Morning Joe might well have renamed itself "Schadenfreude Central" today. The show opened with an extended segment devoted to the news that mask-skeptic Republican congressman Louie Gohmert has announced that he has contracted the coronavirus.
To be sure, Joe, Mika, and Willie bent over backward to let you know they really, really, really hope Gohmert "is okay," with each of them putting their pious good wishes on the record.
Except . . . someone should have told Scarborough not to laugh, smirk, and smile as he introduced the segment, saying, "Louie, Loui-e-e-e, Louie."
Note that while Scarborough berated Gohmert for not wearing a mask in public, Joe apparently didn't apply such rules to himself, as Spectator USA recently caught a maskless Scarborough lounging around in public with Mike Barnicle.
Not content to revel in Gohmert's illness, Scarborough spun a conspiracy theory, suggesting that President Trump's continued support of hydroxychloroquine is due to him somehow being on the take. "Follow the money," said Scarborough. This isn't the first time Morning Joe has floated this absurd theory. Back in April, Mika also said "follow the money," alleging "there’s got to be some sort of financial tie to someone somewhere that has the president pushing this repeatedly."
What renders their accusations particularly absurd is the fact that, having been a generic drug for decades, hydroxychloroquine provides a minimal profit margin. Moreover, several of the drug's manufacturers have, as here and here, offered to donate hundreds of millions of doses.
Scarborough also engaged in some political prognostication, predicting that in addition to Republican senators being "completely wiped out," President Trump, on his current path, will lose "by over 400 electoral votes." That implies an Electoral College wipeout along the lines of 470-68, meaning President Trump would lose in a near-historic landslide. Duly noted.
Of course, Joe's track record as a Trump prognosticator isn't exactly perfect. Three months before the 2016 election, roughly the stage we're at now, Scarborough confidently announced that Trump "knows he's going to lose" and that he believed it "without a doubt."
For good measure, Scarborough capped off the segment by referring to "the party of Donald Trump" as a "dumbass" for the way it's handling the pandemic. Keepin' it classy, Joe!
Morning Joe gloating over Rep. Gohmert's illness was sponsored by Choice Hotels. Follow the link to our Conservatives Fight Back page to contact Choice Hotels to let them know what their advertising dollars supported.
Here's the transcript.
MSNBC
Morning Joe
7/30/20
6:00 am EDT
LOUIE GOHMERT: By keeping a mask on, keeping it in place, I might have put some germs, some of the virus onto the mask and breathed it in, I don’t know. But I got it. We’ll see what happens from here.
MIKA BRZEZINSKI: You don’t get it from the mask, actually.
JOE SCARBOROUGH: Louie. Lou-i-e-e-e. Louie. No.
MIKA: You don’t get it from the mask. You wear the mask so you don’t give it to other people.
SCARBOROUGH: [sarcastically] But, congratulations on walking around, Louie, not wearing masks, doing the very thing doctors tell you will give you the coronavirus.
MIKA: And spread it.
SCARBOROUGH: And spread coronavirus. And then getting it. And then blaming it on the mask. It’s quite a public service for Americans.
MIKA: Republican congressman Louie Gohmert--which, we hope he’s okay. Wondering if masks caused him to contract the coronavirus.
SCARBOROUGH: Of course, I know Louie and I like Louie, and I hope Louie’s okay, Willie. But even after he’s gotten the coronavirus. Even after he's walking around Capitol Hill without a mask, which is how he got coronavirus, even after his staff is complaining to Politico that he’s operating in a dangerous way, and forcing them to be in the office and mocking and ridiculing anybody who wears a mask, he goes on and can’t just say you know what, I need to wear a mask. And now, he’s — it’s like right out of Plandemic where he’s trying to blame the wearing of the mask for what he gets.
. . .WILLIE GEIST: And you have Louie Gohmert, who again, we hope is okay.
. . .
SCARBOROUGH: Hydroxychloroquine, which Scott Gottlieb and just about every other medical professional says, it: Does. Not. Work. On. This. Disease. [Whispers] It doesn't work. I don't know who's making money, right? But, follow the money --
MIKA: You have to ask that question.
SCARBOROUGH: We've said from the very beginning: follow the money. For somebody to continue to bring up hydroxychloroquine, you have to ask: what's the money connection? Because it makes no sense to continue to push a drug, as the president continues to do, that doesn't work. That every medical professional says doesn't work!
. . .
And yet you've got the President of the United States running around, retweeting people that are saying masks don't matter. You've got the President of the United States holding fundraisers in packed crowds, not wearing a mask. And you have Republicans on the Hill, still just acting asinine about it. You keep thinking they're going to change. You've got a chief of staff mocking reporters [affects odd accent]: "you sure do look funny in your mask."
You just sit here going, wait: are they really going to continue this strategy through the fall to ensure that Donald Trump loses by over 400 electoral votes and the Senate is completely wiped out? Because being a dumbass on a national pandemic has proven to be a bad political strategy for the party of Donald Trump.
