On Monday, Joe Scarborough ratcheted up the rhetoric against President Trump’s supporters and allies who question the validity of the Mueller investigation.
In an emotional outburst the likes of which Morning Joe viewers have come to expect from the show’s host, Scarborough explicitly insulted those who might question the efficacy of the case against the President: “Anybody that writes an op-ed and suggests that Donald Trump has not put himself directly in the target of an obstruction charge is just fooling themselves and some very, very stupid, ill-informed readers.”
Scarborough’s agitation may have been due to the upcoming vote in the House Intelligence Committee on whether to release the controversial memo written by Committee Chairman Devin Nunes. In light of the possibility that the memo might be made available to the public as soon as Monday evening, the show’s panelists spent most of the morning attempting to get out in front of whatever information the memo might contain.
During the first segment, Scarborough issued a plea directly to House Speaker Paul Ryan, asking him to somehow prevent Congressman Nunes – whom Ryan appointed as Chairman for the Select Committee on Intelligence – from releasing the memo, and perhaps remove him from the Committee entirely.
“Why is Devin Nunes still in charge of the Intel Committee when he made an absolute fool of himself several months ago claiming he had information that he didn’t have?” Scarborough complained.
He continued: “Paul Ryan, if you’re listening, or somebody in your staff is listening, and I know they are, listen, the Intel Community, the Justice Department said it would be incredibly reckless to release this memo.”
Scarborough and his co-host and fiancé Mika Brzezinski have taken the position that the Nunes memo is little more than a distraction designed to interfere with what they believe to be bulletproof obstruction of justice charges against the President. However, the lines between opinion and fact were blurred on Monday when Scarborough referred to the memo as “cherry-picked and misleading and false.”
He was likely paraphrasing House Intelligence Committee Ranking Member Adam Schiff, who recently alleged that the information contained in Nunes’s memo was cherry-picked. However, one might wonder how Joe Scarborough, who has not yet seen the memo, can be so confident that the memo is false that he’s willing to label it as such on live television.
