Think back to when you last went to a funeral, do you remember speakers at that solemn service giving political speeches, talking about ending the filibuster? I sure don’t, but apparently that is fair game for Barack Obama. MSNBC's Morning Joe touted a variety of clips Friday morning of the former president exploiting what was supposed to be a funeral for Congressman John Lewis, using his "eulogy" to the Democratic lawmaker to campaign against President Trump.
After the partisan MSNBC hacks played a campaign-ad-style montage of Obama seeming to respond directly to Trump, host Joe Scarborough went to work viciously attacking anyone who dared to question such nasty, partisan rhetoric being used to politicize a funeral:
So if anybody decides that they're going to attack Barack Obama or anybody else for speaking the way they did at John Lewis' funeral, they knew what were, what was going to happen. And if somehow it's sleazy to talk about the right of black and white, hispanic, Asian-American voters to get out and profess their Democratic choice on Election Day, if that's sleazy, then you have a different view of American than John Lewis and the overwhelming majority of Americans have.
It’s sleazy to bring politics into a funeral, Joe, most Americans still agree with that. But co-host Willie Geist had to pile on the defense of Obama, blasting critics: "Take politics out of it, if you weren't moved by what you saw yesterday in that church, there might be something wrong with you."
It is quite a take to say that people who are upset with Obama for talking about ending the filibuster at a funeral, or who are upset that Lewis can have a packed funeral while many families have been prevented from gathering to mourn a loved one in recent months. Just goes to show that media elitism knows no bounds.
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Read the full transcript below to learn more.
MSNBC Morning Joe
7-31-20
6:00 AM ET
BARACK OBAMA: There are those in power who are doing their darnedest to discourage people from voting.
DONALD TRUMP: These elections will be fraudulent, they'll be fixed, they’ll be rigged.
OBAMA: Closing polling locations and targeting minorities and students with restrictive ID laws.
TRUMP: So we want to have an election. I'd love to see voter ID.
OBAMA: Attacking our voting rights with surgical precision, even undermining the postal service in the runup to an election that's going to be dependent on mail-in ballots.
TRUMP: But I also don't want to have to wait for three months and find out that the ballots are all missing and the election doesn't mean anything.
OBAMA: We can witness our federal government sending agents to use tear gas and batons.
TRUMP: We're telling them right now that we're coming in very soon, the National Guard, a lot of people, a lot of very tough people.
OBAMA: That's where real courage comes from. Not from turning on each other, but by turning towards one another. Not by sowing hatred and division, but by spreading love and truth.
TRUMP: And we're telling right now these protesters, and many should be arrested because these are professional agitators, professional anarchists, these are people that hate our country.
JOE SCARBOROUGH: So there's a tell of the tape between the President of the United States, the 45th President of the United States and the 44th President of the United States. You know, there were some sad, pathetic tools of Donald Trump who still shamelessly defend absolutely everything he does and think if they're over the top and bombastic in their attacks against people that tell the truth to you that somehow that will discourage others from telling the truth about Donald Trump and what's going on in this country. But, let me just say, knowing John Lewis the way I did, and I knew him pretty damn well, Barack Obama did exactly what John Lewis would have wanted him to do in that funeral yesterday.
MIKA BRZEZINSKI: Good trouble.
SCARBOROUGH: So if anybody decides that they're going to attack Barack Obama or anybody else for speaking the way they did at John Lewis' funeral, they knew what were, what was going to happen. And if somehow it's sleazy to talk about the right of black and white, hispanic, Asian-American voters to get out and profess their democratic choice on Election Day, if that's sleazy, then you have a different view of American than John Lewis and the overwhelming majority of Americans have. Willie, I thought,uh, I thought -- I mean, we have so much to get to.
BRZEZINSKI: Yeah, it’s a big day.
SCARBOROUGH: I thought President Obama's words and so many others that were spoken in the memory of John Lewis and fighting about voters' rights, what John Lewis dedicated his entire adult life to, I thought that was extraordinarily appropriate and moving.
WILLIE GEIST: It was on a day when the sitting President of the United States floated the idea of delaying the election because things aren't going well for him personally. You had three United States presidents, Barack Obama, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush gathered to honor a great American, John Lewis and you couldn't help but be moved as you watched at John Lewis laying in the flag-draped coffin and just above him was what he fought for, an African-American president. In fact, he said he couldn’t have dreamed of an African-American president when he was crossing that bridge in Selma, he just wanted the right to share a bathroom with white people, to sit at a lunch counter with white people and vote the way white people did and now he saw, in his lifetime, an African-American President of the United States. Take politics out of it, if you weren't moved by what you saw yesterday in that church, there might be something wrong with you.
