Free Republic

The American foreign-policy establishment is wringing its collective hands over Donald Trump’s phone conversation with the President of Taiwan, and his subsequent tweet in which he took China to task for its currency devaluation, tariffs on American products, and military build-up in the South China Sea. But there was some surprising support for Trump’s initiative on today’s Morning Joe. First, Mark Halperin said this showed that Trump wasn’t planning to be a passive “inbox president” [Ed.: sayonara, leading from behind], and that it was a way for the US to get “leverage” on China where we had none before. Joe...

Want to understand the bubble in which the elite, liberal media lives? Check out the banner headline of today’s New York Times: “Democrats, Students and Foreign Allies Face the Reality of a Trump Presidency.” On today’s Morning Joe, Mark Halperin nailed it: “Look at the headline of this story. This is the day after a surprising underdog sweeping victory and their headline is not “disaffected Americans have a champion going to the White House” or “the country votes for fundamental change.” The headline is about how disappointed the friends of the people who run the New York Times are about...

The set of With All Due Respect was a sad place today due to the shocking revelation that the computer seized in the Anthony Weiner probe has caused FBI Director James Comey to announce that he is reopening the investigation into Hillary Clinton's emails. In addition to being irked at  Comey, Halperin and Heilemann seemed to be searching for lifeline assurances that this probe might soon go away and have little or no affect on the upcoming election in eleven days. Of course, the problem with that hope is that any news story involving Anthony Weiner is almost guaranteed to...

This Insurrectionist finds Mark Halperin to be among the most cautious and level-headed of pundits. The With All Due Respect host typically avoids wild speculation and is generally of the one-the-one-hand and on the other school of analysis. So it was striking that on today’s Morning Joe, Halperin, with some prodding from Joe Scarborough, suggested that Donald Trump might be planning a big October surprise in the nature of a “revelation” about Hillary Clinton. One sensed that Halperin had some inside knowledge of the situation, though all he mentioned in support of his theory is that Trump is surrounded by...

A few days ago, we reported on “Dr.” Joe Scarborough declaring that Hillary Clinton “doesn’t have” any health issues. On today’s Morning Joe, Scarborough took off his neurologist’s hat and put on the campaign consultant’s cap. Scarborough’s advice to Hillary: refuse to answer any more questions about her emails. According to Joe, Clinton should put her answer up on her website, refer journalists to it any time they try to probe her on the matter, and “move on” to a discussion of Syria. Mike Barnicle echoed Scarborough’s “move on” advice, suggesting Hillary say that if people are still concerned about...

Mike Murphy — who ran Jeb’s Super PAC — says that “if it came down to just my vote and I had to decide, I’d probably vote for Hillary and then jump in a lake out of massive depression.” Appearing on With All Due Respect, Murphy added that he hopes Trump doesn’t win because he’s “a demagogue and a neo-racist.” Murphy gave Trump a 10% black-swan shot of winning. View the video here.

Have you ever had somebody try to sell you on something but the pitch goes on and on and on with a complicated explanation which is almost impossible to understand? If you were smart, you would walk away with your hand on your wallet. Such was the case yesterday when Gene Sperling, Hillary Clinton's economic adviser, attempted to explain her economic policies on Bloomberg's With All Due Respect to hosts John Heilemann and Mark Halperin. His seemingly endless complex explanations seemed to frustrate the hosts until Heilemann asked Sperling to very briefly explain her economic policy. The result? Sperling went on another yet...

Thursday on Morning Joe, co-host Mika Brzezinski made a prediction about the presidential debates forthcoming this fall: Hillary Clinton will “slaughter” Donald Trump. The liberal host said this only moments after she expressed desire for a “nice, peaceful convention” for Democrats next week in Philadelphia, contrasted with the current Republican convention in Cleveland that she believes has been consumed with “horrible, despicable things.” Meet the Press moderator Chuck Todd began with a prediction of his own, that the DNC in Philadelphia is going to be “boring” and wondered what the Clinton folks are going to do “to make a little...

As Joseph Heller famously wrote in Catch-22, “just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t after you.” On today’s Morning Joe, Mark Halperin reported that GOP elites are indeed trying to “orchestrate” a “grassroots, organic” revolt against the presumptive nominee. An “orchestrated grassroots, organic” revolt? Oxymoron, anyone? Halperin went on to state “Trump is right: there are people plotting against him.” View the video here.

Oops! It was quite an amusing moment yesterday on Bloomberg's With All Due Respect when Mark Halperin corrected his co-host, John Heilemann, on delegate math history. As you can see in the video below starting at the 8:05 mark, Heilemann asserted that Donald Trump was not doing as well as he should be because at this point in the 2012 Republican primary, Mitt Romney already had enough delegates to lock up the nomination. Halperin then interjected to point out that Romney did not have the nomination locked up until much  later than now. The funniest thing about this exchange was the sheepish...

