On Wednesday’s Morning Joe, the panel spent a great deal of time covering the recent allegations made by a Democratic Congresswoman from Florida that President Trump was disrespectful to the wife of an American soldier who was recently killed in Niger. Although the liberal politician's account was not supported by independent evidence at the time of the show’s airing, host Joe Scarborough and frequent guest Jon Meacham used the story as an opportunity to attack Christians and church leaders from the South who support Trump as soulless hypocrites.
After playing footage highlighting Representative Frederica Wilson's claims, most of the panel immediately took the Democrat's assertions at face value and used them as just more evidence that Trump was an evil person:
JOE SCARBOROUGH: John Meacham, just put this into a long list of strange, bizarre interactions that the President has on a daily basis. I mean, we could find ten, or eleven, or twelve yesterday of public record that just, again, shows a complete disconnect from the rest of humanity, a complete disconnect from compassion, a complete disconnect from basic human emotions that we teach our children from the time they are two or three years old. Why don't we just go, we’ll stay on this story? But, when you tell John McCain, a war hero, who is, has the most progressive form of brain cancer, who is fighting for his life, when you offer a threat, say [paraphrasing Trump] I'm coming at you and I can be mean [end paraphrase] or whatever childish thing he said, you sit there going, he just, he will never get it. He's never gotten it. And this has nothing to do with politics. This has everything to do with his lack of humanity. And, some of his supporters will say, well, McCain attacked him. You know what you do? When somebody is dying, when somebody is, is, when somebody is fighting for their lives the way he has, sometimes you just sit back and you let it go by and you end up winning.
JON MEACHAM [RANDOM HOUSE, EXECUTIVE EDITOR; TIME, CONTRIBUTING EDITOR]: And you’re the President of the United States,-
SCARBOROUGH: [interjecting] Most importantly.
MEACHAM: -so, at this, even as a candidate, maybe it makes a little more sense, but at this point it's a pathology. The lack of human empathy, which is not simply a personal failing, but it's also gonna have important diplomatic and political consequences for the rest of us.
The “lack of humanity” characterizations vis-a-vis Trump are pretty old news at this point on Morning Joe. However, far more interesting was where Scarborough and Meacham took the conversation next. Namely, they imputed their accusations of inhumanity and evil not just onto the President, but also his supporters, specifically those in the South:
SCARBOROUGH: Let me ask you this, as far as the personal failing goes, ‘cause I got into this yesterday on the show and a little bit after the show. We're from the South. And what at least our generation was taught was constantly being polite. People would come from across the country and all of my friends that would come from the North would say: everybody is so polite; everybody is so kind; people I don't even know come up and say hello to me, take ‘em to church, and they, you know [trails off]. That's what the South had going for it, you know. We have had our problems, but as far as being kind to people that were coming down here, that’s what we always took pride in. You know, your parents I'm sure at times, my parents at times, would say: that is not how a Southern gentleman treats a lady; open the door;-
MEACHAM: Right.
SCARBOROUGH: -you know, walk behind; do this; carry that. [...] [B]ut for yankees, it's hard to know how much that actually is pounded into your head every day. Your friends, there’s even peer pressure. You don't talk to somebody that way. And yet, you have the entire South it seems, you have evangelicals especially, despicable pharisees, leaders of the church in the South, kowtowing to this horrific man who has no humanity and is the antithesis of everything we were taught growing up in the South about how you treat other people.
MEACHAM: And I think there's gonna be some kind of reckoning. Basically, the Republican Party, a lot of, as you say, a lot of our fellow southerners have sold their soul for temporal power and the check is bouncing.
It’s a bit hard to know where to begin, but perhaps the most ridiculous thing here is how Scarborough compared Christian church leaders in the South to some of the main antagonists of Jesus in the New Testament, characters who were complicit in Christ’s death. Moreover, the implication that genuine Christians have no legitimate reason to support Trump because they must agree with everything he has ever said or done sets an impossibly high standard for supporters of any politician to meet.
