MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough called out the media on Tuesday for being biased against Donald Trump in an extended tirade on Morning Joe.
While Scarborough spoke with his panel on the morning talk show, the topic of anger against the media came up. Trump has continually railed against the press as an extension of the Democratic establishment on the campaign trail.
"I don’t think that you can overstate the impact of the media and the anger against the media in this election, and that’s something that focus groups that, yes, the anger is there against our government, against our elected officials, against the rigged system, but also the media being biased on right and left, about I would say, eight out of ten people think that there’s no hope for what the media puts in front of you," panelist Elise Jordan said.
Scarborough attacked the media for not understanding Trump and the rise of Bernie Sanders during the Democratic primary, as well as a disconnect between the media and the rest of America.
"I’ve got to say, and I’ll just say it, over the past couple of weeks, media coverage has been deplorable. It has been deplorable," Scarborough said. "It has been one-sided; it has been biased; it has been every bit as bad as media coverage of the Bernie Sanders phenomenon at the very beginning of the Democratic process. It was slanted and biased against Bernie Sanders; it was completely weighted for Hillary Clinton.
"Sanders was holding massive rallies that everybody ignored, that everybody tried to explain away and it’s because, and Mike Barnicle nailed it ... we are all at the end coastal elites that didn’t get Bernie Sanders and don’t get why people would ever vote for Donald Trump."
The Washington Post's Chris Cillizza called himself a coastal elite and D.C. insider before defending the media’s coverage of the election.
Later Scarborough remarked how at the end of the election there would be many more stories written about Trump than Clinton. Co-host Willie Geist agreed that many reporters had targeted Trump a long time ago.
"No way in defense of Donald Trump, but it’s clear, it’s right in front of us that many reporters decided several months ago that this had to be stopped and dropped their veil of fairness, which is a decision that some reporters made and decided that he had to be stopped," he said.