This whole press corps is out of order!

THURSDAY, JUNE 29, 2017

Donald J. Trump, always worst: What can you say about Donald J. Trump's latest attack on his critics?

For what it's worth, we'll say this:

When we left for the coffee joint this morning, we had just watched the Morning Joe segment in question. We were struck, as we've often been in the past, by how poorly suited Mika is for the role of political pundit.

As we left our sprawling campus, we were shaking our head over the comments which later sent J-Trump off. Inevitably, after Trump went off, Mika responded with a tweet about the gentleman's little hands. Along the way, Paul Farhi reports, Joe has chimed in like this:

FARHI (6/29/17): Last August, their feud moved from nasty to nuclear.

After the “Morning Joe” hosts criticized Trump’s immigration proposals, Trump called the show “unwatchable” in a tweet, adding “@morningmika is off the wall, a neurotic and not very bright mess!”

Scarborough, who is engaged to Brzezinski, came to her aid in, of all things, a music video. Backed by a country-music beat, he sang and semi-rapped about “a soft and flaccid man” who was liable to grant amnesty to undocumented aliens despite his campaign promises to the contrary. The song went on to suggest that Trump suffered from “psychiatric abnormalities” and was “a sociopath [and] a psychopath.”

Who's maybe 9 years old now? Meanwhile, is this whole press corps out of order? Just like Pacino said?

Several things are worth reviewing here. One involves The Morning Joe Two. The other involves the occasionally selective reactions of our career liberal world.

Regarding Joe and Mika, it's hard to forget the way they fawned to Candidate Trump through February 2016. Their conduct was gruesome, unforgivable, plainly among the worst.

Let's hope their ratings went up! Apparently, Joe and Mika and Donald J. Trump had been friends for years.

(It seemed to us that they turned on a dime, and never went back, when Trump refused to criticize David Duke and the Klan. That said, it's hard to research Morning Joe because the program doesn't produce transcripts.)

Concerning the way our own liberal team has responded to Trump's latest burst:

At the Washington Post, Callum Borchers has noticed that sexism seems to be involved in Trump's latest burst.

(Borchers: "The hosts of Morning Joe on MSNBC criticized President Trump's Twitter habit Thursday...and then, as if succumbing to involuntary spasms, Trump's thumbs tapped out whatever nasty, sexist thought popped into his head.")

At moments like this, we tend to recall how permissive we liberals have often been when sexism and misogyny have come from those on our team.

We think of Chris Matthews' grisly behavior right up through Campaign 2008. Career liberals wanted to get on his show. For that reason, tout was permis!

We also think of the ugly attacks on Naomi Wolf during Campaign 2000, many of which came from our favorite liberal pundits. We recall a protest from William Kristol, but none from anyone else.

Most recently, we think of Keith Olbermann's ugly behavior when he was still the king of MSNBC. He and his smutty pal, Michael Musto, would really stink up the joint with their unvarnished misogyny. For years, we wondered if we could possibly be the only people who were offended by their appalling behavior, after which KO would often throw directly to Rachel Maddow.

(This would force her to pretend that she hadn't heard.)

Finally, we got our answer. When the JournoList emails got hacked and released, it turned out that major liberals had been complaining about Olbermann's "misogyny," but they'd only done so only in private! Do you ever see or read [Name Withheld] without remembering this?

This is no criticism of Borchers, who's from the new generation. But down through the years, we liberals have been very good about dropping our bombs when the misconduct occurs Over There. When it occurs among Our Own, our leaders have often been silent.

Regarding this latest incident, Donald J. Trump is and will always be deeply disordered. He will always go one step beyond—but the press corps, including some of our top liberal stars, has provided few walks in the park.

History lesson: Matthew was quite influential as of Campaign 2000. His misogyny was quite widespread. Until the spring of 2008, nobody said a word.

Are people dead all over the world because he was given free rein at that time? Campaign 2000 was decided by maybe six votes. We'll have to go with a yes.