"MSNBC is a giant corporate propaganda operation to trick Democratic voters into voting for the most Republican candidate."

Said Cenk Uygur, "co-creator of the digital outlet the Young Turks (and a onetime MSNBC contributor and host), pointing to some "Republicans and lapsed Republicans on the channel, including" Joe Scarborough.

Quoted in "MSNBC confronts viewer frustration, changes and an identity crisis/The network’s audience has declined since the Nov. 5 election, as viewers have tuned out. Its parent company is spinning it off. What happens next?" (WaPo)(free-access link).

Still, Uygur said that MSNBC’s audience — “older Democratic viewers that decide primaries” — is an important one.... While MSNBC is not on the market, according to Comcast, Uygur recently floated a potential acquisition — not unlike Elon Musk, who also raised eyebrows by asking on his X platform how much the network might cost. “Anything is possible,” Uygur said. “If you’re looking to reform MSNBC into something that is popular, it makes sense to go to a popular online network, and see if they can do the trick.”

Now that the election's over, MSM is free — and selfishly motivated — to present Trump in a favorable light.

The Mika/Morning Joe confabulation with Trump is just one manifestation of this phenomenon, which I'm seeing popping up wherever I look this morning. I need a tag to keep these things together so we can see the pattern. I was thinking of: Now we like him. 

They don't like him that much. They're just taking a different tone and raising issues they'd have suppressed and they're not forcing the old template on everything.

Morning Joe restarts communications with Hitler Trump.

Morning Joe then: Donald Trump is comparable to Adolf Hitler.

Morning Joe now: We met with Trump at Mar-a-Lago to settle our differences. pic.twitter.com/UkfMt9ScuP

— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) November 18, 2024

ADDED: "Defeated left-wing MSNBC anchors Joe Scarborough, Mika Brzezinski reveal they met with Trump: ‘Time to do something different’" (NY Post).

Bill Maher has to — tries to — explain freedom of speech to Mark Cuban and Joe Scarborough.

Bill Maher warns Democrats like Mark Cuban and Joe Scarborough that their unfair treatment of Elon Musk is proving Republicans' point that Democrats do not care about free speech:
Bill Maher: "He launches his rockets from Vandenberg Space Force Base, used to call the Air Force… pic.twitter.com/ATx5At09XG

— Eric Abbenante (@EricAbbenante) October 19, 2024

"He’s gone from saying, ‘Kamala can’t win,’ to ‘Do you think Kamala can win?' It’s still unclear where he’s going to land but seems to be listening."

Says "one senior Democratic adviser," quoted in "Biden now being ‘receptive’ about possibility of giving up 2024 re-election campaign: new report" (NY Post).

He's got Covid, so maybe that makes him vulnerable. And, yes, I've seen the articles about the dream of making him look strong — like Trump jumping up after getting shot — when/if he recovers from his new bout with the famous virus, e.g., "MSNBC’s Joy Reid compares ‘elderly’ Biden’s potential COVID recovery to Trump dodging an assassination attempt."

And let me add that I look at the polls every day, and I'm seeing Joe consistently outperform Kamala Harris. That must tighten Joe's grip. But you need to visualize the next 3 1/2 months, with both scenarios. Joe has difficulty campaigning. He's quite weak. Those who are polled have easily seen that. But they have not seen Kamala Harris as the presidential candidate. They have to imagine it. If Biden withdraws, and Harris becomes the candidate, and we see her speaking and fighting every day, will the polls show greater support for her? There's very little reason to think so. And that's why Joe isn't just a selfish bastard to hang on.

ADDED: I see Matthew Yglesias is writing "The VP is clearly the stronger candidate/The case for Kamala Harris, from a former hater."

"If any of these guys don’t think I should run, run against me. Go ahead, announce for president. Challenge me at the convention."

5:24 a.m.

A duck is nonchalant, and the sky is trying too hard. On the car radio, what Joe Scarborough is angsting over this morning is Trump's expression of pride in the cognitive test he took a while back — the one that you pass by saying that a picture of a camel is a camel — and something Trump said that seemed to Joe to suggest that Trump would not accept the results of the election. I thought: So I guess Trump didn't do anything bad over the weekend. All Joe has is old material, moved to the front burner, where Joe's fevered brain heats things up for his audience, which might have an appetite for leftovers.  Okay, everything's fine. It's a new day.

