In a truly tone deaf show open Friday morning, MSNBC’s Morning Joe cheered the supposed “humility,” “dignity,” and “humanity” of former President Bill Clinton at the conclusion of his impeachment in 1999, while denouncing President Trump’s post-impeachment White House address as a “freak show.”
The left-wing program began with a lengthy montage comparing Clinton’s contrite Rose Garden speech after surviving impeachment in contrast to Trump’s defiance during his Thursday address in the East Room. Scarborough then marveled: “So there we see Donald Trump painting William Jefferson Clinton in shades of humility, shades of dignity, and well, shades of humanity.”
The numerous sexual harassment and assault allegations against Clinton never came up as Scarborough hailed the former Democratic president “looking presidential” after dodging accountability for committing perjury.
The anchor gushed over the Clinton/Trump contrast: “It was a master class yesterday in the difference between humility and hubris. Between class and just someone who is classless.... it was remarkable.”
Scarborough then ranted: “Donald Trump put on a freak show yesterday....When things are going well, Donald Trump and his supporters and his family members are at their very worst.”
Minutes later, Scarborough even declared that Trump “was openly mocking the words of Jesus Christ” at the annual National Prayer Breakfast because the President called out his political opponents.
Once again, this is the same host holding up Bill Clinton as a moral example.
As much as Scarborough claimed to prize “humanity” and “class,” he seemed to forget that his show routinely labels Trump and his supporters “Nazis.” He is the last person to lecture anyone about their rhetoric.
Here is a transcript of the February 7 opening of Morning Joe:
6:01 AM ET
(...)
[MONTAGE OF CLINTON AND TRUMP POST-IMPEACHMENT SPEECHES]
JOE SCARBOROUGH: So there we see...
MIKA BRZEZINSKI: Wow.
SCARBOROUGH: Donald Trump painting William Jefferson Clinton in shades of humility, shades of dignity, and well...
BRZEZINSKI: Humanity.
SCARBOROUGH: ...shades of humanity. Looking presidential. It was a master class yesterday in the difference between humility and hubris.
BRZEZINSKI: It absolutely was.
SCARBOROUGH: Between class and just someone who is classless. It was – it was remarkable.
BRZEZINSKI: It was a remarkable day yesterday, beginning to end.
SCARBOROUGH: It was. Donald Trump – Donald Trump put on a freak show yesterday and showed exactly why this race will always be close, even to the end. When things are going well, Donald Trump and his supporters and his family members are at their very worst.
(...)
6:03 AM ET
SCARBOROUGH: You know, Willie, yesterday, the President did –
BRZEZINSKI: Ooh.
SCARBOROUGH: He put on an absolute freak show inside the White House. He put on actually a blasphemous display inside the National Prayer Breakfast, actually mocking people who quoted the words of Jesus Christ.
WILLIE GEIST: Yup.
SCARBOROUGH: Mocking people there of faith who actually followed the orders of Jesus Christ in the Sermon on the Mount. It was quite a display by a president who actual somehow managed to stoop below the lowest of low.
WILLIE GEIST: Yeah, the victory tour yesterday after the acquittal included a day at the National Prayer Breakfast where he displayed again his complete lack of understanding of what it means to have faith.
(...)
SCARBOROUGH: Yesterday, Donald Trump was at his worst. But think about this. I mean, he is – it is assuring, it is calming, that he is so predictable. What did he do the day after Robert Mueller’s testimony? He picked up the phone.
GEIST: Yup.
SCARBOROUGH: He called Ukraine, invaded by Russia said, “I’m holding up your weapons until you dig up dirt on my political opponent.” That was the next day. Donald Trump was at his worst when he actually should have been at his best. When he should have been at his – well, most humane. He should have played the advantage. This man – this man doesn’t know how to make a deal and politically he just doesn’t know how to play an advantage.
Yesterday would have been a wonderful time for him, if he cared about ever getting to 50%, to do what Bill Clinton did. A man who left office, actually, I think in the 60s. But instead, he – Rick Wilson said, instead Donald Trump yesterday, “He bellowed like a third-world warlord in a display of political performance art that was almost unbearably grotesque in it’s affront to American values, American law, and America’s collective sanity.
And as Willie said, Mika.
BRZEZINSKI: Yeah.
SCARBOROUGH: The most grotesque part was not Donald Trump. We’ve – we’ve already priced that in to the stock.
BRZEZINKSI: Yeah, it’s baked into the cake. The grotesque part were those people jammed in there and the people jammed into the prayer breakfast who were laughing along to this abhorrent behavior. This behavior that cut against not only constitutional norms over the past several months and political norms, but more importantly cultural norms that Donald Trump shatters every day. And I will say as a – as someone who grew up in the evangelical church, a cut against basic norms that evangelicals once claimed to believe, once held themselves to –
BRZEZINSKI: Lived by.
SCARBOROUGH: Once talked about inside the church, and inside prayer breakfasts, even though they are all sinners. At least they ascribe to follow the words of Jesus Christ the best they could do. Yesterday, a President of the United States was openly mocking the words of Jesus Christ.
(...)
