Joe Scarborough picked a good morning to take a day off from Morning Joe. It came the day after Fox News aired an interview with FBI Director Chris Wray in which he said "The FBI has for quite some time now assessed that the origins of the pandemic are most likely a potential lab incident in Wuhan . . . Here you are talking about a potential leak from a Chinese government-controlled lab."
The MSM "conventional wisdom" corps has long dismissed the notion that the virus originated in a government-controlled lab as a Sino-phobic conspiracy theory. They believed it came from a nearby "wet market," which would be more convenient for the Chinese communists.
Today's Morning Joe crew buried the fact that in 2021, Scarborough sneeringly condemned "Harvard guy" Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), for:
"Spouting a conspiracy theory that the Chinese made this virus up in a lab."
You have Rush Limbaugh, every day, the Presidential Medal of Freedom honor. It's hard to say this is the most reckless thing he's ever done, but saying basically this was just a conspiracy . . . This is serious stuff, folks. Don't worry about your ratings for one week. Don't try to spool up whoever was wearing tinfoil hats in your audience. But that's what's happening. These conspiracy theorists are continuing to say things that are going to be extraordinarily dangerous for this country."
If Scarborough had any guts, or journalistic integrity, he would have appeared on today's show to eat some crow -- or better yet, some bat from that Wuhan live market. Wearing a tinfoil hat would have been a nice additional touch.
But Joe was strangely absent. Mika Brzezinski opened the show by blandly announcing without explanation that "Joe has the day off." As Church Lady Dana Carvey would say, "how convenient!"
Now that the liberal media line on Covid origin has been debunked, and Republicans who pointed the finger at the Commie-controlled Wuhan lab have been proven right, Morning Joe regular Katty Kay underlined the "intelligence community" is still divided on this matter and urged Republicans not to make much mention of that, in order to preserve "bipartisanship."
KAY: I think the important thing about the select committee is that they keep the bipartisanship that they have. And that they don't let statements like we've had out of China this morning kind of force the sort of polarization we've seen in American politics where this becomes a tit-for-tat, with Republicans saying, look, we said it was from a lab, and Dr. Fauci, for example, didn't agree with us that it was from a lab, and he was saying it was from the market.
And you could see some of that already in some of the more extreme pro-Trump voices, around the reports that the US intelligence, that the FBI thinks that this did come from a lab. So I think the real job of the committee is to keep the partisan -- the bipartisanship on China policy together, and not let this become another victim of American division over almost every issue between left and right.
Right. Because those oh-so-bipartisan Democrats never exploit any potential political advantage.
Joe Scarborough being strangely absent for Morning Joe the day after his claim was debunked that people who believe Covid originated in a Wuhan lab are "spouting a conspiracy theory" was sponsored in part by Volkswagen and Roman.
Here's the transcript.
MSNBC
Morning Joe
3-1-23
6:07 am ETMIKA BRZEZINSKI: Welcome to Morning Joe. It is Wednesday, March 1st. Joe has the morning off. But along with Willie and me, we have, of course, the host of Way Too Early, White House bureau chief at Politico Jonathan Lemire. US special correspondent for BBC News, Katty Kay, and the president of the Council on Foreign Relations, Richard Haass is with us this morning.
. . .
WILLIE GEIST: You had the Director of the FBI yesterday saying in no uncertain terms that the FBI, in addition to the Department of Energy which has been talking about for the last couple of days, the FBI believes in the lab-leak theory as well.
MIKA: Yeah. The Director of the FBI says China is blocking efforts by the United States and others to investigate the origins of Covid.
In an interview with Fox News, Christopher Wray said that the agency has assessed that the virus most likely came from a potential lab incident in Wuhan.
CHRISTOPHER WRAY: I should add that our work related to this continues, and there are not a whole lot of details I can share that aren't classified. I will just make the observation that the Chinese government, seems to me, has been doing its best to try to thwart and obfuscate the work here, the work that we're doing, the work that our U.S. government and close foreign partners are doing, and that's unfortunate for everybody.
. . .
MIKA: Yeah, there's not a complete agreement on this in the intelligence community, Katty.
. . .
KATTY KAY: I think you're right to point out that there's some division in the intelligence communities over the degree of confidence with which anyone knows whether this came from a lab or came from that market.
And I think the important thing about the select committee is that they keep the bipartisanship that they have. And that they don't let statements like we've had out of China this morning kind of force the sort of polarization we've seen in American politics where this becomes a tit-for-tat, with Republicans saying, look, we said it was from a lab, and Dr. Fauci, for example, didn't agree with us that it was from a lab, and he was saying it was from the market.
And you could see some of that already in some of the more extreme pro-Trump voices, around the reports that the US intelligence, that the FBI thinks that this did come from a lab. So I think the real job of the committee is to keep the partisan -- the bipartisanship on China policy together, and not let this become another victim of American division over almost every issue between left and right.
