Failed presidential candidate Howard Dean has a new mission in life as an MSNBC contributor. It is to be what he sees as a pricipled censor. Dean has announced that he refuses to make any more appearances on that network until it stops broadcasting Trump's White House Coronavirus Task Force briefings. Even if MSNBC only shows a portion of those briefings, that still won't meet Deans strict censorship requirement.
Dean explained his no briefings policy to The Hollywood Reporter on Monday in "Howard Dean Rips TV Networks for Airing Trump Briefings: 'It's Dangerous'."
The headline read: "The former presidential candidate says he won't guest on MSNBC, which employed him as a contributor, until they stop the daily broadcasts." Writer Jeremy Barr explained:
Former presidential candidate and Democratic Party leader Howard Dean drew a line in the sand Tuesday, April 7.
"I just told MSNBC I wasn't going on their shows as long as they were broadcasting Trump's press conference," he wrote on Twitter. "I won’t make much difference if it’s just me but if 50 of you did it it would make a difference."
So how did that work out for you, Howard?
A week later, Dean tells The Hollywood Reporter that he isn't aware of any other national politicos who have joined his boycott, but he's just as fiery in discussing why he thinks it's so "dangerous" for cable news networks like MSNBC, CNN and Fox News to be broadcasting President Trump's daily Coronavirus Task Force briefings.
Oops!
"Trump is not doing this for any reason other than to communicate with his base at a time where he can't have rallies," Dean says. "This has been a problem since Trump ran. Cable television made Donald Trump, because cable television is reality television. But it has very little to do with governance. ... It's dangerous. People have died because of some of the things that Trump has said on television about hydroxychloroquine and stuff like that. And I think the cable television industry has a responsibility for those deaths, not just Trump."
So does that mean you will also boycott using hydroxychloroquine if your life depended on it, Howard?
In recent days, Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski have joined their MSNBC colleagues Rachel Maddow and Chris Hayes in discouraging television networks from broadcasting the briefings.
Note that even they aren't risking their plushy jobs by threatening to walk off if MSNBC continues broadcasting the Trump briefings.
