Joe Scarborough feels the pain of panic-stricken liberals in the age of Trump 2.0., and is doing his best to talk them off the ledge. Here was Scarborough on today's Morning Joe:
SCARBOROUGH: Just as we would say in Congress, a point of personal privilege, because I did something this weekend that I just had not done in a while, and I went through emails of people who watched the show and went into the public email file, deeply concerned, and did my best to reassure them that -- what we need to do to get through moments like these, quoting everybody from Rudyard Kipling to Martin Luther King to James Madison.
Scarborough also tried to rouse the audience by reading at length from a New York Times editorial board column similarly trying to encourage Trump antagonists not to lose hope, to stay engaged against "the efforts to dismantle the federal government, the performative attacks on immigrants, transgender people, and the very concept of diversity itself....they need to be challenged boldly and thoughtfully with the confidence that the nation's systems of checks and balances will prove up to the task."
Jon Meacham was not so sanguine. He expressed profound fear over JD Vance's X post, which simply stated the incontrovertible fact that "judges aren't allowed to control the executive's legitimate power." Meacham worried that Vance:
"Might be setting a predicate for the kind of showdown that would potentially, potentially, break apart this constitutional system of checks and balances."
Reading such an ominous threat into Vance's anodyne statement says more about Meacham's fragile state of mind than anything the Vice President wrote. But he was the Biden speechwriter who claimed we all had a "patriotic duty" to vote for Biden. The feelings of rejection must be intense.
Note: Scarborough yet again managed, on the thinnest of reeds, to remind people that he had been a congressman. He prefaced his mention of responding to viewer emails by saying, "As we would say in Congress, a point of personal privilege."
Here's the transcript.
MSNBC
Morning Joe
2/10/25
6:09 am ETJOE SCARBOROUGH: Just, as we would say in Congress, a point of personal privilege. Because I did something this weekend that I just had not done in a while, and I went through emails of people who watch the show, and went into the public email file, deeply concerned, and did my best to reassure them that what we need to do to get through moments like these, quoting everybody from Rudyard Kipling to Martin Luther King to James Madison.
But the New York Times, it's just one of these moments, and you know this as a writer, where people will come up to you and thank you for saying things, writing things, that they have felt in their heart and that they have tried to express, but haven't been able to do it as effectively as you have.
I think all the things I've been trying to tell people about keeping calm, carrying on, and staying focused and staying informed, the New York Times handled it wonderfully.
And if, if you'll you'll give me the privilege of time to read the New York Times and what they say.
"What this moment calls for. Don't get distracted. Don't get overwhelmed. Don't get paralyzed and pulled into the chaos that President Trump and his allies are purposefully creating with the volume and speed of executive orders. The efforts to dismantle the federal government, the performative attacks on immigrants, transgender people, and the very concept of diversity itself. The demands that other countries accept Americans as their new overlords. And the dizzying sense that the White House could do or say anything at any moment. All of this is intended to keep the country on its back heel so President Trump can blaze ahead in his drive for maximum executive power so no one can stop the audacious, ill-conceived, and frequently illegal agenda being advanced by his administration.
"For goodness sake," writes the Times, "Don't tune out. The actions of the presidency needs to be tracked, and when they cross moral or legal lines, they need to be challenged boldly and thoughtfully with the confidence that the nation's systems of checks and balances will prove up to the task."
. . .
J.D. Vance's tweet yesterday that courts cannot stop a president's legitimate power, I mean, of course they can't. But it is the courts, and not Vice Presidents. It is William Rehnquist and it is Warren Burger that determined the outlines of a president's authority, and not Spiro Agnew and Richard Nixon. That is, we saw that in Nixon v. U.S. I suspect we will see that again soon. But it is important I, I love this editorial and I'm wondering what you took from it.
. . .
JON MEACHAM: The thing that is the most troubling to me in the past x number of days was the Vice President weighing in, in that way.
Because it felt to me, and I hope, I pray that I'm wrong. It felt to me as if it might be setting a predicate. A predicate for the kind of showdown that would potentially, potentially, break apart this constitutional system of checks and balances.
