Morning Joe rips ongoing media failures in Trump coverage

MSNBC's Joe Scarborough called out the ongoing failures in media coverage of Donald Trump as he seeks re-election after being criminally charged in two jurisdictions for his efforts to overturn his loss in 2020.

The twice-impeached former president has been indicted four times on 91 criminal counts, openly threatened violence against his enemies and warned that he would use his government powers against anyone who opposed him, and the "Morning Joe" host said his conduct was so outrageous that it was almost impossible to accurately describe.

"It took me a while, we hung up on him and started -- you know, again, and I've got to say I don't know how anybody, and I've been called and people have asked me my opinion because we've known Trump for a long time, how do you interview Trump?" Scarborough said. "You start by asking the question that a lot of people ask, and you have to ask this question, is Joe Biden president of the United States, do you still not believe that Joe Biden [is president] -- and then you just hammer him, and you can't let it go on to economic development."

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"This guy is still talking about stealing democracy and overturning a presidential election," Scarborough added.

Jonathan Lemire, who covered Trump's first campaign and his White House term for the Associated Press before joining MSNBC and Politico, described how the former president and other Republicans used complaints of bias to manipulate media coverage.

"They have worked -- claimed bias and prejudice from the media, they've adopted Trump's philosophy, 'fake news,' doesn't apply to a story that's not true, it just applies to a story that's negative, that he doesn't like, that's the ethos of the Republican Party," Lemire said. "This is a challenge for the media, we largely, I think, fell down on the job in 2016 in many ways, improved for 2020, no doubt, realized you couldn't just take Trump live, you couldn't just put in a tweet or a cable chyron, you had to provide fact checking and context. You sometimes had to say, no, he's lying right now -- right now -- and I think that we have done that, but we have a long way to go. It's not perfect, and we've never had a candidate like this, an insurrectionist candidate, someone who would threaten to overthrow our democracy, and he can't be treated just like anybody else."

Watch the video below or at this link.

09 27 2023 07 18 24youtu.be