On Thursday’s Morning Joe, not content to boast about his insider status with the Biden campaign, Joe Scarborough disparaged his panelists for their inferior sources.
Said Scarborough:
“Just for people at home, it’s important for them to kind of see what’s behind the scenes. I have, for six months, since people have been freaking out about Biden’s team. I’m telling you, every time I go in and talk to anybody that’s running the campaign, the big part of the campaign. I don’t know what they’re telling you and what they’re telling other people. They’re like, they act like people that are holding four aces. . . . They’re supremely confident.”
Yes, Scarborough doesn’t know what his colleagues are being told by the envelope lickers in the Biden campaign, but when Joe “goes in,” he talks to the people running “the big part of the campaign.” Impressive!
In addition to letting us know that the Biden people are “supremely confident,” and act like they’re holding “four aces,” Scarborough confided that the top campaign people “know something that I think a lot of us don’t know.”
Joe Scarborough plays the super insider. Don’t worry about Trump, folks, Team Biden is “supremely confident!” pic.twitter.com/JAokVcBmYg
— Tim Graham (@TimJGraham) May 17, 2024
This sounds a lot like Scarborough trying to buck up the morale of Biden voters — and donors — in light of the recent New York Times/Siena poll showing Biden losing in five out of six swing states.
Yesterday, we noted Scarborough’s frantic effort to tear down that poll, going so far as to claim that the Times intentionally rigged it against Biden in order to be able to write multiple clickbait stories on the results.
Bonus Coverage: Morning Joe Airs Jimmy Fallon Imagining Trump Having To Get Parole Officer’s Permission For Debate
As is its wont, Morning Joe opened today’s show with a clip from one of the liberal late-night hosts. In this case, it was Jimmy Fallon, imagining Trump accepting Biden’s offer to debate “assuming it’s okay with my parole officer.”
That won raucous laughter from Fallon’s audience, and presumably as well from most Morning Joe viewers. But it amounts to an admission that the multiple trials entangling Trump, led by Democrat prosecutors, do indeed make campaigning difficult for him. Fallon might find that hilarious. But it could well elicit sympathy for Trump from many voters. We’ll see who has the last laugh, Jimmy.
Here’s the transcript.
MSNBC
Morning Joe
5/15/24
6:09 am EDTJOE SCARBOROUGH: It’s a dead heat now. Again, my reaction’s not so much to the Times. And I’m dead serious here. It’s to people who freak out disproportionately on the Times, and then the Times doing 15 stories on their poll. Fox will not do 15 stories on their Fox poll [which shows Trump leading Biden by one point.] Morning Consult won’t.
But it’s become this cottage industry for people on the other side of the Chinese wall that Mara is not on. So she had nothing to do with this. Please, do not direct any comments or tweets to her.
Just for people at home, and I, I, it’s important for them to kind of see what’s behind the scenes. I have, for six months, since people have been freaking out about Biden’s team. I’m telling you, every time I go in and talk to anybody that’s running the campaign, the big part of the campaign. I don’t know what they’re telling you and what they’re telling other people. They’re like, they act like people that are holding four aces.
[Imagining conversation between himself and confident Biden aides] Well what about this? Yeah, it’s pretty bad. What about this? Yeah, yeah, well, that looks really tough. Yeah, boy, Trump. They really —
MIKA BRZEZINSKI: Is this a criticism or —
SCARBOROUGH: No! I’m telling you, they know something that I think a lot of us don’t know. And they look at numbers and they see where things are going. They’ve had a theory of the case, that when people realize Donald Trump is going to be getting into the race, things are going to start gelling better for him.
They understand that you win politics by raising money and organizing on the ground. They understand Donald Trump’s numbers are way down in every way in fundraising. And they’ll [the Trump campaign] say, oh, we’re gonna — No they’re not. They’re not gonna — they’re never going to catch Joe Biden.
And as far as organization goes, we all know, anybody who’s been involved in a political campaign, if you’re tearing up, like, stakes in April and May, you’re not gonna put them back down in July and August. Donald Trump is going to be pounded on the ground. The blocking and the tackling, the Biden people feel great about. And they have about a thousand clips of Donald Trump that, every day, they’re like, which one are we going to use today? Boop. And it just makes him look horrible.
JONATHAN LEMIRE: The Biden campaign —
SCARBOROUGH: They’re supremely confident.
LEMIRE: Yes. They are cognizant —
MIKA: Makes me nervous.
LEMIRE: That it will be very close. They’re confident, but they know it’s gonna be tight.