The smugness of MSNBC gabfest Morning Joe has reached previously unknown insufferable levels with the rise of GOP frontrunner Donald Trump.
Fleece aficionado Joe Scarborough and sidekick Mika Brzezinski are exceptionally pleased with themselves because they (and they alone, it seems) last summer, touted the abilities of Trump to make an impact on the Republican presidential race. Scarborough is particularly unhesitant to tell his small, elite audience of his sterling analysis, as the above video shows.
In their defense, plenty of observers dismissed Trump out-of-hand, but the hosts hardly declared Trump would be the monumental success he has been. Rather, they made vaguely conditional statements like "anything can happen," "he doesn't play by the rules," and that he could have an "impact."
But how self-satisfied are they, regardless? Here are a few soundbites from their shows over the past few months as Trump has moved closer to becoming the Republican nominee:
"Other than a few of us around this table, very few people saw this coming."
"We were right and everybody else was wrong."
"Mika and I certainly understand you're really angry, because we called this first."
"We saw it coming."
"We got it right."
"They're just angry, because they have been wrong for nine months, and we've been right."
"We had a sense about this."
"We knew that he could do this, from the get-go."
"I hate to say it. We were right."
"We just can actually look at the Earth and see that the Sun goes down and that it's actually not flat."
"Everybody else was stupid, and they were wrong every single day. We were right."
"I'm sorry. We called it, and all along we said, not because it's good, not because it's right, not because it's bad."
"While you were saying Donald Trump was a joke, we were saying that Donald Trump was actually going to have an impact on this race."
"It was just analysis ... On Donald Trump, it's the same thing."
"There were a handful of people who, for six months, have been saying what happened last night [in New Hampshire] could happen."
"This is not us patting ourselves on the back. It's just the truth."
"Let's put this on a bumper sticker. We're in the tank for the truth."
Now, as Trump has sat atop GOP polls for months and leads the delegate count for the nomination, the hosts are in full smarm, reading out polls and results and never forgetting to remind the watchers how smart they are.
The vanity of the show's hosts is something to behold. On March 2, a day after Trump rolled to a series of wins on Super Tuesday that cemented his frontrunner status, the show ran a montage of its own analysis and vaguely prescient remarks.
After it concluded, Scarborough said, "Wow ... So what do you after you dunk the ball and you shatter the backboard? Do you just walk off the court?"
But where do they draw this astounding foresight from?
As Brzezinski has reminded viewers, they've known Trump for a long time. They are buddies. Scarborough, who has gotten red with anger on-air deflecting accusations that he's "in the tank" for Trump, has left voicemails with his children for the billionaire, given him personal debate advice and hosted a Trump town hall that political observers panned as softball garbage.
Trump himself called Joe and Mika "supporters" during a victory speech/interview on Morning Joe the day after his New Hampshire primary victory. A flustered Scarborough explained that Trump meant the Morning Joe gang "around the table" were some of the only people who could have seen his victory coming.