Monday’s Morning Joe was firing on all cylinders, full of liberal hot takes and hypocrisy from their faux conservatives and Republicans. Chief among them was co-host Joe Scarborough, who demanded that Republicans defending and enabling President Trump “not only owe an apology to this nation, they owe an apology to their children,” which is amusing considering Scarborough’s personal history with the President.
Scarborough started the 7:00 a.m. Eastern hour by doing — what else — promoting his own supposed greatness.
After hearing a mash-up of Republicans Senators defending the President, Scarborough proclaimed:
This goes exactly to what Jon Meacham has said, goes to what I’ve written before in The Washington Post when I said that our Founding Fathers actually — they envisioned a time — and Jon talks about this in his book as well, The Soul of America....the Founders long envisioned the possibility of a tyrant being elected and becoming President of the United States.
He added that the Founders “never let their imaginations be darkened by a Congress at the same time being so compliant when a chief executive with autocratic tendencies went in and did the sort of things that Donald Trump did.” Therefore, “[t]hese Republicans not only owe an apology to this nation, they owe an apology to their children.”
If you had a heartbeat and watched Morning Joe during the campaign, you’d conclude that Scarborough and fiancé Mika Brzezinski did everything they could to promote the then-candidate and cozy up to him before later tossing him aside.
Between our friends at the Washington Free Beacon and a scrupulous National Review piece by Sarah Quinlan, it’s easy to find examples of how Scarborough helped ensure Trump won the Republican nomination.
Now, historian Jon Meacham agreed with Scarborough’s rant, stating that “[t]he Founders foresaw this” because they created a government with three branches and “divided sovereignty with the states” to help “counteract” one’s vogue passions.
Scarborough read an excerpt from Meacham’s new book and referenced Trump allegedly stating a desire prior to the inauguration about vanquishing his enemies, which teed up Meacham to argue that, “[i]f a president is busy vanquishing his enemies, he's not rebuilding a middle-class, he's not improving our standing in the world.”
He also made the point that congressional Republicans should “thinking about the oil portrait test,” which is “what are we going to think when we look at their portraits?” Keep that line in mind as that’ll come again shortly.
The conversation briefly turned humorous as panelists laughed about the new claim from The Washington Post that the President has uttered roughly 3,000 falsehoods, but someone decided that they had to play Al Gore from South Park insisting that he’s “super serial.”
That person? Failed former McCain/Palin campaign manager Steve Schmidt. Schmidt interjected and uncorked a doozy of rant that, for all his denunciations of Trump for coarsening our discourse, contained some childish toilet language (click “expand” to see more):
We're talking about vanquishing enemies by the President of the United States. The enemies are his fellow Americans which he swore an oath to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States and Americans aren't just connected to each other in this time. We're connected to each other through the generations and we have an obligation to the generations of Americans not yet born to build a stronger country and the abdication of that responsibility, the Founders predicted, that one day, we would have a President Trump. What they could never have imagined is the weakness, the submissiveness of this class of quislings who hold the title United States senator who are complicit in the degradations of our institutions, complicit in the sundering of the nation. We have never seen such weakness, such submissiveness, and none of these people will ever have an oil portrait unless there’s extra wall space at the sewage treatment facility on the grounds of the White House.
Brzezinski simply stated in response to this nonsense that this is “a lesson in citizenship for members of Congress which is just staggering” and moved on by resetting viewers and introducing that segment’s panel.
To see the relevant transcript from MSNBC’s Morning Joe on May 7, click “expand.”
MSNBC’s Morning Joe
May 7, 2018
7:01 a.m. Eastern
JOE SCARBOROUGH [after hearing mash-up of Republicans defending Trump]: This goes exactly to what Jon Meacham has said, goes to what I’ve written before in The Washington Post when I said that our Founding Fathers actually — they envisioned a time — and Jon talks about this in his book as well, The Soul of America, now available at Amazon and bookstores somewhere near you.
MIKA BRZEZINSKI: It's amazing.
