Joe Scarborough: not just an MSNBC host anymore. Now a Biden campaign adviser . . .
On today's Morning Joe, Mika Brzezinski read from Joe Scarborough's Washington Post column of yesterday, in which he counseled Joe Biden to stick to his script. The column, read by Mika, included this line [emphasis added]:
"If you think I am trying to send Biden a message with this column, you are correct. Too much is riding on next year’s election for any Democratic candidate to shoot from the hip rhetorically."
So Scarborough—the former Republican who still claims to be a conservative— has transformed himself into a [presumably] unpaid campaign adviser to Joe Biden, a liberal whose recent flip-flopping rejection of the Hyde Amendment is the cherry on his progressive cake.
Now that Scarborough has outed himself as a Biden campaign adviser, should we expect to see him at Biden rallies, gesturing frantically from the wings if Uncle Joe starts to go off script?
Note: As to Mika's claim that Biden is "intellectually connected to what he and his team are fighting for," that certainly wasn't the case last week, when a Biden surrogate lauded Joe's "consistent" support for the Hyde Amendment, only to have Biden renounce his support the very next day.
Here's the transcript [emphasis added]:
MSNBC
Morning Joe
6/12/19
6:12 am EDTMIKA BRZEZINSKI: Mike was talking about the different Bidens, and how when Biden stuck to the script, it seemed different. I will say, it doesn’t matter. Stick to the discipline. And you make this point in your column, in the Washington Post, because, you know, for a brief moment in his presidency, Trump stuck to the script, in Normandy, as you say, and it worked. And that’s exactly what we need. So Joe writes this:
"President Trump drew praise from editorial writers and thought leaders across the political spectrum for a D-Day address that temporarily soothed the nerves of NATO allies and foreign policy analysts alike.
"Forgive Democrats for being less than impressed by their nemesis’s reading skills. But they should not forget that their ability to dislodge The Donald from 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. next year may depend upon a certain Scranton, Pa. native doing the same. Considering that Joe Biden, the Democrats’ best hope for 2020, has a checkered past as a candidate for national office, his supporters can only hope that when the former vice president gets on stage, he smiles for the crowd, reads his speech and exits stage left, waving as he goes. That is because Biden has proved himself uniquely challenged in going off script, taking 20 minutes to answer a question and causing himself and his staff unnecessary political grief.
"If you think I am trying to send Biden a message with this column, you are correct. Too much is riding on next year’s election for any Democratic candidate to shoot from the hip rhetorically. America’s future will likely be left in the hands of whichever 70-something politician sticks most closely to the script that is handed to him."
And the difference, Joe, between Joe Biden sticking to the script, and Trump, is that Joe Biden at least is intellecutally connected to what he and his team are fighting for. And it wouldn't hurt him to do that. While with Trump, you see a glaring difference from being in front of the cameras with the crosses in Normandy behind him, talking to Laura Ingraham calling people names and acting reprehensibly. And then walking on the stage and looking presidential, because he actually stuck to the script. It was almost jarring.
