MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough could barely contain his anger on Wednesday as he ripped Donald Trump for repeatedly lying during his daily coronavirus task force briefings and roasted cable networks — including his own — for failing to adequately fact-check the president’s falsehoods.
“I still for the life of me don’t understand why the networks, including our own, allow Donald Trump to lie for two hours to the American people,” the co-host of “Morning Joe” said Wednesday, at times shouting toward the camera.
“If he were giving good information, that would be one thing, but it is a lie,” he added, visibly becoming more upset. “So if this network or CNN or Fox is going to run him lying for two hours a night, they need a real-time fact-checker.”
Co-host Willie Geist pointed out that “some of the networks are figuring this out and adapting.”
“I know we come out of it and our anchor, whoever it is that day, runs down a list of what the president just said and sort of debunks if it needs debunking those facts,” Geist said. “So there is some evolution there. I think that’s a good thing.”
It wasn’t good enough for the enraged Scarborough, however.
“I’m not just talking about our network, all the networks, they get distracted by the ground noise. ‘Can you believe the president said this? Can you believe he tweeted that?’ No. Get the facts, get his quotes, get the death toll, get the people in his administration that were warning him from early January. Put up his words, not your words,” Scarborough said. “Get his quotes, get his words. Get his statements. Get the fact that he’s trying to stop Americans from voting in the election by mail, and then get when where the president says, ’Yeah, I voted by mail because I’m allowed to do it but you’re not.’”
Scarborough suggested the briefings “can’t continue unless they have a serious fact checker that cuts in while the president is lying to the American people.”
“If he gives facts, great. I’m all for it,” he said. “I said from the beginning of this we’re all in this together. I said from the beginning I want the president to succeed because when he succeeds, we succeed and Americans don’t die.”
“But he’s not succeeding,” Scarborough concluded. “In fact, he’s spreading misinformation. He’s trying to cover up all the mistakes he’s made over the past two months instead of looking forward, trying to save senior citizens’ lives.”
(Watch the comments from the 14-minute mark in the video above.)
Elsewhere on the show, Scarborough compared the president to the fictional character Eddie Haskell from the 1950s-60s TV show “Leave it to Beaver,” causing Haskell to trend on Twitter.
“The president lies. And I got to say, he’s not a particularly good liar. In fact, he’s one of the worst liars since Eddie Haskell,” Scarborough said. “For you people that are not as old as I am, Eddie Haskell was on ‘Leave it to Beaver.’ I saw the reruns, OK? But but he’s a worse liar since Eddie Haskell.”
Check out that bit from the 11-minute mark in the video below:
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