Where are the Joes? Scarborough, Biden lay low after embarrassing debate
Two Joes, Biden and Scarborough, lay low after the president's disastrous debate performance
It's Monday morning, just 126 days before the most consequential election of our lifetime. But two men named Joe are curiously absent from the public eye:
The first, of course, is the current president of the United States and commander-in-chief of our armed forces. Yet Biden is enjoying yet another long weekend away from the White House and won't be arriving back from Camp David until 8:30 pm tonight.
Yep, no sense of urgency whatsoever at a time when the rest of the party is at DEFCON 1 on the panic front following an absolute train wreck of a performance on Thursday night during the presidential debate in Atlanta.
Meanwhile, Scarborough, the former Republican congressman who helped get Donald Trump elected in 2016 by having him on his MSNBC morning program no less than 41 times, is also laying low. Before he turned on Trump, his interviews were so fawning, so cartoonish, so hospitable, that Matt Taibbi wrote this at the time in Rolling Stone:
"Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski should be herded into a rocket and shot into space for their brown-nosing of Trump."
Ouch. But once Trump got the nomination and Scarborough and Brzezinski faced considerable backlash from MSNBC viewers for being in the tank for Trump, they both did a 180 and became the most anti-Trump voices on the network. No small feat.
Earlier this year, it was revealed that Scarborough and Brzezinski are in regular contact with Biden off the set. Biden apparently watches the show on a daily basis, which, given the insanity of the commentary, cannot be a good thing. For example, here's what Scarborough predicted Trump would do if elected to a second term.
"He will imprison, he will execute whoever he is allowed to imprison, execute, drive from the country." Scarborough said in Nov. 2023. "Just look at his past! It’s not really hard to read."
Just look at his past? OK. Because during Trump's first term, at last check no one was executed or imprisoned simply for opposing him. This is loony tunes stuff from a guy who also claimed Trump, the candidate who agreed to all of Biden's terms to debate on CNN, was actually petrified to debate Biden.
"I can’t believe I’m saying this, Trump is scared out of his mind," Scarborough added. "He’s whining and whimpering because Joe Biden may just beat him really badly."
How did that work out, Joe? Every poll shows Trump winning that debate by significant margins. Had it been a fight, the referee would have stopped it. The former president was in complete command, showed discipline, and hit Biden with the unrehearsed zinger of the night after Biden gave in incoherent response to a question on border security, or lack thereof.
"I really don’t know what he said at the end of that sentence. I don’t think he knows what he said either," Trump jabbed.
For Scarborough, the unofficial chief of staff of this White House, this is not the time to take off work. And don't say this was some sort of pre-planned vacation, because I'm pretty sure his wife, Mika, would be there with him instead of hosting solo this morning.
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To be blunt, MSNBC has had more than a credibility problem for some time. More than any other network, it pushed the narrative around videos of Biden falling or wandering away from world leaders, as he did recently in Italy at the G-7 as "cheap fakes." Scarborough even went further in defending Biden with this whopper with cheese:
"I have spent a good bit of time talking to Kevin McCarthy through the years and hours with Biden in 2024. There is no comparison," Scarborough claimed. "Biden is far sharper, more intellectually curious, and far more insightful on global affairs than any House GOP speaker I have met over 30 years."
Uh-huh. And now, after the debate, Scarborough has done yet another 180.
"If [Biden] were CEO and he turned in a performance like that, would any corporation in America, any Fortune 500 corporation in America keep him on as CEO?" he asked.
On Monday morning, Scarborough was nowhere to be found. Brzezinski ran the show instead by opening with what Mediaite described as a "15-Minute Host-Led Campaign Commercial Defending Joe Biden."
Double ouch.
The Democratic party is fractured right now. As it stands today, Donald Trump is leading in every swing state. One poll out this weekend shows him up in New Jersey. Trump is tied in states like Minnesota, Virginia, New Hampshire and Maine... all states that haven't gone red in decades.
While all of this is happening, Biden is still away for another extended work-free weekend.
His top TV advisor, Scarborough, apparently decided to do the same.
