Joe Scarborough makes a lavish living thundering with righteous indignation over Donald Trump's alleged lies, large and small. So you'd think that Scarborough would take special care to tell the truth himself when it comes to condemning Trump for his supposed falsehoods.
But for the second day running on Morning Joe, we have caught Scarborough playing fast-and-loose with the facts regarding statements made by Trump.
Yesterday, we caught Scarborough accusing Trump, in speaking of immigrants "poisoning the blood of our country," of making a "fascist" call for "racial purity."
As we wrote:
In doing so, Scarborough suppressed the remainder of Trump's statement. Here's the full version, in which Trump said of illegal immigrants:
“It’s poisoning the blood of our country. It’s so bad, and people are coming in with disease. People are coming in with every possible thing that you could have.”
In other words, Trump was speaking literally, not figuratively, about blood being poisoned by disease. But Scarborough twisted it into a call for "racial purity."
On today's Morning Joe, Scarborough was back at his shtick of trampling the truth for purposes of trashing Trump. Echoing an allegation made by Vaughan Hillyard of NBC News, Scarborough claimed that in a social media post, Trump had threatened, upon re-election, to "institutionalize" Jack Smith and other officials at the Department of Justice.
But here's the social media post in question, made by Trump at his Truth Social account.
As you'll see, rather than threatening to institutionalize Smith & Co. himself, Trump was predicting that they will "end up" in a mental institution as a result of suffering from a bad case of Trump Derangement System.
In colloquial terms, Trump was clearly saying that he is driving Jack Smith crazy.
Who in good faith could take that as a threat by Trump to take it upon himself to lock up Smith and the others behind padded walls? Trick question: we said, "in good faith."
Scarborough presumably knows that his largely liberal audience will credulously believe the worst that Joe can allege about Trump. But if Scarborough had any self-respect, and concern about establishing a reputation for journalistic integrity, he wouldn't indulge in this kind of blatantly deceptive anti-Trump propagandizing.
At NewsBusters, we define our mission in part as "exposing liberal media bias." Joe Scarborough, consider yourself exposed,
On Morning Joe, Joe Scarborough falsely claiming that Donald Trump has threatened to "institutionalize" Jack Smith and other prosecutors at the Department of Justice was sponsored in part by AT&T, GoDaddy, and Coventry Direct.
Here's the transcript.
MSNBC
Morning Joe
11/14/23
6:19 am ETVAUGHN HILLYARD: Yesterday afternoon, he [Trump] said in a post on social media that he would institutionalize special counsel Jack Smith, the currenty Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco, as well as former DoJ prosecutor Andrew Weissmann.
JOE SCARBOROUGH: When they talk about institutionalizing, the second he's elected, and this was just yesterday. Institutionalizing people at the Justice Department, because they're pursuing investigations against him.
. . .
When he talks about terminating the Constitution of the United States of America! I mean, yeah, yeah! I, I think, I think, Jonathan Lemire, the White House is really doing what we were talking about yesterday. They're focusing on Donald Trump's words.
Each one of these cases. Institutionalizing people in the Justice Department that you don't like? And he makes that threat yesterday.