MSNBC’s Morning Joe co-host Joe Scarborough appeared Tuesday morning over on NBC’s Today to promote his new book (or whomever wrote it for him) about Harry Truman and, with help from co-host Savannah Guthrie, denounced Republicans as “post-democratic” in their reaction to the 2020 election results and compared Truman to President-Elect Joe Biden.
After a few teases, Guthrie painted Biden as entering office with a “familiar” set of challenges:
An American president inherits a country in crisis on many fronts, including on the world stage and with a tough economy here at home. Sound familiar? Well, we're talking about the nation's 33rd president, Harry Truman, who took over the White House in the final stages of World War II. So are there lessons to be learned by President-Elect Biden? Of course.
Before turning to the book, Guthrie bemoaned about how “more Republicans didn't speak out sooner during this process” and immediately accept Biden as the winner of the election.
Ironically, Guthrie’s husband Michael Feldman was a longtime Al Gore aide and was with him during the 2000 election campaign when it took over a month for him to concede due to a litany of lawsuits demanding recounts.
Scarborough facetiously replied that he was “shocked,” but then insisted in all seriousness that, due to their “silence,” “[s]ome have even suggested that there are elements of the Republican Party that are now post-democratic, post-democracy.”
He added that he wasn’t sure “if I'll go quite that far yet but it really is stunning,” “sad,” and “disappointing to see my former colleagues behave this way and keep...having millions and millions of Americans questioning the legitimacy of America's democratic elections.”
So the liberal media want all Americans to come together and unify, but they’ll refer to over 70 million of them as “post-democratic,” compare them to Jonestown attendees, and suggest elected Republicans are guilty of treason. And those were just three Scarborough examples over the last two days!
The conversation turned to Truman with Guthrie taking solace in how “your book comes right on time because I think in difficult times the one thing we all could use is perspective, and history certainly provides that for us.”
Despite the fact that Scarborough came to Washington himself as an outsider (before becoming a Beltway celebrity), Scarborough waxed poetic about the need for the rule of experts and that Truman had to put up with a Republican Party that, according to him, saw no real purpose in fighting communism and keeping Europe from further falling into Soviet hands (click “expand”):
SCARBOROUGH: We — we’ve have elected time and again politicians to Washington, D.C., that are outsiders. We think that's cool kinda. That's almost as cool as deciding to get somebody to operate on you for brain surgery that's never really done brain surgery. [GUTHRIE LAUGHS] No, we need people who know what they're doing. Harry Truman had been in the United States Senate for a decade. He forged relationships just like Joe Biden has over the past 30, 40 years in Washington, D.C. and so when Truman went in and told Republicans something that they didn't want to hear that two years after World War II we were going to have to confront Joseph Stalin and begin a Cold War, what JFK called a long twilight struggle, he had to go to Republicans who were isolationists. Republicans who after World War I pulled back into this fortress America mentality and explain to them why we had to move forward, we had to protect western Europe from Soviet communism, we had to push through the Marshall Plan that would feed the millions who were starving in Europe because as Truman said, a hungry European is a target for communism and — and we — we had to form NATO, a sort of alliance that had never been formed before in American history. We had to become internationalists even in peacetime. Harry Truman did it, and he did it with the help of a lot of Republicans because he had built those relationships, just like Biden has built relationships with Republicans.
GUTHRIE: If you could slide this book under the door of Joe Biden and say take this lesson from Harry Truman, your predecessors, learn this lesson, what would it be?
SCARBOROUGH: Well, I think — I think the two lessons he already knows. I don't think he needs to be told to get the best and the brightest. Harry Truman did that. He had General George C. Marshall as his secretary of state, a man who had organized the Allies’ victory in World War II. He had Dean Atchinson, maybe the most gifted diplomat of the 20th century, who really was the architect of this revolutionary foreign policy. He had Avril Herriman ambassador to the Soviet Union in 1947 who actually first visited Russia in 1899 when Nicholas II was czar of Russia. I mean, he got the best and the brightest in his cabinet.
Scarborough then asserted that Biden’s put forth “one of the most experienced cabinets that we've seen on the field of foreign policy, at least since Bush 43,” which must be a part of a series of talking points as, a few hours later, Andrea Mitchell claimed on MSNBC that Biden himself would be “the most experienced foreign policy expert since George H.W. Bush.”
And on his way out the proverbial door, Joe claimed Clinton was someone who never held grudges as there always was “a deal to be made,” which would be news to people like Monica Lewinsky.
At the end of the day, the left’s message is simple: we should come together and love each other, you backward, hateful, racist subhumans.
This elitist and hateful characterization of the right was made possible with support from advertisers such as Cadillac, Ford, and Geico. Follow the links to the MRC’s Conservatives Fight Back page.
To see the relevant NBC transcript from November 24, click “expand.”
NBC’s Today
November 24, 2020
8:30 a.m. Eastern [TEASE]SAVANNAH GUTHRIE: Guys, I'm looking forward to our next guest, morning Joe's Joe Scarborough will be with us in just a few. He's going to talk about his new book. Hi, Joe. It's full of important lessons from presidential history that could certainly be applied to today. We'll catch up with Joe in just a moment.
(....)
