‘Morning Joe’ hosts eviscerate ‘sick in the head’ NRA for targeting Obama’s kids

By David Edwards/Raw Story

The hosts of MSNBC’s Morning Joe on Wednesday ripped into the National Rifle Association (NRA) for using President Barack Obama’s daughters in an advertisement opposing new gun safety measures.

On Tuesday, the pro-gun lobbying group sparked outrage by releasing an ad calling Obama an “elitist hypocrite” for opposing guns in schools while allowing his own daughters to be protected by armed bodyguards. The ad comes one month after 20 children were gunned down at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, and just days after the NRA released a first-person shooting game for Apple’s iPhone and iPad targeted at children as young as four.

After reviewing the ad on Wednesday, MSNBC contributor Mike Barnicle immediately denounced it as “political pornography.”

“What’s wrong with these people, Mika?” MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough asked co-host Mika Brzezinski. “You have children who had no say in the decision in whether their father, who is going to step forward to be president of the United States, to run for president — one of the most bone-crushing, sacrificing things any husband or wife can do to their family. And the second they make that decision, their children and their entire family have targets on their backs.”

“And the NRA is putting something out?” he continued. “What’s wrong with these people? Putting out apps that 4 year olds can play on the anniversary of the Newtown murders and now putting out an ad talking about the president’s daughters.”

“They are out of step, out of the mainstream, totally out of sync with what’s going on in our society and, quite frankly after seeing that, I think that some of the people who run that thing are sick,” Brzezinski agreed. “I really do. I think they are sick in the head. And I’m serious. I’m embarrassed right now. I’m embarrassed for our country, that we have a section of society, the NRA, which should have a voice certainly trying to protect a constitutional amendment. I understand that. There’s a really legitimate debate there, [but] they just took it, they just brought it down to the lowest, most base level. I don’t even want to — it’s now fringe.”

“They are now a fringe organization with millions of mainstream Americans, gun, hunting guys and women that love to hunt,” Scarborough noted.

“You should be embarrassed to be part of the NRA at this point,” Brzezinski insisted. “I was even going to try and understand the people running to gun shops and loading up on these high-capacity weapons, assault weapons and magazines. I was willing to understand this debate and understand their fear of laws changing and try and discuss it on this show, but after seeing that, honestly, I’m done. They’re done. This ad is the final straw.”

“It can’t be a real ad!” Scarborough exclaimed.

“That’s so sick,” Brzezinski lamented. “That’s some sick person that did it at home in their basement.”

“It’s just disgusting people,” CNBC host Donny Deutsch piled on. “It just gets to a point where it’s below human decency.”

“This is how they mark the anniversary of Newtown,” Scarborough sighed. “I’ve never seen an organization as out of touch and extreme with middle America as this one… The NRA’s worst enemy could not be doing the damage to this once-respected, mainstream organization as [NRA CEO] Wayne LaPierre is every single day.”

“I’m terrified,” Brzezinski concluded.

Watch this video from MSNBC’s Morning Joe, broadcast Jan. 16, 2013.

 

Scarborough repeatedly shouts ‘Benghazi!’ to block voter suppression talk

By David Edwards/Raw Story

Conservative MSNBC host Joe Scarborough on Monday attempted to shut down any talk of voter suppression by shouting “Benghazi! Benghazi! Benghazi!” over and over again to change the subject to the September attacks on Americans in Libya, a topic that Republicans believe hurts President Barack Obama.

During a discussion about the tight presidential race in Florida, co-host Mika Brzezinski attempted to point out that Republicans had restricted early voting, creating long lines and chaos for voters in some counties.

“You just feel like you have to finish with a story, Republicans bad, [Florida Gov.] Rick Scott bad, voting suppression,” Scarborough complained, throwing up his arms. “I have three words: Benghazi, Benghazi, Benghazi. I’m wandering around my ranch house muttering the words, ‘Benghazi.’ I mean, seriously, are we going here? Are we really going here?”

“But you know what?” Brzezinski attempted to continue. “We’ve had a…”

“Benghazi! Benghazi! Benghazi!” Scarborough interrupted.

“It’s absolutely a story,” NBC’s David Gregory said of the long voter lines.

“Benghazi’s a story,” Scarborough quipped.

“It’s something we have to watch very carefully,” Gregory added. “And by the way, I think the Benghazi issue, I think there are real questions about Benghazi. There are serious questions… well, he brought it up!”

