‘Morning Joe’ Gives Trump The Benefit Of The Doubt After Birther Incident Because Of Course

In a completely unsurprising development, Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough of Morning Joe both rushed to provide excuses for Republican Presidential candidate and half-melted piece of candy corn Donald Trump over the heat he’s taking for seemingly embracing a supporter’s birtherism. During a campaign rally in New Hampshire on Thursday, Trump decided to make the event something of a town hall forum and took questions for the crowd. Immediately, a man stepped up to the mic and stated that President Obama was a Muslim born in another country and wanted to know what Trump was going to do about getting rid of all the Muslims who are training to kill us.

As many reporters and pundits have already pointed out, the moment was very similar to one John McCain faced when he was running against then-Senator Obama in the 2008 Presidential election. At that time, McCain shut down a voter who expressed concerns that Obama was an “Arab” who didn’t love his country. Of course, Trump did no such thing Thursday night. And why would we expect him to? He made his political brand by selling birtherism in 2011 and claiming he had evidence that Obama was born in another country. This is why he has quite a bit of support among Republican voters right now. (66% of his supporters believe Obama is a Muslim.)

By Friday morning, Trump was getting hammered from the left and right over both the way he handled the question and the standard “We’re looking into it, We’re hearing things” shitty answer he gave the man. However, ol’ Donald knew that at least two people would come to his aid, and they made sure to come through with flying colors. In a segment addressing the growing controversy, both Mika and Joe provided tons of cover for Trump.

First off, Mika said that the real estate mogul’s answer was only to the last part of the question the man asked and really had nothing to do with whether or not he agreed with the questioner’s assertion that Obama is a foreign-born Muslim. She pointed out that the only reason people are up in arms about this is because Trump hasn’t answered fully for his previous birther comments. In a stunning lack of self-awareness, she then stated that the media should be asking him about that. Seriously, Mika? You fuckers have him on nearly every day. Why don’t YOU ask him?

The panel then brought up the McCain moment and Mika said she wished Donald would have handled it like the Arizona Senator. However, after speaking for a minute about that, Brzezinski then pushed forth the notion that the man at the rally was possibly, maybe, could be a liberal plant to make Trump look bad. She then tossed it over to Joe to talk about how they are regularly confronted with crazy questions and comments whenever they deal with a live audience in an uncontrolled environment.

Scarborough gave Trump more excuses by telling a story about some audience member who was on hand when they shot at a tavern. According to Joe, the man was a 9/11 truther who blamed George W. Bush for the World Trade Center attacks while asking the hosts a question. In Joe’s mind, this was what happened to Trump. He was ambushed with a crazy question and just gave a general response so he could move on to the next one. No biggie.

At the end of the segment, Scarborough did say that Trump needed to publicly state that he believes President Obama is not a Muslim. Not because he did anything wrong, mind you. But due to the fact that it will be bad politically if he doesn’t nip this in the bud soon. Meanwhile, The Donald pulled out of a Heritage Foundation event due to ” a significant business transaction” that needed his attention. Both Democrats and his GOP opponents have jumped all over the incident in an effort to roundly criticize the celebrity billionaire for fomenting this nonsense. And, as you’d expect, he’s received harsh words from the White House.

Thankfully for Trump, Mika and Joe will always have his back.

Below is video of the segment, courtesy of MSNBC: