Scarborough morn joe

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flak after maralago junket 11 24

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AN 11 26

Scarborough appalled old friend Mike Rogers turned into a 'Trump parrot'

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AN 4 26 GOOD FRDAY DJT - JC

'She's a heretic': Scarborough tears into Trump advisor's 'grotesque' comparison - Alternet.org

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AN 5 25

President Donald Trump and his allies, including Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, have been attacking Harvard University relentlessly — mostly recently, with a push to prevent the Ivy League institution from being able to enroll foreign students.

Many liberals and progressives are defending Harvard, but the university also has some defenders on the right — including MSNBC's Joe Scarborough, who believes that more conservative voices are needed on college campuses but is vehemently critical of the way the Trump Administration is attacking Harvard.

During a, "Morning Joe" hosts Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski and their colleague Willie Geist — a conservative Harvard professor.

Scarborough and Brooks agreed that college campuses need to do a better job featuring conservative viewpoints, but they characterized Trump's attacks on Harvard and other "elite institutions" as a mean-spirited vendetta.

IFrame Content

Brooks told the "Morning Joe" hosts, "There is going to come to some resolution. It's not going to be the zombie apocalypse. But in the meantime, there's a lot of damage that's actually going on right now. And it's creating a lot of fear…. I don't like what the (Trump) Administration is doing, but I trust our administration at the university."

Brooks and Scarborough argued that liberalism is not well-served when conservative ideas are discouraged on college campuses.

Brooks told the panel, "You go to college to have your ideas challenged, to have your mind opened…. That's what we need to get back to."

Scarborough agreed, telling the Harvard professor, "Arthur, I'm deeply concerned. Two things can be true at once. As we always say, I'm deeply concerned about what's happening not only to Harvard, but also, at other institutions of higher learning. And I will say, at the same time… the reason why there's maybe not more of an uproar, and I've said this on the show for the past five years: Every time we have parents of college students over for dinner at our house, friends of ours who have children and colleagues, what they've been telling us for the past five, six, seven, eight years is…. their children are afraid to raise their hand and have the type of talk, the communication, the back-and-forth that you were just talking about."

The "Morning Joe" host added, "The great thing is, when you and I were in college, you could say something extraordinarily stupid, right?.... Now, people are frozen in their seats…. You don't have conservative professors, certainly not in the arts and sciences."

Brooks told the "Morning Joe" hosts, "Look, I'm a conservative….. I ran the American Enterprise Institute, for Pete's sake…. We don't need affirmative action for conservatives, but when your liberal ideas are not challenged, your education is mediocre."

*Watch the full video below or at this link.

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an 12 24

MSNBC host Joe Scarborough expressed no interest in comments made by Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) on Thursday morning during a segment about Donald Trump using the Department of Justice to pursue his political foes.

First taking a shot atHouse Oversight Chair James Comer (R-KY) for saying in an interview with the Bulwark, "With politicians, if you’ve used a congressional committee and you’ve lied and tried to set people up and falsely imprisoned people, then you should be held accountable," co-host Mika Brezinski began to report that Rep. Lauren Boebert contributed, “It’s not looking good for them. You know, they’re asking for their preemptive pardon. So it kind of sounds suspect and guilty. I think anybody who has politically imprisoned American citizens and completely ruined their lives needs to be investigated," but Scarborough cut her off quickly after she mentioned the controversial Colorado Republican's name.

ALSO READ:A dark mystery from America's past could save us from Trump's tyranny

"Alright, alright, I don't care," he interrupted which led the whole panel to start laughing as Scarborough referenced Boebert's Beetlejuice theater scandal by joking, "Go see a play," which led to more laughter.

Watch below or at the link.

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an 1 24

MSNBC's Morning Joe hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski spoke with Financial Times National US Editor Edward Luce Sunday morning about Donald Trump and the Republican Party's commitment to "worship" and model the leadership of autocrat and Hungary Prime Minster Viktor Orbán.

