The “Morning Joe” crew on Wednesday took up Donald Trump’s campaign manager being charged with battery for allegedly manhandling a reporter, with co-host Joe Scarborough expressing frustration they were taking up time talking about the issue at all.
Co-host Mika Brzezinski said while an apology from the campaign would have solved the issue, there’s been a “hyper-focus” on “what appears to be a lie coming out of the box.”
Journalist Cokie Roberts, a guest on MSNBC’s morning news show, stepped in to qualify Brzezinski’s comments, saying, “touching her is inappropriate.”
“I’m saying I totally agree with you,” Brzezinski replied. “And I think there was a lie out of the box. And you are now asking me to say it three times, and that’s my point.”
Brzezinski then turned the discussion to the Huffington Post’s Sam Stein to ask what Fields first reported about the incident.
“I get it,” Stein began.
But Scarborough cut him off.
“You don’t get it. Nobody gets it, Sam, because we haven’t heard it, Sam,” he said pointedly. “Because there is, again, such a hyper-focus. We are now eight minutes into this and I guarantee you, wasting eight minutes, now almost nine minutes on this, people will still say that we have insufficiently obsessed on this touching.”
“There’s two sides to every story,” Brzezinski tried to cut in.
“Which, let me say again, was inappropriate and should have never happened,” Scarborough continued, raising his voice. “But we were going to go to news four minutes ago but you and the rest of the Twitter-sphere think this is the most important story of the universe, Sam, so please, tell us what she said immediately after this broke.”
“I feel like I’m on the stand here,” Stein said.
“Because you can’t help yourself,” Brzezinski told him.
“What are you talking about?” He replied with a laugh.
Stein went on to say while he thinks Fields’ first remarks that Lewandowski yanked her almost to the ground were “definitely overstated,” if she “felt she was violated, she has every right to be heard.”
He also said everyone on the show agrees the controversy was “so avoidable on so many levels.”
“So avoidable,” Brzezinski echoed.
“We’ve said that a hundred times,” her co-host said.
“So what are we debating?” Stein asked.
“Well, you’re the one that wants to keep talking about it,” Scarborough replied over Stein’s objections. “Let’s go to the debate last night, because we’ve now wasted ten and-a-half minutes on this and I’m sure that still won’t be enough.”
He also said there’s been a “singular manic focus” on the event this week and launched into a lengthy impression of the House speaker interacting with the President, noting they had spent 12 total minutes on the issue by the time he finished the bit.
Because people keep getting battered at Trump rallies with the candidate’s stated approval. And that’s news, since it hasn’t happened in recent memory. If ever.
Sounds like the major reason they spent so much time talking about it is that Mr. Scarborough kept either interrupting people, or talking about how much time they were spending talking about it.
“Physician heal thyself!.”
As Cruz aptly enough pointed out, “members of the campaign staff should not be physically assaulting the press.” But if that’s what they’re doing, it’s a pretty much unprecedented news story worth ten minutes of discussion on a supposed news show, Joe, you fucking moron.
I wouldn’t expect any less from the guy who ended up with a dead female staffer in his office.
FFS Katherine, Journalist?
Drumpf last night: “I don’t know what touching is”.