Morning Joe Again Mocks Those Making ‘Total Asses Of Themselves’ On Durham

Tuesday, Morning JoeJoe Scarborough, the host of Joe Scarborough’s show said that everyone who was concerned about John Durham’s most recent filings “stupid” He referred to Durham as a “completely, total asses”, and aggravated the name calling by saying that he cares about Durham on Thursday. Scarborough considers Durham to be included in this.

Scarborough responded to critics from the media and declared:

We’re also seeing a lot of backing off from the breathlessness. Over the weekend all we heard was ‘why isn’t the media talking about this, why mainstream media, the corporate me–,’ we started talking about it and suddenly everyone’s gone quiet or most people have gone quiet except those who really want to make complete, total asses of themselves.

Scarborough referred to Claire McCaskill (ex-Senator of Missouri), and included Durham in this horrible assessment.

And speaking of that, Claire McCaskill, Durham, you know, here’s a guy that spent a good bit of his career respected. He’s humiliating himself. He’s, this thing has dragged on for three years, investigating the investigators has gone on longer than the investigation…He puts out a pleading that is just indecipherable. It allows crackpots to—to– lie to their audiences that something is—is– amiss, and you dig into it and, again, there was no wiretapping.

Scarborough claimed that Durham would not care if he had any evidence of wrongdoing. But:

Well, here we are three years into it. He puts out a pleading that is just indecipherable. It allows crackpots to—to– lie to their audiences that something is—is– amiss, and you dig into it and, again, there was no wiretapping. In fact, no data was collected illegally.  Everything Durham admits was collected legally. Nobody’s charged with Hillary– with anything. Hillary Clinton, there’s not even any suggestion that Hillary Clinton had anything to do with any of this. They have Sussmann, a guy that everybody in Washington, D.C. knew was connected to the DNC and Hillary Clinton including Republicans on The Hill.

Scarborough might not understand that every American lives close to the Beltway. Scarborough might believe there was no wrongdoing, but from a journalistic standpoint, it is up to the network to tell its viewers who the source was for the Russian collusion story.

Scarborough continued: “The fact is Durham after three years has this one charge against a lawyer that is not going to stick. You look at the facts behind that one charge, it’s preposterous….three years and all he is doing is churning up a bunch of nothing and it just continues.” A frustrated host asked: “What are the plans inside DOJ?” Are they going to let this guy go three more years and-and just launch a conspiracy theory with a poorly written pleading every 18 months or so?”

The Mueller probe did not use this standard. Process crimes were shown to be extremely important in that instance, and anyone suggesting they could end them before Mueller was finished with the investigation was impeachable. 

McCaskill for her part danced about the Garland question, and she agreed that Durham’s probe has not yielded anything notable.

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The transcript of the February 17, 2017 show is available here:

MSNBC Morning Joe

2/17/2022

6:14 AM ET

JOE SCARBOROUGH: We’re also seeing a lot of backing off from the breathlessness. Over the weekend all we heard was “why isn’t the media talking about this, why mainstream media, the corporate me–,” we started talking about it and suddenly everyone’s gone quiet or most people have gone quiet except those who really want to make complete, total asses of themselves. 

And speaking of that, Claire McCaskill, Durham, you know, here’s a guy that spent a good bit of his career respected. He’s humiliating himself. He’s, this thing has dragged on for three years, investigating the investigators has gone on longer than the investigation. And as I said a couple of days ago, if they were actually doing things I’d say, “okay, go as long as you want, let’s get to the bottom of this. Whatever it takes, I want to know what all of the agencies have been doing and if there’s something that was done wrong in the investigation, Americans need to know about it.” Well, you know, here we are three years into it. He puts out a pleading that is just indecipherable. It allows crackpots to—to– lie to their audiences that something is—is– amiss, and you dig into it and, again, there was no wiretapping. In fact, no data was collected illegally. 

Everything Durham admits was collected legally. Nobody’s charged with Hillary– with anything. Hillary Clinton, there’s not even any suggestion that Hillary Clinton had anything to do with any of this. They have Sussmann, a guy that everybody in Washington, D.C. knew was connected to the DNC and Hillary Clinton including Republicans on The Hill. I mean I could go on and on and on. The fact is Durham after three years has this one charge against a lawyer that is not going to stick. You look at the facts behind that one charge, it’s preposterous. And yet Merrick Garland, I guess Merrick Garland has to let him continue to go on, but three years and all he is doing is churning up a bunch of nothing and it just continues. Is this the DOJ’s plan? Are they going to let this guy go three more years and-and just launch a conspiracy theory with a poorly written pleading every 18 months or so? 

CLAIRE MCCASKILL: Well, first of all, I think in a way it works to the benefit of the truth that Durham has independent control, that Merrick Garland is not controlling him. Because if there was all kinds of bad actors trying to hurt the guy in Mar-a-Lago, then bring on the grand jury and the indictments, but there’s nothing. 

SCARBOROUGH: Exactly. 

MCCASKILL: Other than saying — there’s nothing other than saying a lawyer didn’t tell us that his firm had done some work and that he was billing Hillary Clinton for some of his time. That’s it. That’s it.