Morning Joe's panel ripped into Hillary Clinton Friday, calling the amount of lies in her explanation of the scathing Inspector-General report about her private emails "mind-boggling."
The panel added that using former Secretary of State Colin Powell as an excuse was not only "sad," but also "pathetic."
Clinton spoke on the controversy again Thursday after the IG report came out slamming her use of a private server.
"Well, I have talked about this for many, many months," she said. "I testified for 11 hours before the committee– the Benghazi Committee. I have answered numerous questions. We have posted information on our website and the information that we had is out there.
"It's been clearly public and my email use was widely known in the department throughout the government and I have provided all of my work-related emails and I've asked they be made public. And I think that demonstrates that I wanted to make sure that this information was part of the official records."
"That was mind-boggling," co-host Joe Scarborough said after the clip played.
In disbelief, he asked a guest panelist if there was no one on her staff that will tell her that she needs to stop lying.
"The number of false statements contained within that," Scarborough said. "I mean, I don't want to be, like, negative, I really don't, but that was just mind-boggling. Does she not have anybody around her that can tell her ... that we have to stop lying about this? Because everything she said in there was just a lie. I mean, it was allowed by the State Department. No, it was not allowed by the State Department."
Co-host Mika Brzezinski added that was the point of the news this week.
Scarborough continued. He cited things that Clinton said, then responded with what came out of the IG report.
"Everybody knew in the State Department we were doing it," Scarborough said. "No. They said we didn't know, but if we did know we wouldn't allow her to do it. She goes on and on. She sent out directives in 2011 saying, ‘Don't do it the way I'm doing it,’ basically. In 2009, there was a federal regulation as far as record-keeping goes, passed across the entire government.
"I don't understand. It just doesn't—it doesn't help her honesty and trustworthy. She's just not telling the truth. and her own State Department said, ‘You're not telling the truth.’ It would be better for her politically to say I screwed up and I'm really sorry. Why can't they do it?"
Politico co-founder Jim Vandehei responded to Scarborough by bringing up an all-women's panel that will air on MSNBC. He said that this issue will be the reason voters dislike Clinton the most. Scarborough then asked again if there was anyone that would tell her that she needs to stop lying.
Vandehei said that her aides have a form of "bunker mentality," where there's only a few of them and they always think that Clinton is right. Therefore, they won't say anything to her about lying, since they all believe she is not.
He touched on his thoughts about the IG report findings, citing that she just has to start telling the truth. He echoed Scarborough's sentiment by saying she'd be better off if she admitted that she screwed up and apologized for it.
Brzezinski corrected Vandehei's use of the term "screw-up."
"You know, Jim Vandehei, this is more than a screw-up, right?" she asked. "Like, you know that. I mean, that's what she should say. But, you understand this is far more problematic than a screw-up."
Vandehei said that this is only a problem because of the way she handled it. Brzezinski and Scarborough disagreed.
"Classified information, we don't know what the FBI is going to rule on that because the State Department themselves said that 22 of those emails that passed through the servers were of such a sensitive classified nature that to release them would be devastating to America's national interest," Scarborough said.
Scarborough ended the discussion by calling the Clinton camp's Colin Powell excuse "sad" and "pathetic." He implied that the Clinton camp thinks the American public is stupid enough to fall for this.
"How sad and pathetic when Clinton supporters and people in the media say, ‘Well you know, Colin Powell did this also.’ Colin Powell did this at a time where there were not the rules that there were when Hillary Clinton was there," Scarborough said.
"And again, when the world was completely different when Colin Powell was doing it. Everybody knows that. I don't know why people are saying that really think Americans are that stupid, but they do. Also, it was the only email that she used, so she forced people that wanted to send sensitive information to her through that one unsecured system in her house."