Joe Scarborough started today's Morning Joe with a rant against weak college administrators who are failing to put down pro-Hamas campus protests.
Scarborough's central beef was that their fecklessness could lead to . . . the election of Donald Trump!
Scarborough analogized today's situation to that of the student protests of the 1960s that led to the election of Richard Nixon in 1968 and "five more years of war." As if "Happy Warrior" Hubert Humphrey would have ended the Vietnam war more quickly?
And in a bit of ultimate scaremongering, Scarborough dropped the usual End of Democracy bomb: "Let's see if they're now going to elect Donald Trump for, I don't know, maybe the last election in American history. If so, good job. Way to go. Way to go!"
Does Scarborough seriously believe that?
And was Scarborough's rather authoritarian rant about the need for college administrators to enforce discipline and rules, or else "leave!", sincere? Or was it simply the reflection of his partisan angst that the campus turmoil could lead to the defeat of his phone buddy, Joe Biden?
Here's the transcript.
MSNBC
Morning Joe
4/29/24
6:03 am EDTMIKA BRZEZINSKI: Also ahead, the latest on the protests over Gaza that are spreading to more and more college campuses.
And, we're going to have an exclusive, first look at Forbes' list of the new Ivies, universities who are poised to replace the elite institutions, in part because of their handling of the protest. It is a much bigger story.
JOE SCARBOROUGH: Even before, even before these protests.
MIKA: This is a trend.
SCARBOROUGH: And I've got to say, just the absolute weakness of the administration, the cowardice of the administration, and, unfortunately, on these elite colleges, having people that are now running these elite colleges on faculty boards that, that, that burned down college campuses in the 1960s, that were responsible for the election in part of Richard Nixon in 1968 because of the chaos on college campuses, because of the chaos in Chicago.
And they gave America Richard Nixon and five more years of war. Good job. Let's see if these administrators, the ones that, like, tried to levitate the Pentagon in the 1960s with Abbie Hoffman. The ones who took over presidents' offices in the 1960s, that, that trashed college campuses. Let's see if they're now going to elect Donald Trump for, I don't know, maybe the last election in American history. If so, good job. Way to go. Way to go, by not being able to discipline students that violate your rules. You either have rules or you don't have rules. You either have standards or you don't have standards. And if you can't live by them, leave!
And let's get some adults in these universities that actually teach students that there are consequences when they break the rules, when they break the laws, and when they spout genocidal chants over and over again.
