One day after the visit to the White House by Boston Red Sox players celebrating the team’s 2018 World Series championship, the hosts on Friday’s edition of Morning Joe on MSNBC asserted that if even one player didn’t want to go, the others should have stayed away as well.
The strongest comment came from co-host Joe Scarborough, who said no one on the baseball team should have taken part because Donald Trump is “the most racist president certainly in our lifetime.”
While discussing what happened on Thursday, the panelists pointed to the fact that Alex Cora -- the team manager and a Puerto Rican -- and almost all of the black and Hispanic players with the Red Sox refused to attend to protest the president’s “racist rhetoric.”
Co-host Mika Brzezinski joined the discourse by stating:
I usually am the one that you guys make fun of for not really knowing enough about sports, but I’ve been watching you coach baseball, and I know enough about what it means to be on a team.
And if one member of the team is not comfortable or two or three, why would anybody on that team go? I don’t get it. I mean, isn’t it all about unity?
Regular MSNBC contributor Donny Deutsch responded to that all-or-none philosophy by turning his attention to “the flip side” of that concept.
“Look. If it’s a chance in my life -- you know how I feel about Trump -- to go to the White House, I shouldn’t be denied that just because you disagree,” Deutsch stated. “So the same way that the guys have a right to stay at home, the guys have a right to go.”
“Actually,” Brzezinski countered, “I don’t think that applies because the reasons why these players didn’t go are so much more important than getting a free trip to the White House,” Brzezinski argued.
“Come on! Stick with your team,” she added.
Scarborough also noted that the unity argument works both ways in this scenario.
“There are some difficult parts to this, really,” he stated. “I’m not going to tell a 23-year-old kid from Texas that may never get a chance to go to the White House again: ‘You’ve got to make a political statement even if you don’t follow politics.’”
The co-host added, "This is on the level, of course, that we can’t even imagine, but man, it’s about the unit. It’s about the team.”
Scarborough then expressed his disappointment with people on the team by asserting:
There’s not one white guy on that team that couldn’t say “You know what? Can you get me to the White House, like three or four months from now, maybe I’ll get a tour?
“I’m gonna stay back with my team.”
He then tried to put the final nail in the coffin by adding that he sides “with the guys who are uncomfortable because this is the most racist president certainly in our lifetime.”
