'Morning Joe' Sorry David Frum Made Forbidden Joke About Fox News, Please Don't Hurt Them!
Turning obeying in advance into a fucking artform.
When Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski revealed recently that they had gone down to Mar-a-Lago to kiss Donald Trump’s ring and try to reset their relationship, we personally didn’t have much sympathy or understanding for their motivations. Yes, we know, they were worried because Trump has personally targeted them in the past, has threatened them, and Trump apparently believes some batshit conspiracy theory about a staffer who died when Scarborough was a Republican congressman.
But Joe and Mika are two of the hackiest Beltway access journalists of all the hacky Beltway access journalists, and their show is often little more than political Perez Hilton gossip. There are many important voices on MSNBC. Joe and Mika, ahem, ehhhhh, nah.
Also, if Trump’s dreams of going after everybody who has ever hurt his feelings or made his little dick feel smaller or called him dumb ever were to come true — if somebody like wide-eyed wonder-loser Kash Patel were to be confirmed as the head of the FBI and a wizard cast a spell on him that made him competent, for instance — then Joe and Mika have a hell of a lot of resources at their disposal to protect themselves.
“Don’t obey in advance!” every expert on authoritarianism is screaming right now. Maybe Mika and Joe couldn’t hear it over the loudspeakers playing “YMCA” for the 65th time that night at Mar-a-Lago.
Now it turns out Mika and/or Joe and/or the MSNBC brass have decided to obey in advance on a new and ever more grievously pathetic level. It turns out longtime guests on “Morning Joe” are no longer allowed to make fun of Fox News — one of the most malevolent corporations in all of America, whose decades of lies, propaganda, and racist brainwashing are perhaps more responsible than any other single entity for America’s current slide into brain-damaged ethno-fascism — without Joe and Mika kicking you off the show and apologizing to the North Korean News Lady Network down the street.
It was David Frum who did the sin against state TV. Yes, never-Trumper and former Republican David Frum, who was a speechwriter for George W. Bush. That is the guy with the courage in this story.
Frum writes in The Atlantic that yesterday morning, December 4, he was on “Morning Joe,” and they were talking about Pete Hegseth, and all the reports coming out about how Hegseth, a former “Fox & Friends Weekend” go-go boy and the current Trump nominee to lead the Department of Defense, has — among all his other disgusting scandals — a longstanding pattern of being a total drunk.
Not the kind of guy you want in charge if something happens to American troops overseas. (He swore to Megyn Kelly yesterday that if he is confirmed, he won’t drink a drop of alcohol ever, he swears, just give him one more chance. You know, like a guy who definitely doesn’t have a problem with alcohol would say.)
Frum was on the show talking specifically about the NBC News article that quoted Fox News staffers, current and former, saying they had all noticed Hegseth’s drinking problems, with a couple of them saying outright that he should never ever ever be the secretary of Defense. (Hegseth, his lawyer, and the Trump transition deny all of it, blah blah. Of course, right on cue, the New York Times had another piece last night about allllll Hegseth’s problems.)
Frum made a joke: “If you’re too drunk for Fox News, you’re very, very drunk indeed.” Big whoop.
During the commercial, a producer bitched at him in his earpiece for saying that. Twice. Shortly after, they quietly kicked him off the show.
And then Mika read this:
“A little bit earlier in this block there was a comment made about Fox News, in our coverage about Pete Hegseth and the growing number of allegations about his behavior over the years and possible addiction to alcohol or issues with alcohol. The comment was a little too flippant for this moment that we’re in. We just want to make that comment as well. We want to make that clear. We have differences in coverage with Fox News, and that’s a good debate that we should have often, but right now I just want to say there’s a lot of good people who work at Fox News who care about Pete Hegseth, and we will want to leave it at that.”
Oh my fucking God.
“Good people who work at Fox News who care about Pete Hegseth.” Yeah, and there were good people on both sides in Charlottesville. Isn’t that right, MAGA?
Frum notes that if there are indeed good people at Fox News, they sure have been remiss in giving a shit about the safety of the country, staying quiet while Donald Trump tries to put the lives of the almost three million people on the Pentagon’s payroll in the hands of this reportedly drunk-ass dilettante loser who’s been credibly accused of rape and doesn’t think women should be able to serve in combat.
He writes:
[I]f NBC’s reporting—based on interviews with 10 current or former Fox employees—about Hegseth’s alcohol abuse is accurate, many of those same good people have failed to report publicly that their former colleague, appointed to lead the armed forces of the United States, was notorious in their own building for his drinking. That would be a startling and shameful shirking of responsibility on a matter of grave national importance. What’s the appropriate language to call it out?
Frum says he admires “Morning Joe,” and that’s fine, he has a history with these people. He’s sympathetic with the concerns swirling around, including those that personally have to do with Joe and Mika, and threats Trump has made against the media in general.
He even suggests that maybe you might agree that what he said about Fox News was dreadfully cruel, but suggests that if so, pretty much anybody could identify that it was D-A-V-I-D F-R-U-M who said it, and not anybody else.
But, he concludes:
It is a very ominous thing if our leading forums for discussion of public affairs are already feeling the chill of intimidation and responding with efforts to appease.
I write these words very aware that I’m probably saying goodbye forever to a television platform that I enjoy and from which I have benefited as both viewer and guest. I have been the recipient of personal kindnesses from the hosts that I have not forgotten.
I do not write to scold anyone; I write because fear is infectious. Let it spread, and it will paralyze us all.
The only antidote is courage. And that’s infectious, too.
Again, the courageous one here is David Frum, the never-Trumper former Republican.
Meanwhile, the ones crying, “Please, sirs! Don’t hurt us!” are the cowardly supposedly liberal media from the MSNBC morning show.
The senile, babbling authoritarian hasn’t even been inaugurated yet, y’all.
Jesus fucking Christ.
[Atlantic]
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I'm kind of wondering what "moment" MSNBC believes we'd need to be in where raising the alarm over a drunkard being in charge of national defense is right and proper. I mean, there are plenty of other times where much more qualified candidates who also happened to be drunkards failed confirmation to federal posts. Or even civil posts.
"Don't obey in advance" takes a certain amount of courage, and these two ain't got it.
Thanks Morning Joe, for making me side with David fucking Frum.