:{:{"This is a guy — Donald Trump — who has promised to terminate the Constitution," Scarborough emphasized. "He said he was going to ban TV networks that he didn't like. He said he was going to execute generals that were insufficiently loyal to him for quote, 'treason', which by the way sounds like the French resolution with a guillotine. They accused everyone of treason and cut their heads off. And then, he talked about a couple weeks ago, how he could kill his political opponents with Seal Team 6, and be immune from all things.}:

... Talks about Viktor Orbán — you understand that a lot of people, maybe on wall street understand what that means — Viktor Orbán has shut down the free press. Viktor Orbán has crushed all political parts. Viktor Orbán is an autocrat who hates western democracy and freedom. and free markets, the way that Wall Street claims to like free markets. You can't make a deal with the devil. You lose every time."}:

Luce replied, "People around Orban, including the local gas man in his village, the guy who does gas connections, have grown rich beyond their wildest fantasies —the billionaires. Those who are in with him get rewarded, and that is how strong men operate. They don't operate according to free market capitalist rules."

Scarborough continued, "And then on the other side of that, people that owned media empires — people that control newspapers, and control TV stations, that were opposed to him — they got charged with crimes, that literally, the value of the company went to zero, and Orbán said I'll buy it from you, you can leave the country, or go to jail. So yeah, the local gas man got rich. People running the free press got thrown in jail. Politicians get run out of country. This is what America faces under a second Donald Trump administration who brags that Orbán is a strong man that he loves, that he is going to be like."

:{:{Luce said, "CPAC [Conservative Political Action Conference], I mean the conservative movement openly adulate Orbán as the model for Trump. This isn't just paying a compliment to an ideological fellow traveler across The Atlantic. It's a much, much more conscious desire to imitate Orban. Orban is what Trump wants to be, punishing business critics, rewarding business friends, a crony system, a patronage based system, in which if you are a friend of Trump, it could become a monopolist.}:

And so I think business leaders — I don't think that [Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of JPMorgan Chase], Jamie Dimon, is a Trumpian. He is actually a registered Democrat, I believe. But I think his ultimate loyalty is to JP Morgan's bottom line. And he knows that if JP Morgan gets out of line under a second Trump administration, which will be far more serious than the first one, then it will get punished. Trump will have no compunction about using the paths of the presidency to award and punish with favors and fines."}:

:{:{Scarborough concluded, "You know, it's amazing, Mika, that the party that I was in, always has talked about personal freedom, personal liberties, talked about small government, take as much money power and authority out of Washington as possible. Get it into local governments. Get it into classrooms. Get it into local police districts. Here you have a Republican party — CPAC — what a joke! Let's not even get started with CPAC. And the Heritage Foundation, what a joke.}:

The RNC [Republican National Committee]. These institutions that used to praise personal liberty, personal freedoms, small government, are all now — as Ed said — they have readjusted, and now they are in support of autocracy. They are in support of a strong man leader. They are in support, the same people who will b**ch and moan about how, 'Oh, the western cannon, and western values are being destroyed, western civilization is at risk!' Those people, now worship — as does Donald Trump — leader of a failed country, who has said that he hates western democracy. says western democracy is dead. He says, 'I'm an illiberal Democrat.' And that's where they've gone.'"}:

Brzezinski added, "Yeah, and if you get what you want, you're not gonna like it."

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wapo no lnx

Opinion: The false prophets who inspired the violence on Jan. 6

Then-presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks to Rupert Murdoch, who owns Fox News and the Wall Street Journal, and his wife, Jerry Hall, outside Trump International Golf Links in Scotland in June 2016. (Carlo Allegri/Reuters)

By Joe Scarborough

Columnist

1/5

My grandmother’s faith in God sustained her as she struggled to raise her family through the Great Depression, said goodbye to her teenage son as he left for World War II and buried her husband a decade later.

The sounds of Billy Graham’s crusades would fill my grandmom’s Georgia home in the 1970s. A decade later, Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker’s “PTL Club” would win her loyalty, as well as her monthly tithes. My parents gently tried warning her that the “PTL” stars were scam artists less interested in her spiritual welfare than in her monthly Social Security checks. Even after being treated rudely by Tammy Faye in a chance encounter, Grandmom kept sending money the Bakkers’ way as they built their empire on the backs of working-class Christians. The dreadful pair’s get-rich schemes leveraged Americans’ love of God for cold, hard cash.

Looking back on the events of Jan. 6, perhaps we should focus more on the false prophets who inspired the violence of that day than the rioters we still highlight on video loops.

Those who beat cops with American flags should serve long jail sentences. But the most important lesson from that tragic day may come from deconstructing how plutocrats and trust-fund babies deployed propaganda campaigns to push that bloodthirsty mob up the Capitol steps.

The “big lie” bloodletting happened at the behest of a slumlord’s son, [trump] who inherited more than $400 million and used his presidency to undermine citizens’ faith in their country. His anti-American poison was spread through the arteries of one foreign family’s media empire and soon metastasized across the American heartland.

Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) on May 3 said former president Donald Trump was "poisoning our democratic system" with his false claims that the election was "stolen." (Reuters)]

Just as the Bakkers used the Gospel of Jesus Christ to prey on gullible viewers, these right-wing billionaires and their allies are trying to brainwash millions of Americans into believing the U.S. government is deploying Afghanistan War helicopters to launch domestic attacks against them, that the FBI is purging patriots from society and that the “deep state” staged the Jan. 6 riot as a “false flag” to strip citizens of their constitutional rights.

These hate-filled hysterics spewed against the United States have been punctuated by verbal assaults targeting military heroes, the slandering of the U.S. intelligence community and a barrage of fire against the nation’s democratic voting system that would make Vladimir Putin blush with pride. These are the kind of anti-American screeds that fueled the Capitol riot, and they have been preached with increasing intensity since that tragic day.

The targets of their misinformation campaign now await trial or languish in jail while the authors of these phony crises sleep comfortably in their marbled mansions and beachside resorts. They are free to travel the world on their super yachts or private jets while Jan. 6 defendants beg for their freedom in federal court.

What a dichotomy between these plutocrats and the working-class populists they duped into doing their bidding on Jan. 6. The divide between the propaganda they preach and the policies they pursue has become just as stark over the past two decades. Republicans have spent the 21st century embracing a populist brand while tailoring their policies to help the super rich. The result has helped drive perhaps the greatest wealth redistribution in world history, at the expense of the middle class.

Maybe that explains why every Republican presidential nominee this century has come from the United States’ most powerful families and graduated from the country’s most elite universities. Their fathers ran automobile companies, Midwest industrial states, the United States Navy, New York real estate empires and the country itself. I can hear the voice of my grandmom saying, “To whom much is given, much is expected.” While we have not inherited the wealth and power of these American oligarchs, we have been given a republic. Let us spend the next year doing what we can to save it.

A screaming Joe Scarborough demanded the arrest of President Donald Trump, the president's personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, and the president's son, Donald Trump, Jr., for inciting Wednesday's deadly violent insurrection.

"Are we a nation of laws?" the "Morning Joe" co-host yelled the morning after thousands of armed Trump MAGA supporters, some draped in "Make America Great Again" flags, breached the nation's Capitol Building, with hundreds crawling the halls of America's seat of government.

"Donald J. Trump called for the insurrection against the United States of America. He called for it. Rudy Giuliani called for 'combat justice,' just an hour or two before this happened. Donald Trump, Jr. said, 'We are coming for you!'"

"That's insurrection against the United States of America. And if Donald Trump, Jr., Rudy Giuliani, and Donald Trump are not arrested today for insurrection and taken to jail and booked, and if the Capitol Hill Police do not go through every video, and look at the face of every person that invaded our Capitol, and if they are not arrested and brought to justice today, then we are no longer a nation of laws and we only tell people they can do this again."

Scarborough and co-host Mika Brzezinski also blasted the Capitol Hill Police for treating the insurrectionists with kid gloves "because they are white," and accusing them of opening "the fucking doors" for the Trump insurrectionists.

"If these insurrectionists were Black, they would have been shot in the face. And my god, if these insurrectionists were Muslim, they would have been shot from the top of buildings."

