Nicholas Fondacaro
Latest from Nicholas Fondacaro
During a conversation on Monday’s Morning Joe panelists Nicolle Wallace took issue with a more vocal anti- Donald Trump movement within the Republican Party. “There are legitimate anti-Trump movements, they are the candidacies of his opponents. And then there are illegitimate anti-Trump movements. I think to the degree the party bosses look like they’re are on the scale, those are completely illegitimate anti-Trump efforts.” Wallace argued.
During a Friday afternoon interview with Hillary Clinton, CNBC’s John Harwood asked the presidential candidate about the current FBI investigation into her e-mail practices. Clinton defended herself from allegations of misconduct stating “I've been the most transparent public official in modern times, as far as I know.”
Mitt Romney’s address on Thursday didn’t sit well with Joe Scarborough and he let his audience know it Friday morning. “Dude, if you're going to get into the pool, jump in. You’re standing at the side. Jump in or go and put the towel on and go back in[side].” A harsh response to a man who is concerned about the state of his party and had something to say about it.
“This is the problem. You can't get real now. You can't start telling the truth now. And that's what everybody's doing.” So exclaimed Mika Brzezinski about the in-depth vetting Donald Trump is now receiving from his GOP opposition. The defense of Trump’s campaign was a prominent theme during Thursday’s edition of Morning Joe.
Megyn Kelly brought conservative writer Ben Shapiro onto The Kelly File Monday night to share his horrifying experience at the lefty California State University campus in Los Angeles, where a massive protest broke out in response to his speaking engagement.
On a special post-GOP debate edition of Hardball Thursday night Chris Matthews turned up the spin to brush the dirt off of Donald Trump. “I thought the funniest line tonight was when Rubio was doing his upper cuts … He said ‘you hired illegal immigrants,’ people without documentation and trump says ‘you've never hired anybody.’"
On Thursday’s edition of All In, Chris Hayes brought on “perhaps America’s leading historian on the modern conservative movement,” Rick Perlstein, to discuss the attacks against Donald Trump for not being a proper conservative. Perlstein argued that when GOP candidates fight over the conservative mantel they really are saying, “I'm the guy that’s going to protect white virtue from, you know, the dark scary hordes.”
On Wednesday's edition of Hardball with Chris Matthews, a shouting match about how the black community views Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan was brought to a screeching halt when Matthews insisted: “[Y]ou’re right about Reince. I agree with your one point or a lot of what she says. But when Reince Priebus’ — his number one goal is to keep blacks from voting.”
On Wednesday’s MTP Daily, MSNBC’s Chuck Todd washed the media’s collective hands by claiming it’s not the media’s job to vet a candidate because the information is already there for the other campaigns to cobble together into attack ads: “A common criticism you’ve heard is that Trump’s rise is the media’s fault, because we have enabled his rise. But, folks, you could argue that the media has also provided all the material that normally a campaign would want to put together an attack against Trump.”
It has been long speculated that the hosts of MSNBC’s Morning Joe, Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, were too buddy-buddy with GOP front runner Donald Trump. There are even accounts of the hosts visiting Trump’s hotel room to watch the New Hampshire primary results come in. Newly leaked hot mic audio, from the recent town hall event the two hosted for Trump, made its way to the airwaves via the Le Show radio program Sunday. The audio clearly shows the overly-friendly relationship the two have with the real estate mogul.
Fox News Host, Bret Baier called the rest of the media out Thursday evening during his update of the story of the Marine assaulted and robbed by apparent Black Lives Matter supporters. “The story has received very little national attention, except on this channel.” Baier said of the media’s silence on the attack.
Andrea Mitchell decided to stump for Hillary Clinton Thursday afternoon on MSNBC by having reporter Jacob Soboroff, once again, pal around with Hillary’s volunteers as they try to get out the vote. Soboroff linked up with a Hillary volunteer in Nevada as she went door-to-door, but it was no average supporter of Hillary. “Jessica is one of scores of volunteers undocumented for the campaigns here, both Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton,” Soboroff reported.
The polarizing former George W. Bush speech writer, David Frum was on MSNBC Live Monday afternoon to share his thoughts about Donald Trump attacking his former boss. Frum argued that the GOP needs to reflect on the Bush years, and described the GOP as a repressed mental patient. “And in Freudian psychology, the theory was, you suffered a trauma, you repressed it, but you could never make it go away. The repression exhibited itself in hysterical behavior, and only -- the only way to deal with it was to bring to light what has been repressed.”
Joe Scarborough and the panelists on Monday’s Morning Joe sat down to discuss Saturday’s GOP debate. During the segment, some of Scarborough’s most stinging comments were not about any of the candidates on the stage, but about the crowd that attended the event. “I tell you what, that was a horrible debate. I know it was like the most watched but not only what was going on on stage. I'm sorry, the crowd, was offensive.”
MSNBC continued to push the narrative of Marco Rubio being the robotic GOP candidate on Tuesday, the day of the New Hampshire primary. During the network’s live coverage of the state’s primary, host Savannah Guthrie and Chuck Todd performed their rendition of 1980’s classic Mr. Roboto by the band Styx. “Domo arigato, Marco Roboto.” The hosts sang in unison.
Chris Matthews was on Morning Joe Monday to share his precious insight into the New Hampshire primary coming up on Tuesday. As part of his segment he was asked about how he would historically categorize Marco Rubio’s seemingly embarrassing debate performance the Saturday prior. “I put it with Blade Runner.” Matthews said.
Joe Scarborough held a fiesta on Friday’s Morning Joe and Senator Marco Rubio was their piñata. The host let his panelist take several good hits on the presidential candidate on the topic of his alleged inexperience. “So after the campaign had all day to figure out what his big accomplishment was, what was his big accomplishment? What did he come up with on the list?”
If you’re a Hillary Clinton fan Thursday’s Morning Joe could help you get your fix of the presidential candidate. Joe Scarborough brought on Joe Klein to talk about his new pro-Hillary piece in Time magazine. Klein’s kind words about Hillary allowed Scarborough to reminisce about his days in congress and what thought about the then First Lady. “I looked at the First Lady under siege and she stood up there and she was clapping and smiling and I thought to myself, damn, that may be one of the strongest people I've ever seen in my life.”
The panelists on Morning Joe got a chance to ask questions of presidential candidate Bernie Sanders on Wednesday, after his strong showing in the Iowa Caucus. The panelists asked fair questions of the candidate such as how he plans to draw in older voters. But Mika Brzezinski, a known Hillary Clinton supporter, couldn’t help but grill Sanders with Hillary’s talking points about his campaign:
Iowa is known for having voters make last minute decisions on caucus day. Andrea Mitchell kept audiences on the edge of their seats while chronicling this internal conflict in one Democrat sophomore college student, Gabe Schabilion. Well the wait is finally over! Gabe announced his final decision on Monday afternoon: “I’ll actually be caucusing for Hillary.”