MSNBC hosts Rachel Maddow and Lawrence O’Donnell got in on the self-satisfied ridicule, too. Promoting Maddow’s latest book about the “unmooring of American military power,” O’Donnell asked the flagship MSNBC host if Romney was merely reflecting on what he might have read in that book.

“He read about Reagan’s private, outside-the-CIA cabal of team-B zealots who were telling him that Russia had all the stuff they didn’t have so he could justify a giant defense budget,” Maddow submitted scornfully.

“It is amazing that Mitt Romney can flip like that just as soon as he hears something to exploit in foreign policy,” O’Donnell remarked. …

But the worst offender was one who should have, and likely did, know better, former Secretary of State Colin Powell. The former Army general greatly entertained his MSNBC hosts with some of the most snide commentary about Romney’s observation.

“Come on, Mitt. Think,” Powell said of Romney’s remark in May to the chuckles of host Joe Scarborough. “That isn’t the case.”