wear an ankle bracelet?" Nicolle even threw in an empathetic "awww" for the plight of "romancer" Mitchell.
By Mark Finkelstein | September 29, 2015 | 7:36 AM EDT
Good ol' Mike Barnicle dutifully carried Dem water this morning, maintaining a straight face while calling Hillary Clinton a "strong" candidate. But also on the Morning Joe set was Nicolle Wallace, who reported that "Democrats think she's terrible. I hope [Biden] doesn't run, because he's better than her."
For good measure, Mark Halperin opined that Biden might want to wait until February, on the theory that if Bernie Sanders beats Hillary in Iowa or New Hampshire, "there'll be panic," or as Wallace put it, "pandemonium."
By Matthew Balan | September 17, 2015 | 4:35 PM EDT
MSNBC's Morning Joe and CNN's New Day both interviewed Carly Fiorina on Thursday after she did well at the Republican presidential debate. However, the two programs failed to bring up her dare to President Obama and Hillary Clinton to watch the hidden camera videos exposing Planned Parenthood's sale of unborn babies' organs and tissue. CNN's Alisyn Camerota and Chris Cuomo largely skirted the issues during their segment with Fiorina, with Cuomo asking about her lack of smiling during the debate.
By Mark Finkelstein | September 14, 2015 | 9:13 AM EDT
Mika Brzezinski: fired up and ready to go . . . for Donald Trump? Not exactly. It isn't that Mika's jumping on the Make America Great Again express. It's just that she wants "intellectual honesty" from her peers when it comes to admitting that Trump has gone from amusing sideshow who's sure to eventually crash to true frontrunner who is now likely to be the Republican nominiee.
You might not think of Brzezinski as being particularly data-driven, but on today's Morning Joe she repeatedly argued that there is no data supporting a Trump meltdown scenario. Going around the table with the question of whether it was "likely" or not that Trump would be the Republican nominee, she, Joe Scarborough and Willie Geist were in the "likely" column. Susan Ferrechio of the Washington Examiner was at 50-50. The only naysayer was Bloomberg's John Heilemann, who opined it was unlikely Trump would be the nominee.
By Mark Finkelstein | September 9, 2015 | 8:09 AM EDT
My mother had a saying about heeding warnings from others: "if one person tells you you're drunk, ignore him. If two people tell you you're drunk, lie down." So what should Hillary Clinton do when the entire Morning Joe panel tells her that her supposed apology on ABC last night was a total bust?
From Joe Scarborough saying it looked like a "hostage video," to John Heilemann saying her apology proved that everything she had said about no one caring about the issue was a "lie," to Mika Brzezinski speaking of the "freakish" control exercised by the Clinton camp, to Willie Geist flatly contradicting Hillary's assertion that her actions were "allowed," the panning of Hillary's performance was unanimous.
By Kyle Drennen | September 2, 2015 | 10:57 AM EDT
Ahead of Pope Francis’s upcoming visit to the U.S., Wednesday’s NBC Today touted a new Pew Research Center poll finding that a minority of Catholics do not believe abortion to be a sin. Willie Geist used the Pope adjusting the process of forgiving abortion as a segue: “...the Vatican announced priests may now forgive women who’ve had abortions....The Pope isn't alone when it comes to a bit of a change of heart.” Geist proclaimed “a third of Catholics say terminating a pregnancy is not a sin.”
By Kyle Drennen | August 31, 2015 | 12:05 PM EDT
On Monday, NBC’s Today devoted a full report to Donald Trump and Republican members of Congress criticizing longtime Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin. Fill-in co-host Willie Geist declared: “One of Hillary Clinton's top aides, Huma Abedin, is in the headlines this morning, with Republican lawmakers and Donald Trump taking aim at her position, and in Trump’s case, her marriage.”
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 Kyle Drennen | August 27, 2015 | 12:15 PM EDT
Introducing a segment on Wednesday’s NBC Today, co-host Savannah Guthrie announced: “We’re back now at 7:43 with the controversial tweet that has led to a headline-making suspension at ESPN.” Fellow co-host Willie Geist declared: “Former big league ace pitcher and current baseball analyst Curt Schilling has a history of pushing boundaries on social media. But his bosses say this time Schilling went too far.”