On MSNBC’s Morning Joe Tuesday, the panel discussed the media’s obsession covering more about President Donald Trump’s antics and controversial statements, rather than his policies, some of which he has already fulfilled.
At the top of the 6 AM hour the panel discussed Trump’s busy third day in the White House which included withdrawing the US from the Trans Pacific Partnership trade deal, issuing an executive order reinstating the Mexico City Policy to cease funding abortions overseas, ordered a hiring freeze on federal workers (military personnel exempted), and meeting separately with corporate executives and congressional leaders.
A discussion about Trump’s accomplishments on Monday did not prevent the panel from critiquing the headlines from the Washington Post and the New York Times criticizing the president’s press secretary, Sean Spicer, for his contentious exchange with the press last Saturday. “There are things that people are saying. Well, you know, TPP may not be that significant. The Chinese are seeing it as very significant. [the Council on Foreign Relations’] Richard Haass and other foreign leaders seeing it as significant. Seeing it as negative, of course,” Scarborough said. “As reporters, we love it. The Democrats love it. The unions love it. The hiring freeze, the same thing. It sends a message. You can say, well, gee, he's not freezing defense. Every one of these things he did, there's a line in the paper saying, ‘Well, it's not really all that.’ Actually there was a lot that happened yesterday.”
Scarborough also remarked:
At the end of the day…he’s sitting down with congressional leaders and he starts by talking about votes. He’s getting back into the counting thing. That's at the top of a lot of websites, Twitter’s freaking out about it. We can focus on it. Everybody knows it's not true. We can sit here and scream and yell, which I think he wants people to do because that plays into the circus…you're talking about in that meeting with congressional leaders, he claimed again that 3 to 5 million illegal immigrants voted in the election, which would have made the difference between him winning the popular vote. That's of course not true. We've said that again and again and again.
Co-host Mika Brzezinski defended the media calling out Trump and said, “He should stop saying things that aren't true.”
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Scarborough responded that Trump’s temperament and antics “gin up 30 minutes of debate and discussion” and rhetorically asked “so we're talking about this and not other things?” Later in the discussion Scarborough clarified, “Nobody is ignoring the temperament. My suggestion is, at least around this table, that we -- while we focus on the temperament, we also look at all the policy that's going instead of [his distractions].”
Bloomberg’s Mark Halperin dismissed the media circus about Trump’s comments and said, “Yesterday was on message and pretty good for him almost every event he did.”
Scarborough responded, “Whether it's an errant tweet about a movie star or something like there, we could report on all of this for four years. At the end of four years people are going to turn around and say oh, my god, look at everything that's happened.”
“Like, there are real policy implications to what happened yesterday,” he added.
Political analyst Mike Barnicle soon echoed Scarborough’s dissatisfaction, “There's so much that happened just yesterday that it's nearly overwhelming. And the problem for the President is that you end up with a headline above the fold in the front page of the New York Times that few of us have ever seen before: ‘Meeting With Top Lawmakers, Trump Repeats an Election Lie.’”
“He's the president of the United States. Yesterday he voided TPP. He voided TPP the day after the prime minister of Japan went out of his way to convince parliament that he was going to try to work something out with the Americans. He basically, as you said, ceded trade to China in that area of the world. There's a front page piece in the Washington Post that is just -- we're only three days into this presidency,” Barnicle added.
Barnicle concluded the discussion and said, “Our job in the media is to focus on policy. That's the tale of the tape. Every day, policy. But the side stories, why doesn't he realize he's president?”
Here is the transcript of the January 24th exchange:
6:02 AM ET
JOE SCARBOROUGH: Great tone, 79, 80 responses. I think I read that from Phil Rucker.
WILLIE GEIST: There's some -- there was 43 different reporters, 79 questions. After that performance on Saturday, the relationship with the media was off to a great start he had to sit and take every question. You may not like what he said. Washington Post deeply reported not the kind of piece you’d expect to see three days into an administration. Talked about Donald Trump didn't think Sean Spicer was strong enough.
MIKE BARNICLE: Didn't like what he was wearing.
GEIST: Didn't like what he was wearing.