“Why do you want to cover up Benghazi?” Scarborough shouted, pointing at MSNBC.com executive editor Richard Wolffe. “Benghazi! Benghazi! Benghazi!”

“Is the voter story I just read a story?” Brzezinski asked Republican strategist Steve Schmidt.

“Benghazi, Benghazi,” Scarborough muttered as Schmidt tried to answer.

“I mean, kind of,” the Republican strategist admitted. “Is it possible a local elections officials in Florida screwed up the early voting? Yes. Is it part of some big, giant Republican conspiracy out there? Absolutely not.”

“So what happened in Benghazi?” Scarborough said.

“I think we can all agree, Republicans and Democrats — whatever your preference — they all should be able to vote,” Wolffe explained. “Those lines are offensive wherever they are, whoever’s responsible. Lines should not happen for several hours just to allow people to do that.”

“I agree,” Scarborough replied. “Just like I agree that we really need to get to the bottom of what happened in Benghazi.”

Watch this video from MSNBC’s Morning Joe, broadcast Nov. 5, 2012.

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Scarborough cries ‘Oh, sweet Jesus!’ as Romney fails to lead chant

By David Edwards/Raw Story

Conservative MSNBC host Joe Scarborough cried out for his Savior on Wednesday after viewing video of Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney awkwardly trying to get a crowd in Ohio to chant his name.

After Romney gave a shout out to his running mate, Paul Ryan, in Vandalia, Ohio on Tuesday, the crowd got excited and began chanting, “Ryan! Ryan!”

“Wait a second,” Romney said, reminding the crowd that he was at the top of the ticket.

Romney-Ryan, Romney-Ryan,” the former governor instructed the crowd, although most of them ignored him. “There we go.”

After co-host Mika Brzezinski played the video on Wednesday, Scarborough could only put his hands over his eyes and utter, “Oh, sweet Jesus.”

“What do the Catholics say? ‘Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us now in the hour of [death]‘?” the conservative host wondered.

“No, it’s over,” Brzezinski pointed out. “It’s not going to work. It’s too late for that.”

“You know what? You don’t fix it,” Scarborough agreed. “Sadly, I say this about Mitt Romney, he’s a great man. He is. He’s a great father. He’s a great husband. He is a great business man, great turnaround guy. If I had a business anywhere in the world, I’d have him run it. He just — he’s a horrible politician. He’s one of the worst.”

Watch this video from MSNBC’s Morning Joe, broadcast Sept. 26, 2012.

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Scarborough: I’m tired of Republicans being the ‘Stupid Party’

By David Ferguson/Raw Story

On Tuesday’s edition of “Morning Joe,” host Joe Scarborough vented his frustration with Missouri Rep. Todd Akin (R)’s refusal to drop out of the race for U.S. Senate and said that he’s tired of his party being the “Stupid Party.” Akin is the Republican congressman who said in an interview earlier this week that a woman’s body can stop conception in the instance of a “legitimate rape,” thus obviating a need for exemptions from abortion restrictions for the victims of rape and incest.

On Monday, Scarborough said that Akin was evidence of a Republican party that had placed ideology ahead of actual electability and fitness to govern. On Tuesday, with Akin (thus far) refusing to get out of the race, Scarborough made it clear that, to his thinking, the mortally wounded Akin campaign could be spoiling the chances for Republicans to take the majority of seats in the Senate.

“Congressman Akin, you’re in denial,” said Scarborough as if he were addressing Akin, “You’re gonna lose if you stay in the race. And, by the way, your loss could make the difference between a Supreme Court justice that could make all the difference in the issues you claim you care about and having a Barack Obama fifth appointee for majority. So you think about that today when you do your little commercial. And think about destroying the Republican majority. Good on ya.”

Akin’s campaign released a commercial this morning apologizing for the remarks, but vowing to stay in the race against incumbent Sen. Claire McCaskill (D), who has been down in the polls against Akin in recent weeks.

Scarborough had praise for his party, however for uniting in condemning Akin’s remarks, which have touched off a firestorm on both sides of the party aisle. “Even Hannity” has spoken out against the controversial statements, which apparently is the panel’s Maginot Line that defines the edge of acceptable Republican discourse. If even Hannity turns up his nose at what you’ve said, then you’ve truly jumped the tracks of credulity and should probably rethink how your remarks and your refusal to leave the race are affecting your party.

