Naval War College Professor Tom Nichols was on MSNBC's Morning Joe Monday morning to opine on the controversy involving Virginia Governor Ralph Northam's 1984 medical school yearbook. Nichols' contribution to the panel was not to criticize the now infamous photo or Northam's Saturday press conference where he retracted his apology. Rather, Nichols blasted Republicans for criticizing Northam, while also defending President Trump.
The context was a recent Washington Post op-ed Nichols wrote entitled, "Sorry, Republicans.You can't call out Northam for racism and give Trump a pass," where he said that Trump supporters have forfeited the right to pass any moral judgments. For Tom Nichols, who made a scene out of leaving the Republican Party (again), a Trump supporter is anybody who does not fully agree with him.
On Morning Joe, Nichols called Republican condemnations of Northam "insulting" and later "appalling" and accused Republicans of trying to convince the public that history began yesterday.
Nichols accused Republicans of treating the public as if they were "dumb," which is ironic considering he has amassed quite the Twitter following by using his PhD to question the intelligence of Trump voters by describing them as "rubes."
Here is a transcript for the February 4 show:
7:14 AM ET
JOE SCARBOROUGH: Tom Nichols, you wrote an op-ed in the “USA TODAY” where you were saying -- or "The Washington Post," I'm sorry, where you said “Sorry, Republicans, you can't call Northam out for racism and give Trump a free pass.” There were many times I had to go off of Twitter this weekend. The hypocrisy…
MIKA BRZEZINSKI: It was too painful
SCARBOROUGH : … for Trump Republicans, even after looking at it and dealing with it and watch their hypocrisy over free trade, watch their hypocrisy over NATO, watch their hypocrisy over their former positions on holding Russia in check, watch their hypocrisy on big spending, watch their hypocrisy on big deficits, I’ve watched their hypocrisy on the federal debt. But, I must say their hypocrisy on the issue of race after we go from the Muslim ban to the Hispanic doctor, to the gold star mother to Charlottesville through all of the things Donald Trump has done, seriously, these Trump Republicans seriously are going to lecture anybody on being insensitive on the issue of race?
TOM NICHOLS: Everybody's got a right to express an opinion. Not everybody has a right to be taken seriously. The thing that was really striking about Republicans on the Northam thing is that they were issuing these kinds of statements as though nothing had ever happened up until yesterday.
BRZEZINSKI: Right.
NICHOLS: As though somehow we're all like the guy in that movie who can't form new memories, that every time we go to sleep, we wake up and we start all over again as if nothing had ever happened. And it's insulting. I mean, it goes beyond hypocrisy. It's insulting. It says to the listener, “You don't really have any firm memories, you can't draw connections from one day to the next, so we're just going to say this and jump on this bandwagon and you'll totally get it because you're so dumb you can't remember a thing.”
BRZEZINSKI: Wow!
NICHOLS: It really was astonishing and that was what made me write the piece. Nobody's hands are clean on race in this country. You know, there's a long history here and I don't think anybody gets a corner on vice or virtue. But for Republicans in the past two years to put up with the things they've put up with and then try to pivot at the last minute and have this newfound racial sensitively was really appalling. It was just appalling
