A Mediaite post today is headlined, “Scarborough Finds Out Michelle Obama Watches Morning Joe and Immediately Apologizes:”
Knowing that someone in the highest office in the land is watching you on television can led to some interesting tonal shifts. ‘Twas the case on Morning Joe Friday when POLITICO’s Mike Allen said the new book Double Down, a fascinating new look at the KFC san… er, the 2012 election, reveals that First Lady Michelle Obama is a habitual Morning Joe watcher. Joe Scarborough had an… interesting reaction to that news.
The second Allen told Scarborough, he buried his head in his hands and said, “Oh, dear lord.” He continued, “Mrs. Obama, I am so sorry.”
One of the tidbits that Allen shared was that the First Lady “e-mails Valerie Jarrett when she doesn’t like what’s being said” on the MSNBC show. Scarborough just couldn’t hide the awkward shame from his face, as Mika Brzezinski teased, “You really should take back everything you said this morning.”
There were also some assorted shouts of “Hi, Valerie!” before they moved on.
Isn’t the above just kabuki from Scarborough? Recall this post of ours from December of 2009:
At Newsbusters, Noel Sheppard writes, “MSNBC’s Ed Schultz claimed Friday that the White House communicates with Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski during their ‘Morning Joe’ program.”
Embedded in his post is a clip, via Brian Maloney of the Radio Equalizer blog, of Schultz saying:
So Mika starts looking at her Blackberry and so does Scarborough and obviously the White House is texting them or emailing them or whatever and they didn’t like the show. Because Arianna had been on there, I’m on there, Howard Dean had been on there and they wanted some balance.
Now think about that – here’s the White House getting in contact with ‘Morning Joe’ because they’re afraid there’s too many lefties on the air! Now if that’s not sensitivity at its highest level, I don’t know what is! I told ya a few days ago they had rabbit ears! They don’t like anything that’s being said right now, they’re getting beat up!
“In reality, this isn’t as shocking as it might seem”, Noel writes:
NewsBuster Mark Finkelstein reported in October that the White House e-mailed NBC’s Savannah Guthrie while she was on the “MJ” set.
According to Guthrie, a senior White House advisor wanted her to tell Scarborough to “stop being an a**hole.”
Honestly, you can’t make this stuff up.
Back in October, we linked to the clip embedded at the top of this post, of a White House correction being read on the air during Scarborough’s show. When we went back to that clip tonight, it had been yanked off YouTube with a note claiming, “This video has been removed due to terms of use violation.”
Fortunately, another copy still exists on YouTube, and we’ve embedded our own clip, which you can watch [below]:
[jwplayer mediaid=”75157″]
Back to 2013: I don’t know if that was the last time that the White House emailed a correction into Scarborough’s show that was read on the air, but any host who had that happen to him would surely remember it for the rest of his life. Not to mention that he would hopefully be embarrassed afterward that he allowed it to happen in real time — particularly a host who holds himself out as representing a party and ideology opposite that of the administration that contacted the show. So presumably Scarborough is simply play-acting today to keep his job safe with his leftwing MSNBC masters.
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