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Donald Trump finally said something that shook the Republican establishment out of its self-induced stupor over his presidential candidacy. “He’s a war hero because he was captured,” the loudmouth from New York said about Sen. John McCain, Vietnam War veteran and prisoner of war, at a GOP cattle call in Iowa on Saturday. “I like people that weren’t captured.” That’s rich coming from a billionaire who received five deferments from military service during the Vietnam War. Meanwhile, McCain, who refused early release, was held captive and tortured in a North Vietnam prison for five-and-a-half years. Anyone who aspires to be...

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) —Donald Trump might be a presidential candidate mired in an ongoing national controversy, but he still makes time to offer feedback to newspaper columnists. This time, the scribe who drew Trump's ire was the Washington Post's Jonathan Capehart, who called out the billionaire's "baldly racist xenophobia" in a column earlier this week. In response, Trump sent Capehart, who is African American, a handwritten note: "Jonathan - You are the racist, not I," Trump wrote. "Get rid of your 'hate.'"

Bill Kristol has supported the removal of the Confederate flag from the South Carolina capitol grounds for 15 years. But when he took to Twitter yesterday to criticize the left's "frenzy of self-righteousness" in the wake of Charleston, he brought down on his head a deluge of ugly criticism. On today's Morning Joe, Jonathan Capehart and John Heilemann eschewed the kind of scatalogical suggestions that had been made to Kristol on Twitter, but engaged in a barrage of criticism of their own. Capehart accused Kristol of "belittling" the families of the Charleston victims, while Heilemann—telling Kristol he was "trolling"—sarcastically said...

I realize we’ve been hitting the South Carolina shooting and the disgusting, racist criminal who allegedly perpetrated the murders rather often since yesterday morning. Unfortunately, nothing as serious and tragic as this can unfold in America today without immediately becoming mired in multiple levels of political muck, generally before the first facts are even verified. In this case, the process continued well into the evening and will surely roll forward in the weeks to come. One aspect of the church shooting, however, seemed to offer at least a slim ray of hope in an otherwise dismal day. A consortium of...

In the 45-minute “festival of narcissism” that was Donald Trump’s rambling presidential announcement, one particularly nasty passage proved him to be a menace to the Republican Party. It was the one about Mexican immigrants. The U.S. has become a dumping ground for everybody else’s problems. [Applause] Thank you. It’s true, and these are the best and the finest. When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re not sending you. They’re not sending you. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And...

In discussing the scandal engulfing former House speaker Dennis Hastert, who is due in court this week, one thing must be made absolutely clear. What he is alleged to have done to young boys has absolutely nothing to do with being gay or gay rights. * Almost immediately after the news broke of Hastert’s indictment, folks looked to Congress for signs of hypocrisy. Former representative Barney Frank (D-Mass.), who is gay, made an assertion during an appearance on Huffington Post Live last Monday that was flat-out inappropriate. “Dennis Hastert twice as speaker tried to get the house to pass a...

Washington Post columnist Jonathan Capehart is now experiencing that traditional “Come to Jesus moment”: that instance where he’s discovered the left is not interested in opinions that differ from a given narrative. In fact, if you are black and you stray, you are fair game for any and all vitriol issued. Specifically, when it comes to the whole Michael Brown-was-shot-in-the-back-while-having-his-hands-up-and-saying-“Don’t-shoot” that led to dominant social media hashtags, protests in cities around the country, and a movement that has united progressive and/or anarchist factions, it was all based on a lie.

From a shining city on a hill and Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall, to terrible deeds in the name of Christ and terrorists' legitimate grievances. The chasm between Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama when it comes to their views of America and the world could hardly be wider. But on today's Up With Steve Kornacki, when the host asked the Washington Post's Jonathan Capehart whether President Obama talks and thinks about America differently from Reagan [and Clinton and Carter], Capehart emphatically replied "No. Rudy Giuliani is lying." View the video here.

Jonathan Capehart, liberal Washington Post columnist and MSNBC contributor, happens to be black and he thinks Kwanzaa is sort of a crock. Kwanzaa is the African-centric celebratory season taking place between Christmas and the New Year, originally created by a guy who lived in Maryland. The “holiday” receives a lot of marketing attention for politically correct reasons but very few black Americans actually observe it. Capehart writes:

Forget about voting record or positions on policy. What really counts for Jonathan Capehart of the Washington Post is knowing how to properly perform a dance step. Or at least he hopes that will be the secret to electoral success for Senator Mary Landrieu whose voting record such as supporting Obamacare has made her unpopular in Louisiana. The dance step Capehart is referring to is called the "Wobble." Here is Capehart gushing over Landrieu's ability at performing a Wobble and hoping that it will help with her re-election:

The Post articles on the House Republican revolt over the border bill and and the role Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) played in making it happen have nuggets of information that show why I’ve been harping about the possibility of  impeachment since June.As the article on the revolt notes, Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and his allies said they had the votes to pass a border bill that not only speeded up deportations but also had a $659 million price tag, which was considerably less than the $3.7 billion President Obama asked for. And then the bill was pulled from the floor...

