On Wednesday’s Morning Joe, the guests and hosts actually had a moderately balanced (particularly by MSNBC standards) discussion running for much of the broadcast with respect to evaluating Trump’s address to the United Nations General Assembly yesterday. However, in a segment with former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski facilitated her unleashing a series of ridiculous assertions about Trump’s speech completely unchecked by basic reality.
Brzezinski began by asking Secretary Albright what her gut feeling was about President Trump’s speech:
MIKA BRZEZINSKI: Your take on President Trump's address before the U.N. General Assembly? What's your gut?
MADELEINE ALBRIGHT: Well, my gut is: I'm glad he went and that he actually spoke some positive things about the United Nations. I think it was actually two speeches: One in which somebody had written about the history of the U.N. and the importance of it, and the other written in a way to be much more nationalistic.
This isn’t a terrible interpretation of the speech. It certainly did have a mix of ‘America First’ messaging combined with appeals to work with other countries multilaterally to deal with North Korea. However, the former Secretary couldn’t help but push the conversation onto pretty tenuous ground:
I think kind of going up and talking about ‘America First’ in that location and then having listened to many speeches there, the tone of it was really bad, I think. And in so many ways, I think we all want to make sure that America is strong, but I think his speech weakened America. And I think with something that is going to make it very hard for us to carry on a lot of diplomatic work that we have to.
What precisely should Trump have said in response to continuous and unrelenting threats from Kim Jong-un’s regime to annihilate America? Albright didn’t explain. Instead, she went on to complain about Trump not emphasizing multilateralism enough and being too harsh in his tone, ending with quite a whopper of a charge:
And, you know, mostly you don't go to the U.N. to give a domestic speech. And I think that he was doing that, red meat, in so many ways, but it will hurt, ultimately. And in terms of the multilateral-, I know people don't like the world ‘multilateralism,’ it has too many syllables and ends in an ‘-ism,’ but mostly it is about partnerships and sharing the burden and I think that then he has to do that kind of work. And then, I do think the language, generally, that he used was so harsh that I think it -- in some ways, it strengthened Kim Jong-un, made him the center of attention.
This was quite a stunning argument, as it appeared that Secretary Albright was saying that Kim Jong-un threatening to nuke and otherwise incinerate millions of South Koreans and Americans wasn't what made him the center of attention, but rather Trump using too many mean words (for a fuller picture of North Korea’s nuclear diplomacy over the years, see this).
Instead of standing up for America and its right to at least talk about self-defense against a rogue, mass-murdering, criminally-evil regime, Brzezinski simply agreed with Albright: “Yep. I totally agree with that.”
See the full segment transcript below:
7:23 AM EST
(...)
MIKA BRZEZINSKI: Your take on President Trump's address before the U.N. General Assembly? What's your gut?
MADELEINE ALBRIGHT: Well, my gut is: I'm glad he went and that he actually spoke some positive things about the United Nations. I think it was actually two speeches: One in which somebody had written about the history of the U.N. and the importance of it, and the other written in a way to be much more nationalistic. I think kind of going up and talking about ‘America First’ in that location and then having listened to many speeches there, the tone of it was really bad, I think. And in so many ways, I think we all want to make sure that America is strong, but I think his speech weakened America. And I think with something that is going to make it very hard for us to carry on a lot of diplomatic work that we have to. But I'm gonna try to be positive-
BRZEZINSKI: Right.
ALBRIGHT: -and see that the fact that he recognizes the importance of some multilateral action and the history of the U.N., because the U.N.’s important, and part of it is going to be now as to whether they fund the U.N. We, by not paying or funding, it’s very hard to get reform if, in fact, you don't support the funding of it. So those are the aspects of it.
SCARBOROUGH: We talk around the table often about how maybe a slight move to the middle by Donald Trump is always met with a harsh tweet where he throws red meat to his base. Did you get a sense yesterday that, the two speeches he gave, one may have been sort of a tip of the hat to the United Nations and an understanding of the realities that have set in on him over the past eight months, but another part of the speech might have been for domestic consumption, for his base, saying: Yes, yes, I'm at the United Nations, but my friends, don't worry. I'm gonna say ‘national sovereignty’ a thousand times. So you can take that back to your Republican club meetings and let ‘em know Donald’s still with you.
ALBRIGHT: I think you're absolutely right. And, you know, mostly you don't go to the U.N. to give a domestic speech. And I think that he was doing that, red meat, in so many ways, but it will hurt, ultimately. And in terms of the multilateral-, I know people don't like the world ‘multilateralism,’ it has too many syllables and ends in an ‘-ism,’ but mostly it is about partnerships and sharing the burden and I think that then he has to do that kind of work. And then, I do think the language, generally, that he used was so harsh that I think it -- in some ways, it strengthened Kim Jong Un, made him the center of attention.
BRZEZINSKI: Yep. I totally agree with that.
(...)
