On Monday’s Morning Joe on MS NOW, Mika Brzezinski refused to read Donald Trump’s reaction to the death of former FBI Director Robert Mueller.
Brzezinski had been delivering a recap of Mueller’s life and career when she turned to Trump’s social media post. After beginning to quote it, she abruptly stopped mid-segment:
“I can’t even read this. I’m not doing it.”
It was on screen for viewers to see. Trump had written: “Robert Mueller just died. Good, I’m glad he’s dead. He can no longer hurt innocent people!”
Even by Trump standards, the remark was jarring. Fox’s Brit Hume tweeted: “This is the kind of stuff Trump does that makes people not just oppose him but hate him.”
Instead of informing viewers, Mika made her reaction the story, substituting a visible display of distress (see screencap) for the basic journalistic task of conveying what Trump had actually written. Performance for the base comes first, not reporting.
Co-host Joe Scarborough declined to engage the substance of Trump’s remark, saying he would “rather respond to a man who committed over eight decades of his life to this country.” It’s a little overstated to assert Mueller was serving the country as a child. Then came the Russia-probe boasting:
SCARBOROUGH: Robert Mueller’s life speaks for itself. And history will judge both Robert Mueller and Donald J. Trump for what happened during the Russian investigation. And people can run around waving their arms on, other networks saying Russia hoax, Russia hoax. I’m quite confident that history will judge both of those actors through that time period. And they will not find Robert Mueller lacking.
Brzezinski then suggested the show could read more favorable reactions instead: “The other two presidential statements were nice. We could read one of those.” George W. Bush and Barack Obama issued more typical statements of appreciation.
In Trump’s first term, MSNBC belonged to the red-hot Collusion Caucus, led by Rachel Maddow, who channeled every shaky claim in the Steele dossier. . Lawrence O’Donnell falsely claimed “The President is a Russian operative.” After Mueller failed to indict, Scarborough was still insisting “There is more of that onion to unpeel.”
But it could be argued, as a political and media matter, the Mueller probe ate much of Trump’s first term in terms of public attention. Whatever Trump sought to achieve as president was submerged under an obsession over the notion that he was illegitimately elected by a foreign power. As Rich Noyes laid out here at NewsBusters from January 20, 2017 through March 21, 2019, the last night before Mueller sent his report in to the Attorney General:
The ABC, CBS and NBC evening newscasts produced a combined 2,284 minutes of “collusion” coverage, most of it (1,909 minutes) following Mueller’s appointment on May 17, 2017.
That’s an average of roughly three minutes a night, every night, for an astonishing 791 days…In fact, TV reporters devoted more airtime to the Russia investigation than any of the Trump administration’s policy initiatives — immigration, tax reform, trade, North Korea, ISIS, the economy, veterans’ affairs, the opioid epidemic, to name but a few.
