Joe Scarborough and Paul Krugman are fighting again.
The two men have long been going after each other in blog posts arguing about the national debt crisis. Last March, they sat down together with Charlie Rose to face off in a one-on-one debate. Scarborough appeared strong during the debate while Krugman later wrote in a blog post that he felt "tired" and "unready" -- calling it his "Denver debate moment."
A year later, the two are back at it. Scarborough and his "Morning Joe" panel on Wednesday slammed the changes made to the Census Bureau's health questionnaire -- which will potentially make it difficult to measure the effects of the new health care law -- as a "clumsy effort" by the White House to "cook the books" on Obamacare. Krugman fired back in an opinion column in the New York Times Wednesday suggesting Scarborough is an "Obama Truther."
"It’s really quite vile to have talk-show hosts who quite literally know nothing about the field, other than that they’re against covering the uninsured, casually accusing Census of 'cooking the books' to support Obamacare," he wrote.
Scarborough responded in an email to Politico Wednesday saying that he "laughed" when he read the column, and said that Krugman is still embarrassed over his debate performance last year.
"I guess the Nobel Prize winning professor hasn't gotten over being embarrassed in his economics debate against an Alabama grad who read Sports Illustrated in the back of my Econ 101 classes," Scarborough said. "Paul's shrill attack is off target and wrong, as usual. I just hope the good professor can work through the humiliation of his debate performance against me and will soon stop being driven to post silly attacks because of his feelings of inadequacy. I'm pulling for him."
(h/t: Mediaite)