Scarborough said that he’s less interested in the question of whether or not the Republican Party should be a moderate or a conservative party, “I’m just tired of the Republican Party being the ‘Stupid Party!’” he said, “Stupid people saying stupid things and scaring off independent voters and swing voters!”

We wish former Rep. Scarborough (R-FL) luck with that. It may be asking rather a lot from today’s GOP.

Watch the clip, embedded via MSNBC, below:

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Scarborough: Is Romney going to apologize for West’s ‘Communist’ remarks?

By David Edwards/Raw Story

Conservative MSNBC host Joe Scarborough on Friday said there was “inconsistency” because President Barack Obama has been forced to renounce a Democratic cable pundit’s comments about Ann Romney but Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney has not apologized after Rep. Allen West (R-FL) accused 81 House Democrats of belonging to the Communist Party.

In the past 24 hours, President Barack Obama, First Lady Michelle Obama, Vice President Joe Biden and other Democrats have all spoken out in defense of Ann Romney after Democratic CNN contributor Hilary Rosen asserted that Ann Romney “never worked a day in her life.”

But as Scarborough noted on Friday, no Republican — including Romney — has disputed West’s recent claim that up to 81 House Democrats were secretly members of the Communist Party.

“When are we going to get the apology from Mitt Romney for Allen West, a congressman who compares — or says 80 Democrats are Communists?” the MSNBC host asked Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan. “I’m not carrying the Democratic card right now, I’m just saying this seems a bit overblown.”

“You’ve got the gender wars that have been going on for the past few weeks,” Noonan explained. “And I wouldn’t say it was the Republicans who started the gender wars, who started the whole trope of the war against women.”

Scarborough then posed the question to former Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele: “Shouldn’t Mitt Romney distance himself from a sitting United States congressman who is connected to the Republican Party, who is connected to Mitt Romney, who is connected to the Washington establishment — an elected member of Congress who said 78 to 81 Democrats are Communists?”

“I don’t know,” Steele stuttered. “I don’t know because I don’t think it’s worth it!”

“You don’t know if Mitt Romney should condemn a sitting congressman that says 78 to 81 members of the Democratic Party in the House of Representatives are Communists?” Scarborough pressed.

“Well, I mean, why should he condemn them?” Steele replied.

“Why should he condemn them!” Scarborough exclaimed. “He’s comparing 78 to 81 public servants in the Unites States House of Representatives — are saying are part of a movement that were responsible for the death of over a 100 million people in the 20th century.”

“The Hillary Rosen thing and the Allen West thing, they are two separate things,” Noonan insisted. “I think it odd that you are connecting them.”

“Here we have a cable news pundit that has shut down the political discourse over the past 24 hours, when a sitting United States congressman says something deeply, deeply offensive and no Republican has spoken out against that,” Scarborough shouted. “Does nobody see there is a little bit on inconsistency here, Peggy? Do you distance yourself from Allen West’s comments?”

“I don’t have to distance myself, Joe,” Noonan shot back. “You are being mischievous. … [I]t did hearken back to an unfortunate time in our history when a senator from Wisconsin stood up and I believe there were 200 to 205 Communists in the State Department. It’s silly. It’s way past 50 years ago.”

“I forget where we are,” she added. “Look, the Democrats opened a front. They opened it mischievously about a month ago. They just got nailed for fighting in part of the front. Fine. Let it go.”

Watch to the video below from MSNBC’s Morning Joe, broadcast on April 13, 2012.

Scarborough: ‘Michele Bachmann is a joke

By David Edwards/Raw Story

Conservative MSNBC host Joe Scarborough Thursday tore into the base of the Republican Party in Iowa for pushing Michele Bachmann, someone who is “never going to get close winning the presidential nomination.”

“Michele Bachmann’s first answer was, I wish the federal government had defaulted,” Scarborough recalled Bachmann saying during Thursday night’s Republican debate. “Had defaulted! A week after Americans lost — some of them perhaps lost half of their pensions. Lost half of their 401ks. When trillions of dollars went down the drain with Americans suffering, she said that and got applause.”

“If anybody thinks that guys like my dad are going to be voting that way… they are out of their mind and they are too stupid not only to prognosticate, they are too stupid to run Slurpee machines in Des Moines… Michele Bachmann is a joke. She is a joke. Her answer is a joke. Her candidacy is a joke… Iowa, if you let her win, you prove your irrelevance once again.”

