The media are once again overreacting when it comes to Donald Trump's statements on Megyn Kelly and her questions during last week's GOP debate in a near repeat of their predictions of Trump's demise following the front-runner's comments on Sen. John McCain, MSNBC's Joe Scarborough said Monday.
"The world is upside down,"
Scarborough said on his "Morning Joe" program. "The political world is upside down. And you have Donald Trump, who is sort of this Mad Hatter of American politics. He may be mad, but he's driving everybody else in this process mad, too."
The resulting circus is putting members of the media and others "wildly off their game in a way that feeds right into his strengths," he added.
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And as a result, the stories are starting to nearly repeat each other with new statement Trump makes that draws fire, said Scarborough.
"The Washington Post wrote an article yesterday morning where you could cut and paste the GOP establishment names and the quotes and the predictions of Donald Trump's imminent doom," he said.
Scarborough said the mainstream media had better pick up on what's going on, because "they're getting it wrong time and time again."
The doom-and-gloom calls that followed Trump's verbal sparring with Kelly are the same as those made after Trump's questioning of McCain's "hero" status last month, said Scarborough —and the pattern holds all the way down to the media turning to South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham to confirm the Trump campaign will soon end.
Likewise, Time magazine political analyst Mark Halperin replied that there is an "iron triangle" where Trump is concerned.
"You have these conservative activists who want Trump to decline," said Halperin. "You have 2016 candidates who want Trump to decline. And the media, as you say, some people we like and respect who just seem to have decided they want to write his obituary now."
"It's disgusting just to talk about it this early," said Scarborough. "There was a
stunning lead in The New York Times yesterday morning that stated as fact that Donald Trump was talking about Megyn Kelly's menstruation cycle."
Trump's comments came during a CNN interview Friday night, when Trump said that during the debate, "You could see there was blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her wherever." The remark prompted RedState leader Erick Erickson to disinvite Trump from a major weekend event hosted by the group.
People who saw the comments live may have speculated that was what Trump was talking about, Scarborough said, but by Sunday morning "it was a stated fact."
Oftentimes, people want to assume the "worst of Trump," said Scarborough, accusing the media of "jumping to conclusions that feed into Donald Trump's supporters' worst beliefs about the media — that [it] assumes the very worst and write it as if that's the case."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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