It was a little shocking. NPR media reporter David Folkenflik came on Monday night's All Things Considered to talk about cable news, and it wasn't about his hate object Fox News, at least not directly. The subject was President Biden's phone interview with his buddies at MSNBC's Morning Joe. Even Folkenflik thought Scarborough was well, energetic in his obsequiousness:
JOE SCARBOROUGH: Democrats, you believe, may now be doing the same thing that Donald Trump tried to do in 2020, and that is overthrow the popular will of Democratic voters.
FOLKENFLIK: You know, I haven't heard even President Biden go that far, even as he's, you know, defiantly defending his right to run this race. It may be he was trying to channel Biden or advise him a little bit about some of the rhetoric there.
As enjoyable as it may be to suggest Scarborough was more pro-Biden than Biden, this suggests Folkenflik didn't read Biden's letter to congressional Democrats on Monday, where he explicitly argued "We had a Democratic nomination process and the voters have spoken clearly and decisively...They have chosen me to be the nominee of the party. Do we now just say this process didn’t matter? That the voters don’t have a say?"
Democrats had a "nominating process" where the incumbent intimidated everyone who could plausibly challenge him, and where some state "Democratic" parties omitted challengers from the ballot.
But this was the fun part -- NPR having to contemplate that Scarborough is so deeply embedded into the Biden camp that it evokes parallels to -- oh, God forbid! -- Fox News.
JUANA SUMMERS, anchor: You know, some people out there are making the argument that MSNBC and Scarborough are just a mirror image of Fox News for Republicans. Quickly, how fair is that?
FOLKENFLIK: Well, you know, certainly, Joe Scarborough now serves as kind of a outside adviser in much the way that Sean Hannity does for President Trump. I would say two things. First, I would say it's definitely part of the Democratic firmament, and you had a couple of Biden administration aides who are now hosts on MSNBC. And at the same time, I would argue that perhaps because of NBC News being a corporate sibling, you know, it's a little bit more rooted in journalism.
SUMMERS: Yeah.
FOLKENFLIK: And it's more willing to admit interests against its own sympathies and rooting causes.
This is hilarious. NBC, with Lester "Fairness Is Overrated" Holt, is being used to say Scarborough and Maddow and Joy Reid and Jen Psaki are "more rooted in journalism"? NPR liberals should really admit that they can't attack Fox News as uniquely partisan when the parallels have become unmistakable. Obviously, Fox News is hated because it underlines information that the Left wants to suppress.
More "rooted in journalism" sounds like code for more rooted on Our Side, on the Left, and its avowed reverence for "facts," like the "fact" that America is deeply racist, and that capitalism is inherently unjust. That's what you get from government-funded radio and TV.
Audio is below:
