Joe Scarborough believes the Trump administration is lying in saying the president wasn't briefed about a reported Russian bounty on US soldiers in Afghanistan.
But if indeed the president wasn't informed of the reported Russian plot, on today's Morning Joe Scarborough offerered two execrable explanations for the omission: President Trump is either too "addled," i.e., demented, to make informing him worthwhile. Or, the president is a Russian "source," who couldn't be "trusted." That is tantamount to accusing President Trump of treason, of being a Russian spy.
The suggestion that President Trump is "addled" is part of Morning Joe's continuing campaign, as here and here, to counter the undeniable evidence of Joe Biden's mental decline by suggesting that President Trump has acuity issues of his own. It's one thing to postulate that President Trump suffers from Biden Syndrome. It's altogether more appalling to suggest that the president is a traitor.
Note that a gleeful Mika Brzezinski, fantasizing President Trump's political demise, suggested that if "if this isn’t the turn, I don’t know what it is." It's always Silver Bullet time at MSNBC!
This segment was brought to you by Papa John's, Icy Hot, and Home Advisor.
Here's the transcript.
MSNBC
Morning Joe
6/29/20
6:16 am EDTMIKA BRZEZINSKI: Claiming ignorance on a Russian plot to have US troops killed in Afghanistan.
JOE SCARBOROUGH: By the way, claiming ignorance when everybody else in the government, certainly his security people, seemed to know it, and even the British were notified. So really, is the president so addled --
MIKA: Yeah.
SCARBOROUGH: -- that they didn’t even tell the President of the United States when we’re telling our allies?
MIKA: Yeah, it's going to be a tough one.
SCARBOROUGH: When the intel community knows about it? No. They’re lying and you know they're lying.
MIKA: Well this is a really -- if this isn’t the turn, I don’t know what it is.
SCARBOROUGH: Well —
. . .
SCARBOROUGH: At the time he's trying to invite [Russia] to the G-7. At a time he’s continuing to say that Russia’s a good friend of his, and they’re not going to tell the president? That either suggests he is so addled and mentally deficient they didn’t think it was worth their time telling him, or that he’s a source of the Russians and that they couldn’t trust him. There’s no other good explanation of why you wouldn’t tell the president that the leader of Russia is putting bounties on the heads of young American troops.
Actually, there is an explanation, whether you believe it or not: that the intelligence was so raw it didn't need to go to the White House. Former Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell challenged leftist Rep. Ted Lieu on Twitter: “I never heard this. And it’s disgusting how you continue to politicize intelligence. You clearly don’t understand how raw intel gets verified. Leaks of partial information to reporters from anonymous sources is dangerous because people like you manipulate it for political gain.”