Sorry, "wolf whistle" is already taken.

As I got into my car this morning, I caught the end of a discussion of what I think was Donald Trump's racism. I had MSNBC on the satellite radio, so it was "Morning Joe." Somebody with an English accent was bemoaning someone who I can only assume was Trump and he casually used the words "wolf whistle" to mean what "dog whistle" normally means, but much more dangerous.

But a "wolf whistle" is...

... a distinctive two-note glissando whistled sound made to show high interest in or approval of something or someone, especially a woman viewed as physically or sexually attractive. Today, a wolf whistle directed at a woman is sometimes considered a precursor to sexual harassment, or a form of sexual harassment in itself.

According to Adam Edwards of Daily Express, the wolf whistle originates from the navy General Call made with a boatswain's pipe. The General Call is made on a ship to get the attention of all hands for an announcement. Sailors in harbour would whistle the General Call upon seeing an attractive woman to draw fellow sailors' attention to her. It was eventually picked up by passers-by, not knowing the real meaning of the whistle, and passed on. During a 2015 broadcast of A Way with Words, doubt was cast upon this explanation by lexicographer Grant Barrett, who noted that it was very thinly supported. The Turn To Call is far closer to the wolf whistle than the General Call.

The standard sound for a coin insertion for the Bally Manufacturing pinball machine "Playboy" (featuring iconography from Playboy magazine) is the wolf whistle.

Not everything is about racism and Trump.



In the never-ending quest to impugn Donald Trump, as you invent new terms and think you are clever, try checking whether the terms are already taken.

What I wanted to learn.

I wanted to take the "Master Class" from David Sedaris, but I couldn't bring myself to pay $99 for a subscription to the app until I saw that they also had a class from Billy Collins, a poet I've liked ever since I randomly picked a book off a high shelf at Paul's Books and read one poem.

Both Sedaris and Collins, I see now, begin their writing by noticing some little thing that is present in their own life. Both teach that you ought to carry a notebook with you everywhere and jot down these little things as they happen.

That's all writing. Of course, I wanted to learn about writing, but what else? Master Class has 80+ famous people teaching how they each do their thing. I've watched 2 others, neither in the writing category. I watched Bobbi Brown, who teaches about makeup — the kind of makeup that honors whatever face you happen to have. (You do not need to "contour" your nose or "overline" your lips.) And I watched Alice Waters, the restaurateur, who says you really need to start your cooking by getting in touch with your local vegetables.

Do you see the theme of these 4, which I chose without thinking of a theme? The theme occurred to me as I was doing my sunrise run this morning. I don't listen to headphoned-in music anymore when I run. I listen to the immediate environment and let thoughts rise up from within my own head, and I got where I could see how these 4 choices represented a single desire on my part. All these lessons have to do with awareness of what is right here.

When I got back to my car, the radio was on MSNBC, which I'd listened to on my little drive out to my running place. I'd put up with Joe Scarborough angsting about Republicans being less likely  to wear masks than Democrats — what is wrong with them?! — but I didn't want that infecting me on the ride home. I clicked over to music. It was Neil Young:

Come a little bit closer
Hear what I have to say
Just like children sleeping
We could dream this night away
But there's a full moon rising
Let's go dancing in the light
We know where the music's playing
Let's go out and feel the night

Neil was getting what was for him an unusual idea: To go out and experience the moon.



I got the idea a while back to get out and experience the sunrise, to go running in the light.

How shocking is "And they went in and it was like a knife cutting butter"?

Trump used that phrase yesterday at the Roundtable on Justice Disparities in America (transcript). Context:

In Minneapolis, they went through three nights of hell. And then I was insistent on having the National Guard go in and do their work. It was like a miracle. It’s just everything stopped. And I’ll never forget the scene. It’s not supposed to be a beautiful scene. But to me, it was after you watched policemen running out of a police precinct. And it wasn’t their fault. They wanted to do what they had to do, but they weren’t allowed to do anything.... I said, “I’m sorry. We have to have [the National Guard] go in.” And they went in and it was like a knife cutting butter, right through, boom. I’ll never forget. You saw the scene on that road wherever it may be in the city, Minneapolis. They were lined up. Boom. They just walked straight. And yes, there was some tear gas and probably some other things and the crowd dispersed. And they went through it by the end of that evening. And it was a short evening. Everything was fine.... So I just want to tell you that we’re working on a lot of different elements having to do with law, order, safety, comfort, control, but we want safety. We want compassion. We want everything.

As I drove home from my sunrise run this morning...



... I had "Morning Joe" on the satellite radio, and he was riffing emotively on that phrase "it was like a knife cutting butter." Joe acted as though the phrase connoted murderously cutting into human flesh, and Who talks like that?!! In Joe's vivid nightmare, Trump is unfathomably evil. Joe said it's as if Trump were "running for President of the Confederacy" and Trump has decided to speak only to "angry white men — angry old white men."

Joe is 57, by the way, so that's a bit old, and he is also white and angry, so maybe he knows whereof he speaks, and yet he does not mean that he hears the siren call of Donald Trump.

But let's look at this phrase "like a knife cutting butter." It's an idiomatic expression! It means it was easy. You see the context. It doesn't mean the National Guard was sadistically injuring people. It means all they had to do was show up and walk straight in and everything worked out just fine.

It wasn't even a hot knife....



The inability to understand metaphor is, of course, highly selective. A commentator like Joe has to use what Trump gives him. He must scan the transcripts every day, looking for something to pretend to be anguished about.

"On 'Morning Joe,' they are talking about coronavirus all the time again."

I said, after listening to the show on the car radio in 2 4-minute stretches on the way out and back from the sunrise run.

"What does that tell you?" Meade asks.

"It says the ratings came in."

"Mr. Nice Guy won't cut it. He does it his way."

A new Trump ad (pinned at the top of Trump's Twitter feed right now):

pic.twitter.com/FHDMd4jx78

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 28, 2020

Bombastic music, clearly intended to be very upbeat and optimistic. Did that work on you or did you find it annoying? The voiceover actor seemed awfully hammy. I'm just showing this to you. I'm pretty sure if you're already a Trumpster, you'll find it rousing and encouraging, but you're fooling yourself if you think it will do anything but have the opposite effect on those who don't like Trump.

Earlier this morning, before I saw this ad, I was thinking about how some speech works against the proposition asserted. I was listening to "Morning Joe," and I can't remember exactly what he was saying, but it put the opposite idea in my head. It got me thinking about why I voted against Jimmy Carter in 1976. My opinion flipped on the last day after something Carter said.

This year, it seems the best arguments against both candidates are the things they themselves say.

"The boogeyman plunging him and the family of his late wife into the very worst of memory holes is a conspiracy-theory-loving, twitchy-fingered and often shameless tweeter who also happens to be the president of the United States, Donald J. Trump."

Writes Kara Swisher in "Twitter Must Cleanse the Trump Stain/The president is spreading a vile conspiracy theory on the platform. Maybe Twitter should finally hold him to its rules" (NYT).

The "conspiracy theory" in question is that Joe Scarborough had something to do with the death of a woman long ago. The woman's husband wants some Trump tweets deleted. There's also the idea — pushed by Mika Brzezinski (Scarborough's wife) — that Twitter should throw Trump off the site entirely.

But what exactly did Trump tweet? The woman's husband is quoted saying that Trump "allud[ed] to the repeatedly debunked falsehood that my wife was murdered by her boss, former U.S. Rep. Joe Scarborough." Alluded! We need the text of the tweet, but, incredibly, it's not in this long column.

I had to look it up. I found: "A blow to her head? Body found under his desk? Left Congress suddenly? Big topic of discussion in Florida...and, he’s a Nut Job (with bad ratings). Keep digging, use forensic geniuses!"

One reason not to quote the tweet is that it's just asking questions, and we'd have to spend time going into a subject we don't know. The woman's husband implies that the questions have all been asked and answered, but all he says is that there is one "falsehood" — that Joe Scarborough murdered the woman (Lori Klausutis). But Trump didn't tweet that statement. Does the debunking of the idea that Joe Scarborough murdered the woman make the things Trump actually did tweet into the sort of statement Twitter should take down?

First, Trump just asked questions, but even if we reject that loophole — I'm only asking! — it is true, I take it, that the woman suffered a blow to her head, that her body was found under his desk, that he left Congress suddenly, that it's a big topic of discussion in Florida, and that "Morning Joe" has bad ratings. And it's nothing but inane opinion to call Joe Scarborough "a Nut Job." Trump is called things like that constantly on Twitter, so there's no way there's a Twitter policy against calling famous people mentally ill.

What I got from 3 minutes of "Morning Joe" today at dawn...

I hate to watch the news on television, but I do like to put MSNBC on the satellite radio in my car and sample what's going on there as I drive the 3 minutes it takes to get home after my sunrise run.

This morning, Morning Joe was speaking as if he were concerned about what Trump could possibly to do to win the election. In his sad troubled mode, Morning Joe said that Trump needed to contrast himself to Biden, but was there any area of contrast that could work? He can't claim to be less "doddering" — because both men are old. And he can't claim to be better on China, because he's praised President Xi.

Morning Joe somberly advised Trump to find something else — not China and not the problem of "doddering." He kept saying "doddering." That cracked me up.

The word "doddering" originally referred to something that happens to oak trees. "Doddering" is derived from "doddered" which the (unlinkable) OED defines as:

A word conventionally used... as an attribute of old oaks (rarely other trees); apparently originally meaning: Having lost the top or branches, esp. through age and decay; hence, remaining as a decayed stump. Johnson explained it as ‘Overgrown with dodder: covered with supercrescent plants’; and this explanation, which was manifestly erroneous, since neither dodder nor any plant like it grows upon trees, has been repeated in the dictionaries, and has influenced literary usage, in which there is often a vague notion of some kind of parasitical accretion accompanying or causing decay.

We're used to the verb "dodder," but I hadn't known of an actual substance called "dodder." It's a parasitic plant that looks like this on a tree:



A joke about Trump's hair seems within reach.

"... used them beautifully... dumped them nicely..."

“Concast” should open up a long overdue Florida Cold Case against Psycho Joe Scarborough. I know him and Crazy Mika well, used them beautifully in the last Election, dumped them nicely, and will state on the record that he is “nuts”. Besides, bad ratings! #OPENJOECOLDCASE

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 4, 2020

I don't know what he's talking about or how that #OPENJOECOLDCASE hashtag is doing. I see the top trending hashtag this morning is DON LEMON, and I know what that is....

Don Lemon with zero fucks left.pic.twitter.com/kbC0zghhzB

— Brian Tyler Cohen (@briantylercohen) May 4, 2020

Anyway.... "used them beautifully... dumped them nicely" — that's pretty cruel. And what the point of stating something "on the record" and then using quotes — "nuts"?

Ah... here's an article explaining what that "Florida Cold Case" is. From Mediaite:

The “Florida Cold Case” here is the death of Lori Klausutis, the 28-year-old intern found dead in Scarborough’s district office when he was still serving as U.S. Congressman for Florida’s 1st Congressional district. An autopsy concluded that Klausutis’ death happened after heart problems caused her to fall and hit her head on a desk in 2001.

Even though there were no indications of foul play or suicide, the tragedy prompted a number of conspiracy theories....

I've got to say, Trump's tweet this morning is some really trashy trash talk. Psycho... Crazy... "nuts"....

"Trump Keeps Talking. Some Republicans Don’t Like What They’re Hearing/Aides and allies increasingly believe the president’s daily briefings are hurting him more than helping, and are urging him to let his medical experts take center stage."

A NYT headline for an article by Jonathan Martin and Maggie Haberman. I don't believe they're at all interested in helping Trump politically.

I was just listening to a few minutes of "Morning Joe" as I was driving over to see the sunrise this morning. They had the same topic and were flatly opining that Trump was hurting himself by talking too much at the briefings. They warned him that Biden would be able to pick over his voluminous remarks and find damaging things to quote.

At the time, I thought, well, that must be the most damaging thing they've got against him today — that he's on camera talking too much — or it's the other way around and Trump's appearances are helping him and they want him to stop.

