From news websites to cable news outlets, the liberal news media is now being forced to contend with its non-stop Trump-is-Hitler warnings after Trump cheated death by a few inches Saturday. One stark example of that self-reflection is MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” program, where co-hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski were pulled Sunday night before their weekday show aired Monday morning.
Post-shocked media pivots back to Trump and MAGASteve Jordahl, AFN.net The assassination attempt against Donald Trump shocked the world, including the liberal news media, but that shock is over and now Trump and his supporters are being portrayed by reporters and news anchors as the real threat. Reacting to the iconic photo of a bloodied Trump raising his fist, Washington Post art critic Philip Kennicott predicts the photo will make Republicans more violent by encouraging “dark forces” in the country. “Political violence can only degrade democracy, never advance it,” he wrote, “and this photograph is painful proof of that corrosive power.” Kennicott even compared a left-behind shoe on stage, possibly belonging to Trump, to the piles of shoes left behind by Jews at Nazi concentration camps. On a Monday CNN segment, Jim Acosta complained to a New York Times reporter that Trump supporters are treating his miraculous survival “like a religious event, that he was saved by God.” The reporter, Michael Gold, said Trump supporters at the Republican National Convention already view him as a “savior” for the country. So the assassination attempt, he complained, only adds to the political narrative that Trump is the victim of “political martyrdom.” On a CBS News segment, former House speaker Kevin McCarthy was grilled about Trump’s own mean words and deeds just one day after the assassination attempt. “Does Donald Trump bear some responsibility for that?” anchor Norah O’Donnell demanded. “Does he need to change his rhetoric?” “You know, it's odd,” McCarthy pushed back. “This is a man that came less than an inch from losing his life, and the question is you're worried about him?” |
News of the last-minute change came from CNN, the liberal rival network. It said NBC executives were concerned a “Morning Joe” guest would make an “inappropriate” comment about Trump and the assassination attempt, which would reflect badly on NBC.
The show returned to the cable network today, Tuesday. On that show, Scarborough said he was “very surprised” and “very disappointed” when NBC News informed him Sunday the plan was to operate with a single NBC News feed during the day Monday.
“That did not happen,” Scarborough complained. “We don’t know why that didn’t happen.”
Considering the history of the two co-hosts, Media Research Center spokesman Curtis Houck tells AFN he didn’t buy the excuse from NBC about a guest making an “inappropriate” comment on the live TV show.
“It’s not just about the guests,” Houck says. “They can make all the excuses they want, but I would say this is definitely about Joe and Mika.”
'American democracy can be over'
Houck and MRC have plenty of evidence – years of on-air quotes and video clips – to support that allegation since the two co-hosts routinely warn their audience Trump must be kept out of the White House or else America will become another Third Reich. After learning about “Morning Joe” being punished by NBC bosses, MRC affiliate Newsbusters compiled 14 examples of “Morning Joe” hosts and guests imagining a second Trump term.
In a June 2022 segment, Brzezinski called the Democratic Party the “world’s last best hope against fascism, against an extreme autocratic anti-woman, anti-gay, anti-contraception, anti-freedom collection of fascists who dominate the Trump wing of today’s Republican Party.”
“We’re in a fight for American democracy, and he’s [Donald Trump] becoming more and more explicit on how he wants to take American democracy down!” Scarborough warned in a December 2023 segment. “One year from now, it can be over. American democracy can be over.”
In a segment from last year, presidential historian Michael Beschloss compared Trump to “monsters” who have tried to destroy the United States, such as during the U.S. Civil War and World War II.
Donald Trump, Beschloss warned, is “threatening to do it all again, but even more effectively, saying he’s going to institute a presidential dictatorship, that we may assume is going to take our democracy away.”
Trump will 'execute' his enemies
In a November 2023 segment, eight months ago, Scarborough pushed back on people who complain he shouldn’t compare Trump to Hitler. If Trump controls the U.S. judicial system again, the co-host warned, Trump will “imprison, he will execute whoever he is allowed to imprison, execute, drive from the country.”
More recently, after the Biden-Trump debate, Brzezinski compared it to a “a man slowed down by a cold versus a man with a cold, vile, and merciless heart.”
In light of the show’s history, Houck says the decision to punish “Morning Joe” was admitting the show is a “powder keg” of trouble for NBC executives.
“This has to be the smartest decision MSNBC has made in maybe the history of ever,” Houck says of the one-day punishment.
Back on the “Morning Joe” program Tuesday, Scarborough demanded to know why NBC News dropped its plans for a live news feed that affected only one MSNBC show, "Morning Joe."
Brzezinski said she knew the answer.
“I think the reason why is this show began, and continues 17 years later, on being the place where you can go to have the hard conversations in a civil way,” she said.
