MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough has come a long way on this story in a very short time. One week ago, he was pronouncing it part of a White House deflection effort. By the end of last week, he said it was worth investigating. Today, Scarborough is suggesting other media outlets, including the New York Times, are dropping the ball by failing to cover it on the front page.

“What if Dick Cheney had asked for the unmasking of names for Barack Obama’s incoming administration?” Scarborough asked. He continued, “It’s a very simple question to ask the next time anybody says this is much ado about nothing.

“There are a lot of things we don’t know. A lot of questions we don’t know. I do know this, though, I heard the hallelujah chorus come and immediately on cue last night saying…nothing to see hear. Move along, move along.”

“Let’s just replace Susan Rice’s name with Dick Cheney’s name, the incoming Trump administration’s name with the incoming Obama administration’s name and then…let’s go from there,” Scarborough said.

Though Scarborough didn’t specify which media outlets were part of the “hallelujah chorus” he was likely talking about CNN which as Allahpundit noted earlier, appeared to be in the tank for team Rice last night.

The unmasking story seems to have been tainted for the media by Trump’s “wiretapping” tweets. They want to avoid giving any credence to those claims so they’re downplaying what could be a legitimate story with some similar elements. Meanwhile, having Rep. Maxine Waters talk constantly about “collusion” and “impeachment” doesn’t seem to have soured the media on the Russian-influence-on-the-election story even though there still isn’t proof anything nefarious happened. One story fills the media with dread, the other with hope. One guess why they feel that way.

Also this morning, Scarborough pointed out that the NY Times seems to be downplaying the story. “Why isn’t it in the newspaper of record here?” Scarborough asked, holding up a copy of the front page of the NY Times. “We’ve got Bill O’Reilly on the front page but we don’t have NSA and Susan Rice,” he said. Guest Mark Halperin added, “It’s on A16 in my hard copy.” This brought a laugh from Scarborough. You can see the exchange at about 5:30 in this clip:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qp06z-_3DJ8

Here’s a parting thought from Fox News reporter Adam Housley who broke some of this story a few days ago.

For the record, seeking truth is not creating a diversion. Arguing such is taking a political position. We can investigate more than 1 story

— Adam Housley (@adamhousley) April 4, 2017