Watch this video from MSNBC’s Morning Joe, broadcast Aug. 12, 2011.

MSNBC suspends Scarborough over donations to GOP

By Daniel Tencer

MSNBC has suspended morning host Joe Scarborough after he admitted to having made eight previously undisclosed donations to the campaigns of Republican candidates.

Scarborough and MSNBC management agreed to the two-day hiatus after Politico reporter Kenneth P. Vogel asked for comment about five donations Scarborough had made to political candidates. Scarborough admitted to making the donations, as well as three others.

Scarborough apologized for the donations, but said they were not meant to have a political agenda and were simply him "being kind to longtime friends." Scarborough is a former Republican congressman.

The suspension comes two weeks after MSNBC suspended prime time host Keith Olbermann "indefinitely" over his donations to three Democratic candidates.

Though Olbermann was quickly reinstated, the suspension caused an outcry among Olbermann's progressive supporters, and sparked a debate over whether news commentators such as Olbermann and Scarborough should be held to the same journalistic standards as straight news reporters.

Under NBC guidelines, reporters can make donations to political campaigns but have to get permission from management first.

"To some, the suspension of Mr. Scarborough will simply underscore the strangeness of a policy that seeks to protect NBC’s journalistic integrity, but does not differentiate between news reporters and political commentators," notes the New York Times. "There is no love lost between Mr. Olbermann and Mr. Scarborough. But the two men may now find themselves agreeing about a new approach toward commentators’ donations at MSNBC."

MSNBC.com compiled a list earlier this year of journalists who have made campaign contributions. Scarborough's previously known donations, as well as those of several other MSNBC staffers, were listed.

Politico's Vogel reports:

Scarborough gave at least five separate previously unknown $500 contributions while serving as an MNBC host – all to Republican candidates to whom he was close who were running for state legislative seats in or near Scarborough’s hometown of Pensacola, Fla. After being contacted by POLITICO about the donations, Scarborough voluntarily disclosed three other $500 contributions to a friend running for county office in Florida.

In his own statement, Scarborough said that “despite the fact that these races were local and not relevant to my work at MSNBC I have been told they violated MSNBC guidelines,” and that he had agreed to the suspension.

“I recognize that I have a responsibility to honor the guidelines and conditions of my employment, and I regret that I failed to do so in this matter. I apologize to MSNBC and to anyone who has been negatively affected by my actions.”

Scarborough will be on suspension without pay Monday and Tuesday of next week, and will return to the air Wednesday.

Pence Can’t Think Of Any GOP Ideas That Are Different From Bush, Says Simply: We Are ‘Pro-Growth’

By Ben Armbruster

Yesterday at a fundraiser in Atlanta, President Obama took a jab at Republicans for failing to break away from President Bush and trying to “bamboozle” the American public. “It’s not like they’ve engaged in some heavy reflection,” he said. “They have not come up with a single, solitary, new idea to address the challenges of the American people. They don’t have a single idea that’s different from George Bush’s ideas – not one.”

Today on MSNBC, when host Joe Scarborough asked Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN) to differentiate today’s GOP from Bush, Pence couldn’t offer much in the way of specifics:

SCARBOROUGH: Give Americans listening to you today a vision for America that is different from the vision that George W. Bush had for America because their argument is you guys are all just George Bush clones.

PENCE: … The vision for Republicans going forward is to produce pro-growth tax policies that will get this economy moving again. But to really practice what we preach about fiscal discipline and entitlement reform. … We can have pro-growth tax relief going forward but we’ve got to get back to basic spending discipline and the principles of limited government.

Despite Pence’s generalizations of “fiscal discipline,” Scarborough seemed convinced. “That is a radical difference from what Republicans did from 2001 to 2008,” he said. Watch it:

For starters, like Pence, President Bush was also good at delivering similar sweeping, non-specific rhetoric:

– “I also had a good discussion today…about how we can kind of get away from all the distractions that tend to dominate Washington and focus on a pro-growth agenda for this fall.” [9/07/01]

– “Social Security reform, entitlement reform is an important topic.” [10/16/04]

– “You have to have some fiscal discipline if you want to balance the federal budget, and that’s what I’m asking Congress to do.” [2/06/07]

Moreover, a new CAPAF report out today notes that the GOP agenda out of the Republican Study Committee — of which Pence is a member — is a mirror image of the Bush years. Their “Economic Freedom Act” calls for more deficit funded tax cuts and will cost a whopping $10 trillion and their ideas to pay for it will cover less than 5 percent of the total cost. Sixty-one percent of the tax benefits will go to the richest 1 percent of households while the average middle-class tax payer’s tax cut will be paltry in comparison to the richest one pecent.

