‘Morning Joe’ host Joe Scarborough has vowed to “delete Twitter” from his phone after being accused of “lying” for sharing a debunked clip of potential Supreme Court Justice nominee Amy Coney Barrett.
In a now-deleted tweet, Scarborough shared a clip of Barrett appearing to suggest that she opposed nominating Supreme Court judges in a presidential election year for fear they may “flip the balance of the court.” Barrett made the comments in question after Barack Obama had nominated Merrick Garland to fill the seat left vacant by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia.
“Amy Coney Barrett opposed Merrick Garland’s nomination because: 1. It came the same year as a presidential election, and, 2. She said the nomination couldn’t go through because Scalia would be ‘replaced by someone who could dramatically flip the balance of the court.’ Like her,” Scarborough tweeted on Friday.
Though the clip has been widely shared by Trump’s critics to argue against filling Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s seat, it has also been debunked as being out of context, even by the Washington Post, where Scarborough is a columnist. The newspaper ran a story on Thursday explaining that Barrett was not arguing against electing a Supreme Court judge in an election year.
When confronted with the story from the Post showing the clip was “deceptively edited,” Scarborough lashed out at Democrats and the media for not being “fair” to Barrett. He also promised to delete Twitter from his phone in response.
“There have been 3 or 4 times this year something like this has happened. And this happened the same time I was telling Democrats and the media to be fair to her and stay away from her faith. I’m deleting Twitter from my phone,” he tweeted.
Thanks, Matt. There have been 3 or 4 times this year something like this has happened. And this happened the same time I was telling Democrats and the media to be fair to her her and stay away from her faith. I’m deleting Twitter from my phone. Thanks again for passing along. https://t.co/Ex2TMLvA6G
Scarborough still received plenty of criticism and was accused of “lying” for sharing a clip that had been proven to be misleading days before.
“Joe is lying again. Even his own newspaper debunked this,” National Review writer David Harsanyi tweeted.
scarborough: verb1. to incessantly deplore something which you helped bring about without acknowledging your culpability.”He’s been scarboroughing like mad recently.”
You should move to a small town, somewhere the rule of law still exists. You will not survive here. You are not a wolf, and this is a land of wolves now.
CBS News originally ran the edited clip of Barrett, earning pushback for taking her words out of context. Her full comments show that she said the president “has the power to nominate” someone based on the Constitution, and it is then up to the Senate to “act or not.”
Shocker: #ACB did NOT, in fact, “caution” against replacing Scalia in an election year. She defaulted to the Constitution. “POTUS has the power to nominate and the Senate has the power to act or not.”Bad-faith framing with the stink of suppressive intent. #FakeNewshttps://t.co/iGZpuZIjz0pic.twitter.com/89TmcZNHDZ
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