NBC legal analyst Lisa Bloom teamed up with Chris Hayes on Tuesday night to counter the claim that Michael Brown did not have his hands up before he was fatally shot by Officer Darren Wilson. Later that evening, Bloom took aim at a colleague who’s been pushing that narrative.
“No one has said Mike Brown was a hero,” Bloom said in a tweet directed at MSNBC morning host Joe Scarborough. “What we have said was that we don’t give the death penalty to shoplifting teens.”
The impetus for Bloom’s Twitter rebuttal was a post on Scarborough’s typically dormant Politico blog. Scarborough wrote that the “hands up, don’t shoot” gesture, which has been used as a sign of solidarity with Brown, is “offensive” because it “suggests that a police officer pointed a gun and shot a black man whose arms were in the air while he said ‘hands up, don’t shoot.'”
“The fact is there is no credible evidence that remotely supports the absurd claim that ever happened,” he added.
That post, combined with Scarborough’s on-air comments earlier this week, left Bloom incensed. In one tweet, Bloom addressed “Morning Joe” regular Donny Deutsch, who echoed Scarborough’s criticism of the gesture and called Brown a “thug.”
.@JoeNBC Acc’g to that radical race-baiting PBS, more than half of GJ witnesses said Brown’s hands were up when shot http://t.co/ritgZkQ08d
— Lisa Bloom (@LisaBloom) December 3, 2014
.@JoeNBC No one has said Mike Brown was a hero. What we have said was that we don’t give the death penalty to shoplifting teens.
— Lisa Bloom (@LisaBloom) December 3, 2014
.@JoeNBC White people telling black people that we know better how they should handle themselves when their kids are shot: big turnoff.
— Lisa Bloom (@LisaBloom) December 3, 2014
.@JoeNBC Flaw in yr reasoning is assuming Darren Wilson’s testimony is 100% true tho no one asked him tough Qs or pointed to inconsistencies
— Lisa Bloom (@LisaBloom) December 3, 2014
.@JoeNBC If you concede massive racial bias in justice system, how do you not see it here? Or have you not read the grand jury transcript?
— Lisa Bloom (@LisaBloom) December 3, 2014
.@JoeNBC I’m helpfully giving you link to grand jury transcript. Read up in preparation to discuss this with me! http://t.co/LC0YRHfO6h
— Lisa Bloom (@LisaBloom) December 3, 2014
.@DonnyDeutsch says (and @JoeNBC seems to agree) Mike Brown was a “thug” –a dead kid who can’t defend self + who had no advocate in GJ room
— Lisa Bloom (@LisaBloom) December 3, 2014
I missed the memo from black America asking a bunch of white folks to sit around a TV studio and wag fingers at them. But not @JoeNBC
— Lisa Bloom (@LisaBloom) December 3, 2014
Civil rights movement ignited over black kids being killed at horrific rates. @JoeNBC likens it to “flying saucers.” Show some respect, Joe.
— Lisa Bloom (@LisaBloom) December 3, 2014
More than half the eyewitnesses say Mike Brown was shot from behind while running away. Contend w that truth @JoeNBC. http://t.co/ritgZkQ08d
— Lisa Bloom (@LisaBloom) December 3, 2014
Only 1/5 of the eyewitnesses said Brown was NOT shot while running away, @JoeNBC. http://t.co/ritgZkQ08d
— Lisa Bloom (@LisaBloom) December 3, 2014
Dorian Johnson is not an “accomplice” to robbery, @JoeNBC. Never even charged. Guess you didn’t read his GJ testimony or fact check that.
— Lisa Bloom (@LisaBloom) December 3, 2014
“Media doing disservice to police,” says @JoeNBC. US cops kill over 400 per year, UK 2, Germany 6. A vitally important story to cover.
— Lisa Bloom (@LisaBloom) December 3, 2014
What’s most painful about @JoeNBC‘s rant is how one dimensional he paints Mike Brown, entirely believing his shooter’s version of events.
— Lisa Bloom (@LisaBloom) December 3, 2014
Easy to criticize looters. But to wag finger at them w/o acknowledging 1000s of nonviolent protestors is irresponsible, @JoeNBC
— Lisa Bloom (@LisaBloom) December 3, 2014
Over the course of their fact-check on Tuesday, Bloom and Hayes might as well have been addressing Scarborough. Hayes said the “narrative that we see in certain quarters that the gesture itself of putting your hands up is to perpetuate a lie about the last moments of Michael Brown’s life” was not proven by the grand jury’s decision to not indict Wilson.
“There are so many issues here that Mike Brown and Ferguson represent that are broader than what happened on Canfield Drive [where Brown was shot in August],” Hayes told Bloom. “But I refuse to allow people to not be factual about what we did and did not learn from the grand jury testimony.”
On Wednesday morning, an animated Scarborough appeared to take a thinly veiled shot at Hayes.
“A cop is not out on the street going, ‘You know what I’m going to do today? I’m going to move our society forward,’” he said. “A cop on the street has one job and the job is to protect the people in that neighborhood. It is not to make a statement that makes primetime people on MSNBC feel better about America.”
These public disagreements don’t bother MSNBC.
“MSNBC embraces diverse opinions on our network,” a spokesperson told TPM on Wednesday when asked about Hayes and Scarborough. “Our hosts often have strong points of view, and they aren’t always going to agree.”
It’s unclear if that celebration of diversity applies to Bloom’s tweets.