Here are the quotes in the NYT in support of that headline:

Mr. Trump “sometimes drowns out his own message,” said Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who has become one of the president’s informal counselors and told him “a once-a-week show” could be more effective. Representative Susan Brooks of Indiana said “they’re going on too long.” Senator Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia said the briefings were “going off the rails a little bit” and suggested that he should “let the health professionals guide where we’re going to go.”

That's far from harsh criticism. Of course, the briefings go on a long time. Trump and the force stand there taking questions as long as the reporters keep asking. Why not tell the reporters to stop talking so much? They can't complain that he won't answer questions. I don't know why, but I've been watching the show. I don't watch TV news. Can't stand the news on TV. But I watch the coronavirus briefing every day. It has high ratings, and I can see why.

Impressions: 1. Sunrise, and... 2. A few minutes on the car radio with Morning Joe.

The sunrise at 6:59 (20 minutes after the "actual sunrise") time:



And here's my impression of what I heard on Morning Joe, somewhere between 7 and 7:10 (Central Time). Trump must be criticized, so they have to pick a way to criticize him. What Joe has picked is that Trump failed to heed the advice of the experts until recently. We really were facing a pandemic with a million plus Americans dead, and the economy absolutely did need to be shut down, and Trump should have done it sooner. Now, he's finally absorbed the experts' message and he's acted.

Joe — and other Trump critics — have committed to the idea that we were faced with a calamity that required the lockdown and all the economic damage that ensued. I'm not saying they can't turn around and blame him for the damage to the economy, but it will be hard and hypocritical to look at what happens and say, See? Not that many people died, it wasn't so bad, and Trump overreacted and crashed the economy.

Are the critics boxed in? They can't really say, See? Not that many people died, because we won't know how many would have died if we hadn't taken the strong measures we did. Yesterday, the experts were saying they expect that the deaths in the United States will now be limited to 100,000 to 200,000, and that's still a lot, and maybe it will be less. Anything less than 100,000 will seem like an achievement, and we'll move on to restarting the economy.

Well, I'm sure, the Morning Joes of the world will be able to say the restarting of the economy happened too soon or too expansively. Joe was sneering this morning at the concern Trump showed for the economy as he worked out his response to the pandemic: It took Trump too long to shut things down because he cared too much about the economy. That makes it a lot harder for Joe, et al., to bash Trump for not caring enough about the economy.

Are the critics boxed in? Only if they have principles about being consistent. Or if they worry too much about seeing their inconsistency displayed in montages on social media.

"I’m panicked. I’m absolutely panicked."

Donny Deutsch: “I’m panicked. I’m absolutely panicked.” [about Bernie]

Joe: “Well, Donny... Get a paper bag, breathe into it deeply...”pic.twitter.com/U2Os4sRGzA

— Samuel D. Finkelstein II (@CANCEL_SAM) February 20, 2020

That's Donny Deutsch, and his name is trending on Twitter right now, because of this clip.

But keep listening and you'll hear Morning Joe, and he's doing the same kind of if-Trump-could-do-it reasoning that I was telling you about 3 days ago, here:

I like listening to "Morning Joe" on my car radio as I drive back home after my sunrise run. This is a 5 minute drive and about all I can tolerate, but it's good for giving me a sense of what Democrats are freaking out about at the moment. Today, they were tormenting themselves over Mike Bloomberg. He's got race-and-gender problems, but so did Trump. He's a billionaire, but so is Trump. If Trump did it, shouldn't that mean Bloomberg can do it?

I don't think they've faced up to why Trump was able to do what he did. Without first giving Trump credit, they're in no position to say so then Mike can do it too. It sounded to me as though they think of Trump as evidence that weird magic things happen. So, why not Mike? At the very least, they should recognize that Trump had a powerful skill in knocking down rivals on the debate stage, and Bloomberg has yet to set foot on the stage....

Well, now we've seen Bloomberg on the debate stage, and today, Morning Joe is using the same form of defective reasoning to try to bolster hopes about Bernie Sanders.

Morning Joe on the State of the Union: "We expect the President to crow" about the impeachment acquittal.

I just heard that on the car radio as I was driving home from the sunrise.