SCARBOROUGH: But there is, Jon Meacham, the Founders long envisioned the possibility of a tyrant being elected and becoming President of the United States. They never let their imaginations be darkened by a Congress at the same time being so compliant when a chief executive with autocratic tendencies went in and did the sort of things that Donald Trump did. These Republicans not only owe an apology to this nation, they owe an apology to their children.
JON MEACHAM: A couple of things. You're exactly right. The Founders foresaw this. I think if you had told the men in Philadelphia in 1787 that, you know what? We won't get a really terrible one at the very top until 2016, they would have thought you were fantasizing. They're the — it's the reason for the three branches, it’s the reason for divided sovereignty with the states. Ambition was supposed to counteract ambition.
SCARBOROUGH: Right.
MEACHAM: The resilience of the Constitution, the genius of the Constitution is that it recognizes human sinfulness, it recognizes human weakness and it was an attempt to give reason a chance to be in the arena against passion. What I think about these —
SCARBOROUGH: I don't want to get too — I'm sorry, Jon, let just me read one and have you continue and I don't want to get too far into the book right now but this is so appropriate to what you’re saying. You write: “Even when the drafting was done, the precise nature of the presidency of its powers and of relative role in guiding the nation as an open mystery to the framers yet they were willing to live with the ambiguity, why? Because of George Washington. From the start Americans, recognized the elasticity of the presidency and hoped for the best, such hopes have not been realized.” And then you talk about Donald Trump the day before being sworn in saying those around him, ‘I want you to look at everyday as a reality TV show where I vanquish all comers.’
MEACHAM: And vanquish is the scariest part of that. That was a story that Peter did in December of last year. If a president is busy vanquishing his enemies, he's not rebuilding a middle-class, he's not improving our standing in the world. He's busy watching television and tweeting about it and to me — again, this is not a case for mindless optimism, but the Founders did foresee that we were going to need these checks and balances because the presidency itself was a wager on character. They were looking at the first president when they were trying to figure out the powers of the presidency.
BRZEZINSKI: Wow.
MEACHAM: So, it was — it’s a human institution. Just one thing about the wonderful montage there. These guys have got to start thinking about the oil portrait test. You know, what are we going to think when we look at their portraits?
BRZEZINSKI: Right.
MEACHAM; And maybe they think getting past next couple of days or getting through a fundraiser is important but you want to be Margaret Chase Smith who in 1950, four years before the men caught up, gave the first anti-McCarthy speech.
BRZEZINSKI: Yeah.
MEACHAM: You don't want to be at the end of the game here.
BRZEZINSKI: Yeah. Meacham talked about that montage of Republicans just not able to answer the question as to whether or not the president lies. That was Republican Senator Roy Blunt yesterday adding his names to the list of senators that would rather not acknowledge it that the President has a penchant for lying. By The Washington Post’s account, the President has lied or misled the public more than 3,000 times.
JOHN HEILEMANN: That's more than a penchant. That's more like a pathology then a penchant.
BRZEZINSKI: It's a pathological problem. Steve Schmidt.
STEVE SCHMIDT: Can I just say?
BRZEZINSKI: Please.
SCHMIDT: We're talking about vanquishing enemies by the President of the United States. The enemies are his fellow Americans —
BRZEZINSKI: Yeah.
SCHMIDT: which he swore an oath to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States and Americans aren't just connected to each other in this time. We're connected to each other through the generations and we have an obligation —
BRZEZINSKI: I know.
SCHMIDT: — to the generations of Americans not yet born to build a stronger country and the abdication of that responsibility, the Founders predicted, that one day, we would have a President Trump. What they could never have imagined is the weakness, the submissiveness of this class of quislings
BRZEZINSKI: Yes.
SCHMDIT: — Who hold the title United States senator who are complicit in the degradations of our institutions, complicit in the sundering of the nation. We have never seen such weakness, such submissiveness, and none of these people will ever have an oil portrait unless there’s extra wall space at the sewage treatment facility on the grounds of the White House..
BRZEZINSKI: So a lesson in citizenship for members of Congress which is just staggering.