"Democrats often have the media on their side because of liberal bias." That sounds like a very common complaint among conservatives. However, that is exactly what liberal Mark Halperin stated yesterday on Bloomberg's With All Due Respect when he admitted the very obvious. This admission came during a discussion about how the Senate refusing to hold hearings on President Obama's nomination of Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court will supposedly help Democrats. In fact Halperin and co-host John Heileman were practically leaping for joy in their belief in how this issue will damage Republicans in the upcoming Senate elections. Perhaps it was...

Mark Halperin has ripped the MSM for its "outrageous" treatment of Bernie Sanders. Calling the media "lemmings," Halperin, seconded by John Heilemann, said on today's With All Due Respect, that the Hillary campaign has ginned up "faux outrage" over a number of Sanders' statements, and that the media has been "following it around," treating minor matters like "major contretemps." Halperin also had a warning for Republicans: 'just wait until a general election if Hillary Clinton is the nominee at how much faux outrage her campaign shows over whoever the Republicans nominate." That comes as no surprise, but still refreshing to...

Former Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney plans to bash Donald Trump in a speech Thursday, according to excerpts of the speech being passed around social media. In quoted remarks released by Bloomberg Politics editor Mark Halperin, Romney calls Trump "a phony, a fraud." "He's playing the American public for suckers: He gets a free ride to the White House and all we get is a lousy hat," Romney is expected to say. Romney, who recently has been publicly critical of Trump's campaign, announced Thursday's speech on Wednesday at the Hinckley Institute of Politics at the University of Utah in Salt...

I'm guessing most NewsBusters readers could care less about "diversity" when it comes to choosing Justices of the Supreme Court. That they'd be thrilled if all nine justices looked, for example, like Clarence Thomas--so long as all shared his philosophy of judicial restraint and original intent. On today's With All Due Respect, Mark Halperin interviewed Planned Parent president Cecile Richards. Richards declined to name someone she'd like to see nominated to the Court but did say she was "extremely grateful" for the addition to the Court of Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor. That prompted Halperin to observe: "regardless of ideology...

Let he who is without sin . . . throw the first punch? Today's With All Due Respect rapped the MSM for its extensive coverage of Donald Trump having said of an unruly protester "[I'd] like to punch him in the face." Lamented John Heilemann: "cable news is so often so crazily dumb." Just one problem. Before Heilemann and Halperin bemoaned the MSM's excessive coverage of the line . . . they opened the show by playing in its entirety the clip of Trump's pugilistic proclivity! Hypocrisy, anyone? Their point was that the media's fascination with Trump's antics makes it...

Talk about setting someone up to fail . . . Heading into a contest, politicians traditionally like to lower expectations. But Joe Scarborough has raised expectations for Marco Rubio almost to the roof. On today's Morning Joe, Scarborough repeatedly cited talk that if Marco Rubio doesn't finish second in the South Carolina primary, "he has to get out of the race." Chuckling through Joe's comments, Mark Halperin batted away talk of a less-than-second-place finish forcing Rubio out of the race: "with all due respect, that's one of the silliest things I've heard this cycle. Rubio needs to beat Bush here...

Any would-be Republican presidential candidate who had--hanging around his neck--all the scandals and investigations that surround Hillary Clinton, would likely not have the chutzpah to throw his hat into the ring. He would know that the MSM would create such a toxic environment that his candidacy would never have a chance of getting off the ground. And so it is somewhere between amusing and outrageous to hear Mark Halperin claim, as he did on today's With All Due Respect, that the press is "biased against" Hillary Clinton. Granted, Halperin did so in the context of discussing this evening's Dem debate...

‏@MarkHalperin: "My report card grades for the NH winners victory speeches: @realDonaldTrump A: v strong energy/close. @BernieSanders B+: went too long

**SNIP** "All of our sources high up are telling us... that this investigation is far more advanced than we the public knows," Scarborough said, before asking the panelists what information they're getting. "Well, there are three things that people are keying off of. First of all, there are a lot of chatter amongst FBI agents, many of whom have never been big fans of the Clintons. But a lot of FBI agents seem to be saying something is happening here," Bloomberg News analyst Mark Halperin said. "Second is from a legal point of view, you look at the recent developments...

With news of the death of Paul Kantner of Jefferson Airplane, let's take a line from another group of the late 60s, Buffalo Springfield: "there's something happening here." What it is ain't exactly clear, but it doesn't seem to bode well for Hillary Clinton. Today's Morning Joe featured an ominous exchange between Joe Scarborough and Mark Halperin. The notion was that a variety of sources--from a senior network exec, to top Obama admin officials, to FBI agents--are saying the same thing: the FBI investigation of Hillary is much further along than most people realize. Listen to Halperin: "the body language...