Following Thursday night’s explosive Republican primary debate on Fox News, MSNBC’s Morning Joe was in Cleveland for reaction. A panel heaped praise on Ohio governor John Kasich, particularly regarding his response to a question about Medicaid expansion. Willie Geist described it as “the best answer of the entire night that any candidate gave.” Host Joe Scarborough thought he “hit it out of the park.” John Heilemann cheered Kasich’s general performance as “Reaganesque in some ways.” 

Ouch: this one's going to leave a mark.  Arkansas Republican Senator Tom Cotton has said that "John Kerry acted like Pontius Pilate, he washed his hands" on crucial issues in the Iran deal and left it to the IAEA to negotiate secret side deals with Iran on them.

Cotton made his remarks on today's Morning Joe.  It might be a mark of the regard, or lack thereof, in which Kerry is held that no one on the panel rose to his defense.  Harold Ford, Jr. was given the floor immediately after Cotton spoke, and blithely inquired only if Kerry would be asked about these issues in his Senate testimony. A bit later in the show, Dem Sen. Tim Kaine appeared.  Kaine presumably either watched or was briefed on Cotton's statement, but made not a peep to push back on the Pontius Pilate analogy.

From the man who brought you malaise, now an even more depressingly negative view of America . . . On today's Morning Joe, Jimmy Carter declared that America is in "inevitable decline."  

But no finger-pointing at President Obama, please: Carter declared that the decline is "not because of any defect or fault on the part of the President of the United States."   Cue the Cole Porter: it's just one of those things.

Mika Brzezinski just can't contain her liberal bias. On today's Morning Joe, Mika admitted that the the MSM has a double standard when it comes to reporting controversial things that Democrats and Republicans have done or said. Yet she promptly turned around and applied that same double standard to Bernie Sanders and Rick Santorum.

Discussing Bernie Sanders having written in 1972 that women fantasize about being raped, Mika agreed that if Rick Santorum had written the same thing, the press would go crazy.  However, Mika claimed that wouldn't be because Santorum's a Republican, but rather would be due to "his record and his views."  When Joe Scarborough said there'd be no justification for jumping on Santorum, Mika disagreed: "there's a little bit of one."

Willie Geist wondered out loud what would happen to a Republican candidate who had written that women fantasize about being raped--and Joe Scarborough questioned whether he would he still be in the race.

But when it's a candidate for the Dem presidential nomination who had written those words, well, that's a different story. On today's Morning Joe, when Scarborough raised the matter of Bernie Sanders having written that women fantasize about being raped, Mika Brzezinski repeatedly tried to shut him down and turn the page.