Joe Scarborough, the host of MSNBC’s Morning Joe political roundtable, blasted the media this morning for its “freak out” over Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s unwillingness during last night’s third and final presidential debate to accept, in advance, the election results.
“I will keep you in suspense,” the New York real estate mogul and first-time candidate told moderator Chris Wallace.
Both Trump and former candidate Bernie Sanders have used the “rigged election” terminology during the campaign season. Many Sanders supporters believe that his primary challenge to eventual Democrat presidential nominee Hillary Clinton was conducted unfairly.
Trump’s response came in the immediate aftermath of several James O’Keefe Project Veritas hidden camera videos suggesting that Democrat operatives were allegedly inciting violence at Trump rallies and also acknowledging acts of voter fraud. The O’Keefe video about alleged mass voter fraud has received nearly three million YouTube hits so far.
Both Joe and co-host “Morning Mika” Brzezinski have had an on-again, off-again feud with their frenemy Donald Trump, during which they have directed lots of harsh criticism in his direction. This time, they both seem to be on his side at least as it relates to the overheated media reaction.
Joe Scarborough, 53, is a former Republican politician who represented Florida’s 1st congressional district in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1995 to 2001.
Scarborough specifically called out the media for its hypocrisy “bath” about what Trump said.
“This is an example, the media got something they can absolutely freak out about and claim that he’s an agent of Vladimir Putin and destroying democracy in America and it’s just another example of the media having to find a little phrase and freak out when as a Republican I have listened to Democrats talk about the only two times we won the White House in like 800 years that we stole both elections… Democrats have been whining for 16 years, they’re still writing articles about how Bush stole the elections in 2000 and 2004. So this holier-than-thou attitude about this is the first time anyone has suggested that the election is not a sacrosanct process, it’s a joke! So you guys bathe in that hypocrisy if you want to, I’d just like to hear how the debate went… hell, even Bernie Sanders supporters just six months ago were saying that Hillary Clinton was rigging the election.”
The Morning Joe host was alluding to the fact that Al Gore famously contested the 2000 election by refusing to concede to George W. Bush and challenging the results all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. John Kerry at one point also claimed that the 2004 election was stolen from him in Ohio. There was relatively little pushback in either case from the mainstream media.
Mika then chimed in with a list of previous statements from journalists about alleged stolen elections
Scarborough also got into a heated exchange this morning with Never Trumper Bill Kristol over Trump’s questioning of the election’s legitimacy.
“You’re practically crying,” Scarborough said to the Weekly Standard editor, while also accusing him of lying about the show’s softball Trump coverage last year.
About a week ago, Scarborough chided his own network for a poll that showed Hillary Clinton with an 11-point national lead over Donald Trump. The Morning Joe host claimed that the poll “was cooked” because it was taken at the height of the Access Hollywood scandal in which Trump was heard on a hot mic using lewd language 11 years ago but excluded taking into consideration the second presidential debate.
In July, unconfirmed rumors surfaced that Joe Scarborough and the recently divorced career journalist Brzezinski, co-workers on the show for nine years, are in a relationship.
[Featured Image by Brian Ach/AP Images]