‘Morning Joe’ Defends Trump’s Mistreatment Of Women, Labels Him A Feminist

A short while ago, it seemed like Joe Scarborough was actually able to quit Donald Trump. After being mildly critical of The Donald on both Morning Joe and his column in the Washington Post, Trump launched one of his patented tweetstorms at Joe. Of course, because Scarborough is as thin-skinned as Trump, he responded in kind. Fun times were had.

Well, Monday morning rolled around, and it seems all is right in the world, as the Morning Joe crew spent a large portion of the program coming to the former reality TV star’s defense. (Did we really think Joe and Co. were going to turn their back on Daddy?) Following up an extensive investigative piece on Trump’s lengthy history of harassing and mistreating women throughout the years, Scarborough led a panel discussion where four dudes and Mika all decided that Trump’s behavior was totally fine.

JoeScar kept wondering what Trump did that was actually that bad. See, in Joe’s view, since Trump didn’t assault a woman in full view of others while calling her a whore, his behavior was totally in line with Donald being Donald. In fact, it seems like he was being very complimentary and gentlemanly to the women featured in the article. Remember, Donald Trump cherishes women.

While Mika kept making her trademarked faces, we were treated to loads more derp from the other middle-aged, rich, white guys on the panel regarding Trump’s behavior towards women. Political hack Mark Halperin, who just loves him some Trump, said that while there were some things that were troubling in the piece, he didn’t see anything illegal. As Mediaite’s Tommy Christopher pointed out Monday morning, the article points out at least one instance of sexual assault and harassment that was actually the centerpiece of a lawsuit.

Now, that woman has since clammed up, but she stood by her account, and what she described was both sexual assault and sexual harassment. Those things are illegal, as are many of the other allegations made in the piece. That we have come to expect such behavior from men like Donald Trump isn’t a mitigation of it, it is the cause of it. It’s also likely why there isn’t more than this handful of allegations in the piece, because the ways in which such allegations are treated by people like Halperin makes women less likely to report them. Powerful men always assert that women make things up for personal gain, and men like Halperin never stop to ask what personal gain is to be had by being disbelieved and shamed, and simultaneously alienating every potential employer or ally, or the person powerful enough to believe he can behave this way without repercussion.

Another panelist, New York rich dude and Trump buddy Donnie Deutsch, decided to turn the idiocy up to 11 by proclaiming Donald Trump a feminist. Not. Making. That. Up.

“I have to tell you, I don’t want to be glib here. I was reading that and in many ways I was relating to it. Donald Trump is a feminist. I want to defend him. I want you to hear something. I ran a company and I was roguish in certain ways.

…Just like me, I ran a company and 9 of my 11 partners were women. I would say things in the workplace, but at the end of the day, it was a meritocracy, women would insult men, men would insult women. He’s an equal opportunity insulter. We can’t have feminism unless everything is on the table.”

Later on in the show, the panel talked about Rowanne Brewer Lane, one of the women featured in the piece who criticized the description of the incidents involving her to Fox News. While she didn’t say the Times made anything up, she was upset that they placed comments in a negative context. As one would expect, Morning Trump got a lot of mileage out of that.

Below is video of that segment, courtesy of MSNBC: