If you ever wondered whether Joe Scarborough had a conscience, wonder no longer.
He stands by his assessment that the Joe Biden of 2024 WAS the "best Joe Biden ever."
"Put into proper context, I'm just not going to freak out and melt down on one or two clips here and there."@JoeNBC stands by his "best Biden ever" comment - preview clip from his interview with @MarkHalperin, out today on @NextUpHalperin.
— Next Up with Mark Halperin (@NextUpHalperin) May 20, 2025
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Mark Halperin has become an indispensable journalist for the modern era. He, along with the lost list of real journalists who have struck out on their own to build little (or not so little) media empires, proves that real journalism no longer has a place at the legacy outlets--and that journalists willing to buck The Narrative™ have tapped into a strong demand for independent voices.
Halperin lost his gig at MSNBC during the #metoo era, and I obviously have no particular insight into whether any or all of the allegations against him are true. All I can say for sure is that "believe all women" was then and is now a stupid standard.
What I can say for certain is that Halperin has carved out a space for himself over the past couple of years as one of the best political reporters in the country, attracting admirers from all points on the political spectrum. He gets scoops, and better yet, he brings context to the news that is impossible in the hyperpartisan, clickbait-driven 24-hour rage-bait media.
On his new show, Next Up with Mark Halperin, Joe Scarborough tried to clean up his tarnished image more than a little, and I will leave it up to you to watch the 12-minute segment in which the MSNBC host defends his assertion that "Joe Biden is more than cogent" and that the 80+ year-old former president was the best version of himself to have ever been.
Me? I don't believe him for a second, although Scarborough at least is not pretending that he was fooled by people more intelligent and more devious than he.
It IS conceivable that Scarborough found Biden's discussion of world affairs a tour de force of analysis, but if so, that only tells us that Scarborough is more stupid about how the world works than I could imagine. Biden destroyed everything he touched, from Afghanistan to Israel and Ukraine. That Scarborough thinks that the record and the analysis it was based on were brilliant shows that he is a fool.
But I doubt he is being honest here because he doesn't exactly have a sterling record of being honest on anything else. He has been a key player in every leftist hoax against Donald Trump, pushing the ridiculous claim that Donald Trump was going to throw MSNBC hosts and other critics in camps, and continues to this day to be an example of how MSNBC has modeled itself on Baghdad Bob.
Still, Scarborough's performance is a prime example of the media excuse machine: now that their lies have been exposed, they have found a defense that is, in some ways, arguing that they are worse than propagandists: they are idiots who masquerade as "experts."
If admitting to being a propagandist is self-disqualifying, what does that make being a drooling idiot who cannot see the obvious?
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