Joe Scarborough

It’s been a rough few days over at MSNBC. Since the attempted assassination on Donald Trump over the weekend, the network seems to be the one unable to regain its footing. From J-13 truthers to The Lord of the Rings conspiracies, here’s Cockburn’s rundown of everything that's gone wrong so far. Much like Joe Biden’s weekly routine, MSNBC got off to a shaky start on Monday after it pulled Morning Joe from air following the shooting in Butler, Pennsylvania. Executives were worried Mika Brzezinski planned to pull out her hand-stitched Trump voodoo doll. Whatever the couple had cooked up, Joe Scarborough was not happy that they weren’t able to pull it off.

As if the media’s coverage of the White House Correspondents' Dinner this weekend wasn’t painful enough, now we have to listen to TV personalities agonize over nerd prom's hypothetical demise. The latest in-sync meltdowns stemmed from a joke made by the dinner’s headliner comedian Colin Jost. "Colin Jost had a pretty apt joke tonight when he said this may be the final White House Correspondents’ Dinner,” CNN’s Jim Acosta told Vanity Fair at the NBCUniversal afterparty. “I think people have to think seriously about what’s going on right now.” Nothing says "afterparty fun" like grave assertions about the future of the American media.

Greenville, South Carolina I’ve now seen three versions of Donald Trump in the state where I grew up. In 2016, he was the impassioned underdog, battling against Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz in a state many in the national media assumed would decide against a New York limousine liberal and stop the Trump Train in its tracks. In 2020, he was the prideful, over-the-top champion of the conservative cause — he bellowed through a sweaty speech, calling out to the universal Republican endorsements in the audience, playing the hits to a stadium crowd mere weeks before the word "coronavirus" was known to the average American.

I’m old enough to remember when Joe Scarborough spent most of his show kissing Donald Trump’s ass. Those were the days. Cast your mind back to 2015. Mika and Joe were still just “co-workers” and they would constantly yuck it up with then candidate Donald J. Trump. Don’t take my word for it — even the Washington Post wrote about their love affair with the Donald, describing the theme of these interviews as “bonhomie.” Erik Wemple explained, “Trump is often on the phone; some decent, journalistic questions get lobbed at Trump, often by Willie Geist; Trump makes more claims than the crew can possibly fact-check; and there’s a great deal of talk about polls.” When Willie Geist is asking the hard-hitting questions, you know you are in friendly territory.