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Watch Morning Joe Talk About Solyndra

Mika Brzezinski:   “We'll just get this quick story in here and I want to get your take on it, Chris. New details are surfacing in how the Obama administration dealt with the bankruptcy of Solyndra, that's the California-based solar company that received a half-billion dollar loan from the Energy Department. Newly revealed e-mails show the administration pushed the company ‘very hard’ to delay announcing layoffs until after the midterm elections. The e-mails were made public as part of a House committee investigation. The White House denies politics were at play. Your take, Chris Matthews?”

Chris Matthews:  “Well, it looks to me –“

Brzezinski:  “By the way, how could politics not be at play?”

Matthews:  “Of course.  It looks like they got the money and it looks like they got a lot of help from the guy who said he was going to keep out of it and he wasn’t going to get involved in it and recuse himself. It looks like to me like there’s a lot of politics, like good old-fashioned pork. That’s what it looks like, the whole thing.  And I think that all of this effort to try to do industrial policy and pick winners is always tricky business. And when you start saying the government of the United States is going to say this industry should make it and we're going to put our money behind this one,  and it’s going to be our model cities program and private sector - it's not what government's good at.”

Brzezinski:   “But putting off announcements until after the election, that's politics.”

(MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” 11/16/11)