As If It Wasn’t Already Obvious That Morning Joe Is Scared Of Trump ▉

David Frum, writing about his appearance this morning on MSNBC’s Morning Joe:

I was invited onto MSNBC’s Morning Joe to talk from a studio in Washington, D.C., about an article I’d written on Trump’s approach to foreign policy. Before getting to the article, I was asked about the nomination of Pete Hegseth as secretary of defense—specifically about an NBC News report that his heavy drinking worried colleagues at Fox News and at the veterans organizations he’d headed. (A spokesman for the Trump transition told NBC, “These disgusting allegations are completely unfounded and false, and anyone peddling these defamatory lies to score political cheap shots is sickening.”)

I answered by reminding viewers of some history:

In 1989, President George H. W. Bush nominated John Tower, senator from Texas, for secretary of defense. Tower was a very considerable person, a real defense intellectual, someone who deeply understood defense, unlike the current nominee. It emerged that Tower had a drinking problem, and when he was drinking too much he would make himself a nuisance or worse to women around him. And for that reason, his nomination collapsed in 1989. You don’t want to think that our moral standards have declined so much that you can say: Let’s take all the drinking, all the sex-pesting, subtract any knowledge of defense, subtract any leadership, and there is your next secretary of defense for the 21st century.

I told this story in pungent terms. It’s cable TV, after all. And I introduced the discussion with a joke: “If you’re too drunk for Fox News, you’re very, very drunk indeed.”

At the next ad break, a producer spoke into my ear. He objected to my comments about Fox and warned me not to repeat them. I said something noncommittal and got another round of warning. After the break, I was asked a follow-up question on a different topic, about President Joe Biden’s pardon of his son. I did not revert to the earlier discussion, not because I had been warned, but because I had said my piece. I was then told that I was excused from the studio chair. Shortly afterward, co-host Mika Brzezinski read an apology for my remarks.

While I, like Frum, appreciate the show’s attempt to bring a well informed discussion to a national audience as well as the tough spot the show itself is in given Trump’s want to realiate to any media that’s hostile to him, this is simply unacceptable. This is capitulation pure and simple. In a word: cowardice. It is not ok.

As for my own comments: You can decide for yourself whether I overstepped the proper limits of television discussion. But I also note that if I did misstep, well, my face was on the screen, my name was on the chyron, and anyone who took offense knows whom to blame.

First off, those comments are not overstepping. What Frum told was an anecdote to make an analogy between the fact that Hegseth has a drinking problem (to put it mildly) and what our standards should be and that someone who gets out of line when drinking should be below the standards of the position. It’s that simple.

Second, Frum actually has a spine to stand up for what’s right, unlike Joe and Mika. As he says, his face and name were on the screen, let the heat be on him.

It is a very ominous thing if our leading forums for discussion of public affairs are already feeling the chill of intimidation and responding with efforts to appease.

None of this is good. It’s ominous in the sense that at any moment Trump can just decide to shut down MSNBC so he’s already intimidated them into getting in line, lest they be persecuted. But this is also part of the way authoritarians take and maintain control. We were warned.

I’ll leave you with Frum’s closing words:

I do not write to scold anyone; I write because fear is infectious. Let it spread, and it will paralyze us all.

The only antidote is courage. And that’s infectious, too.

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