Though I appreciate Callum Borchers’ Washington Post opinion piece about the significance of "Morning Joe"'s exit from the Republican Party, something else bugs me about Joe Scarborough's public denunciation of President Trump (yes, I just typed "President Trump") and Republicans in Congress.
The REAL lede here is that Scarborough is both bitter and gleeful as he and Mika Brzezinski, his fiancee and “Morning Joe” co-host, rip the white hoods off those in denial of the racist, xenophobic, homophobic, misogynistic, eugeniatic agenda of the "alt-right" ---- the same hood Joe himself has been wearing "until they came for me."
For more than six months, [Edited per mycomputermachine’s gentle correction below] Throughout last year’s campaign, Scarborough himself demonstrated Kool-Aid drinking at its most ludicrous. Although “Morning Joe” has, as mycomputermachine notes, “been on a relentless tear on Trump,” Joe himself has remained a Republican and hasn’t been tough on Congressional Republicans and the Republican Party as an entity. Now, suddenly and without warning, in the wake of two [disgustingly sexist] tweets, President Trump and his administration are Joe-magically transformed from the Machiavellian super-genius swamp drainers with a yuuuuuuge plan you won't believe because it's amazing. Because Joe’s has had an epiphany!
Now his premise has changed. Now that the Twitterstorms have impacted “Morning Joe” on a viciously personal level, Joe claims the entire Trump campaign and administration (and much of the Trump family) are not Machiavellian but simply ignorant noobs who've somehow bumbled their way to the White House and accidentally plunged our nation into some Batman-villain plan that captured Congress and the conservative media outlets and Rube-Goldberged them over an electrified pool of hungry sharks and mutant codfish while the Trump Family and its quislings escape in a Steampunk helicopter with Russian oligarchs they met at the debutante ball where Commissioner Gordon feted his daughter's graduation from secretary school. Trump is mentally unstable and he and many in his administration are inexperienced doofuses. No agenda here; it’s mental instability aaaaall the way down.
Until the president used his officially-considered-presidential-administrative-underwritten Twitter account to unleash even more horrendously misogynistic Twitter Terrorism upon Joe's fiancée Mika, those other horrendously misogynistic Trump tweets were entirely defensible. Yes, Joe, I used the word "more" — because when you search the Googlez, you'll find he's victimized women before and targeted many for public harassment and death threats.
But Joe's guilty of the same crime that he je-vous-accuses Congressional Republicans of: deliberately turning away from the "just playing with fire cuz I buy gold matches" indignities and downright danger Trump has unleashed upon us all because they can exploit the resultant chaos. Scarborough himself describes Trump as a "tool.” He should know about tools: "Morning Joe," Congressional Republicans, et al. use the Trump-consequent fracas as cover for their own profit-making and political purposes.
What's significant about Joe Scarborough's public denunciation of the Republican Party? Not that he's fed up with the Republican Party but the fact that he wasn’t fed up until it affected him.
Until his fiancée/co-host Mika was targeted for presidential Twitterscorn intended to humiliate and harass, as well as to whip his cheering supporters into publicly humiliating and harassing (and likely to threaten) Mika, Joe's been cheering on their parade for the emperor's new clothes for a very long time and is ONLY NOW embarrassed to notice that the emperor he's championed is not only naked but also a triumphalistly naive ignoramus with a stiffy for his idiot-savant talent for fooling the people and profiting off it.
How egotistically, misogynistically chivalrous you are in front of a camera, Joe, as you repudiate the very values that have made you rich and famous.
Way to go, Joe. Srsly, way to go. You've cast yourself as a hero for publicly excoriating the "alt-right" you've exulted for almost your entire career.
"Until they came for Mika."