Joe Scarborough, the former congressman-turned-MSNBC morning anchor of his own program “Morning Joe” is taking a lot of heat for an Op-Ed he bylined in the Washington Post, in which he wrote, “the gravest threat Trump poses to our national security is the damage done daily to America’s image,” according to several news sources, including rival Fox News.
Scarborough didn’t stop there, and that’s why a thread on Twitter might be worth reading, along with the actual WaPo opinion piece quoted by The Hill, which he concluded with this:
“The question for voters this fall is whether their country will move beyond this troubled chapter in history or whether they will continue supporting a politician who has done more damage to the dream of America than any foreign adversary ever could.”—Joe Scarborough
Will this presidential election be the most important in American history?
That this Op-Ed was headlined “Trump is harming the dream of America more than any foreign adversary ever could” doesn’t help, either. And the fact that it appeared on the 17th anniversary of the terrorist attack on the Twin Towers and Pentagon simply poured kerosene on the fire.
Other news agencies, including the Huffington Post, are covering the controversy. Some readers concur with Scarborough, and others definitely do not.
He may not be in as much trouble as actress Carole Cook, who reportedly wondered where John Wilkes Booth—the man who assassinated Abraham Lincoln—is “when you need him.”
According to Fox News, conservative strategist Chris Barron observed that that “shamelessly exploiting the death of 3,000 Americans in an attempt to do political damage to President Trump is a new low, even for Joe Scarborough.”
It was 17 years ago, on the same day of the week—Tuesday, Sept. 11, 2001—that hijacked commercial airliners were flown into both towers of the World Trade Center, and into a section of the Pentagon. A fourth jet, which may have targeted the Capitol or White House, crashed in a Pennsylvania after passengers revolted and tried to reclaim the aircraft from the terrorists.
Should Scarborough’s opinion piece result in his departure from MSNBC? That’s not likely, although the cable network may lose some viewers. Nike is being boycotted over picking Colin Kaepernick, the NFL athlete who started the take-a-knee movement during the National Anthem, as its “Just Do It” ad campaign. Levi Strauss is being boycotted because it recently announced a joint effort with anti-gun billionaire Michael Bloomberg’s Everytown for Gun Safety, ostensibly to combat so-called “gun violence.”
The Huffington Post reported that Donald Trump Jr., reacted to the Scarborough column, stating, “Joe you owe an apology to the 3000+ families who lost loved ones on this tragic day. Injecting politics today is disgraceful and only shows how irrelevant and deranged you’ve become.”
Whether viewers abandon Scarborough remains to be seen.