Watch:

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-had-kushner-push-the-national-enquirer-to-probe-scarborough-murder-conspiracy-in-2017

mma 520 morn joe

https://www.mediamatters.org/one-america-news-network/during-white-house-briefing-oan-correspondent-suggests-trump-lawyers

an 520

Scarborough can sue for defamation — and ‘it could require Trump to pay substantial punitive damages’: Legal expert

Travis Gettys / Raw StoryMay 28, 2020

MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough may have a defamation case against President Donald Trump, according to one legal expert. Peter Schuck, an emeritus professor of law at Yale and visiting professor at…

wow w exmr breaks ranks

https://www.alternet.org/2020/05/conservative-publication-slams-trump-for-promoting-vile-and-illogical-conspiracy-theory/

alex h

Trump has never been shy about promoting absurd far-right conspiracy theories, including birtherism (the racist claim that President Barack Obama wasn’t really born in the United States). And recently, Trump has been floating the conspiracy theory that Never Trump conservative Joe Scarborough — who hosts “Morning Joe” on MSNBC with liberal Mika Brzezinski, his wife — murdered a former employee. And the editorial board of the right-wing Washington Examiner slams Trump for it in a scathing editorial published on May 27.

The former employee that conspiracy theorists have accused of killing was Lori Klausutis, who suffered from a heart condition and was only 28 when, on July 19, 2001, she fell and fatally hit her head. At the time, Scarborough was a Florida Republican serving in the U.S. House of Representatives. Scarborough, who is now one of Trump’s most vehement critics on the right, has since left the GOP because of his disdain for Trumpism.

An autopsy was performed on Klausutis after he death, and that autopsy showed no signs of foul play. Moreover, Klausutis’ widower, Timothy Klausutis, has been imploring Trump to quit claiming otherwise and let his wife rest in peace. He has also asked Twitter to remove tweets in which Trump has promoted the anti-Scarborough conspiracy theory.

The Washington Examiner’s editorial board explains that according to the anti-Scarborough conspiracy theory, the ex-congressman “must have been having an affair with the staffer in question, and he must have murdered her in order to cover it up. According to this tall tale, the controversy surrounding her death even forced Scarborough to leave Congress."

the editorial goes on to lay out some reasons why the conspiracy theory defies logic.

“This story is not just false, but verifiably so,” the Washington Examiner asserts. “It is also illogical and bizarre. For one thing, Scarborough wasn’t even in Florida when this incident occurred. He took six votes on the House floor the day Klausutis died — the first at 10:25 a.m. and the last at 7:09 p.m. The following morning, he participated in another vote at 10:10 a.m.”

The Examiner adds, “Second, Scarborough had already announced his retirement from Congress long before Klausutis died; so, there’s nothing to that part of the story, either. And even after his departure from Congress, Scarborough hardly shrunk into the background as if to avoid the spotlight. The first episode of his new evening MSNBC show, ‘Scarborough Country,’ broadcast three months after he left the House. It gave him a much higher profile than he’d ever had as an obscure congressman from North Florida.”

But even though “there was also never any indication that Scarborough had any sort of improper relationship with Klausutis,” the Examiner’s editorial board explains, Trump hasn’t hesitated to promote the conspiracy theory on Twitter.

“The latest person to trumpet and repeat this vile slander is the president supposedly leading this nation through a time of crisis,” the Examiner asserts. “Whatever his issues with Scarborough, President Trump’s crazed Twitter rant on this subject was vile and unworthy of his office. Some will undoubtedly shrug it off as Trump being Trump, but one could hardly be blamed for reading it and doubting his fitness to lead. To say Trump owes Scarborough an apology is to put it mildly.”

an 520

This is pretty nuts’: Kayleigh McEnany struggles to defend Trump’s vicious murder conspiracy theory

Cody Fenwick

White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany was forced to defend President Donald Trump’s recent attacks on MSNBC host Joe Scarborough on Tuesday.

same guy? yup!

https://www.alternet.org/2020/05/trump-implores-forensic-geniuses-to-investigate-former-gop-congressman-for-murder/

why are i/we not using alt rt tag anymore?

maga hatters?

https://www.rightwingwatch.org/report/disinformation-coronavirus-and-the-2020-presidential-election/

trump trains?!

https://www.rightwingwatch.org/report/disinformation-coronavirus-and-the-2020-presidential-election/

no lnx pix twet

The term disinformation tends to conjure up images of Twitter bot armies with thick Russian accents, but the disinformation landscape in 2020 is a lot more complex. While Russia has great expertise in roiling U.S. political waters, it isn’t the only foreign actor in the disinformation and trolling games. The Oxford Internet Institute issued a report finding “evidence of organized social media manipulation campaigns which have taken place in 70 countries, up from 48 countries in 2018 and 28 countries in 2017.”Social media companies have removed content with disinformation campaigns originating in Saudi Arabia, China, and Iran.