8:33 a.m. Eastern [TEASE]
[ON-SCREEN HEADLINE: Coming Up; 8:36 AM; Catching Up with Joe Scarborough]
GUTHRIE: Coming up next, we'll catch up with Joe Scarborough. He's got a new book out about Harry Truman’s time in the White House. Joe will tell us how that presidency could offer some lessons for the incoming president.
(....)
8:35 a.m. Eastern
[ON-SCREEN HEADLINE: The Truman Joe; Scarborough Talks New Book on Harry and “Saving Freedom”]
GUTHRIE: An American president inherits a country in crisis on many fronts, including on the world stage and with a tough economy here at home. Sound familiar? Well, we're talking about the nation's 33rd president, Harry Truman, who took over the White House in the final stages of World War II. So are there lessons to be learned by President-Elect Biden? Of course. Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough is the man to ask. He's out with a new book today. It’s called Saving Freedom: Truman, the Cold War, and the Fight for Western Civilization. Hi, Joe, good morning. It's good to see you.
JOE SCARBOROUGH: It's great to see you too.
GUTHRIE: You know what, I'll get to the book but I've got to ask you about politics. It's a big morning. You know, the President has authorized the GSA now to begin the transition. Are you surprised that more Republicans didn't speak out sooner during this process?
SCARBOROUGH [LAUGHING]: I'm shocked, I really am and that's the one thing that we're moving now obviously toward a Biden administration. The GSA stepped in. You've — you’ve seen the President now is giving the go ahead for them to cooperate with the Biden transition. So I'm not going to say the next month and a half, two months are going to be a return to normalcy, but hopefully we'll — we’ll see things calm down. I still can't come to terms with a lot of my friends that I served in Congress with for eight years. The fact that they’ve remained silent through this entire process, they didn't recognize Joe Biden, who clearly won the election, and some have even suggested that there are elements of the Republican Party that are now post-democratic, post-democracy. I don't know if I'll go quite that far yet but it really is stunning, really is disappointing to see my former colleagues behave this way and keep — keep — having — having millions and millions of Americans questioning the legitimacy of America's democratic elections. It's — it’s really a sad time period for us.
GUTHRIE: Well, you know, your book comes right on time because I think in difficult times the one thing we all could use is perspective, and history certainly provides that for us and I loved reading about Harry Truman, who I had forgotten really worked with a divided Congress. He did not have control of Congress and yet was able to accomplish a lot. Is there a lesson there for Joe Biden?
SCARBOROUGH: Oh, boy, there's a big lesson and there's a lesson for all of us too. We — we’ve have elected time and again politicians to Washington, D.C., that are outsiders. We think that's cool kinda. That's almost as cool as deciding to get somebody to operate on you for brain surgery that's never really done brain surgery. [GUTHRIE LAUGHS] No, we need people who know what they're doing. Harry Truman had been in the United States Senate for a decade. He forged relationships just like Joe Biden has over the past 30, 40 years in Washington, D.C. and so when Truman went in and told Republicans something that they didn't want to hear that two years after World War II we were going to have to confront Joseph Stalin and begin a Cold War, what JFK called a long twilight struggle, he had to go to Republicans who were isolationists. Republicans who after World War I pulled back into this fortress America mentality and explain to them why we had to move forward, we had to protect western Europe from Soviet communism, we had to push through the Marshall Plan that would feed the millions who were starving in Europe because as Truman said, a hungry European is a target for communism and — and we — we had to form NATO, a sort of alliance that had never been formed before in American history. We had to become internationalists even in peacetime. Harry Truman did it, and he did it with the help of a lot of Republicans because he had built those relationships, just like Biden has built relationships with Republicans.
GUTHRIE: If you could slide this book under the door of Joe Biden and say take this lesson from Harry Truman, your predecessors, learn this lesson, what would it be?
SCARBOROUGH: Well, I think — I think the two lessons he already knows. I don't think he needs to be told to get the best and the brightest. Harry Truman did that. He had General George C. Marshall as his secretary of state, a man who had organized the Allies’ victory in World War II. He had Dean Atchinson, maybe the most gifted diplomat of the 20th century, who really was the architect of this revolutionary foreign policy. He had Avril Herriman ambassador to the Soviet Union in 1947 who actually first visited Russia in 1899 when Nicholas II was czar of Russia. I mean, he got the best and the brightest in his cabinet. And we see Joe Biden is doing the same thing. This is one of the most experienced cabinets that we've seen on the field of foreign policy, at least since Bush 43 and then you — you also — we've already talked about the bipartisanship. It is so important, and Joe Biden knows this like Harry Truman knows it. You have to keep going after the other party, even when they're resistant. I always joked that Bill Clinton, you could impeach Bill Clinton on Tuesday and he'd call you up on Wednesday and go, “hey, you want to go golfing?” [GUTHRIE LAUGHS] That's because Bill Clinton always knew there was another vote, there was always another reason —
GUTHRIE: A deal to be made, yeah.
SCARBOROUGH: — to work with the other party. Yeah, there was a deal to be made, and that's why he was so successful. That's why LBJ was successful and why Truman was successful.
GUTHRIE: Well, like I said, Joe, there's a lot of lessons here and also just learning about the history of Truman, coming from Missouri. You say short in stature, bad eyes, who would have thought he would become such a figure in American history. It’s a great read, Joe.
SCARBOROUGH: Yeah.
GUTHRIE: Thank you. The book is called Saving Freedom. You can find more information about it today.com/shop.
