In Morning Money this morning, Politico’s Ben White called out President Obama for being mean to big business yesterday in his news conference:

HEAD SHAKER: BIZ BASHING RHETORIC RETURNS – Fairly or not, corporate America continues to disdain the Obama administration following two huge regulatory bills (health care reform and Dodd-Frank) that will increase compliance costs and, in the case of banks, make doing business significantly more difficult. So it seemed odd to hear the President-who is regularly said to be mending fences with the corporate world-lapse back into business-bashing rhetoric at his press conference.

From the presser: “Keep in mind that the business community is always complaining about regulations. When unemployment is at 3 percent and they’re making record profits, they’re going to still complain about regulations because, frankly, they want to be able to do whatever they think is going to maximize their profits.”

It’s certainly fine to think these things and there is undoubtedly truth to them. And maybe it SHOULD be a lot harder for banks to do business. But at time when the President desperately needs companies to start hiring, going out in public and calling corporate executives a bunch of amoral whiners is not going to help and is only going to reinforce the already widely held belief that the President simply does not believe in or trust the profit motive. [Emphasis added]

Shortly after, Mark Halperin went on Morning Joe and explicitly called the President a dick, saying “I thought he was a dick yesterday.” It’s not clear if that’s because the President was mean to big business or mean to Republicans, but clearly Halperin didn’t like having his pals fee fees hurt.

Halperin has already been suspended indefinitely as an analyst by MSNBC, though I assume indefinitely will mean longer than one week but less than two months.

I tend to agree with BooMan and Atrios, as Halperin accurately revealed his viewpoint, which is normally hidden from view. Halperin’s world is ruled by Matt Drudge and he has a strongly Republican viewpoint, which is reflected by his lousy reporting.