On Tuesday's Morning Joe, host Joe Scarborough said that anyone who cared about Special Counsel John Durham's latest filing "stupid." On Thursday, he upped the name-calling even further, saying only "complete, total asses" care about Durham. For Scarborough, this includes Durham himself.
Reacting to media critics, Scarborough declared:
We’re also seeing a lot of backing off from the breathlessness. Over the weekend all we heard was 'why isn't the media talking about this, why mainstream media, the corporate me--,' we started talking about it and suddenly everyone’s gone quiet or most people have gone quiet except those who really want to make complete, total asses of themselves.
Turning to former Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill, Scarborough included Durham in that nasty assessment:
And speaking of that, Claire McCaskill, Durham, you know, here’s a guy that spent a good bit of his career respected. He’s humiliating himself. He’s, this thing has dragged on for three years, investigating the investigators has gone on longer than the investigation...He puts out a pleading that is just indecipherable. It allows crackpots to—to-- lie to their audiences that something is—is-- amiss, and you dig into it and, again, there was no wiretapping.
Scarborough tried to claim that if Durham had evidence of real wrongdoing, he would care, but:
Well, here we are three years into it. He puts out a pleading that is just indecipherable. It allows crackpots to—to-- lie to their audiences that something is—is-- amiss, and you dig into it and, again, there was no wiretapping. In fact, no data was collected illegally. Everything Durham admits was collected legally. Nobody’s charged with Hillary-- with anything. Hillary Clinton, there's not even any suggestion that Hillary Clinton had anything to do with any of this. They have Sussmann, a guy that everybody in Washington, D.C. knew was connected to the DNC and Hillary Clinton including Republicans on The Hill.
As hard as it may be for Scarborough to understand, not everyone in America lives near the Beltway. Even if Scarborough believes no legal wrongdoing was committed, from a journalistic perspective, the network that hyped the Russian collusion narrative has an obligation to explain to its viewers that the source for that was a political hack.
Scarborough continued: "The fact is Durham after three years has this one charge against a lawyer that is not going to stick. You look at the facts behind that one charge, it’s preposterous....three years and all he is doing is churning up a bunch of nothing and it just continues." The frustrated host demanded: "What is the plan inside of DOJ? Are they going to let this guy go three more years and-and just launch a conspiracy theory with a poorly written pleading every 18 months or so?"
That was not the standard for the Mueller probe. In that case, process crimes were portrayed as massively important and any suggestion of ending it before Mueller wrapped up was considered impeachable.
For her part, McCaskill danced around the Garland question and agreed that Durham's probe as has not produced anything noteworthy.
This segment was sponsored by Dove.
Here is a transcript for the February 17 show:
MSNBC Morning Joe
2/17/2022
6:14 AM ET
JOE SCARBOROUGH: We’re also seeing a lot of backing off from the breathlessness. Over the weekend all we heard was “why isn't the media talking about this, why mainstream media, the corporate me--,” we started talking about it and suddenly everyone’s gone quiet or most people have gone quiet except those who really want to make complete, total asses of themselves.
And speaking of that, Claire McCaskill, Durham, you know, here’s a guy that spent a good bit of his career respected. He’s humiliating himself. He’s, this thing has dragged on for three years, investigating the investigators has gone on longer than the investigation. And as I said a couple of days ago, if they were actually doing things I’d say, “okay, go as long as you want, let’s get to the bottom of this. Whatever it takes, I want to know what all of the agencies have been doing and if there’s something that was done wrong in the investigation, Americans need to know about it.” Well, you know, here we are three years into it. He puts out a pleading that is just indecipherable. It allows crackpots to—to-- lie to their audiences that something is—is-- amiss, and you dig into it and, again, there was no wiretapping. In fact, no data was collected illegally.
Everything Durham admits was collected legally. Nobody’s charged with Hillary-- with anything. Hillary Clinton, there's not even any suggestion that Hillary Clinton had anything to do with any of this. They have Sussmann, a guy that everybody in Washington, D.C. knew was connected to the DNC and Hillary Clinton including Republicans on The Hill. I mean I could go on and on and on. The fact is Durham after three years has this one charge against a lawyer that is not going to stick. You look at the facts behind that one charge, it’s preposterous. And yet Merrick Garland, I guess Merrick Garland has to let him continue to go on, but three years and all he is doing is churning up a bunch of nothing and it just continues. What is the plan inside of DOJ? Are they going to let this guy go three more years and-and just launch a conspiracy theory with a poorly written pleading every 18 months or so?
CLAIRE MCCASKILL: Well, first of all, I think in a way it works to the benefit of the truth that Durham has independent control, that Merrick Garland is not controlling him. Because if there was all kinds of bad actors trying to hurt the guy in Mar-a-Lago, then bring on the grand jury and the indictments, but there's nothing.
SCARBOROUGH: Exactly.
MCCASKILL: Other than saying -- there's nothing other than saying a lawyer didn't tell us that his firm had done some work and that he was billing Hillary Clinton for some of his time. That's it. That's it.
