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."

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?

If she were anyone but a Clinton, would Hillary's campaign not be kaput? Imagine: you're a big Dem donor, elected official in an early primary state or grassroots organizer trying to decide whose bandwagon to jump on.  You turn on Morning Joe today, and there's Ron Fournier, MSM member-in-good-standing and someone who's said he's voted for Clintons more than anyone in DC, saying about the email scandal that Hillary "might pay a big price criminally." Schnikes! Where did you say Bernie Sanders is appearing next? 

As baleful as Fournier was about Hillary's fortunes, something Joe Scarborough said might be even more ominous.  Scarborough revealed that he's receiving emails from aides to President Obama who "cannot believe she keeps saying that this was okay with the White House . . . they cannot believe inside the Obama White House that she continues to act this way." Consider: all President Obama needs to do is raise an eyebrow at his Attorney General Lynch, and Hillary could be in indictment-land. 

Al Hunt did stop short of predicting something so horrible it could never happen in America--federal marshals armed with assault weapons hunting down children cowering in closets to forcibly return them to a Communist dictatorship. Oh, wait, that really did happen, under President Bill Clinton, when Elian Gonzalez was returned to Cuba at the point of a gun. 

On today's Morning Joe an Al Hunt on the verge of hysteria predicted that Donald Trump's immigration plan would lead to "federal raids on maternity wards."  He claimed that implementing the plan would cost "11 trillion dollars," which assuming 11 million illegals in the country converts to $1 million each.  Joe Scarborough chimed in to claim that "we don't have the money to do that."

You know those super-fast-talking disclaimers run at the end of some ads?  The kind of CYA things the lawyers force the advertisers to say? That's what Mark Halperin's pro forma praise of Hillary on today's Morning Joe brought to mind. 

Halperin first ripped Hillary's campaign as the most "unresponsive to basic questions" he's ever dealt with, and reported that "elite Democrats" are worried about being stuck with scandal-ridden Hillary as their candidate. But Halperin apparently felt obliged to include this bit of posterior-protecting pablum: "she's still an extraordinarily strong candidate, she's a great public servant. She's, I think, right now, the most likely person to be elected president."