Writing in the New York Times today, David Stockman, President Reagan’s director of the Office of Management and Budget, agrees. “If there were such a thing as Chapter 11 for politicians, the Republican push to extend the unaffordable Bush tax cuts would amount to a bankruptcy filing,” he said.

As the President noted yesterday, the reality is that Republicans have yet to come up with a “single idea” that is different from Bush and as demonstrated by Pence’s comments this morning, they’re having a hard time disproving that.

Markos Moulitsas Banned From MSNBC After Twitter Feud With Joe Scarborough

Jack Mirkinson

A Twitter feud between blogger Markos Moulitsas and MSNBC host Joe Scarborough has resulted in Moulitsa's temporarily being banned from the network.

The trouble started on May 29, when Moulitsas, who runs the Daily Kos blog, took offense at a series of tweets from Scarborough, who co-hosts "Morning Joe," about the news that the White House had offered a job to Congressman Joe Sestak in an attempt to dissuade him from running for Senate. Scarborough wrote that:

The Sestak story is as unbelievable a cover story as Nixon throwing little Checkers under the bus. A farce on it's face. Luckily for the White House, the media has been negligent on this story since Day 1. The press will let this laughable story slide.

Writing on his blog, Moulitsas said that he felt Scarborough was inflating a non-story. So he shot back on his own Twitter feed, writing, "Like story of a certain dead intern," a reference to the death of Scarborugh's staffer, Lori Klausutis, in 2001, when Scarborough was still in Congress.

This only escalated the Twitter war. Scarborough fired back, writing, "Unbelieveable. You have a long history of spreading lies suggesting I am a murderer. This is the 3rd or 4th time by my count." Moulitsas responded, "I've never suggested you're a murderer. I've noted media hypocrisy in going after [Congressman] Gary Condit [whose intern, Chandra Levy, was murdered in 2001]. But he was Dem. You aren't."

The back-and-forth led MSNBC President Phil Griffin to email Moulitsas, telling him that the network would not be booking him on its shows for the time being:

After I became aware of the ugly cheap shot you took at Joe on Twitter, I asked the teams to take a break from booking you on our shows for a while. I found the comments to be in poor taste, and utterly uncalled for in a civil discourse. I'm hoping this will be only temporary and that the situation can be resolved in a mature fashion, but until then I just don't know how one could reasonably expect to be welcomed onto our network while publicly antagonizing one of our hosts at the same time.

On his blog, Moulitsas accused Griffin and MSNBC of catering to Scarborough because he is a conservative, saying that Scarborough "calls the shots" on the network. He also claimed to be "uncomfortable" on television, saying he would not miss his appearances too much.

Greg Sargent chimed in also casting doubt on Griffin's rationale.

"I don't recall the chief of MSNBC publicly banning Liz Cheney from appearing on the network when she cut an entire Web video 'publicly antagonizing' Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews for allegedly being too frightened to debate her about terrorism," Sargent wrote. "See, conservatives are expected to demonize the media, and can always count on being granted a platform by the same major networks they hammer publicly on a regular basis. It's all part of the game, get it? But it seems Markos got publicly dressed down and banned by the president of the network, no less, all because he got under Scarborough's skin with a few nasty little Tweets."

Scarborough rips conservatives for seeking ratings by scaremongering about Obama’s education speech.

By Matt Corley

Earlier today, ThinkProgress noted that conservatives are freaking out over President Obama’s upcoming speech to schoolchildren about “persisting and succeeding in school,” claiming that it is actually aimed at political indoctrination. On MSNBC’s Morning Joe today, host Joe Scarborough ripped into the hyperventilating conservatives. “Seriously, why don’t we want the president of the United States, any president of the United States, delivering the message to kids: work hard, stay in school, succeed,” said Scarborough, adding, “get your ratings if you want, you’re just screwing your political party.” Watch it: