Many Americans were horrified to learn last night of the news that comedian Kathy Griffin had posted a tweet depicting herself with an effigy of the bloody, severed head of President Trump. In a world now full of real-life beheadings instigated at the behest of Islamic terrorists, drug cartels, and others, one would think that such a story might be considered “newsworthy.” Co-host Mika Brzezinski of MSNBC’s Morning Joe disagreed, however, on the basis that the story was ‘too gross’ and ‘not worth doing.’
The exchange in question went as follows:
MICHAEL SCHMIDT: I will say with all the news going on, like, we step out for something, and then all of a sudden someone else has written another story and we've gotta go back to the office. It's like playing a baseball game and every time you turn up someone is hitting a home run.
JOE SCARBOROUGH: No, it is really scary. You go into a lunch or something and you come out and everybody goes you just see what happened? No, what happened? The martians attacked, they’ve got LA they’re going towards Vegas. You’re like, how did I miss that!? But it is moving at such a hyper pace.
NICHOLAS CONFESSORE: I missed the Kathy Griffin news last night.
MIKA BRZEZINSKI: Okay, we're not talking about it.
ELISE JORDAN: You missed nothing up.
BRZEZINSKI: I’m sorry it’s too gross. It’s just not worth doing.
Wow, so this story doesn’t deserve to be covered then on the basis that it is too icky to talk about? Is that what the new journalistic standard is at MSNBC? If someone depicts the murder of a president now it can only be discussed if it is done in a neat and tidy manner? Or is this simply the standard as applied solely to Republican presidents?
Here are the excerpts from the May 31 exchange:
6:53 AM
MICHAEL SCHMIDT: I will say with all the news going on, like, we step out for something, and then all of a sudden someone else has written another story and we've gotta go back to the office. It's like playing a baseball game and every time you turn up someone is hitting a home run.
JOE SCARBOROUGH: No, it is really scary. You go into a lunch or something and you come out and everybody goes you just see what happened? No, what happened? The martians attacked, they’ve got LA they’re going towards Vegas. You’re like, how did I miss that? But it is moving at such a hyper pace.
NICHOLAS CONFESSORE: I missed the Kathy Griffin news last night.
MIKA BRZEZINSKI: Okay, we're not talking about it.
ELISE JORDAN: You missed nothing up.
BRZEZINSKI: I’m sorry it’s just too gross. It’s not worth doing. All right, coming up, Michael eat some lunch.Thanks for being on the show this morning. Nourish yourself.
SCARBOROUGH: Thank you Michael, I thought this was a stellar performance for you. I thought this was one of your better days.
SCHMIDT: I'm just happy I got through it.
SCARBOROUGH: You did very well.
BRZEZINSKI: Sort of. All right, we'll ask award winning linguist, Nicholas Confessore to help us break down the word covfefe. Plus, the President reportedly gives out his cell phone number to other world leaders. And we actually found some footage of that!
