Political writer Joe Conason got an earful from MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough on Wednesday morning after an analogy about Winston Churchill went horribly awry and ended with Scarborough convinced he had been called “a Nazi.”
A few hours later, in a post on National Memo titled, “What I Learned On ‘Morning Joe’ Today,” Conason wrote that he doesn’t regret invoking Churchill’s remarks on Germany.
“As a former Republican Congressman, Joe Scarborough is a past master of fake indignation, so it is wise to be careful with jokes (and historical quotes),” Conason wrote.
In an effort to point out Scarborough’s off-again-on-again relationship with the Clintons, Conason had quoted Churchill saying that the Germans are always “either at your feet or at your throat.”
The quote did not land — 30 seconds later Scarborough was berating Conason for calling him a Nazi.
In his post, Conason didn’t appear to buy Scarborough’s outrage.
“There is simply no possibility that Joe, who generously noted that we are ‘friends’ before I left the set, believes I called him ‘a Nazi’ or would ever do so,” he added.
Conason insisted during the show that the quote wasn’t even about the Nazis, saying it was uttered after World War I, but Scarborough, apparently still burned, later tweeted that it was indeed made during World War II.
In his post afterward, Conason admitted got the timeframe of the quote wrong, but still described it as “profoundly and amusingly apt” to describe Scarborough’s love-hate dynamic with the Democratic power couple.
Wach the original exchange on-air below:
