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Scarborough Compares Trump’s Renegade Rhetoric To Reagan In Politico Column

by Frances Martel | 12:29 pm, April 9th, 2011

» 35 comments

Joe Scarborough has taken a lot of heat in his career for going against the conservative tide and condemning some of the most extreme rhetoric on the right. In light of this, his recent fascination with Donald Trump, as expressed in a Politico column this week, comes as a bit of a surprise. Scarborough compares Trump to Ronald Reagan, and seems bemused, if not impressed, with his ability to express extreme views without caring about what others think.

“The disconnect between Washington’s view of Reagan and America’s perception of him bears repeating in a year when so many GOP candidates are being showered with contempt by a new generation of Washington elites,” Scarborough writes, noting that Trump has now eclipsed Palin in amassing public scorn from those “in the know.” Scarborough, who spoke with Trump in writing the article, doesn’t seem to agree with everything Trump says, but doesn’t take time to debunk it, either. Particularly, Scarborough lets Trump’s words speak for themselves on his belief that President Obama was born abroad, and that his autobiography was written by domestic terrorist Bill Ayers:

“Bill Ayers wrote ‘Dreams From My Father,’” Trump told me. “I have no doubt about it. That first book was total genius and helped get him elected. But you can tell Obama did the second book himself because it read like it was written by somebody of average intelligence with a high school education.”

For Trump, the theory feeds into his belief that Obama is unfit to be president.

“He is the most overrated guy. It’s unbelievable. Obama is worse than Jimmy Carter, and I put Carter at the head of the pack for bad presidents.”

“This is not how serious presidential candidates are supposed to talk,” Scarborough writes of Trump, though to him this is precisely what makes him a viable candidate. “Anyone who believes political commentators’ scorn for Trump will keep him from winning the Republican nomination need only read the nasty things Washington’s wise men said about Reagan in 1979,” he notes. But Scarborough doesn’t ever quite confront the fact that much of what Trump has been promoting goes beyond the pale in terms of ad hominem rhetoric. Granted, Reagan never suggested Carter had a terrorist write books for him or that he was born overseas, but he did have some wacky foreign policy ideas!

Trump, now running up to second in some GOP primary polls, would not be so surprising a candidate to catch Scarborough’s eye if the latter had not made a career out of calling for toning down extreme rhetoric. Even in this piece, Scarborough takes a detour from trying to understand Trump to take a swipe at perennial target Glenn Beck: “When your political rhetoric shocks a man who believes the rise of the Antichrist could be ushered in by President Barack Obama’s agenda, it might be time to refocus your communications strategy.”

Say what you will about Beck (and Scarborough has said a lot about him), but he has never been a birther and his theories tend to incriminate organizations professionally, not individuals personally lest they be a head of said organizations or somehow directly professionally involved. Nor does Beck have or aspire to any governmental power the way Trump does. The disapproval directed at Beck repeatedly both on television and in this column appear inconsistent with the cautious interest in Trump presented here. Dismissing Beck’s theory that the radical left and Islamic fundamentalists will somehow unite to form a pan-Middle Eastern communist caliphate and applauding– albeit in a half-snickering, Charlie Sheen way– Trump’s theory that Bill Ayers wrote Dreams of My Father when one man is polling well for the most important job in the world and the other is stepping down from his entertainment hour within the next year is simply hypocritical.

Perhaps as a buffer against such criticism, Scarborough ends his bizarre column with a much more apt comparison than his Reagan analogy– to Ross Perot, and a reminder that Trump is no Reagan, “but he isn’t Palin either.” Most have unanimously agreed that any flair in the wasteland of personality that a Tim Pawlenty-Mitt Romney led presidential field represents is a good thing– you could almost hear the internet collectively cheer when a Pawlenty staffer drunkenly threw up in a random yard in Iowa. But in spending a good portion of his TV time calling out irresponsible rhetoric, Scarborough has, to a degree that many others haven’t, given up his privilege to partake in the fun.

2012 elections, barack obama, Bill Ayers, Donald Trump, Glenn Beck, joe scarborough, Mitt Romney, Politico, Republicans, Ross Perot, Sarah Palin, Tim Pawlenty

http://www.facebook.com/people/Ellen-Carey-Rowe/683757018 ellie

Scarborough was also singing the praises of Scott Walker as the Republican’s new great white hope for the presidency. I actually like Joe and his frat boy ways … but he can be pretty delusional at times.
catfishjuggling

Let me be the first to call Joe a RINO.
A.R.

trump lived his whole life smooching off his dad
he probably has resentment towards anyone without means who makes it big
Lou Sarah

Some things you’ll never find at Mediate… home to radical mouth-breathing, dragger-baggers?

“Barry, Mau-Mau” plummeting up to 49% approval in the latest Fox (FOX!!!) poll & Gail Collins epic takedown of all things Trump in the Times today:

Read it and weep losers……………

“That first book was total genius and helped get him elected,” Trump continued. “But you can tell Obama did the second book himself because it read like it was written by somebody of average intelligence with a high school education.”

Did I mention that, in his letter, Trump complained about my calling him a “birther” because the word was “very derogatory and meant in a derogatory way”? Obama, of course, graduated from Columbia University and Harvard Law School — if you can believe Columbia and Harvard Law.

“Three weeks ago I thought he was born in this country. Right now I have some real doubts. I have people that actually have been studying it, and they cannot believe what they’re finding,” Trump announced on “Today.”

Trump does not actually seem to have people studying, or even Googling. Still, he sounds very self-assured. This is because before he was a reality-show host, he was in the New York real estate business, a profession in which it is vital to be able to say imaginary things with total certainty. (“I have five other people who are begging me to sell them this property. Begging.”)

Let’s run over some of his arguments:

THE GRANDMOTHER STORY “His grandmother in Kenya stated, on tape, that he was born in Kenya and she was there to watch the birth,” Trump wrote. This goes back to a trans-Atlantic telephone call that was made in 2008 by Ron McRae, an Anabaptist bishop and birther, to Sarah Obama, the president’s 86-year-old stepgrandmother. He asked her, through an interpreter whether she was “present when he was born in Kenya.” The translator responded: “She says, yes, she was. She was present when Obama was born.”

It is at this point that some of the tapes floating around the Web stop, which means that the listener doesn’t get to hear the follow-up, which makes it very clear that Sarah Obama misunderstood. The full conversation ends with the interpreter saying, for the umpteenth time: “Hawaii. She says he was born in Hawaii. In the state of Hawaii, where his father, his father was learning there. The state of Hawaii.”

THE BIRTH CERTIFICATE If only Hawaii made its birth records public, and charged people a thousand dollars a pop to look at them, the state’s budget problems would be solved by the conspiracy theorists. However, it doesn’t. If you were born in Hawaii and request a copy of your birth certificate, you get a certification of live birth, which the federal government accepts for passports. Barack Obama requested his in 2007, and his campaign posted it on the Internet.

“A certificate of live birth is not even signed by anybody. I saw his. I read it very carefully. It doesn’t have a serial number. It doesn’t have a signature,” said Trump on “Today.”

The document has the stamped signature of the state registrar. The University of Pennsylvania’s FactCheck.org made a pilgrimage to the Obama campaign headquarters, examined the document, felt the seal, checked the serial number and reported that it looked fine.

THE EMPTY PHOTO ALBUM “Our current president came out of nowhere. Came out of nowhere,” Trump told the Conservative Political Action Conference to great applause. “In fact, I’ll go a step further. The people that went to school with him, they never saw him; they don’t know who he is. It’s crazy.”

This week on CNN, Suzanne Malveaux played Trump clips of Hawaiians reminiscing about the schoolchild Obama for a documentary the network had done on the president.

“Look, I didn’t say that … If he was 3 years old or 2 years old or 1 year old and people remember him, that’s irrelevant,” Trump responded. “You have to be born in this country.” – Gail Collins
A.R.

trump is an annoying piece of s***, why do journalists and tv personalities bother correcting his bs
Barack Must Go

Obama’s story is one in which the village idiot wins the lottery and become the toast of the town. Unfortunately, in this story, like so many before the curse of the lottery destroys the fairy tale tale.

…….then BOOM goes the dynamite.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Ellen-Carey-Rowe/683757018 ellie

catfishjuggling said:
Let me be the first to call Joe a RINO.

Damn! I laugh out loud every time you do this!
WCinWI

catfishjuggling said:
Let me be the first to call Joe a RINO.

Joe is a RINO so this “joke” post really isn’t that funny. :)
catfishjuggling

@WC: Just so that I fully understand, can you spell out for me the qualities that make someone a TRUE Republican and give me some examples of people you feel live up to that ideal please?

