The Scarborough Scam

In the video below, MSNBC Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough histrionically condemns Mitt Romney based on a misleading account of the Romney/Ryan campaign appearance outside Dayton last week. The Blaze picked it up here. I wrote about it in “The company he keeps.”

BuzzFeed followed up with a good post here, reporting that Scarborough had mocked Romney for “something that didn’t happen.” Bryan Preston highlights the Townhall video below. It goes to the heart of the story. Reporters in attendance at the rally (including Byron York and McKay Coppins) had no doubt that Romney was responding to the crowd’s chant of his name, not Ryan’s.

The Blaze story set off a storm on Twitter. Twitchy captured the action here. He tweeted: “I won’t even dignify the site that is fanning this false controversy but I will take note of those who link to the lie.” He’s taking note!

Yesterday Scarborough replayed the video (minus the misleading subtitles that gave rise to the controversy) and mocked the conservative bloggers who had called MSNBC out for its deception. NRO has posted the clip of Scarborough’s comments yesterday here. Just about everything Scarborough said was transparently false, as my daughter Eliana explains in this post at NRO.

Scaroborough mocked the bloggers who had gotten on his case as eating Cheetos in the basement of the their mother’s homes. This was a lame variation of Jon Klein’s critique of bloggers eight years ago in the immediate aftermath of Rathergate, and it hasn’t improved with age. I’ve been tweeting Scarborough in the hopes of eliciting a response (tweets collected here). Mr. Scarborough has, as they say, declined to comment.

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