Mark Finkelstein
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Guest-hosting Joy Reid's MSNBC show, Ali Velshi finds it impossible to understand why President Trump, given his criticism of US journalists, would express concern about the possible murder of a journalist at the hands of the Saudi government.
An absolute classic out of the Dem/MSM playbook. Take a huge, expensive, inefficient, government program. Find someone with a heartwrenching story who is helped by it. Highlight that story as if it represents the essence of the program in question. Bonus points if you can get someone to get choked up on camera. And thus it was that today's Morning Joe featured a segment in which NBC reporter Morgan Radford traveled to Ohio ahead of President Trump's rally there. She found Colleen, a mother whose daughter had developed cancer at age seven, who said that "it was life-changing, what the ACA [Obamacare] did for us."
On Morning Joe, Joe Scarborough says that Republicans got a "huge bump" from the Kavanaugh hearings, whereas the hearings were "a disaster for the Democratic party."
On Morning Joe, Joe Scarborough explains Nikki Haley's resignation as UN Ambassador by suggesting she is positioning herself for a 2020 presidential run, on the theory that, as Scarborough predicted back in August, President Trump won't seek re-election. Scarborough surmises that Haley wants to get out in front of Mike Pence.
On CNN, host Alisyn Camerota, referring to allegations by Christine Ford and Deborah Ramirez, spoke of "these accusations against Brett Kavanaugh—not one, but certainly two credible ones."
The cast of Morning Joe (Mika, Joe, Meacham, and Barnicle) put on their bitter-beer faces. They castigate Republicans for celebrating the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh with brewskis, and rip Lindsey Graham and Mitch McConnell for their roles. "A shabby Senate, with a short-sighted, selfish, cynical, Majority Leader who cared more about his political party and his own political ambitions than the country itself," said Joe.
We knew that Senator Susan Collins would come under attack by the left for her "yes" vote on Kavanaugh. But comparing Collins to people who would attend lynchings after going to church? No one would sink that low, right? Wrong. On MSNBC Friday afternoon, Al Sharpton said: "these people would go to church and then go to the lynching after clothing themselves in morality. And that's what we're seeing today. When Susan Collins can stand there after this man [President Trump] mocked Al Franken last night."
CNN international correspondent Farai Sevenzo says of First Lady Melania's Trump visit to a Kenyan game reserve: "she was dressed, really, in the classic Out of Africa by Sydney Pollack way, or even John Huston's, The African Queen: the jodhpurs, the boots. The color was all there. The stylist should be very proud of himself."
On Ari Melber's MSNBC show, Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin, whom Melber twice described as a "conservative," said of Republican male senators commenting on the Kavanaugh confirmation: "they are so emotional, almost hysterical. I mean, I would make a joke about it, that they're behaving as if it's their time of the month, but this is very, very serious."
On Sam Harris's "Waking Up" podcast, Bill Maher says that when it comes to immigration, "'Steve Bannon and I share some ideas." Harris and Maher also criticize the liberal media's dishonest coverage of Muslim immigration issues.
CNN does its best to undermine the FBI's latest investigation of Brett Kavanaugh. Host John Berman suggests that the investigation is a "sham." Host Alisyn Camerota sheds crocodile tears, wondering whether the impliedly inadequate investigation is "bad for the FBI."
On Morning Joe, Joe Scarborough slams the MSM's "one-sided, biased," pro-Christine Ford coverage of the Kavanaugh nomination. He says the MSM will be surprised by how Republican candidates will be improving in the polls, in the same way the mainstream media was incapable of imagining a Trump victory in 2016.
On CNN, co-host Alisyn Camerota says that Christine Ford's accusation that Brett Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her and held his hand over her mouth to keep her from crying out "makes more sense" in light of an alleged incident in which Kavanaugh threw ice at someone in a bar.
On Morning Joe, regarding the Kavanaugh situation, Donny Deutsch claims "the higher you go on the income curve, the men [are] still not getting it ...The lower you go on the income curve, men are getting it." Donny, do us a favor: go back to your fancy Manhattan pad, and carefully uncork a Premier Grand Cru Classé Bordeaux.
John Dickerson, host of Face the Nation on CBS, is unusually confrontational with Republican Tom Cotton of Arkansas, a supporter of the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh. The question arises because the normally mild-mannered Dickerson was shockingly combative with Cotton. View the video, because the transcript alone doesn't do justice to just how sarcastic and confrontational Dickerson was.
There was a surprising exchange on Friday's Morning Joe between Mika Brzezinski and Jonathan Swan of Axios. The upshot: Mika found Brett Kavanaugh's anger to be authentic. Brzezinski twice stated her agreement with Swan's view that "if you did believe you were innocent of what he's been accused of, not being angry would not seem natural."
After Christine Ford's testimony, Lindsey Graham described her to reporters as a "nice lady who has come forward to tell a hard story." How dare Graham insult a woman that way! Reacting to it during the subsequent panel discussion, Brian Williams archly asked MSNBC legal analyst Daniel Goldman: "when he calls her a nice lady?"
On Morning Joe, Joe Scarborough expresses real skepticism about the claims of Julie Swetnick, the Michael Avenatti client. Among other things, Joe asks: "who would continually go to high school parties where women were being gang-raped--and first of all keep going to those parties?"
Appearing this afternoon on MSNBC's Deadline: White House program hosted by Nicolle Wallace -- his sidekick on the McCain presidential campaign -- Steve Schmidt broke out the tired liberal claim that Republicans somehow resemble the villains of 'The Handmaid's Tale.' The show has been described as portraying "a dystopian future . . . wherein a totalitarian society subjects fertile women, called 'Handmaids,' into child-bearing servitude."
On Morning Joe, Mike Barnicle claims that "everyone so revered" the Presidency and the U.S. Senate not that long ago, and wonders how long it will take to repair the damage to those institutions that is now being done on a daily basis.