Hillary Clinton must be worried if she's willing to trot out a bottom-of-the-barrel dead-ender like Joe Conason to defend her.
Conason slithered onto the Morning Joe set today and it didn't take him long--quoting Winston Churchill--to compare Joe Scarborough to Nazis. Even then, Conason couldn't tell the truth, claiming Churchill hadn't been referring to Nazis, when he clearly had.
Let's look at that Churchill quote. He said "By its sudden collapse, … the proud German army has once again proved the truth of the saying, 'The Hun is always either at your throat or at your feet'." And when and where did he say it? In a speech before a Joint Session of Congress on May 19, 1943. The German army to which Churchill cited was of course the Nazi army. Joe Conason, busted.
For you youngsters out there who might not remember Conason from the Monica Lewinsky era, here's a wonderful passage from a 2001 Jonah Goldberg column. As you'll see, some things, and people, never change:
Conason made a name for himself defending Bill Clinton by attacking the people who attacked Bill Clinton. No matter what Bill Clinton did or said it didn’t matter because the other guys were worse.
. . .
Conason’s appetite for creating Clinton-defending concoctions is inexhaustible. Why Joe is like this I don’t know. He does seem like a generally grumpy, sit-in-the-dark and throw-whiskey-bottles-at-late-night-reruns-of-Hardball kind of guy. And it’s got to be a lonely business always, always, always being so, so right.
Informal reader poll: who gets your vote as scuzziest Hillary defender: Conason, Carville, Lanny Davis, David Brock or someone else?
Here's the transcript of the Conason/Scarborough exchange, in which Conason falsely claims Churchill wasn't talking about the Nazis.
JOE SCARBOROUGH: Come on, come on. Stop this game.
JOE CONASON: It was very interesting when you gave the -- first of all, Joe, I have to say.
SCARBOROUGH: Stop this game.
CHURCHILL: I have the Churchill quote for you, which is --
SCARBOROUGH: Oh, great, I love Churchill.
CONASON: What he said about the Hun, is that they're either at your feet or at your throat.SCARBOROUGH: So you're comparing me to Nazis now. Great.
CONASON: No, no. No, no.
SCARBOROUGH: You just compared, you just used the word -- you compared me to a Nazi because you don't like the facts that you have nothing on this.
CONASON: You're nothing like a Nazi, Joe.
SCARBOROUGH: You just compared me to one.
CONASON: No, no, no. It's just that there are times when you've been, you know, friendly to the Clintons.
SCARBOROUGH: Right.
CONASON: Like when I believe you broadcast from CGI at least one time.
SCARBOROUGH: A couple times.
CONASON: A couple times!
SCARBOROUGH: Oh no! Does that make me a Nazi, Joe?
CONASON: No, no, Churchhill was saying sometimes you like them, sometimes you don't like them when it's convenient for you.
. . .
SCARBOROUGH: No, no, Let me finish. You compared me to a Nazi. You compared me to a Nazi.
CONASON: No, I didn't.
SCARBOROUGH: Yes, you did. You brought up a Churchill quote when he was talking about the Nazis.
CONASON: He wasn't talking about the Nazis. He wasn't talking aboutt the Nazis. This was after World War I.
SCARBOROUGH: The Huns. Whatever.
CONASON: They were not Nazis. They were Huns.
