Last updated on September 25th, 2023 at 08:42 pm
Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough wasn’t on the show Tuesday despite it being a big news day due to the fallout from the release of a Senate report detailing the CIA’s use of torture during the Bush Administration. Even though Joe wasn’t there in person, he tried to be there in spirit by sending out a series of tweets apparently defending the CIA and calling out certain Democrats over their previous knowledge of the CIA’s torture program. In typical Scarborough fashion, he used false equivalencies to somehow paint Democrats as the real bad guys in regards to this report.
In a tweet that was read live on the air by Joe’s co-host Mika Brzezinski, Scarborough compared the Senate report to Rolling Stone’s much-maligned campus rape story involving the University of Virginia.
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Senate Intel Report investigators refused to interview the accused. Sounds like Rolling Stone’s journalistic approach on their UVA story.
— Joe Scarborough (@JoeNBC) December 10, 2014
It appears Scarborough feels that the two are similar because he believes that the Senate investigators didn’t speak directly to members of the CIA who were directly involved in the interrogations in question. In Joe’s mind, this is apparently the same as Rolling Stone not speaking to accused rapists on the UVA campus prior to running a story about an alleged gang rape. It seems like Scarborough got this nugget from a Wall Street Journal piece that was run right after the report was made public. Joe tweeted the article out Monday afternoon.
Six former CIA directors and deputies: Interrogations Saved Lives and Senate Investigators Never Spoke to US http://t.co/TbLVgdMGIP via @WSJ — Joe Scarborough (@JoeNBC) December 9, 2014
After Mika brought up Joe’s tweet on the air, she turned to Meet the Press moderator Chuck Todd for a reaction. Even Todd, a usually reliable ally of Joe’s, felt Scarborough wasn’t really making a fair comparison. Todd pointed out that the Senate investigators utilized the CIA’s own memos to formulate the report. The investigators combed through tens of thousands of memos to come to its conclusions based on the record keeping of CIA staff members. There wasn’t really a need to interview the interrogators, medical staff or other staffers that may have been present. Also, it is very likely the CIA would have refused the request anyway.
Below is the segment from Morning Joe, courtesy of MSNBC:
Of course, the real reason Scarborough is trying to discredit the report is due to nothing more than partisan political games. He doesn’t like that Republicans, and specifically the previous White House administration, are getting raked across the coals over the findings. The GOP recently had a big win in the midterm elections, and it just isn’t fair that the loser Democrats are revealing this report now and making Republicans look bad. Therefore, Scarborough is going to petulantly claim that the report is totally flawed, and even if torture was used, Democrats were knowledgeable of its use and did nothing about it.
Below are Joe’s tweets whining about Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA).
Diane Feinstein was given explicit information regarding enhanced interrogation techniques in 2006. Her response was ambivalent.
— Joe Scarborough (@JoeNBC) December 10, 2014
After being briefed on enhanced interrogation, Sen Feinstein asked no questions and turned to asking about Victor Yushchenko’s poisoning.
— Joe Scarborough (@JoeNBC) December 10, 2014
Speaker Pelosi’s claim she was never told about enhanced interrogation techniques is FALSE | PolitiFact http://t.co/MrFIUCGQNK
— Joe Scarborough (@JoeNBC) December 10, 2014
When Joe gets back to the Morning Joe set, be prepared for him to cry about Democrats putting the country in danger and wrongly accusing the CIA for partisan reasons. Also, be ready for him to use his Rolling Stone comparison again and again. One thing we know about Joe, once he thinks he’s found a great meme or angle, he will beat it to the ground.
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).
