"I reassure you the Biden campaign is safe. There is no presence of the Trump campaign in the streets of America. None at all."
That paraphrase of Saddam spokesman Mohammed Said al-Sahhaf, aka "Baghdad Bob," at the beginning of the Iraq war in 2003, with American tanks rumbling into Baghdad, could have been Joe Scarborough on Friday's Morning Joe.
Scarborough claimed that Trump's financial travails "are the sort of things that may not show up in stupid polls in March."
He rolled tape of Never Trumper Stuart Stevens analogizing the Trump to a bag filled with water. It might not be leaking, but there'd come a time when it would catastrophically collapse!
Scarborough said Stevens analogized the race to 1980 race between Carter and Reagan. It was considered a toss-up till the very end, until Reagan broke away in the last weekend. Which is really weird, because Biden is no Ronald Reagan. Biden is very much like Jimmy Carter: a man presiding over inflation and foreign-policy fecklessness.
Scarborough was clearly feeling defensive about his shameless shilling for Biden. At the end of his spiel, he imagined people out there saying, "he's whistling past the graveyard."
"No I'm not," insisted Joe. "You look at the fundamentals! It doesn't make sense that, that Donald Trump is going to pull this out at the end."
Riight.
Bet Scarborough can't wait for that next call from his phone buddy Biden, praising his latest effort on behalf of the team.
Note: Jen Palmieri, a former Obama communications director who performed the same function for Hillary's 2016 campaign, committed some unintentional humor. She kvetched that the media isn't sufficiently covering the facts that Trump has been having financial problems, and that he has been indicted 91 [sic, now 85] times!
In fact, there has been wall-to-wall MSM coverage, brimming with schadenfreude, of Trump's difficulties in raising the half-billion bond in the NY civil fraud case.
And it seems a virtual MSNBC requirement that any segment on Trump be prefaced with a description of him as the "twice-impeached, defendant in four criminal trials, facing 91 [recently reduced to 85] felony charges, found liable for sexual assault" former president.
But the media is going too easy on Trump. Yeah, that's the problem, Jen! Democrats think the media is "underdoing it" until they have a massive lead in the polls. They expect the media to magically make it "right."
Here's the transcript.
MSNBC
Morning Joe
3/22/24
6:03 am EDTJOE SCARBOROUGH: What a nightmare. I'm dead serious here. What a nightmare it has to be, being a part of Donald Trump's campaign, being grossly underfunded, and knowing that Trump has put his family in charge of the RNC, for being a Republican candidate down ballot. I've been one of those before. You're just praying that the RNC can help you out. And knowing all of that money is going for a guy who's just completely beyond cash strapped. I mean, for a lot of legitimate reasons. Again, we said this yesterday. There are a lot of billionaires that wouldn't have $500 million lying around. But they really are, he has along, but they're really leveraging his campaign for his personal use.
And it's -- these are the sort of things that may not show up in stupid polls in March. This is the shhh-- stuff [laughter on set] that as you make that final turn after Labor Day, this is when things -- and I'm not saying it's going to happen, but I thought Stuart Stevens had good a pretty good insight. Said everybody's talking about how this race looks right now, he said.
To Stuart, and he knows a thing or two about campaigns, he says it's looking like 1980 in reverse. Where, you know, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, all year, too close to call.
And things just flipped near the end. And that's what Stuart says. And if you look how things are lining up, we don't know what's going to happen the next six months, but, man, if, if you look any of the fundamentals about politics, this is -- this looks like -- this looks like Stuart may be onto something.
And Alex told me they got Stuart's bite here. Play Stuart real quick, and we'll talk about it.
STUART STEVENS: My image of the Trump campaign is somebody walking around with a paper bag full of water. I don't think it's going to leak, but when this thing goes, it is going to go quickly.
And I think there's a good chance we're going to have a situation like 1980 in reverse, where Carter was tight with Reagan until the middle of October, and then kind of the bottom fell out for Carter.
. . .
JEN PALMIERI: You know, I think that we don't talk enough about Trump's weaknesses, and the fundamentals of his campaign are very weak. You know, it's like, he doesn't have any money. He has 91 counts against him, four indictments, trials that he's like trying to balance, and he can't raise any money. He's got to raise half-a-billion dollars by Monday.
And then, with the Biden, I think we need to brace for the -- I bet you'll agree with this. Like, the polls might not change in Biden's favor until the fall.
SCARBOROUGH: Right!
PALMIERI: Like, that's when people are going to start to pay attention.
SCARBOROUGH: And just so people understand, we went into the final week, and I'm old enough to remember this. And I know Donny is. Final weekend. There was I think, you know, Time magazine came out, back when we had magazines, when we were younger people and had magazines to read.
The Friday before the Tuesday election in 1980, nobody knew if Jimmy Carter was going to win or Ronald Reagan was going to win. And [blows out air], just a collapse over the weekend.
And you look [pounds table] at the fundamentals. You look at the fundamentals. You look at the economy. And wee're going to show an ad. Are you better off than you weref our years ago? Damn straight you are, unless you're Donald Trump.
Like, the fundamentals in every way. The money, the economy, you name it. This week, we find out Jay Powell's doing three interest rate cuts.
And by the way, people are like, if anybody's out there going, he's whistling past the graveyard. No I'm not. I'm just telling ya. You look at the fundamentals! It doesn't make sense that, that Donald Trump is going to pull this out at the end.
