Look, Joe Scarborough has a lot to make up for. He helped nurture Trump into the electoral juggernaut he became, and while he has not specifically apologized for that (remember, we have no way of knowing how much of that coverage was a corporate mandate), he has done his best to sound the alarm. Progressives need to learn to take a win when they get one, and to have one of the most influential voices inside the Beltway take on Trump is no small matter.
Today's show featured an op-ed Scarborough wrote for today's Washington Post:
"Our own Joe Scarborough has a new piece in this morning's Washington Post titled 'A Storm Is Gathering,' " Geist said.
"In it, he writes there's every reason to believe 2018 will be the most consequential political year of our lives.'
"The reckoning upon us follows a year mercifully drawing to a close. Over that horrid year, President Trump has questioned legitimacy of federal judges, cast contempt on the rule of law while his campaign manager, national security adviser and foreign policy aide have been marched into federal courts. Those anti democratic instincts were made all the more ominous by his praising of autocrats across the world as they were ruthlessly consolidating power.
"The storm is gathering and how we respond in the months ahead may determine our fate for years to come"
"Joe goes on, 'While trump's eroding of U.S. prestige across the globe is disturbing, it's his administration's undermining of democratic values that poses a greater threat to our Constitution and country. Borrowing again from Churchill, America's constitutional norms tremble in the balance as he launches attacks on First Amendment protections and law enforcement officers who refuse to be bullied. They never let their imaginations be darkened by the possibility of a compliant congress.'
"Kristen Soltis Anderson, let's go to you on this, how dire is the situation? Do you agree with Joe here?"
"I think the situation is fragile," Anderson said.
"That's perhaps how I'd best frame it."
She brought up what's happening in Alabama with Roy Moore claiming the senate election is invalid.
"This is what we were at risk of facing at a national level, had Donald Trump lost the presidential in 2016, that there's a sense, oh, there was voter fraud, I won by x number of million votes. There are times when it sounds like he forgets that he won the presidential election.
"I worry that in 2018 if Republicans face large losses, and at this point a lot of the polling suggests it's not going to look good for them, that if President Trump looks like he's potentially at risk of having a Democratic Congress that may want to begin to pursue impeachment proceedings, do you then begin to see the questioning of the validity of elections period?
"That's the sort of -- I don't think it's likely, but if I'm thinking of a potentially really scary situation, I'd look at things like what's happening with Roy Moore in Alabama, wondering if there's a chance that that sort of worldview gets brought national by a president who is liable to -- he likes blaming other people for things and claiming, look, i'm a bigger winner than you ever could have possibly realized."
I can't emphasize enough the influence of Morning Joe on D.C. insiders. It is a measure of how dire the situation is that Scarborough is not backing off.
