Donald Trump phoned in to Morning Joe today and showed his usual regard for the truth:
Scarborough asked Trump if he would have stayed out of Libya. Trump answered, “I would have stayed out of Libya. I would have stayed out of Iraq too.”
At the time, Trump’s lie generated no pushback from Joe Scarborough.
The Clinton campaign contacted the show to challenge Trump's claim regarding Libya, and a correction was issued on air after the interview:
Kudos, to @Morning_Joe for doing later correction of Trump on Libya. Took a response from Clinton campaign. pic.twitter.com/DbunSHbmjv
— andrew kaczynski (@BuzzFeedAndrew) May 20, 2016
However, no correction was issued regarding Trump's claim that he "would have stayed out of Iraq," which is a lie:
... in a 2002 interview with Howard Stern, Donald Trump said he supported an Iraq invasion.
In the interview, which took place on Sept. 11, 2002, Stern asked Trump directly if he was for invading Iraq.
“Yeah, I guess so,” Trump responded. “I wish the first time it was done correctly.”
Trump's earliest denunciation of the war came a year after it started.And Trump endorsed George W. Bush in 2004.
****
But that wasn't the only nonsense that went unchallenged in the interview. In this segment, Mika Brzezinski let Trump get away with pretending to be clear-eyed and knowledgeable about terrorism:
Donald Trump isn't waiting around for investigators to tell him who or what was responsible for the EgyptAir crash.
He said Friday morning that he could "practically guarantee" who "blew up" the plane....
"Another plane was blown up and I can practically guarantee who blew it up," the presumptive Republican presidential nominee said during an appearance on MSNBC's "Morning Joe." ...
"And another plane went down and let me tell you, the mindset of a weak Hillary Clinton, which is four more years of Obama, is not going to do it for our country," he added of his likely general-election opponent.
In the segment, as you can see in the clip above, Brzezinski again lets Trump get away with claiming to be a dove on Iraq ("I'm the one that didn't want to go into Iraq, Mika"). But beyond that, when he says of the EgyptAir plane that he can "practically guarantee who blew it up," Brzezinski passes up the opportunity to ask a simple one-word question:
"Who?"
What would Trump have replied? He just would have said, triumphantly, "Islamic extremists" -- as if he's the only guy with the guts to raise that possibility.
At which point a real journalist would have asked, "Yes, but who? The Islamic State? Al Qaeda? The Muslim Brotherhood? And based where? Egypt? France? Belgium?"
Your answer, wannabe Leader of the Free World?
Brzezinski also lets Trump get away with suggesting that Clinton won't even consider the possibility that this was a terrorist attack because, like all Muslim-coddling liberals, she's in denial about the nature of the threat. That's where Trump is going when he segues from "I can practically guarantee who blew it up" to "the mindset of a weak Hillary Clinton." That's where he was going with this statement, which he issued yesterday (emphasis mine):
In fact, Clinton speculated yesterday that the plane went down because of terrorism:
Democratic presidential front-runner and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton shared her thoughts on the crash of EgyptAir Flight MS804 over the Mediterranean Sea early Thursday.
“It does appear that it was an act of terrorism -- exactly how, of course, the investigation will have to determine,” Clinton told CNN’s Chris Cuomo in an interview Thursday afternoon.
But Trump's base "knows" that she and all other Democrats are in denial about the very existence of this kind of extremism. Trump is stroking the pleasure center in the wingnut brain that experiences orgasms of self-righteousness at the thought that liberals don't believe there are any Islamist terrorists. (A Free Republic commenter, in response to the Trump statement: "You cannot solve a problem by pretending it does not exist. Muslims are responsible for most acts of terrorism, probably over 80 or 90% of them.")
In the clip, Brzezinski is so obsessed with trying to accuse Trump of racism (on a rare occasion when he's not really guilty) that she misses what he's actually saying, and never calls him on it.
Daddy, what was journalism?
(Crossposted at No More Mr. Nice Blog)
