Will Joe Scarborough be hearing from some MSNBC suits? You can imagine Joe being called on the carpet for having, on today's Morning Joe, not-so-subtly accused his own network of "fearmongering" the issue of minority voter suppression against Republicans.
During a discussion of Hillary's planned speech of today on expanding the voting calendar, Scarborough spoke of "cable news" and "cable shows" driving ratings by "fearmongering" the notion of Republicans supposedly engaged in voter suppression. So which cable news network could Scarborough have in mind? Fox News? Nope. CNN? Meh. Googling "MSNBC voter suppression" yielded 136,000 hits, including links to virtually every MSNBC host, from Matthews to Maddow, Roberts to of course Sharpton, beating the voter suppression drum.
That Scarborough knew he was treading on thin home ice is reflected in his hesitation before mentioning "cable" news and "shows" the two times he did. He stuttered out "watch, watch, watch" before finally taking the plunge and saying "cable shows" the second time.
JOE SCARBOROUGH: That's the silliness, though: we've heard for the past two presidential election cycles that the Republicans are demons and that they have put bars up around all the voting booths and they are chasing down black people and other minorities and doing everything they can to stop them from voting and Darth Vader is running around zapping any Democrat that might try to vote.
And, in these same elections, far from voter suppression, there has been the highest voter turnout that Democrats could have dreamed for. And especially among the very minorities who everybody was screaming--just as a little political ploy. I mean, fearmongering. The voting turnout was extraordinary among black voters, among Hispanics . .
They were screaming this in '08, they were screaming it in '12, they were screaming it in 2000. They do it every four years. And it is a fearmongering routine to try to get people out to the votes and also you can drive, you know, your cable news ratings and you can drive your website ratings by trying to say this governor or that governor hates all black people and doesn't want them to vote --
MIKA BRZEZINSKI: I think it's a real issue.
JOE: -- and then --
STEVE RATTNER: Well, nobody says that.
JOE: Yes, they do. Watch, watch, watch cable shows.
