By Peter Drier/Common Dreams
Most media reports have portrayed Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski as aggrieved victims of Donald Trump’s Thursday Twitter tantrum. It can’t be pleasant to be attacked so personally by the president, but Scarborough and Brzezinski are fighting back.
On their MSNBC show Morning Joe on Friday and in an op-ed column in the Washington Post entitled “President Trump Is Not Well,” they chastised Trump for his vicious and vulgar attacks on her appearance, for referring to her as “low I.Q. Crazy Mika” and him as “Psycho Joe.” They denied Trump’s claim that she had plastic surgery and that she was “bleeding badly from a face-lift” when she and Scarborough visited Trump’s private club at Mar-a-Lago in Florida last year. They also levied a serious charge that Trump tried to blackmail them by threatening a negative story about the couple in the National Enquirer unless they asked Trump (who is close to the tabloid’s publisher) to have the story killed.
America is aghast but hardly surprised by Trump’s latest social media assault. It is totally consistent with his regular attacks on women, his efforts to bully and intimidate his critics, and his narcissistic need to get revenge on anyone who does not swear uncompromising loyalty to him.
Understandably, Brzezinski and Scarborough are attracting lots of sympathy for being the targets of Trump’s vile comments. Democrats have used this episode to remind Americans about the president’s unhinged personality, his disrespect for women, and how he demeans the office and embarrasses the country with his crude and repugnant remarks. Republicans have been relatively tepid in rebuking Trump. They have sought to distance themselves from his comments against the influential MSNBC co-hosts and particularly his sexist remarks about Brzezinski, but not one Republican so far has proposed a motion in Congress to censure the president for this and other outrageous statements.
On air, Brzezinski said that, “I am very concerned about what this once again reveals about the president of the United States. It’s strange,” adding “It does worry me about the country.” Scarborough pointed to the “alarming” pattern of Trump’s insults toward women. And in a tweet directed at Trump, Scarborough wrote, “Why do you keep lying about things that are so easily disproven? What is wrong with you?”
But Scarborough and Brzezinski are hardly emblems of journalistic integrity or political courage. Let’s not forget that the Morning Joe cohosts, particularly Scarborough (a former Republican Congressman from Florida), are partly responsible for Trump becoming president. They’ve known Trump for over a decade and were once among his biggest fans.
Read More
Posted on July 3, 2017