On today's Morning Joe, Joe Scarborough slammed evangelicals for their focus on abortion. No fewer than four times, Scarborough called evangelicals' concern about abortion "bizarre."
All this arose in the context of the show opening by contrasting President Biden's National Prayer Breakfast remarks yesterday with those by President Trump a year ago. It's true that Biden's remarks were more conventionally appropriate. But which "brilliant" aide thought it was a good idea to have an unusually frail and subdued Biden say, "we need to lean on each other, lift one another up?
Scarborough trashed Donald Trump as the opposite of Jesus, "and that's a guy who got, what, 90% of the evangelical vote?" He accused evangelical preachers of "selling out" their congregations in order to get a glimpse of power via their connection to President Trump.
Scarborough boasted of having always voted pro-life. But his message to evangelicals was clear: don't make such a big deal about abortion. Come on over to the liberal side. Even if in doing so you will be supporting abortion not just until birth, but in some cases beyond. Take Barack Obama, who opposed the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act back when he was in the Illinois Senate.
But in 2010, Scarborough trashed anyone who questioned Obama's Christianity. "I don't hold religious show trials like Glenn Beck and other people on the far right are holding of Barack Obama right now," Scarborough preached. "I think true Christian faith, true Christian charity accepts this man's word and goes on to something else, and creates a new false controversy."
So who is "bizarre" now? And who has sold out their evangelical convictions for a glimpse at power? As his third wife sat their next to him in the studio. Egotistical, three wives, loves power. Kinda Trump-ish.
Scarborough's agitated, and at times screaming, demeanor suggested he still hadn't managed to compose himself since having, bizarrely, "joked" yesterday that Liz Cheney might have assassinated fellow Republicans voting to remove her from her House leadership post.
Joe Scarborough's segment calling evangelicals "bizarre" for their concern over abortion.was sponsored in part by USAA, Amazon, and GoDaddy.
Here's the transcript.
MSNBC
Morning Joe
2/5/21
6:02 am ETJOE SCARBOROUGH: You have this bizarre, and it is bizarre — it is bizarre. You have had this bizarre trend in evangelical Christianity to reduce Jesus’s entire message to abortion. It’s — it’s just not there! Read the red letters.
Yes, I’m saying this as somebody who voted pro-life all the time. But you cannot reduce Jesus’s ministry to that. And yet, Mika, you have one preacher after another preacher, after another preacher selling their entire congregations out. A lot of them, just to touch the cloak. Not of a holy man, but just to touch the cloak of a failed reality-TV host who was [begins screaming] the antithesis of everything they preached their entire lives.
How do we know this? Because I grew up in the church, I grew up in the Southern Baptist church.
. . .
It just shows the hypocrisy of religious leaders who kowtowed to this false prophet just to have a little glimpse of power.