MIKE BREZINSKI: So, Mike, you asked the question “did it.” Day One of the Trump administration saw his press secretary lying about crowd size. Day Two, more measured tone and emphasis on policy. And yesterday was Day Three. Willie points to the Washington Post writing, “President Trump often seemed comfortably at home in the White House as he entertained, signed orders, posed for photos, and promised to disrupt Washington, just as he had electoral politics.” President Trump spent much of his first Monday on campaign promises starting with trade agreements, signing a memorandum to withdraw United States from Trans-Pacific Partnership. Ordered a hiring freeze for most federal agencies as Ronald Reagan did in his first hours as president and also followed the Reagan model by reinstating the Mexico City policy that blocks foreign aid to organizations that perform or discuss abortions. Trump spoke by phone with Egyptian president Abdel Fattah El-Sisi discussing how they can work together to combat global terror. While the president held a listening session with members of American manufacturing from companies such as Dow Chemical, Ford, Lockheed Martin and U.S. Steel sharing his hope to cut regulations by 75%. Later, he sat down with union leaders who praised him for canceling TPP and his promising to spend on infrastructure. And he finished the day gathering a bipartisan group of congressional leaders where he came away full of high spirits.
[PLAYS CLIP]
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: How’s the meeting going, Mr. President?
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Very good. We have a fantastic relationship with everybody at the table. Totally just a beautiful, beautiful relationship.
[END OF CLIP]
BREZINSKI: Yeah, they don't.
SCARBOROUGH: So, Mark, an extraordinarily busy day, if you go from start to finish. There are things that people are saying. Well, you know, TPP may not be that significant. The Chinese are seeing it as very significant. Richard Haass and other foreign leaders seeing it as significant. Seeing it as negative, of course. As reporters, we love it. The Democrats love it. The unions love it. The hiring freeze, the same thing. It sends a message. You can say, well, gee, he's not freezing defense. Every one of these things he did, there's a line in the paper saying, “Well, it's not really all that.” Actually there was a lot that happened yesterday.
MARK HALPERIN: And a lot he said he would do as a candidate. He didn't win the majority of the vote but he won the election. Yesterday was a big down payment possibly symbolically and starting down the path to substance on things he said he's going to do. He says he's for free trade. He's going to have to start forging these bilateral relationships ‘cause America must be a trading nation. He just doesn't like these big international deals. I thought that they handled the messaging very well yesterday because they’re framing this as a guy fulfilling his promises, a man of action, meeting with a lot of people. And again, unless you're just dead set rooting for him to fail, yesterday was a good day on the down payment on a lot of his promises.
SCARBOROUGH: At the end of the day, Will, he’s sitting down with congressional leaders and he starts by talking about votes. He’s getting back into the counting thing. That's at the top of a lot of websites, Twitter’s freaking out about it. We can focus on it. Everybody knows it's not true. We can sit here and scream and yell, which I think he wants people to do because that plays into the circus. But if you do that, you don't realize there are a lot of significant things and a lot of things conservatives are concerned about especially on the trade front. There are people that believe we've ceded Asia to China.
We're talking about TPP. Think about a Republican president on his first big day, first Monday in office, sitting down and doing something that draws the ire of a lot of Republicans and statement of praise from Bernie Sanders on the other side of the aisle. It's a position Hillary Clinton held on TPP during the campaign. This is the Republican president coming in and immediately doing something that pleases Democrats and doesn't please his own Republicans. On the other question you're talking about in that meeting with congressional leaders, he claimed again that 3 to 5 million illegal immigrants voted in the election, which would have made the difference between him winning the popular vote. That's of course not true. We've said that again and again and again. Reports from that meeting including from senators --
BREZINSKI: He should stop saying things that aren't true.
SCARBOROUGH: The question is nobody believes it? Is he doing it to gin up 30 minutes of debate and discussion so we're talking about this and not other things?
HALPERIN: In this case it doesn't make sense. Yesterday was on message and pretty good for him almost every event he did.
SCARBOROUGH: And my point is, whether it's an errant tweet about a movie star or something like there, we could report on all of this for four years. At the end of four years people are going to turn around and say oh, my god, look at everything that's happened. Like, there are real policy implications to what happened yesterday.
BREZINSKI: Well, Mike, give us your take when you cover stories like this. Look, I don't think you ignore the obsession with crowd size and this obsession with going back to the race. Also what he said about, quote, illegals. But I think it has to be put in perspective to what was comparatively, compared to the first two days, a much better day. And then we can talk about the policies. I don't agree with some of them.
SCARBOROUGH: Also, for any president, a significant policy day. When you have the head of the top manufacturers in one minute and the head of the unions in thanking you the next minute, that's not a traditional Republican.
