Joe Scarborough Lashes Out at Elon Musk Amplifying Out-of-Context Video of Mika Brzezinski

Ken MeyerApr 20th, 2022, 8:39 am
 

Joe Scarborough railed at Elon Musk for amplifying an old video of Mika Brzezinski that misrepresents concerns about a possible hostile Twitter takeover.

As Musk presses on with his attempt to buy the social media takeover, Twitter’s board of directors adopted a “poison pill” plan to protect the stock of their other shareholders and counteract the Tesla CEO’s efforts. Scarborough alluded to this as he noted that Brzezinski recently asked if Twitter has any “guardrails” to stop what Musk is doing.

From there, Scarborough turned his attention to an old clip of Brzezinski from 2017 that recently resurfaced on social media. This clip was accompanied by a claim that Morning Joe warned “Elon Musk is trying to control how people think. That’s our job.”

There’s just a slight problem: Brzezinski wasn’t even talking about Musk, and the post distorts her position on the media’s role in bringing facts to the public.

The Associated Press ran a fact check on the clip, and they correctly note Brzezinski was talking about former President Donald Trump and the consequences of his war with the media at the time. Musk was never part of the conversation.

Here are Brzezinski’s remark in full, plus her follow-up tweets back then to further elaborate on her position:

Well and I think that the dangerous, y’know, edges here are that he’s trying to undermine the media, trying to make up his own facts. And it could be that while unemployment and the economy worsens, he could have undermined the messaging so much that he can actually control exactly what people think. And that is our job.

Despite the post’s false portrayal of Brzezinski’s position, multiple versions of it spread across social media, even as Facebook flagged it down for misinformation. As it so happens, Musk chose not to rebuke this misinformation, but instead, he reacted to the false claim with laughter:

As Scarborough broke down all of this on Wednesday, he slammed Musk for perpetuating the lie against his wife and co-host.

“It was trending, and then we find out the Associated Press has done a fact-check on it because Elon Musk joins in, which tells you what a sewer Twitter would be if he ran it!” Scarborough fumed.

As Jonathan Lemire pointed out how this exemplifies the danger of social media misinformation, Scarborough continued to hammer Musk for being part of the problem.

“[It] shows, again, Mika, what a sewage dump Twitter would be if Elon Musk took it over,” he reiterated.

Watch above, via MSNBC.

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