Joe Scarborough Laughs Out Loud Mocking Paramount ‘Trying to Placate’ Trump in CBS-Colbert Spat: ‘Please Approve the Merger!’

Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough laughed out loud mocking CBS parent company Paramount for “trying to placate” President Donald Trump and “validate” his feelings in a bid to secure approval for its bid for Warner Brothers Discovery, a backdrop he said was key to understanding network’s clash with The Late Show’s Stephen Colbert.

Stephen Colbert said Monday night that CBS had blocked the broadcasting of his planned interview with Texas state Rep. James Talarico (D) after network lawyers raised concerns about the Federal Communications Commission’s “equal-time” rule. Colbert told viewers the segment was pulled on legal advice and that the interview would be later uploaded to YouTube.

CBS denied Colbert’s claims in a statement released on Tuesday with the host hitting back again that night in a further monologue in which he branded the response “crap.”

On Wednesday’s Morning Joe, Scarborough laughed himself silly as he mocked Paramount, suggesting CBS throw a banner of its studios pleading with the president to back their WBD bid:

A lot of people feel like they are trying to placate Trump – ‘well let’s validate those feelings!’ – Of course, they’re trying to placate Trump! With every move they make, every breath they take, every step they take: placate, placate, placate! ‘Please!’

Why don’t they just unfurl a banner across CBS news headquarters on what is it, 57th Street? Say, ‘please, please, please approve the merger, please!’ Because that’s all it’s about!

The host continued arguing that since the moment CBS News appointed editor-in-chief Bari Weiss “everybody knew” that it “was not about the news” but “about them getting Warner Brothers Discovery.”

He went on to lambast CBS for choosing to end The Late Show, which is scheduled to conclude in May before warning that the story had made a martyr out of Talarico:

You know, the second I saw this dust up, I go, oh my god, who is the luckiest man in the world politically? The candidate who was, quote, banned. So you can go and say, the most powerful people in America, the most powerful regulators, they’re scared of data. I mean, which happens to be true here. But again, in America, you try to wack that mole, it’s going to pop up somewhere else.

Concluding, Scarborough predicted that taking Colbert off the air and off the network would ultimately backfire: “What have you allowed him to do? Now he can create content online, get probably ten times as many viewers with absolutely no restrictions at all.”

Watch above via MS NOW.

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