Iranian Facebook post targeting Americans. (Source: Facebook)

But homegrown disinformation is a much bigger problem, starting with President Donald Trump’s reelection campaign and extending into a vast network of pro-Trump super PACs, right-wing media outlets, and an organized army of MAGA warriors happy to amplify every lie, false conspiracy, and misdirection online. Domestic disinformers have adopted tactics deployed by Russia and other hostile actors in 2016, optimizing them for 2020.

The lessons of 2016 haven’t been lost on the legions of far-right, pro-Trump conspiracy theorists who have their own web-based video and audio shows. With the coronavirus pandemic and its economic fallout posing threats to Trump’s reelection, the president’s online far-right boosters have taken up disinformation messaging designed to discredit the judgment of public health officials and scientists on the severity of the pandemic and the resulting COVID-19 disease. For instance, Rodney Howard-Browne, a Florida megachurch pastor who convened large church services in defiance of social distancing orders, claimed that the pandemic was “planned” at a 2019 New York event hosted by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. And Rick Wiles, a religious-right broadcaster and font of anti-Semitic lies, suggested that the coronavirus emergency may have been “staged” to shut down the U.S. (Despite ample documentation of Wiles’ conspiracy-mongering and anti-Semitism, he is regularly granted press credentials by both the White House and the Trump campaign.)

In fact, MAGA-world influencer Brenden Dilley, whose YouTube channel has more than 12,000 subscribers, laid bare the MAGA disinformation playbook last year when he baldly asserted, “It doesn’t have to be true; it just has to go viral.” In that episode of his show, he used the example of the false claim that Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who was then running for the Democratic presidential nomination, had a racist knick-knack on display in her kitchen. On a more recent edition of his YouTube show, he reiterated that reasoning when explaining why he was advancing a false story about MSNBC host Joe Scarborough.

Right Wing Watch

@RightWingWatch

MAGA life coach Brenden Dilley praises Trump for baselessly suggesting thatJoe Scarborough was involved in the death of an intern:"It doesn't matter if it's true. This is how you fight back against people who are trying to destroy you."

Embedded video

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11:14 AM - May 4, 2020

Twitter Ads info and privacy

180 people are talking about this

The Trump campaign and pro-MAGA super PACs have made it clear that the old rules of politics no longer apply, and their base now largely believes in an alternative reality. The president spreads and amplifies so much disinformation on his Twitter feed that it’s nearly impossible to keep up, and GOP elected officials for the most part now follow suit. Republican operatives have built disinformation tactics into their strategies.

Trump Campaign Facebook ad with misinformation.Facebook refused to take this ad down per their policy not to fact check political ads on their platform. (Source: Twitter, Judd Legum)

Trump’s online supporters can’t merely be dismissed as bots. His online fanbase is overamplified but made up of actual individuals happy to spend considerable time and resources getting pro-MAGA messages out into the ether. Social media researcher Erin Gallagher has a fascinating piece on #TrumpTrains, self-organized cells of Trump fans working in Twitter direct messaging groups to spread Trump’s rhetoric and recruit new supporters to the cause.Gallagher was able to get a #TrumpTrain “conductor” to go on the record about how the #TrumpTrains are organized, recruiting volunteers or “riders” to tweet pro-Trump content in large volume at the direction of “conductors.”

Facebook groups and pages are another hub for pro-Trump disinformation. Writing for Media Matters, social media researcher Natalie Martinez details how the far-right propaganda machine operates on Facebook, “On Facebook, right-wing meme pages play a vital role in condensing and recycling far-right talking points and keeping the MAGA base engaged online. These pages regularly post extremist content, arguably violating Facebook’s hate speech content policy, and often exploit tragic events in the news cycle, images of veterans, and violent anti-immigrant rhetoric for likes and shares.” Multiple candidates running for office as Republicans have been caught participating—some as page administrators—in right-wing Facebook groups.

conservative bashes his own party’s hostility to democracy: ‘It’s always Republicans’