I am genuinely interested here. I am not trying to be snarky.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Ellen-Carey-Rowe/683757018 ellie

WCinWI said:
Joe is a RINO so this “joke” post really isn’t that funny. :)

The joke isn’t about whether Joe is a RINO or not.
CAconservative

Whether or not, Trump plans to run for president, the questions he’s asking need to asked. We are a nation that abides by the law, and foremost, should include the clown presently sitting in White House. If he doesn’t produce a legal Birth-Certificate prior to the 2012 election, he should automatically be removed as a legal candidate for the office.
DonnaK

Scarborough seems to jump on who ever is making news…first it was Chris Christie, then Scott Walker, now Trump.!! It is kind of pathetic Joey, can’t you sustain your ratings on your own personality? Let me think…NO!! Once they fall off the headlines, Joey doesn’t comment anymore….Stop giving this woman hater space on Mediaite….Please!!
http://www.facebook.com/people/Ellen-Carey-Rowe/683757018 ellie

CAconservative said:
Whether or not, Trump plans to run for president, the questions he’s asking need to asked. We are a nation that abides by the law, and foremost, should include the clown presently sitting in White House. If he doesn’t produce a legal Birth-Certificate prior to the 2012 election, he should automatically be removed as a legal candidate for the office.

Perhaps you’re in the camp with those who think the State Dept. allowed him to become POTUS without a birth certificate and carrying a foreign passport.
catfishjuggling

Yes Ellie. He is.

I agree with him. If Obama doesn’t produce a valid birth certificate he shoudl be removed from office.

Of course, since Obama already has, this point is moot.

Next.
DonnaK

Trump is all BS and ego….Does anyone believe that the Clintons, as bad as they wanted Hillary to beat Obama, wouldn’t have moved heaven and earth to prove something like this on President Obama….Come on people, can we quite giving this egomaniac press? He makes me sick everytime he appears, and it was that way even before he was RUNNING for President…I can imagine the joy President Obama & his staff get everytime this idiot appears, first it was Palin now this fool…Let the country go to hell, but make these people richer….I guess that is the new United States of America, and Trump professes his love for this country!! He is the one making us a laughing stock.
catfishjuggling

How exactly is Trump not a RINO? Please to explain.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Trump

In the 2000 election, Trump jockeyed to run as a third-party candidate for the United States presidency, considering running nomination by the Reform Party as a business conservative, socially moderate candidate.[55][56][57][58] In his 2000 tome, The America We Deserve, economic policies Trump proposed include:

Institution of a once-only 14.25% tax on personal estates and trusts over $10 million, which he estimated would raise $5.7 trillion in revenue toward retirement of the national debt, tax cuts for the middle class, and supplementing the funding of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid; and, by way of compensating this one-time tax on the wealthy, permanent abolishment of the 55% federal inheritance tax.
Repeal of limits on campaign contributions, combined with outlawing soft money campaign contributions
See also: Campaign finance reform in the United States
Regarding universal health care, Trump touted himself as “a conservative on most issues, but a liberal on this one. Working out detailed plans will take time. But the goal should be clear: Our people are our greatest asset.”[59][60]
Renegotiation of U.S. trade policies[61]
For 2004 and 2008, Trump speculated about running for President in the Republican party and for 2006 considered running for governor of New York as a representative of the party[62]

Trump had switched to the Democratic Party from the Republican Party in 2001 and again registered as a Republican in 2009.[63] Trump said in an interview in 2007, “I’m very much independent in that way. I go for the person, not necessarily the party. I mean, I vote for Republicans and I vote for Democrats.”[64]

Since the 1990 U.S. elections, Trump contributed to the campaigns of both Republicans, such as John McCain, Rudolph Giuliani, Newt Gingrich, and George W. Bush[65] and such Democratic Party candidates as Ted Kennedy, John Kerry, Tom Daschle, Joe Biden, Harry Reid, Rahm Emanuel, Hillary Clinton, Anthony Weiner, Charles Schumer, Kirsten Gillibrand, and Charles Rangel.[65][66][67]
http://www.facebook.com/people/Ellen-Carey-Rowe/683757018 ellie

catfishjuggling said:
Of course, since Obama already has, this point is moot.

Next.

