Don't flatter yourself, Joe. You ain't that important.
Calling President Trump a "would-be dictator," Joe Scarborough claimed on today's Morning Joe that if he could "get away with it," Trump would arrest Mika and him, and every other journalist he didn't like, and throw them in jail to silence them.
The liberals tried this tactic before the election. None of this has ever happened, but they just keep predicting it. They have to pretend pulling Jim Acosta's "news" credentials for a week is somehow like wasting away in the Gulag.
Scarborough added the obligatory, "our constitutional republic and the institutions in it, literally, are being challenged every day."
And yet, here we are, the day after the New Hampshire primary, where every candidate sought to top the other in savaging Trump. And in a media environment where the MSM has been pouring out poison on the president since the day he announced his candidacy. Yet all remain free to walk the earth, venting their venomous spleens.
Scarborough was reacting to the news of the Justice Department's decision to seek a reduction in Roger Stone's recommended sentence.
The reality is that all presidents have had an adversarial relationship with the press. You need look no further than President Trump's predecessor. Then New York Times reporter James Risen called Barack Obama's administration "the greatest enemy of press freedom in a generation.”
Note: Persisting in his propensity to demean people in juvenile ways, Scarborough repeatedly called Tom Tillis, a Republican senator from my home state of North Carolina, "Tommy Boy." Scarborough did so in the context of lambasting senators who voted to acquit President Trump in the impeachment trial.
Here's the transcript.
MSNBC
Morning Joe
2/12/20
6:31 am ETJOE SCARBOROUGH: Our constitutional republic, literally, and the institutions in it, literally, are being challenged every single day by this would-be dictator. Let me say, that sounds tough, doesn’t it? You tell me.
MIKA BRZEZINSKI: That’s the word I was going to use.
SCARBOROUGH: You tell me. Would Donald Trump not do whatever he could do if he could get away with it? Seriously. If he could arrest every journalist he didn’t like, if he could arrest us tomorrow? Let me ask you a question: do you think he would arrest us tomorrow? Do you think he would arrest the editor of the New York Times, the editor of the Washington Post, Jeff Bezos? Do you think he would arrest them tomorrow and throw them in jail to silence them?
MIKA: It sounds like it.
SCARBOROUGH: Because if you say he wouldn’t, you’re just lying to yourself.