Travis Gettys / Raw StoryMay 25, 2020

Conservative David Frum blamed the Republican Party for undermining U.S. democratic institutions. The former speechwriter for George W. Bush told MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” that President Donald Trump’s hardcore base was…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Scarborough

Charles Joseph Scarborough (/:{ˈskɑːrbʌroʊ:(style="border-bottom:1px dotted"):}:/; born April 9, 1963) is an American cable news host, musician, and former congressman from Florida. He is currently the co-host of Morning Joe on MSNBC with Mika Brzezinski, his spouse. He previously hosted Scarborough Country on the same network. Scarborough was previously a lawyer and a politician and served in the United States House of Representatives from 1995 to 2001 as a Republican for the 1st district of Florida.

Scarborough was also a visiting fellow at the Harvard Institute of Politics at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government.^[1] He was named in the 2011 *Time* 100 as one of the most influential people in the world.^[2]

Early life

Charles Joseph Scarborough was born in Atlanta, Georgia, the son of Mary Joanna (née Clark) and George Francis Scarborough, a businessman; he has two siblings.^[3] Scarborough attended Pensacola Catholic High School in Pensacola, Florida. He earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in history from the University of Alabama in 1985 and a Juris Doctor degree from the University of Florida College of Law in 1990.^[4] During this time he wrote music and produced CDs with his band, Dixon Mills, including the album Calling on Robert E. Lee,^[5] and he also coached football and taught high school.

Legal career

Scarborough was admitted to The Florida Bar in 1991,^[4] and practiced law in Pensacola.^[6]

Scarborough's most high-profile case was briefly representing Michael F. Griffin,^[7][8][9] the killer of doctor David Gunn, in 1993. He made several court appearances representing Griffin, before removing himself from the case,^[10] later saying: "There was no way in hell I could sit in at a civil trial, let alone a capital trial," referring to the prospect of prosecutors seeking the death penalty against Griffin.^[11] Scarborough assisted Griffin in choosing other counsel from the many who offered their services, however, and helped shield the family from the media exposure, pro bono.^[12]

Scarborough's political profile was also raised when he assisted with a petition drive, in late 1993, opposing a proposed 65 percent increase in the City of Pensacola's property taxes.^[6]

U.S. House of Representatives

Elections

Scarborough in 1994

In 1994 Scarborough won the Republican Party primary for Florida's 1st congressional district. The seat had come open when eight-term Democratic incumbent Earl Dewitt Hutto announced his retirement. In the general election Scarborough defeated the Democratic candidate, Pensacola attorney Vince "Vinnie" Whibbs Jr., with 61 percent of the vote. Whibbs was the son of former Pensacola mayor Vince Whibbs. The district had not supported a Democratic candidate for U.S. president since 1960. However, Democratic candidates had continued to hold most local offices well into the 1990s. Scarborough's win coincided with a large Republican wave that swept through the Florida Panhandle, as well as the entire United States. Republicans swept nearly all of the region's seats in the state legislature and have held them ever since.^[citation ^needed]

Scarborough was reelected with 72 percent of the vote in 1996. In 1998 and 2000, he faced only write-in candidates as opposition.^[13][14]

Tenure

During his congressional career, he received a 95 percent lifetime rating from the American Conservative Union.^[15] He signed the Contract with America. Scarborough served on the Armed Services, Judiciary, Government Reform, and Education committees. In 1998 he was named chairman of the Civil Service Committee.^[16]

Scarborough was one of a group of about 40 freshmen Republican legislators who dubbed themselves the "New Federalists" after The Federalist Papers. Scarborough was elected political director of the incoming legislators. The New Federalists called for sweeping cuts in the U.S. government, including plans to "privatize, localize, consolidate, [or] eliminate"^[17] the Departments of Commerce, Education, Energy and Housing and Urban Development. Gingrich tapped Scarborough to head a Republican task force on education, and Scarborough declared, "Our goal is to get as much money, power, and authority out of Washington and get as much money, power, and authority into the classroom as possible."^[6] Rep. John Kasich (R-Ohio), then chairman of the House Budget Committee, adopted Scarborough's language eliminating the federal Department of Education in the 1996 House Budget Resolution.^[18] The budget passed the House by a vote of 238–193.^[19]