Do you expect Trump to use the SOTU to crow about the impeachment? I don't even think he'll bring up the subject! The best political use of the SOTU is not to seem partisan or political at all. I expect Trump to say the state of the union is great, to highlight what he believes are his many accomplishments, and to lay out a future founded on those accomplishments and leading to more greatness. It's weird to think he'd use the SOTU like a rally and go on about the impeachment hoax and the "perfect" phone call.

I remember when Trump was the weirdest thing around. But the reaction to Trump out-weirded him. And here we are on the morning after the Iowa caucus and the Democrats don't seem to have been able to make their way through a predictable, planned event that should have been the height of normality. And here's morning Joe imagining the President behaving chaotically at his well-planned event.

By the way, speaking of Trump and his "greatness" theme, I thought of a slogan for the Democrats, to offset Trump's "Make America Great Again"/"Keep America Great": "What's so great about greatness?"

I also thought of "Oh, great," but you'd have to say it with sarcasm, and a slogan can't depend on saying it in the right tone of voice.

ADDED: Meade said: "We expect the President to crow, and there you have the sunrise.... It's funny that crowing is what a rooster does, and you use the word, but crows don't crow."

AND: Reading the "ADDED," I said: "Morning in America"... and then there's Morning Joe in America.

"Thank you Joe and remember, the BRAIN is much sharper also!" tweeted Trump...

... in response to something Joe Scarborough, who'd said that Trump "looks like he’s about 20 years younger than a lot of Democratic candidates" (reported at Politico).

ADDED: Notice that Trump said "the BRAIN is much sharper," not "my BRAIN is much sharper." Remember, yesterday we were talking about "the geriatric possessive," how old people tend to say "I’m going to take my bath" and "take my walk" and "take my nap" rather than referring to baths and walks and naps and so on generally, without using a pronoun to highlight that the thing in question is theirs, which is what younger people do. Look at Trump — old but not seeming old — he doesn't even say "my brain." He says "the brain."

AND: Speaking of Trump's looks, here's something from the new Howard Stern book, from an April 2004 interview:

Caller: In a hypothetical situation—I mean, saying you’re not involved with Melania and there was no ethical backgrounds for business and whatnot—how many of those bitches [on "The Apprentice"] do you think you could’ve banged?

Howard: Good question.

Donald: Boy, I’ll tell ya. I love the thought, I’ll tell you that. ’Cause they were attractive. Do you agree with that?

Howard: I mean, some of the bodies on them while they were sitting there . . .

Donald: They were amazing.

Howard: Which is more important: talent or looking great?

Donald: Looking great.

Howard: I agree.

Donald: I’ve had both, and I’ll take looking great.

PLUS: Meade corrects my interpretation of "I’ve had both, and I’ll take looking great." He says Trump was talking about the women. I completely believed he'd switched over to talking about himself and he was looking back on the time when he was beautiful. I read the interview last night and saw it that way and went looking for it this morning because I saw it that way, and I published the quote without even seeing the ambiguity, I was so attached to that interpretation. I now believe that he meant the women — he's "had" women — and I find that so much less interesting.

SO: Now, I'm thinking about the word "had." You have your own brain, whether you call it "my brain" or not. You can use "had" to talk about the sexual partners you've had without needing to say "sex." Just say "had." To say "I've been had" means you've been tricked, and a sexual partner can be called a "trick." Of course, I look up "had" in the OED, and talk about ridiculously long entries. Try reading "have, v." It's long! I begin to laugh at myself for even trying, but then it jumps out at me:

13. transitive. a. To gain sexual possession of (esp. a woman); to have sexual intercourse with....

It goes back to Old English: "Þa het he feccan him to þa abbedessan on Leomynstre & hæfde hi þa while þe him geliste." Of course, there is Shakespeare: "Was euer woman in this humor woed, Was euer woman in this humor wonne: Ile haue her, but I will not keepe her long" ("Richard III"). Henry Fielding: "'None of your Coquet Airs, therefore, with me, Madam,’ said he, ‘for I am resolved to have you this Night.'" Keats: "I should have had her when I was in health, and I should have remained well." And — we need a woman — Judith Krantz in "Scruples" (1978): "They cherished not having had each other because it created a current of continual warmth which... was more important to them than sex." Ha, the woman is about not having.