Campaigns & Elections

MSNBC host Joy Reid and guest Elie Mystal on Saturday openly connived about the best way to "get to" Trump. They concluded that it would be to "go after" Ivanka. Gloated Mystal: "this is the first time that we have Ivanka . . . in the crosshairs . . . The only way we're really going to get to Trump is if you go after his kids . . . And this [going after Ivanka] could be the way to do it."

On Morning Joe, Donny Deutsch describes President Trump as "pathetic" and "defanged," going from being a "malignant cancer" to a "benign cancer." And so it is for the cast of Morning Joe. No matter how they might have denounced President Trump the day before, as the sun rises they are forced to begin yet again their labor of trying to take Trump down. 

On Wednesday’s Hardball, two separate MSNBC panelists suggested that not only did then-candidate Donald Trump’s hush money payments to Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal “[rob] the American people of their right to vote,” but that he was not a “democratically elected” President because of them and possible collusion with the Russians.

They were a little late to the game but during Wednesday’s CBS Evening News, the network used Democratic Party talking points to stoke fears of a Republican Party power grab in the state of Michigan. And as with their network competitors (ABC and NBC), they too offered little explanation of exactly how the GOP was threatening Democratic power.

Appearing on MSNBC, Richard Painter, who in 2018 ran as a Democrat for a US Senate seat from Minnesota, declared that President Trump's "goose is cooked," and that he should seek a plea deal and resign from the presidency. 

Turning on the tube this morning, you had to wonder whether you were actually watching Morning Joe, or a rerun of Saturday Night Live's satire of Mika Brzezinski's histrionics on the show. The doubt arose because Mika gave an exceptionally emotional performance that seemed like a virtual parody of the parody. As others spoke, Mika made a series of excited interjections.

Guest hosting for Ari Melber on his MSNBC show The Beat, Yasmin Vossoughian was speaking to Texas Democratic Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee when she appeared to question whether Democrats would be patriotic if they don't impeach President Trump: "Congresswoman, are Democrats putting country first by not pursuing impeachment?"

On his MSNBC show, Hardball, Chris Matthews suggests that it would be a "witch hunt . .  . to impeach a President for his sexual misconduct, even if it is illegal."

Morning Joe began the week reveling in President Trump's problems, with Donny Deutsch saying that the President's predicament is just "the tip of the iceberg" and insisting more than once that Trump will pay "for the rest of his life."

On CNN's New Day on Sunday, Michael Moore, a former Obama-appointed U.S. and Democrat state senator in Georgia, boasted: "you're hearing sort of the death rattle of this presidency, of this administration. I don't know that we need to call the undertaker yet, but it's certainly time to pick out the cemetery."

To offer a different interpretation, reader WKRP took the view that McQuade was not suggesting that President Trump be stripped of his citizenship, but that he be removed from office if he obtained the presidency via fraud. If indeed that's what McQuade meant, she found a roundabout means of saying so. But this writer acknowledges this as a plausible alternative interpretation of her remark.

While invoking the passing of former President George H. W. Bush, CNN International and PBS host Christiane Amanpour fretted on Thursday’s show that “[a]s President Bush One is laid to rest, one of the Senate’s true moderates heads home in defeat,” blaming it on “conservative dark money,” “negative ads,” and a refusal by voters to accept McCaskill’s manufactured image as someone right down the…

Friday at the Hot Topics table, the hosts of The View argued with Utah Republican, Rep. Mia Love, pressuring her to call President Trump a racist, after he blamed her critical stance towards him as the reason why she lost to her Democrat challenger in the midterm elections. Love didn’t fold under the pressure from the liberal hosts, instead calling out Democrats for targeting her because she is a…

Participating in a panel discussion for the Recode Decode podcast with fellow NBC News colleagues Chuck Todd and Hallie Jackson, on Wednesday, Andrea Mitchell told host Kara Swisher that two of the reasons for Hillary Clinton’s defeat in the 2016 presidential election were “gaslighting” from the Trump campaign and “the unfairness of the media.”