Scarborough supported a number of anti-abortion positions while in Congress, including the Unborn Victims of Violence Act, that made it a crime to harm a fetus during the commission of other crimes.^[20][21]

Scarborough sponsored a bill to force the U.S. to withdraw from the United Nations after a four-year transition^[17] and voted to make the Corporation for Public Broadcasting self-sufficient^[22] by eliminating federal funding. He also voted for the "Medicare Preservation act of 1995,"^[23] which cut the projected growth of Medicare by $270 billion over ten years, and against the "Small Business Job Protection Act of 1996,"^[24] which raised the minimum wage to $5.15. Scarborough had a conservative voting record on economic, social, and foreign policy issues but was seen as moderate on environmental issues and human rights causes, including supporting the closure of the School of the Americas and defending accused terrorist Lori Berenson.^[6][25]

While in Congress, Scarborough received a number of awards, including the "Friend of the Taxpayer Award" from Americans for Tax Reform; the "Guardian of Small Business Award" from the National Federation of Independent Business; the "Spirit of Enterprise Award" from the United States Chamber of Commerce; the "Taxpayer's Hero Award" from the Citizens Against Government Waste; and the "Guardian of Seniors' Rights Award" from the 60 Plus Association.^[citation ^needed]

Scarborough was one of the 228 members of the House who voted to impeach Bill Clinton in December 1998.^[26]

Committee memberships

104th Congress^[27] – Committee on Government Reform and Oversight – Committee on National Security (formerly Committee on Armed Services)
105th Congress^[28] – Committee on National Security – Committee on Government Reform and Oversight – Committee on Education and the Workforce
106th Congress^[29] – Committee on Armed Services – Committee on Government Reform – Committee on the Judiciary
107th Congress^[30] – Committee on Government Reform – Committee on the Judiciary

Electoral history

...

2017 --> indep on colbert

]

Conspiracy theory

Main article: Donald Trump's Joe Scarborough murder conspiracy theory

On July 20, 2001, one of Scarborough's aides, Lori Klausutis, was found dead from a head injury in his office in Fort Walton Beach, Florida.^[41] The autopsy found that she had collapsed due to an undiagnosed heart condition and had struck her head.^[42] A theory that Scarborough was involved in the death was promoted by such people as publisher Markos Moulitsas and filmmaker Michael Moore, who registered the domain name JoeScarboroughKilledHisIntern.com.^[43] Since 2017, as part of a war of words with Scarborough, President Donald Trump has raised this debunked theory and called for another investigation.^[44][45][46]

Media career

Scarborough is the co-host of MSNBC's Morning Joe, which features interviews with top newsmakers and politicians and analysis of the day's biggest stories. Previously, he hosted Scarborough Country, a primetime news show. He and Mika Brzezinski also briefly hosted a syndicated talk radio show called the Joe Scarborough Show on ABC Radio Network.

While still serving in Congress, Scarborough founded the free weekly Pensacola-area newspaper The Florida Sun in 1999. The paper later merged in 2001 and is now known as the Independent News.^[47]

In April 2003, he embarked upon a television career with the launch of Scarborough Country on MSNBC, until he began hosting Morning Joe full-time.^[citation ^needed]

In an op-ed for The Washington Post in August 2016, Scarborough argued that the Republican party must "dump Donald Trump" as their presidential candidate. Drawing attention to Trump's remarks about Hillary Clinton and the Second Amendment, Scarborough wrote: "A bloody line has been crossed that cannot be ignored. At long last, Donald Trump has left the Republican Party few options but to act decisively and get this political train wreck off the tracks before something terrible happens."^[48]

In June 2017, Scarborough and Brzezinski were the targets of President Donald Trump's tweets, in which, in response to their coverage of his administration, referred to him as "Psycho Joe" and called her "low I.Q. Crazy Mika," while asserting that she was "bleeding badly from a face-lift" when he previously encountered her at Mar-a-Lago.^[49][50][51]

The hosts responded with an op-ed in The Washington Post, in which they described White House officials telling them that the president would kill a pending National Enquirer article if they apologized to Trump for their coverage of him.^[52] The president's tweets received criticism from numerous Republican lawmakers, including Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, Senators John McCain, Susan Collins, Ben Sasse, Lindsey Graham, and Lisa Murkowski.^[53]

