During Monday’s episode of Morning Joe, Mika Brzezinski essentially lost it on the air when she got fed up with co-host Joe Scarborough using air time to throw out conspiracy theories on the missing Malaysian airliner. When beginning the segment on the airliner, Mika relayed the newest information about debris found in the southern Indian Ocean and evidence released by numerous agencies. Then, after bringing on a former pilot, John Cox, to discuss the facts of the case as they know them, Bill Karins was brought on to give a weather forecast. Karins pointed out that the weather in the search area is pretty harsh and that the ocean waters can be pretty rough at this moment.
After Karins’ forecast, Scarborough then tried to swing the discussion to various theories on what happened with the plane. Engaging Steve Rattner on the panel, Scarborough stated that since nobody can say with absolute certainty what happened with the airplane, pretty much every potential theory has to be on the table. Scarborough then floated out a theory that terrorism was involved and that the plane might be somewhere else other than at the bottom of the Indian Ocean.
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Rattner pushed back, as he said ‘lunatic theories’ need to be dismissed and insinuated that Scarborough was in denial of the evidence placed in front of him. Scarborough then attempted to twist the facts around to make his case that his theory of hijacking and the plane currently being in Pakistan held water. Joe also made a point of name-dropping the CIA during the conversation, as if making a point that someone in the agency had confided in him that they are seriously looking into this theory.
It was at that point that Mika had enough and became agitated with Scarborough pushing his conspiracy theory as real news. Below is video of the entire segment:
After Mika tried to bring the conversation back to a discussion on evidence and the actual facts as they are known, Scarborough continued to step over her. He wanted Willie Geist to add to it in order to cause a little more chaos on the set and potentially give his conspiracy theory more credibility. Finally, Mika had enough and exclaimed, “Can we go to news school for a second, please?”
The level of anger and aggravation in Mika’s voice was noticeable. She first chastised Geist for asking Rattner a question that was asked and answered a week ago. She then laid into Scarborough for pushing a conspiracy theory on the air under the guise of actual news. She said they’d have time to do a panel discussion later on in the show where he could float his theory. However, at that specific point, they were only going to relay the facts to the audience and report the news.
Of course, Scarborough treated Mika like a little hysterical girl that needed to be calmed down. He told her to bring her voice down and then arrogantly talked over her while she tried to desperately explain why his introduction of a conspiracy theory was inappropriate. She finally just ended the segment by stating they were going to discuss Ukraine.
Just as an aside, after Morning Joe went off the air on Monday morning, the Malaysian Prime Minister announced in a press conference that flight MH370 ended in the south Indian Ocean and that there are no survivors. He made the statement with absolute certainty. Therefore, we should at least be able to dismiss theories that the plane was taken to Pakistan or shot down by an unfriendly country.
Justin Baragona is the Managing Editor at Politicus Sports as well as Senior Editor at PoliticusUSA. He was a political writer for 411Mania.com before joining PoliticusUSA. Politically, Justin considers himself a liberal but also a realist and pragmatist. Currently, Justin lives in St. Louis, MO and is married. Besides writing, he also runs his own business after spending a number of years in the corporate world. You can follow Justin on Twitter either with his personal handle (@justinbaragona) or the Sports site’s (@PoliticusSports).
