Former Congressman, co-host of Morning Joe, and former Republican Joe Scarborough, currently the target of President Trump’s personal rumor mill in the form of a baseless murder accusation, claims to have no clue for the big circle on his back in this editorial defending himself and shaming President Trump:
Joe Scarborough
Source: WikipediaThe pace of those hateful lies ebbed and flowed with the years, until they swelled recently into a slimy tsunami of bilge spewing from President Trump’s 80-million-strong Twitter feed. I have never been able to grasp Trump’s bizarre fixation with “Morning Joe,” but that sad obsession has driven him to weaponize Lori’s memory in an attempt to settle some perceived grievance against me. Or perhaps to deflect from the 100,000 Americans lost to a disease he once dismissed as “one person coming in from China.” [WaPo]
But it’s really rather simple, and comes in two points.
First, there’s the fact that Morning Joe is an influential show that many Republicans listen to. As Scarborough has expressed disgust with Trump, Trump must consider him a foe that must be destroyed, if only metaphorically.
But that’s the minor point. The real point is this: I’ve called the Trump base a cult, and for good reason as they support their Leader despite all pleas that they listen to reason and think objectively. But this also goes the other way: Trump is the cult leader. As such, he has the ego and the narcissism you’d expect to find. When Scarborough walked away from the Republican Party, much like Max Boot, Jennifer Rubin, and a number of other major and minor Republican officials, he was spitting in the Trumpian holy water. In the Trump mind – either cultist or leader – the man can do no wrong, his vision of the future is peerless, and he’s an expert in everything, in the way the bumbling amateur often is.
Scarborough is the signal example of something Heinlein supposedly once said: One man’s religion is another man’s belly laugh. And the religionist hates that.
Scarborough may not realize it, but by leaving the Republican Party on Trump’s watch, he’s delivered a mortal insult.
Worse yet, as a media personality with a platform, his leave-taking is an example to other Republicans who may be finding the cult to be an uncomfortable fit: You, too, may betray the Father of Lies, his actions say, and while talk is cheap, Scarborough did more – he trotted his way right out of Jonestown, spat in the Jim Jones Kool-Aid, and walked away with his honor mostly whole. He’s a rejection of the entire way of the Republican Party, and Trump – as the embodiment of a Party on the brink of going from the Presidency to nothing, to even possibly burning down – can’t but take it as an insult.
Quite personally.