In August 2019, Scarborough drew criticism after posting conspiracy-driven tweets about the death of Jeffrey Epstein, an American financier multimillionaire and convicted sex offender.^[54] Scarborough tweeted: "A guy who had information that would have destroyed rich and powerful men's lives ends up dead in his jail cell. How predictably...Russian."^[55]

Morning Joe

In May 2007, Scarborough became one of the rotating hosts auditioning for the slot vacated by Imus in the Morning on MSNBC. Scarborough, with his morning show, won the slot permanently in July 2007.

Morning Joe is a weekday MSNBC morning news and talk show, airing from 6 a.m. to 9 a.m. Eastern Time. It features Joe Scarborough providing both enterprise reporting and discussion on the news of the day in a panel format with co-hosts Mika Brzezinski and Willie Geist. The show features in-depth discussions that help drive the day's political conversation.

In 2007, New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg joined Willie, Mika, MSNBC president Phil Griffin, and Joe to cut the ribbon on the new set of Morning Joe at 30 Rock.^[56]

Scarborough has covered presidential elections and conventions. In 2015 he interviewed Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and abruptly ended the interview, but resumed it after commercial break.^[57] During the 2016 election, Scarborough criticized the Democratic National Committee for trying to protect Hillary Clinton and ensure she received the Democratic party's presidential nomination, calling the DNC "rigged" against voters.^[58] 2017 marked the program's 10th year on air.

According to Nielsen ratings in 2016, Morning Joe delivered MSNBC's biggest total viewer and demo audiences in the time period ever and beat third-place CNN in both categories. This marked Morning Joe's seventh straight year topping CNN in total viewers.^[59] Scarborough also is a regular guest on NBC and MSNBC news programs and has appeared on Meet the Press numerous times. In April 2012 Scarborough guest-hosted Meet the Press.^[60]

Radio

On December 8, 2008, Scarborough and Morning Joe co-host Mika Brzezinski began hosting a two-hour late-morning radio show on WABC (770 AM) in New York City, replacing 12-year veteran host John Gambling.^[61][62][63] As of April 26, 2010, the radio show was placed on "hiatus", which Scarborough said was to redevelop its format into a new three-hour show.^[64] The show never returned.

Books

Scarborough released his first book, Rome Wasn't Burnt in a Day: the Real Deal on how Politicians, Bureaucrats, and other Washington Barbarians are Bankrupting America,^[65] on October 4, 2005.

In his second book, The Last Best Hope,^[66] released on June 9, 2009, Scarborough outlined a plan to help guide conservatives back to a political majority after their defeats in the 2006 midterm elections and the 2008 presidential election.

On November 12, 2013, Scarborough released his third book, The Right Path: From Ike to Reagan, How Republicans Once Mastered Politics—and Can Again.^[citation ^needed]

Music

Scarborough released his debut EP, Mystified, on June 23, 2017. A music video for the title track of the new wave-inspired EP was also released on the same day.^[67] Scarborough plans to release a new EP every month for the next four years.^[68]

Personal life

In 1986, Scarborough married Melanie Hinton. The couple had two sons^[69] and divorced in 1999. While interviewing Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in June 2005, Scarborough expressed concerns about the possibility that one of his sons may have suffered vaccine damage (See Thimerosal controversy). Scarborough said, "My son, born in 1991, has a slight form of autism called Asperger's. When I was practicing law and also when I was in Congress, parents would constantly come to me and they would bring me videotapes of their children, and they were all around the age of my son or younger. So, something happened in 1989."^[70]

In October 2001, Scarborough married his second wife, Susan Waren, a former aide to Florida governor Jeb Bush and a former congressional committee staffer. Their daughter was born in August 2003; their son was born in May 2008. Scarborough and Waren were divorced in January 2013.^[71]

Scarborough currently resides in New Canaan, Connecticut, an affluent suburb near New York City.^[72] In early 2017 during a trip to Antibes, France, he became engaged to his co-host Mika Brzezinski.^[73] The couple married on November 24, 2018, in Washington D.C. in a ceremony officiated by U.S. Representative Elijah Cummings.^[74]