It’s hard to believe that anyone would think that the Republican State Dept. was so woefully incompetent that they would allow Obama to become POTUS without a legitimate birth certificate.
Tedderman

One must only read the story here on Mediaite about how the brains differ in liberals and conservatives to understand Joe’s theory. It’s the republican way, “fear and smear” baby, “fear and smear.”
Several years ago Scarborough sported a pair of “Tojo” round eye glasses(before Lasik surgery I guess). Then he traveled to the west coast for a visit and returned sans the “Tojo” glasses and the rather large stick he had in his ass at that time. Perhaps some TSA agent removed it, I don’t know but it seems he’s rediscovered the stick and shoved it back in where the sun don’t shine.
CAconservative

ellie:

Really, it’s not hard to believe this government is woefully incompetent. When hundreds of $Billions of taxpayer dollars can be waisted, or stolen annually and this government does nothing to stop it, or when tens of millions of illegal alien trespassers can enter our country unabated, and without criminal consequence, being woefully incompetent is a woefull understatement. This government deceit, and gross-negligence, in any other area of business, would be considered criminal.
Tedderman

Thare’s that whole fear and smear thing again, CaCONservative, you got it down pat. Good job, you get your card.
MrTPar_taY

I wish Obama and Trump would leave President Reagan alone.
Barack Must Go

ellie said:
It’s hard to believe that anyone would think that the Republican State Dept. was so woefully incompetent that they would allow Obama to become POTUS without a legitimate birth certificate.

You leave me no choice. It’s a black thing. Here it comes in 3, 2, 1…..
Nachi

I have never, ever thought/imagined that the American masses were/are intelligent. Have noted quite the opposite since childhood. Thus it is not at all surprising that Trump’s political followers/believers are quite intellectually reclusive. Tiny-minded people who seek sources they already agree with from which to obtain their “news.” They possess a vast unsusceptibility to growth of any variety or etiology. Or intellectual/moral/ethical curiosity. Shameful, really.
KirbbDogg2000

I know Joes showing is ture colors. I think he’s kissing Trump’s ass so if he does run. Joe will be on the ticket. Think about it, He been on his own show less and less. And the ratings go’s up when him and Mika are not there. And Jeff Zucker Joe’s buddy isn’t there to tell him that him and Mika will on on for years to come anymore. I think Joe is making his post Moring Joe plans. And he could expoxe things about MSNBC and used it on them if he does. There have been some storys going around about Joe running for office and going with Bloomberg. Hi Turmp have a strong friendship. I could see them running togeter before Bloomberg.
WCinWI

catfishjuggling said:
@WC: Just so that I fully understand, can you spell out for me the qualities that make someone a TRUE Republican and give me some examples of people you feel live up to that ideal please?

I am genuinely interested here. I am not trying to be snarky.

Allen West.
Arkansas Steve

Trump is “extreme” Joe?
Time out! Take a nap!
catfishjuggling

@WC: My browser is being test so I couldn’t quote you.

Ok, I’ll grant you Lt. Colonel West. Is he the only one in the whole party?
Paul G

catfishjuggling said:
@WC: My browser is being test so I couldn’t quote you.

Ok, I’ll grant you Lt. Colonel West. Is he the only one in the whole party?

Come on WC! EVERYBODY(libs & the LSM) KNOWS there’s no black republicans(and tea partiers)..What do they call them??? oh yea, Uncle Toms.
catfishjuggling

You gotta admit. fghjvb is the most lucid commenter on here.
Rescuedog

Last fall Scarborough was backing Bloomberg for president. Now it’s Trump. He really knows how to pick a winner.
KirbbDogg2000

The story was that Bloomberg was going to run and Joe was going to run with.Joe back peddeled and said he wasn’t only because of who would be on top. His words not mine. If Bloomberg or Trump were to pick him. Joe has some baggage like the dead intrune that was found in his office back 2001. All of his crap he’s pulled at MSNBC and even on camrea.Plus Joe’s ego will also play a factor too. I do think if Trump does run.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Barbara-Hodges/100000863918892 Barbara Hodges

I don’t know if anyone here is old enough to remember SPY magazine, the originator of “snark”, but here is a cache version of the magazine:
http://books.google.com/books?...

He’s on the cover. The coverage of Trump during his downfall in the ’90′s starts on page 50.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Ellen-Carey-Rowe/683757018 ellie

oops! Hawaii official denounces ‘ludicrous’ birther claims

http://tinyurl.com/42atsj6
KirbbDogg2000

that wont stop Trump.
Rescuedog

Barbara said:
I don’t know if anyone here is old enough to remember SPY magazine, the originator of “snark”, but here is a cache version of the magazine:
http://books.google.com/books?...

He’s on the cover. The coverage of Trump during his downfall in the ’90’s starts on page 50.

A short fingered vulgarian.