Additionally, it is worth noting that Meacham’s assertion that southerners had “sold their soul[s]” by supporting Trump echoed Scarborough’s religious sermon from Tuesday that Trump was actively “go[ing] out of his way” to flout moral conventions and act in a way that embodies the “antithesis” of Christ’s teachings. If Scarborough and company actually want more moral credibility, they should at least start holding rank-and-file Democrats to the same standards as everyday Republicans before getting too fire-and-brimstone on their audience.
A transcript of the segment follows below:
6:06 AM EST
JOE SCARBOROUGH: John Meacham, just put this into a long list of strange, bizarre interactions that the President has on a daily basis. I mean, we could find ten, or eleven, or twelve yesterday of public record that just, again, shows a complete disconnect from the rest of humanity, a complete disconnect from compassion, a complete disconnect from basic human emotions that we teach our children from the time they are two or three years old. Why don't we just go, we’ll stay on this story? But, when you tell John McCain, a war hero, who is, has the most progressive form of brain cancer, who is fighting for his life, when you offer a threat, say [paraphrasing Trump] I'm coming at you and I can be mean [end paraphrase] or whatever childish thing he said, you sit there going, he just, he will never get it. He's never gotten it. And this has nothing to do with politics. This has everything to do with his lack of humanity. And, some of his supporters will say, well, McCain attacked him. You know what you do? When somebody is dying, when somebody is, is, when somebody is fighting for their lives the way he has, sometimes you just sit back and you let it go by and you end up winning.
JON MEACHAM [RANDOM HOUSE, EXECUTIVE EDITOR; TIME, CONTRIBUTING EDITOR]: And you’re the President of the United States,-
SCARBOROUGH: [interjecting] Most importantly.
MEACHAM: -so, at this, even as a candidate, maybe it makes a little more sense, but at this point it's a pathology. The lack of human empathy, which is not simply a personal failing, but it's also gonna have important diplomatic and political consequences for the rest of us.
SCARBOROUGH: [interrupting] Let me ask you this, as far as the personal failing goes, ‘cause I got into this yesterday on the show and a little bit after the show. We're from the South. And what at least our generation was taught was constantly being polite. People would come from across the country and all of my friends that would come from the North would say: everybody is so polite; everybody is so kind; people I don't even know come up and say hello to me, take ‘em to church, and they, you know [trails off]. That's what the South had going for it, you know. We have had our problems, but as far as being kind to people that were coming down here, that’s what we always took pride in. You know, your parents I'm sure at times, my parents at times, would say: that is not how a Southern gentleman treats a lady; open the door;-
MEACHAM: Right.
SCARBOROUGH: -you know, walk behind; do this; carry that. It, it, it, I, for yankees, and I know you are one, Barnicle, but for yankees, it's hard to know how much that actually is pounded into your head every day. Your friends, there’s even peer pressure. You don't talk to somebody that way. And yet, you have the entire South it seems, you have evangelicals especially, despicable pharisees, leaders of the church in the South, kowtowing to this horrific man who has no humanity and is the antithesis of everything we were taught growing up in the South about how you treat other people.
MEACHAM: And I think there's gonna be some kind of reckoning. Basically, the Republican Party, a lot of, as you say, a lot of our fellow southerners have sold their soul for temporal power and the check is bouncing. And I think that the cultural ubiquity of this president is fascinating to me. You know, Andrew Jackson started as president as the central figure, Lincoln as the great war president, T.R. understood the mass media, he made his kids characters in the national drama, FDR changes everything. But nobody has ever been as top of mind as the 45th President of the United States and I don't think ultimately that's a good thing. Remember what John Adams said? [paraphrasing Adams] I study politics and war so my son can study engineering and geography;-
SCARBOROUGH: [interjecting] Right.
MEACHAM: -he studies that so that his son can study literature and philosophy. We’re all the way back to point A.
SCARBOROUGH: Mika and I were walking out of a restaurant, Katty, a couple of weeks ago and we just heard people at every table talking about Trump. None of it was positive. None of it was positive. Everybody was concerned. Everybody was nervous. This was in a Republican area by the way. We got out of the restaurant and I turn to her and I said: you know, he doesn't care that everybody in there thinks he’s destroying America; the only thing he cares about is that they're talking about him.
(...)
