On Thursday, Joe Scarborough examined the way both sides are handling themselves as the fiscal cliff hoopla continues. Particularly, he focused on President Obama who is facing what he deemed to be an interesting and difficult dynamic in his second term — after being treated so poorly in his first.

“In my toughest political battles, every time I won, the bigger the victory, the more gracious I was afterwards,” Scarborough said. “That’s how you get things done.”

Later in the segment, referring to fiscal cliff talks, Brzezinski said, “A man in negotiations does not say to another man, ‘You’re going to cave.’ Ao you say that to another man in negotiations? And you think you’re going to get him to cave?”

“This is all about men,” she added, noting that women would be more reasonable and “actually get something done.”

“It’s going to be very hard for the president,” Scarborough said, especially after a big victory that followed four years of him being told he was an “illegitimate president.” He was told he was not a citizen, Scarborough said. That he was a a socialist, a Marxist, “that he wasn’t even an American.”

“He has been knocked around and treated like a second-class citizen as president of the United States by a third of the American public,” Scarborough said. “And then he wins a big victory and immediately he’s hearing from people like us, ‘You’ve got to be gracious to those people.’ Politics is sort of a rough and ugly game at times.”

The clip below, via MSNBC:



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