Joe Scarborough Loyally Comes To The Rescue, Defends Trump Over His Nazi Salute Flap
Another day, another opportunity for Donald Trump to call in to Morning Joe and have his two sycophants fawn over him.
A day after co-host Mika Brzezinski claimed a Trump critic was suffering from ‘Trump Derangement Syndrome,’ Mika and Joe Scarborough spent much of Tuesday’s program spinning a narrative that the presumptive Republican Presidential nominee was the victim of media bias. In their opinion, and that of the other panelists on the show, too much was being made over Trump calling on rally attendees to raise their right hands and pledge allegiance to him.
Immediately, the comparisons to Nazi and fascist salutes were made, mostly because that is exactly what it looks like. It also doesn’t help Trump that a large swath of his voting base is made up of white supremacists and those drawn to authoritarianism and nationalism. Beyond that, many observers have already highlighted the celebrity billionaire’s fascistic qualities. Thus, demanding allegiance from supporters and forcing them to make a pledge to him falls right in line with what we’ve seen in the past from fascist leaders.
On Tuesday, Scarborough made sure Trump knew that the Morning Joe crew had his back on this particular topic. As Mediaite’s Tommy Christopher pointed out, Joe led a panel discussion on this issue prior to their interview with Trump. During the conversation, Scarborough likened the rally pledge to Baptist church services, where parishioners raise their hands during prayer. (Seriously, he said this. Not making it up or exaggerating.) Joe also claimed that he hadn’t seen any footage of the raised hands until Tuesday, and then falsely stated that other news outlets were showing the clips out of context. (Per Christopher, only Morning Joe has played the clip out of context.)
After getting the whole panel on board with the Trump defense, Joe and Mika took Donald’s phone call. During the ‘interview,’ Joe and Trump both agreed that the media was being all dishonest by even reporting on this in the first place. It was just unfair to even show the images and video since we all know that racism, xenophobia, white nationalism and bigoted hatred has nothing to do with Trump’s campaign. And he totally hasn’t aped Mussolini and Hitler during this election.
But, yeah, Morning Joe assured the former reality TV star that he has nothing to worry about regarding what’s happening at his rallies. So, y’know, just keep on keeping on. (Remember last week when Joe said Trump’s KKK embrace was “disqualifying”? Yeah, neither does he.)
Anyway, here’s the video of that interview segment, if you want to subject yourself to it, courtesy of MSNBC:
