During the Wednesday edition of Morning Joe, host Joe Scarborough observed that “nobody” was expecting Republican hopeful Mitt Romney to beat President Obama in 2012. “Nobody thinks Romney’s going to win,” Scarborough said candidly. “Let’s just be honest. Can we just say this for everybody at home? Let me just say this for everybody at home.”

Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough refuses to believe that Mitt Romney actually read and enjoyed The Hunger Games series. Refuses! And, moreover, he can’t believe Romney would take his young grandchildren to see “a movie where teenagers are hunted down and killed.” “He did not read the books,” Scarborough insisted. “We know he is not [...]

The Rev. Al Sharpton stopped by Morning Joe on Wednesday to speak in depth about the case of Trayvon Martin, the 17-year-old who had been shot to death by a self-appointed community watchman named George Zimmerman. After noting that Zimmerman had made over 40 calls to 911, the group focused on whether Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” law holds up in this particular case, as well as whether local Sanford, Florida authorities have been handling this case properly.

On Wednesday, the Morning Joe crew took a look back at Tuesday night’s Illinois primary, wondering whether Mitt Romney‘s win in the state — and Newt Gingrich‘s rare round of compliments for his Republican rival — might signal the beginning of the end for Rick Santorum.

On Tuesday, the Morning Joe crew took a moment to discuss comments Karen Santorum made about her husband’s stance on social issues — particularly contraception — on last night’s edition of Piers Morgan Tonight. You’ll recall that, yesterday, host Mika Brzezinski had asked Rick Santorum whether his campaign had gotten “sidetracked” by focusing on contraception. [...]

On Monday’s edition of Morning Joe, GOP presidential hopeful Rick Santorum vented some of his frustration at the media’s propensity to focus on certain issues — like contraception — after being asked about that very topic by host Mika Brzezinski.

On Monday’s Morning Joe, Joe Scarborough went on a long jeremiad about the direction of the War in Afghanistan, disagreeing with many of the Republican presidential candidates’ arguments about what “winning” the war meant. “Headline for all Republicans and Democrats that want to continue to fight this war, we won the war.” Scarborough exclaimed. “It was an anti-terror campaign. We went in to get Osama bin Laden. We went in to break up al Qaeda in Afghanistan where they launched the 9/11 attacks. We killed them. We routed them. We destroyed them. We didn’t go in to beat the Taliban. The Taliban is a different thing. Very different thing than al Qaeda. The Taliban doesn’t want to blow up buildings in Washington, DC, or New York or Charlotte or Atlanta. They want to be left alone to run their country by second century standards. We should let them.”

Talk show host and author Tavis Smiley stopped by the set of MSNBC’s Morning Joe on Friday, where he was taken back by one particular aspect of Rep. Paul Ryan‘s commercial on the House Budget Committee, which shows the Congressman walking down a hallway and discussing the nation’s budget crisis while noting that he had been “here, in Congress.”

On Friday, the team at Morning Joe discussed newly-revealed information about the American staff sergeant accused of opening fire on Afghan civilians, including his lawyer’s assertion that he had been going through marital difficulties and had been given news that his close friend had been gravely injured merely a day before the shooting. The soldier, [...]

On Thursday, the Morning Joe team took a look back on yesterday afternoon’s America Live interview with Mitt Romney, where host Megyn Kelly explained that she had to cut off the GOP presidential hopeful at the end of a segment due to an encroaching “hard break.” While they had mixed feelings concerning some of the responses Romney had given during the interview (panelist Donny Deutsch rather amusingly noted that Romney doesn’t “lean forward”), they seemed to be most taken aback by how the interview ended.

On Wednesday, Morning Joe host Mika Brzezinski took a look at Maureen Dowd‘s New York Times column. Could the discussion surrounding women and contraception open up a path for Hillary Clinton in ’16?

Former McCain senior campaign strategist Steve Schmidt sat down with MSNBC’s Morning Joe Monday morning and spoke candidly on his role in the 2008 campaign, saying HBO’s Game Change was largely true. “I think it was very accurate,” Schmidt acknowledged and admitted he was reckless in helping pick Sarah Palin as the Vice Presidential nominee. “I think the notion of Sarah Palin being President of the United States is something that frightens me, frankly.”

