One of James Taranto's tongue-in-cheek tropes at his Best of the Web Today column is "We Blame George Bush." As Wikipedia describes it, the trope "is a play on the perceived tendency for many of his detractors to lay the blame for pretty much anything" on Bush. In a recent example, "We Blame George W. Bush" was placed over a headline reading “Slipping Into a Food Coma? Blame Your Gut Microbes.” 

And lo and behold, from today's Morning Joe comes a real-life example of the phenomenon. Mika Brzezinski blamed Donald Trump's proposal to ban all Muslims from the US, on in part—you guessed it—George W. Bush. In fairness, Mika did also blame the Obama admin. She argued that foreign policy blunders not just by the Obama administration but "by the George W. Bush administration"  created feelings that Trump is tapping into. For Mika to reach back to blame Bush for Trump's proposal, when even liberals praise him for going out of his way, for example, six days after 9-11, to declare "Islam is peace," etc. is something between outrageous and hilarious.

Yes, it's fair to report Ben Carson's problems in pronouncing "Hamas," as a reflection of his lack of foreign policy fluency. But despite being billed as an MSNBC political "correspondent," on today's Morning Joe Hunt mocked Carson in a manner more befitting a late-night comedian trolling for laughs from a liberal crowd.

After rolling a clip of Ben Carson addressing the Republican Jewish Coalition yesterday in which Carson's pronunciation of "Hamas" left something to be desired, Hunt cracked "there were some questions afterwards in the room whether he was talking about the terrorist group, or the Middle Eastern food staple." Washington Post columnist Gene Robinson gleefully piled on, saying that when he was in Gaza he had "some very good hummus" and "I also met with a member of Hamas." A sighing, seemingly sympathetic Mika Brzezinski observed "it's just too easy."

Here at NewsBusters, we usually reserve popcorn-popping for times when Democrats are scrapping among themselves. But in this strange political season, it looks like we could be in for some Orville Redenbacher moments among Republicans, too.

On today's Morning Joe, Joe Scarborough mentioned having watched some of Megyn Kelly's Fox News show last night, and claimed that Kelly was "vicious" in going after Donald Trump. In the unkindest cut of all, Scarborough said Kelly "sounded like Rachel Maddow." View the video of Scarborough's statement, followed by clips from last night's Kelly File. You'll see that Megyn doesn't crack the slightest smile when Steve Hayes describes Trump as akin to "a dog with diarrhea." And a skeptical Kelly is all over Roger Stone when he attempts to defend Trump.

On Monday's Morning Joe, the crew discussed New York Police Commissioner William Bratton's appearance on Sunday's Meet the Press. Joe Scarborough played a clip of Bratton begging Congress to pass a law preventing people on the government's terrorism watch list from buying guns. Scarborough echoed the plea as well.

Joe Scarborough opened today's Morning Joe with coverage of the unfolding terror attack in Mali, and promptly turned to Ayman Mohyeldin for a report.

The very first words out of Mohyeldin's mouth were "it's important to emphasize we still don't know the identity of these gunmen who have taken the hotel hostage." Great point, Ayman. I mean, sure, they were yelling Allah Akhbar, and released hostages who could recite passages from the Koran. But can anyone prove they're not a bunch of Yale frat boys on early Spring Break wearing hideously inappropriate Halloween costumes? Or perhaps some insufficiently sensitive Mizzou administrators invading the safe space of the hotel guests?