Morning Joe Slams the Panic Button, Boasts About Their Own Failing Memories to Defend Biden: ‘We’re All Imperfect’

If you’ve ever talked to a political communications staffer working in an office or on a campaign — or even so much as happened upon one talking on TV — you might have noticed that they say quite a lot that isn’t true.

You might also wonder, after watching them bend over backwards to insist that there are no qualifications to their arguments and no nuance to any given subject, how they manage not to keel over from embarrassment. The answer is simple; it’s their job to promote their bosses, reality be damned.

One of the great privileges about working in the media is that there’s no professional mandate to indulge such delusions. Still, it’s not a privilege everyone takes advantage of.

In the days since Robert Hur released a report detailing President Joe Biden’s mishandling of classified information and cognitive decline, Morning Joe has been on an extended public relations Hail Mary on behalf of Biden.

The day after the report came out, the crew threw a tantrum. Host Joe Scarborough wailed that Hur — who took pains to compare Biden’s cooperation with his investigation favorably to Donald Trump’s refusal to cooperate with an effort to reclaim documents he took from the White House — was a “Trumper.”

According to Scarborough, it was “bad-faith” and “gratuitous” for Hur to explain that his decision not to charge Biden was based in part on the fact that Biden repeatedly struggled to recall what years he served as vice president during.

Then on Monday, Vanity Fair‘s Molly Jong-Fast joined the program to take her turn slamming Hur. “He’s not a neurologist, right?” she asked.

Biden’s press shop away from his press shop continued with the borderline propagandistic defenses of him on Tuesday. This time it was John Heilemann who took the lead.

“A lot of us here have a problem with what day it is, what day of the week. And I can sort of remember maybe that the Chiefs won the Super Bowl, but even that, even that’s fading fast for me,” began Heilemann implausibly.

He continued:

The  fairest thing to say about this, Joe — and this is of course our politics — so this, nothing will be fair about this. But both of these candidates are over the optimal age at which we would want a president to be. They just, they are. And if we had, if we could rule this race by rationality, if we’re gonna say, we’re gonna have Donald Trump, we’re gonna have Joe Biden. The two of them should, we should acknowledge the fact that they are, as the special counsel unfairly said, Biden in a kind of- took a shot at him when he wrote it. But, you know, elderly gentleman, they are. They’re elderly gentleman, they’re going to be- one of them is an octogenarian already. The other is going to be an octogenarian shortly. And they’re not going to have the best memories. You know, we’re joking about it here but the truth is, you and I don’t have the best memories. You know, Willie, Willie’s memory is even worse than ours. Last time I checked Lemire remembers things most of the time. I won’t speak for Michael Steele. But we’re all, you know, we’re not, we’re all imperfect.

This completely preposterous rant is the logical endpoint of a show deciding that its aim is not to enrich viewers’ understanding of the world around them, but to influence them to the benefit of the most powerful man in the world.

The ideologically homogenous cast of Morning Joe unanimously agrees that Biden should prevail over Trump this November and there’s nothing inherently wrong with them making that case.

But the consequence of  subordinating truth to this objective are the ridiculous arguments being made on MSNBC every morning.

Scarborough doesn’t present any evidence Hur is a “Trumper” because he doesn’t have any.

You don’t need to be a doctor to identify a broken leg or a slowing mind.

And for the love of God, John Heilemann, if you can’t remember who won the Super Bowl, it’s probably time for you to call it quits, too.

If the only answer Democrats’ media vanguard has for its poll-induced panic over Biden’s chances this November is to insult voters’ intelligence, then they’ve already lost.

Watch above via MSNBC.

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.