MIKA BRZEZINSKI (CO-HOST): I think vintage Trump is back. Has anyone noticed that? 

MICHAEL STEELE: He's got his groove back.

BRZEZINSKI: He's got his groove back.

[...]

JOE SCARBOROUGH (CO-HOST): I got to say, even Bill Kristol was saying afterwards, “That was something. That was something.” That was amazing. He's like, “I'm not sure what I saw, but that was amazing.”

BRZEZINSKI: No I'll tell you what you saw. 

SCARBOROUGH: What did you see?

BRZEZINSKI: You saw him connecting with the crowd in a way that no other politician in the history of politics that we know ever could. You can't imagine a Republican candidate going up there and talking about his golf course in Turnberry without getting killed. Remember the car elevator and all sorts of things that plagued Mitt Romney? This guy talks about his Turnberry golf course and everybody in the audience is with him, about the construction project, and about his son and they actually feel they could own a golf course in Turnberry. He connects. He connects. 

STEELE: He does. But I guess the question still begs itself. You've got these golden nuggets that are being handed to you. 

BRZEZINSKI: Yes.

STEELE: So, instead of riffing on Chuck Todd --

BRZEZINSKI: Yes.

STEELE: -- riff on that. I mean, just talk --

BRZEZINSKI: Well Chuck Todd actually -- he had to come around a little bit on the show yesterday. But he was -- he nailed Hillary Clinton to the wall on this stuff during this speech.

SCARBOROUGH: Well there's a tale, and so Mark Halperin you were there last night. And it's a tale of two speeches. It's the speeches that the audience sees and ever since yesterday we were very critical, but Mika was not, of not focusing enough on Hillary. And then later on we ran the part where he was going through the routine. How long can you really talk about grandchildren? 

BRZEZINSKI: And he's fantastic. 

SCARBOROUGH: And how long can you really talk about golf? OK, that's your two-and-a-half minutes. What else did they talk about for 25, 26, 27, 28 minutes? Now of course at this point everybody's going, “Oh, they're supporting Donald Trump.” And everybody's freaking out. “They're racists, they're bigots. They hate Jews. They hate Hispanics.”

BRZEZINSKI: No, we’re telling you he connected in this.

SCARBOROUGH: No, we're just talking about what we saw last night on television. We talked about, Mark Haleprin, a guy who looks reenergized.

BRZEZINSKI: Happy.

SCARBOROUGH: I kept looking at him going is this guy really 70 years old? And the audience was eating it up.

BRZEZINSKI: With him.

SCARBOROUGH: This is a tale of two campaigns. Hillary, who's sort of slugging through a hard time right now, and Donald Trump, who seems to be having the time of his life, but then there's also the tale of two speeches. There's the speech the audience sees and you see and everybody loves, and then there's the speech the next morning where we pick out something he said last night. In this case it's the defending of that star. Repeatedly. And that's the narrative. While I think a lot of us miss what the audience and what voters saw last night.

Related:

NY Times: In A Defiant, Angry Speech, Donald Trump Defends Image Seen As Anti-Semitic

Previously:

All In's Chris Hayes Compares Trump's “Unhinged” Ohio Speech To Charlie Sheen's #Winning Tour

MSNBC's Scarborough Praises Trump's Speech: “That's Called The Pivot”

8 Things Trump And Morning Joe Hosts Discussed When Cameras Were Off