What August Segment? Scarborough Says He Never Said Bush Was An Idiot

Tim Graham
January 15th, 2007 2:13 PM
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In retracing the early steps of the O'Reilly vs. Scarborough battle, it's funny to see that when O'Reilly attacked NBC and MSNBC on January 4, he probably hadn't left the parking lot at Fox when attack dog Joe Scarborough was already protesting his complaints on MSNBC, and running audio from O'Reilly's radio show earlier in the day. This exchange shows that Scarborough is either (a) making fun of himself, or (b) completely misleading his audience about his attention-grasping "Is Bush An Idiot?" segment last August:

O’Reilly, from his radio show: “Bush can't win. No matter what he does. NBC News, The New York Times, The Washington Post, they're going to say he's an idiot. There's no sense of balance or fairness in their reporting. That's activist journalism.”

Scarborough: “Bush an idiot? I've never said Bush is an idiot. Chris? If I ever said -- do you think Bush is an idiot?

Chris (Licht, the executive producer, I'm assuming): “Absolutely not.”

Scarborough: “Absolutely not.”

Chris: “We would never say that, nor have we ever said that.”

Scarborough: “You're a Connecticut Republican.”

Chris: “We’d never say that.”

Scarborough: “We are conservative people.”

Oh, we didn't say Bush was an idiot. We merely raised the question in a provocative way on screen? Scarborough did go on to an interviews with The Washington Post (stupid "in a league by himself") and the leftist Bush-hating site Salon to suggest Bush wasn't an intellectually curious man, unlike Scarborough, whose show is apparently an intellectual's dream and never sinks into celebrity babble......?

Anyone ever hear the teaser: "Tonight on Scarborough Country: are we in danger of immanentizing the eschaton?"

(It should be noted that I know a few people who are conservatives who believe Bush is an idiot. That doesn't define whether you are conservative or not.)

As for "Connecticut Republican," we only know Licht joined the show in 2005:  "Chris makes the move to MSNBC from the NBC O&O [owned and operated station] in San Francisco/San Jose."