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Scarborough Loses COVID Blame Game as Video Shows Own Guest Telling Us Not To Be Overly Concerned

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If only Joe Scarborough had been president. He was a representative once upon a time, after all. And, he’s apparently omniscient. That’s a pretty good qualification for the job, I must say.

I’m taking that part from Scarborough’s claim on Wednesday that not only did he know what was coming down the pike with the coronavirus back in January, we all knew it.

It came during a Scarborough interview with Obamacare architect Ezekiel Emmanuel.

“We’ve heard, Zeke Emanuel, that nobody could have seen this coming,” the MSNBC host said regarding the COVID-19 crisis.

“The fact is, everybody saw this coming. Everybody saw this coming in early January.”

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This is either one prescient man or someone who is lying about what he knew and when he knew it. The answer, unsurprisingly, is the latter.

In late January, medical contributor Dr. Dave Campbell appeared on “Morning Joe.” He was asked by co-host Mika Brzezinski about whether viewers should be panicking regarding the outbreak, then mostly thought to be confined to China.

“No, Americans do not need to panic,” Campbell said.

Was Joe Scarborough trying to score political points with COVID-19?

“The Chinese are already panicking — as they should, because this virus is spreading all through the central parts of China, and it’s a new virus. It has never been seen before, so its mechanism of spreading is not quite known yet.

“What I would suggest, however, is that Americans take this as a wake-up call for seasonal flu. We are not out of the flu season. We’ve already had 15 million cases of the flu in the U.S., 140,000 hospitalizations, 54 children have died. Almost as many as have died from the novel coronavirus and everybody’s not vaccinated yet.

“Even if you get vaccinated and get the flu, it lowers the complication rate from the flu,” he continued.

“So we don’t need to be overly concerned yet in the United States about the novel coronavirus, we do need to keep our eyes open for the seasonal flu. We’re right in the middle of the flu season still.”

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If Scarborough, an outspoken critic of President Donald Trump, was among the “everybody” who knew what was coming in early January, why would he have a medical contributor on talking about how the real culprit would be the seasonal flu? If Scarborough was so well informed, after all, this would be disinformation.

And, as The Intercept’s Glenn Greenwald pointed out, it’s not as if Scarborough’s Twitter account evinces a man consumed with coronavirus fears, either. In fact, he was much more preoccupied with a different set of topics.

So, 29 tweets about impeachment, 11 about the election, seven about sports and a whopping zero about coronavirus. For a man who saw the country more or less being locked down from coast to coast and the economy being frozen in place in just two months’ time, this was a guy who had a different set of priorities to talk about.

This isn’t to excoriate Scarborough for not getting this right. Most of us got this one wrong. We still don’t have a particularly fantastic grasp on how coronavirus will turn out, what the policy prescriptions should be and how soon we’ll recover.

You’ll note, in fact, that no one was calling Scarborough out for not knowing the future. Instead, he’s going on the offensive and calling other people out.

Didn’t foresee the scope of this? Well, according to Scarborough, you should get on board with literally everybody who saw this coming.

Don’t you listen to scientists? Oh, wait, of course you don’t — you’re disagreeing with Joe Scarborough.

And everybody knows Joe Scarborough knows everything, right?

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C. Douglas Golden is a writer who splits his time between the United States and Southeast Asia. Specializing in political commentary and world affairs, he's written for Conservative Tribune and The Western Journal since 2014.
C. Douglas Golden is a writer who splits his time between the United States and Southeast Asia. Specializing in political commentary and world affairs, he's written for Conservative Tribune and The Western Journal since 2014. Aside from politics, he enjoys spending time with his wife, literature (especially British comic novels and modern Japanese lit), indie rock, coffee, Formula One and football (of both American and world varieties).
Birthplace
Morristown, New Jersey
Education
Catholic University of America
Languages Spoken
English, Spanish
Topics of Expertise
American Politics, World Politics, Culture




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