MIKE BARNICLE: There's so much that happened just yesterday that it's nearly overwhelming. And the problem for the president is that you end up with a headline above the fold in the front page of the New York Times that few of us have ever seen before: ‘Meeting With Top Lawmakers, Trump Repeats An Election Lie.’ He's the president of the United States. Yesterday he voided TPP. He voided TPP the day after the prime minister of Japan went out of his way to convince parliament that he was going to try to work something out with the Americans. He basically, as you said, ceded trade to China in that area of the world. There's a front page piece in the Washington Post that is just -- we're only three days into this presidency.
SCARBOROUGH: But, Mike, I'm sorry. The New York Times, the Washington Post. Are people talking about that this morning after yesterday or talking to themselves? They might be talking to themselves.
BARNICLE: No. They are talking to themselves.
SCARBOROUGH: A lot of stuff got done yesterday. I'm saying we have talked about the fact that he's been lying about the crowd sizes now and lying about the popular vote now for months. Now you can put that old story on the top, or you can talk about how trade is fundamentally changed forever, about how union groups came in to talk to Republican -- I'm just saying --
BARNICLE: Is trade changed forever?
SCARBOROUGH: Yes. Yes. There has not been a Republican or a Democrat since -- who was the last protectionist Democrat? Yes, you ask Richard Haass whether America's position on trade has forever changed. You ask other foreign policy people.
HALPERIN: Not forever changed, it's changed for now. Every president in the last two generations, the organizing principle has been trying to pass big comprehensive multi-lateral trade deals. This president won't do that.
SCARBOROUGH: This is a break on trade, probably, and he's promised this break on trade. It goes back to Herbert Hoover.
BARNICLE: It's an enormous break. As mark points out, he's going to have to cut deals now individually with Japan. Philippines, Vietnam.
HALPERIN: I'll bet the next president goes back to the other model.
SCARBOROUGH: I'll bet, too. I'm just saying this is a break. Change forever, no, but a break from what, 50 years, 60 years, 70 years?
WASHINGTON POST’S EUGENE ROBINSON: Yeah, the paradigm.
SCARBOROUGH: My point is things are happening here.
ROBINSON: Yeah, things are happening, and they are being reported, right? These are all big stories. You have to report it all. You have to report, you know, what's going on in terms of the dynamics inside the new White House. There's a story The Washington Post does, and it's a pretty amazing story about the fit the president pitched over the weekend over how the inauguration was being reported. That's a story. Also, everything that happened yesterday is a story. The TPP story, yes, it is a big story because in the short-term, at least, it's going to give, I think, China the opportunity to become the dominant sort of factor in how trade is arranged in Asia and the fastest growing region in the world. Now, remember that everybody -- by the time we got to the election, everybody was against tpp or said they were against tpp. So theoretically Hillary Clinton would have been doing the same thing. We'll never know if she would have or not. But yeah, that is a big deal. You know, this is going to be a fascinating challenge, I think, for all of us in the media, because you simply cannot ignore the temperament of the new president, the shape of the new administration.
SCARBOROUGH: Nobody is ignoring the temperament. My suggestion is, at least around this table, that we -- while we focus on the temperament, we also look at all the policy that's going instead of --
ROBINSON: Absolutely.
SCARBOROUGH: I guarantee you there will be people throughout the day on cable news that will lead with the illegals story and talk about it for 30 minutes. They can talk about it for 30 minutes if they want to or talk about things that are going to actually change. As the New York Times said, bring about an end of an era on trade.
ROBINSON: We can't control, how, what others do. No, I certainly wouldn't recommend doing that, because there's a lot of stuff going on. You've got to look at these policies, though. What impact does a federal hiring freeze always have, for example. One of the things it does, you know, it means you have perhaps fewer employees in the long run but more contractors.
SCARBOROUGH: Right.
ROBINSON: You know, that policy is generally not all it's cracked up to be but it's a big symbolic thing, especially for voters who, you know, size of government. Well, size of government keeps expanding, freeze or no.
GEIST: In fairness the New York Times and Washington Post both have trade as above the fold start. So I think the point is that the country wants Donald Trump not to focus on the size of his crowd and whether or not the election was legitimate, which he's obsessed with, and to focus on these things and yesterday he started to do that.
BARNICLE: Our job in the media is to focus on policy. That's the tale of the tape. Every day, policy. But the side stories, why doesn't he realize he's president?