Liberals often say they’re big on tolerance, but apparently tolerance must flow only one way – toward liberals and their favored identity groups. So says MSNBC contributor Jonathan Capehart. Appearing as a guest on Monday’s The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell, Capehart rebuffed the idea ... [T]olerance, no, is not – it should not be a two-way street. It's a one-way street. ... That’s the perfect encapsulation of liberalism – they will make you to understand that you are wrong and they are right. You will tolerate whoever they like, but as for you – tough luck. If you don’t...

The Obama administration’s indictment of critic Dinesh D’Souza on campaign finance law violations is a reminder that it’s dangerous to be in the opposition when the president is a lawless strongman who knows the media will protect him no matter what. Democratic malefactors remained at large on Friday as D’Souza pleaded not guilty to charges that he directed two individuals to each make $10,000 donations to the campaign of Wendy Long, an unsuccessful Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate, on the understanding he would reimburse them, which he did not long after.The court in New York reportedly imposed unusually tough...

On Morning Joe today, Jonathan Capehart hailed the loud protest in the Texas Capitol gallery by pro-abortion rights advocates—which prevented the state senate from voting on a pro-life bill—as an example of "democracy in action." Joe Scarborough countered that if pro-life protesters had done the same, people on MSNBC and elsewhere would be calling them an "angry, unruly mob." Interestingly, New York Times reporter Jeremy Peters agreed with Scarborough, saying he was "absolutely right." Capehart had no rebuttal. View the video here.

On Sean Hannity's Fox News Channel program Tuesday night, while discussing same-sex marriage, Dr. Ben Carson made the point that if we change the definition of marriage for homosexuals, what's to stop NAMBLA or those into bestiality from demanding the same. The media, which is always ready to destroy any black man who dares think for himself, uniformly pounced today. In response to the manufactured uproar, the soft-spoken Carson (who was a hero to the left until he came out as a conservative), did the interview rounds on cable Friday, including Andrea Mitchell's show on MSNBC and Wolf Blitzer's on...

Seriously: of all editorial writers at the nation's major newspapers, could the Washington Post's Jonathan Capehart be the least conversant with the Constitution? Back in August, we caught Capehart admitting to his unfamiliarity with Enumerated Powers Clause. On today's Morning Joe, Capehart's Constitutional confusion was on display again. Discussing the Supreme Court's possible overturning of DOMA, Capehart complained that it looked like the Court was headed toward doing so not in reliance on equal protection, but on the basis of states' rights, which Capehart called "a legal technicality." Tenth Amendment much, Mr. Capehart? View the video here.

Sure, you might be cool with Barack Obama calling up a drone strike on an American citizen. But don't forget: a Republican [shudder!] could become President! That was the Washington Post editorialist Jonathan Capehart's warning to Donny Deutsch when the ad-man-turned-pundit proclaimed he had no problem with the president, under desperate circumstances, ordering a drone strike against an American. View the video here.

Andrea Mitchell's Freudian slip was showing on her MSNBC show this afternoon. Mitchell's moment of unintentional honesty came during a discussion with Chris Cillizza of Joe Biden's ugly remark yesterday to a largely African-American audience that Mitt Romney would "put y'all back in chains." As noted here, Capehart defended Biden on Morning Joe today, claiming he had "nothing to apologize for." Mitchell, seeking faux balance, cited Capehart as having enumerated a number of supposedly racially-tinged remarks made by Republicans. Just one problem: Mitchell described Capehart as a "Democratic analyst." Oopsie! Surely a distinction without much of a difference, but Capehart's...

An animated opening segment on today's Morning Joe focused on the fallout from VP Joe Biden's remark to a largely African-American crowd yesterday that a Romney presidency would "put y'all back in chains." Washington Post editorialist Jonathan Capehart claimed Biden doesn't have "anything to apologize for." But earlier, Willie Geist opined that had Paul Ryan said such a thing, "there would be calls" for Ryan and Romney "to get out of the race." Taking the cluelessness cake, Mika Brzezinski found it inconceivable that Biden might have been playing the race card. View the video here.