The MSNBC show couldn’t handle the truth.
The MSNBC show couldn’t handle the truth.
A couple of months ago, Joe Scarborough warned his viewers, and especially his critics, that he was about to unleash a truth bomb.
The former Republican congressman wanted everyone to know not that Joe Biden had lost a step but was still okay, not that Biden was better than Trump regardless of his physical and mental state, and certainly not that he had heard some concerning things about Biden but he didn’t want anyone to draw premature conclusions.
No, no — he wanted everyone to know that Joe Biden was more impressive than ever.
This was ludicrous at the time but has been exposed as propagandistic dreck in light of Biden’s debate debacle that appalled even Scarborough himself.
“Start your tape right now because I’m about to tell you the truth,” Scarborough said directly to the camera on his March 6 program, “and F you if you can’t handle the truth.”
“This version of Biden, intellectually, analytically, is the best Biden ever, not a close second,” he continued.
According to Scarborough, “I undersold him when I said he was cogent. He’s far beyond cogent. In fact, I think he’s better than he’s ever been, intellectually, analytically, because he’s been around for 50 years.”
He added, “If it weren’t the truth I wouldn’t say it.”
Indeed, Biden was supposedly such an intellectual giant, so acute in so many ways, it was a wonder he was even in a competitive race. “Historians will look back,” Scarborough pronounced, “and they will say, ‘Why was this race close in February and early March, because it makes no sense?’”
Did his co-panelists venture to suggest that, even though they preferred Biden to Trump as much as Scarborough did, this might be a touch over the top? No, of course not. “All of that is right,” Jonathan Lemire offered.
There are journalistic failures, and then there’s creating an alternate reality in the apparent hope that if it is declaimed confidently enough that it will prevail over the truth.
We know now that Biden’s alarming decline was one of the worst-kept secrets in Washington (how could it have been well kept given that the evidence was before our eyes?). Democratic senators knew. Democratic donors knew. Journalists knew. But what is supposed to be one of the most plugged-in political programs on television had no idea? Not one panelist ever got a whiff of it or was a touch worried about the stiff gait, blank looks, confusion about where to go, flagrant verbal miscues, or mumbly incoherence?
Even if we chalk it up to being in an information bubble, there’s no excusing the vicious and self-righteous attacks on anyone who dared tell the truth, even in relatively mild terms, about Joe Biden.
When Robert Hur described Biden — charitably, as it turned out — as an “elderly man with poor memory,” Morning Joe couldn’t handle it.
Scarborough led the way, calling that line “garbage.” He hit Hur for his “politically charged, Trump-like ramblings.” In the midst of his angry denunciations of Hur for saying something that was true and relevant to his decision not to charge Biden, Scarborough referred to “liars” on other news networks and in other parties, and accused Hur of “bad faith.“
When about a month ago the Wall Street Journal ran a piece with a headline that is now completely unassailable, “Behind Closed Doors, Biden Shows Signs of Slipping,” Morning Joe similarly melted down.
On Twitter, Scarborough called it a “false, biased story.” On air, he said the Journal based the story on “Kevin McCarthy’s lies” and that Biden “is light-years” — yes, light-years — ahead of every Republican speaker of the past 30 years. Finally, he declared himself speechless at the absurdity of any suggestion that Biden wasn’t doing so great behind closed doors: “I don’t know what to say.”
Panelist Mike Barnicle said he was “embarrassed for the Wall Street Journal” for running “a classic hit piece” that was “so tilted, so off the mark.”
“This piece is outrageous,” Barnicle fumed.
Of course, there’s now been ample reporting about Biden’s capabilities that has gone much further than the offending Wall Street Journal article.
All of this is an especially poor showing given that Scarborough was suggesting back in 2017 that Trump had dementia, the same Trump who seven years later won a debate going away against the incumbent president Scarborough insisted was at the very top of his game.
Some might say that Scarborough betrayed Joe Biden with his now-hedged about-face immediately after the debate. By trying so hard to create a false image of Joe Biden, though, Scarborough really betrayed his viewers.