On her 9:00 a.m. ET hour show on Monday, MSNBC anchor Stephanie Ruhle derisively labeled President Trump’s upcoming peace summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un as nothing more than “a brilliant PR stunt that doesn’t get us anywhere,” but fretted to her panel of liberal pundits that he could get political gain from the meeting, “does this end up being a strong talking point for President Trump?”

MSNBC Political Analyst Elise Jordan predicted: “Well, I think he’s going to extend the pageantry for quite some time and this is going to be the start of – ” Ruhle quipped: “He loves pageants.” Jordan continued by warning that the meeting could be beneficial to Trump: “So while he will say that and proclaim that this is a great success, he might not have that much to show for it, but he is going to have this to use as an ongoing talking point throughout the 2018 midterm season.”

Left-wing SiriusXM radio host Mark Thompson chimed in and blasted the notion that the President might be nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize if the sit-down was successful:

He likes to play self-victimization to his base. So what he’s going to say is, “They gave Obama a Nobel and they won’t give me one.” Even though he’s done nothing to earn a Nobel. And this meeting alone won’t get it done, it’s a photo op. As the reporters explained – the two reporters earlier – Kim Jong-un wants this photo op as much as Trump does. It legitimizes him as this mystical god-like figure to his own people, which is wrong. And then Trump can do the same thing to pretend that he’s worthy of a Nobel.

Ruhle forgot to ask Thompson what Barack Obama ever did to “earn a Nobel” when he was handed one simply for being elected president.

Thompson went on to suggest that Trump was just engaging in the high-stakes foreign policy mission because he was “weakened”: “Lastly, there’s also a history of world leaders who themselves in trouble, meeting with weakened U.S. presidents. Brezhnev kissed Nixon, China met with Nixon. And so, this is just history repeating itself.”

Ruhle marveled in response: “You are such the historian. Every time you come, I'm more impressed.”

Wrapping up the discussion minutes later, Ruhle asked her guests: “Okay, then quick, there will be a grand headline. Will there be a substantive deal this time tomorrow?” Former Obama State Department Ambassador Wendy Sherman dismissed the idea: “I don’t think there will be a substantive deal, of course not.” Jordan agreed: “I don’t see how it's possible.” Thompson predictably joined the consensus: “No, absolutely not.”

Ruhle then worried: “But will it be a winning news cycle for the president?” Sherman and Jordan promptly agreed that it would be, while Thompson sounded the alarm: “If those of us in journalism allow it to be. We need to absolutely scrutinize it in the same way every Democratic president was scrutinized going to North Korea. Can’t be this double standard.”

Sherman joined in the complaining about Democrats suffering from a media “double standard”:

When Secretary Albright and I went to Pyongyang and went into this extraordinary stadium event that Kim Jong-il took us to with thousands of people on the floor doing gymnastics, thousands in the stands with flip cards showing us missiles going off, we sat there with tight smiles on our face because you are diplomats and you can’t be scowling or walk out of the stadium. But we got so much criticism. Secretary Albright was castigated right and left for smiling, for having a toast, for anything that we did in Pyongyang....to Mark’s point, if a Democratic president said such things, they would have the administration up on Capitol Hill tomorrow castigating them for doing so.

Thompson then proclaimed: “If Hillary Clinton had won and set up a meeting with Kim Jong-un, they’d have articles of impeachment this afternoon. I’m telling you, that’s exactly what they would do.”

The notion that there’s real concern that the liberal media will give Trump overly-positive coverage on anything is patently absurd. MSNBC is already trying to bash the President before the summit has even happened.

Also, to claim that Democrats are victims of media bias is laughable. MSNBC devoted hours of fawning air time to President Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran and visiting with Cuban dictator Raul Castro. Where was the skepticism then?

Here is a transcript of portions of the June 11 panel discussion: