I'm not big on recycling, and have even run afoul of the volunteer recycling police at our little community here, who discovered that I had put cardboard in the garbage dumpster.
So permit me to atone for my crimes against the planet by recycling one of my columns from five years ago.
I do so in response to Joe Scarborough's castigation of President Trump on today's Morning Joe for having criticized Democrats at yesterday's National Prayer Breakfast, suggesting that they oppose God. (Some of us remember the 2012 Democrat convention, where a large number of Dems loudly screamed as they restored a menition of God to the party platform.)
Insisting he was "not preaching," Pastor Joe went on to cite Scripture, in effect accusing Trump of being a bad Christian:
"Nancy Pelosi, even when Donald Trump was deriding her personally, attacking her personally, even when he mocked and ridiculed Nancy Pelosi's husband being brutalized within inches of his death, she still talked about praying for Donald Trump.
And it was a concept he didn't understand. It's a concept that actually Jesus talks about in the Sermon on the Mount. I'm only bringing this up. It's not preaching. This is just reporting on, if you're going to the prayer breakfast, and you're saying Democrats are godless heathen, and you don't even understand that Jesus is, one of the first things that we learn in Matthew on the Sermon on the Mount is that you pray for your enemies. You pray for those who want to persecute you. Blessed are the merciful, for they shall be shown mercy. When you're asked to forgive, you're asked to forgive 70 times 7. That's, that's like the perfect number. So that lies at the heart of Jesus' ministry.
"If you're trying to bring the country together, you can pass on the whole; Democrats are godless Marxists because, yeah, maybe the most intense of the base believe it. But it's kind of hard to spread that message at the same time you're destroying PEPFAR. At the same time, you're destroying all these other aid efforts that were actually inspired by religious organizations and presidents' belief in Jesus Christ and the need that we needed to help the poorest among us."
In that 2019 column, I noted Scarborough rebuking the inimitable Sen. John Kennedy [R-LA] for having said of Nancy Pelosi, "It must suck to be that dumb."
As I wrote in response [emphasis added\:
"When it comes to insulting Donald Trump in crude terms, Joe Scarborough is the veritable Don Rickles of political pundits. Scarborough's faux-outrage could go down as one of the most egregious examples of hypocrisy and lack of self-awareness in recorded television history."
The column detailed that in the previous few years, Scarborough had:
- Called President Trump a "thug" and a "goon."
- Written that Trump "is not mentally equipped to continue watching our show."
- Smeared Trump in one long breath as a "bumpkin, fool, idiot, stupid old blubbery man who doesn’t know what he’s doing; weakest leader on the planet;” suffering from "pre-dementia.”
- Called Trump a "jackass" and "plain out stupid."
- Accused Trump of “malignant idiocy,” and transforming into a “tyrannical president.”
- Called Trump a "schmuck," a vulgar Yiddish term, and compared him to a kid "pooping his pants."
In more recent times, Scarborough has, of course, made a cottage industry of calling Trump a fascist and even "full-on Hitler." Our Alex Christy has reported that, based on an analysis of a year's worth of comments, Scarborough won the dubious distinction of being "The King of Nazi Analogies."
Note: For the second day running, Scarborough misrepresented Trump's restrictions on foreign aid. Yesterday, we caught Scarborough claiming that Trump's executive order on USAID is "literally killing people across the globe right now." Scarborough failed to note that Trump had excluded life-saving actions from his restrictions on aid activities.
Today, Scarborough accused Trump of "destroying PEPFAR," the program aimed at curbing AIDS abroad. Scarborough failed to report that Trump has issued a waiver, permitting PEPFAR to continue distributing HIV medications.
Here's the transcript.
MSNBC
Morning Joe
2/7/25
6:00 am ETDONALD TRUMP: Because here in America, we are once again a nation that believes in ourselves. We believe in our destiny and trust in the providence of Almighty God.
And I can tell you the opposite side, the opposing side, and they oppose religion. They oppose God. They've lost their confidence. They've lost their confidence as a different group of people than I remember.
As the Bible says, blessed are the peacemakers. And in that end, I hope my greatest legacy, when it's all finished, will be known as a peacemaker and a unifier. I hope that's going to be clear.
MIKA BRZEZINSKI: All right. President Trump there with his unique style as unifier in chief yesterday at the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington.
. . .
JOE SCARBOROUGH: It's always fascinating to see Donald Trump at these prayer breakfasts. Because you never -- it's like a box of chocolate. You never know exactly what you're going to get.And so you have these calls for unity, and you also have these suggestions that Democrats were godless heathens that had lost their way. And of course, this suggestion that now suddenly, over the past couple weeks, America has become a great country again.
. . .
But it is interesting, and it does need to be brought up, that Nancy Pelosi, even when Donald Trump was deriding her personally, attacking her personally, even when he mocked and ridiculed Nancy Pelosi's husband being brutalized within inches of his death, she still talked about praying for Donald Trump.
And it was a concept he didn't understand. It's a concept that actually Jesus talks about in the Sermon on the Mount. I'm only bringing this up. It's not preaching. This is just reporting on, if you're going to the prayer breakfast, and you're saying Democrats are godless heathen, and you don't even understand that Jesus is, one of the first things that we learn in Matthew on the Sermon on the Mount is that you pray for your enemies. You pray for those who want to persecute you. Blessed are the merciful, for they shall be shown mercy. When you're asked to forgive, you're asked to forgive 70 times 7. That's, that's like the perfect number. So that lies at the heart of Jesus' ministry.
And so I just remember when Nancy Pelosi talked about praying for Donald Trump. He said, oh, nobody believes that. How could you ever do that? He's also a man who has said that he's never had to ask God for forgiveness, either.
So again, what one does at the prayer conference when -- prayer breakfast -- when one is President of the United States, obviously is up to them. I would say, though, just a recommendation, if you're trying to bring the country together, you can pass on the whole, Democrats are godless Marxists because, yeah, maybe the most intense of the base believe it.
But it's kind of hard to spread that message at the same time you're destroying Pepfar. At the same time, you're destroying all these other aid efforts that were actually inspired by religious organizations and presidents' belief in Jesus Christ and the need that we needed to help the poorest among us.
And so, interesting time to be delivering that message. Let's hope, again, a page is turned. Hope springs eternal. Let us hope that the two sides can figure out how to get along. And that starts by one side not calling the other side godless heathens. Just a suggestion. Just a suggestion.
MIKA: Just one small suggestion.
SCARBOROUGH: That may not be the best way forward.