Liberal distaste for former Sen. Rick Santorum has blinded many of them to his fundamental appeal as a presidential candidate, but former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean gets it. In assessing the GOP primary race on Thursday morning’s Morning Joe, he made the observation that, while Mitt Romney has long been seen as the most formidable challenger to President Obama‘s reelection, “I almost fear Santorum more, because he actually can connect with people. I think he would be tough for us, much tougher than I would have thought, given his positions.”

Lack of sleep can make anyone go a little batty. Seasoned broadcast veteran Tom Brokaw appeared on MSNBC’s Morning Joe and did a hilarious impression of one of Mitt Romney‘s trademark facial tics — the “white man overbite.” Prior to Brokaw’s imitation, the other panelists were discussing what the Republican hopeful had to do to corral conservative supporters.

On a Super Tuesday edition of MSNBC’s Morning Joe, Joe Scarborough lit into Republican hopeful Mitt Romney for his various stances on individual mandates.

“What does it say about a candidate, though, who wrote an op-ed in 2009 saying that, please apply what we did in Massachusetts nationally on an individual mandate, and then goes on the campaign trail yesterday and just lies?”

Bill Keller, former executive editor of the New York Times, paid a visit to Morning Joe on Tuesday. The panel discussed Rick Santorum‘s controversial remarks about the separation of church and state and his take on freedom of religion. Much of this rhetoric, Keller said, is a fear tactic — similar to how Newt Gingrich warned us about Muslims and Sharia law.

On Tuesday, the Morning Joe crew was discussing, of course, the Michigan primary. The conversation took an interesting turn as they talked about Mitt Romney‘s prospects should he lose in his home state, and how this primary might play out. Mark Halperin insisted Romney would remain a frontrunner, but brought up another angle: Romney’s fate if Super Tuesday turns out to be a disaster.

On Tuesday’s edition of Morning Joe, Joe Scarborough was flabbergasted over the choices in the GOP field, in particular Rick Santorum.

“He’s not just offending left-wingers in Manhattan and Georgetown, he’s offending conservative right-wing women that have never voted for Democrats in their life!”

On Monday morning, Morning Joe‘s Mika Brzezinski weighed in on GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney‘s recent economic speech at a mostly-empty Ford Field stadium in Detroit, Michigan by opining that “there’s something wrong with his people.”

Remember Tim Pawlenty? Once upon a time, when the GOP field was a lot more crowded, he had his bid for the Republican nomination. That chapter, of course, is now closed. But on Friday, Pawlenty paid a visit to Morning Joe and discussed everything from third-party candidates to the supposed “back room deal” between Mitt Romney and Ron Paul. A bromance that, according to him, definitely doesn’t exist.

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie was seemingly surprised — at least at first — when plucky Washington Post columnist Jonathan Capehart appeared on Morning Joe and held his feet to the fire over his decision to veto same-sex marriage, or, as Capehart saw it, putting civil rights up for a referendum.

Columbia University professor Jeffrey Sachs and Joe Scarborough went after each other over Newt Gingrich SuperPAC funder Sheldon Adelson, devolving into a shouting match. “He’s a completely, by the way, unlikable guy,” Sachs said of Adelson. “And do we need major gambling influence and guy has played all over the world with governments so he gets the licenses and charges up and down as a core leader of our politics? Come on!”

On Tuesday, MSNBC host Andrea Mitchell stopped by Morning Joe, where she looked back on the “great right-wing conspiracy’s” treatment of Bill and Hillary Clinton. Early on, Bill Clinton, Mitchell explained, defined himself as the “comeback kid,” partially thanks to his ability to not bow down to the anger and the “vicious” nature of the [...]

Yesterday’s Democratic walkout at a House hearing on the Obama administration’s contraception mandate, which featured an all-male panel of witnesses, has become the latest rallying point in the culture war over women’s healthcare. On Friday morning’s Morning Joe, fill-in hosts Willie Geist and Mike Barnicle were not about to let that stand, and convened a vagina-free panel to discuss it, leading to this stunning screenshot:

On Friday morning, Morning Joe panelist Donny Deutsch decided to get to the bottom of one of life’s great unanswered questions, as inspired by GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney: What is the perfect height for a tree? While in Michigan yesterday — a state where, as many of you know, his father had been Governor [...]