Panelists on MSNBC's Morning Joe slammed Hillary Clinton on Monday in response to remarks she made to donors last week in New York City about why she lost the 2016 presidential election.
Co-host Mika Brzezinski began the segment by playing audio clips of Clinton blaming FBI Director James Comey and Russia President Vladimir Putin for sinking her campaign.
"Take it from Nate Silver, who has pointed out that swing state voters made their decisions in the final days, breaking against me because of the FBI letter from FBI Director Comey. Nate Silver believes, I happen to believe this, that that letter most likely made the difference in the outcome," Clinton said.
"We have to recognize that, as the latest reports made clear, Vladimir Putin himself directed the covert cyber attacks against our electoral system, against our democracy, apparently because he has a personal beef against me," Clinton added.
Liberal columnist Mike Barnicle responded to the audio clips by saying this was a "sad" way for Clinton to step off the political stage, adding that the Comey letter did have an impact because it reminded voters how she had "failed" to address her email scandal for many months.
"Her larger problem is she went to the country with really no story. She did not have a story to tell. Americans love stories. She had no narrative to tell. She was basically, when you strip it all away, her campaign came down to the phrase 'it's my turn,'" Barnicle said.
New York Times reporter Jeremy Peters also chimed in and discussed how Clinton has not done any critical self-examination after the election.
"It's the Russians' fault. It's Comey's fault ... It's Obama's fault. It's fake news' fault. It's the media's fault. She took another gratuitous swipe at the media saying it was our fault," Peters said.
Peters also said that all of these excuses only allow the Democrats to avoid the "tough questions" about why they lost and how they alienated various groups of voters they needed to win.
"She was not the agent of change that Americans wanted," Peters added.
"Sixty-eight House seats lost. 12 in the Senate. 10 Democratic governors lost over the past eight years. You can make all of the excuses you want to make. This is a party that right now is not connected with Middle America," co-host Joe Scarborough said.
Bloomberg's Mark Halperin said the media's narrative of the Republican Party being in crisis mode before the election was always a "silly narrative" and that it was actually Clinton's campaign that was in trouble.
"I think Hillary Clinton's comments that we played there are painful to watch are part of this process of sorting out what happened," Washington Post columnist David Ignatius said. "I like the quicker, cleaner Barack Obama version after the 2010 midterm elections when he said, 'We got shellacked.' He looked in the eye and said, 'We got shellacked.' I think that was good. This will go on for a long time."
Scarborough said that Democrats need to do some reflecting in the future if they want to understand why there is a disconnect between them and Middle America.
"We're going to learn all of this, but it is time for the Democrats to actually look and say, 'Why are we so disconnected from America? What has happened over the past eight years?'" Scarborough said.