Sooner or later the sun shines on a sleeping dogs arse.
SNBC’s Mika Brzezinski won scattered praise Thursday morning after she booted author Michael Wolff off “Morning Joe” for refusing to acknowledge his role in spreading the rumor that U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley is having an affair with President Trump.
Hold your applause.
Wolff’s penchant for factually challenged narratives and lurid innuendo was well-known long before the Haley episode. Brzezinski, “Morning Joe” co-host Joe Scarborough, and everyone else in media who made Wolff’s new book, Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House, a top-trending news story simply didn’t care. They either overlooked the author’s history of fabulism or they dismissed it outright.
Many even excused the factual errors in Fire and Fury as they promoted it.
In reference to a particular anecdote that was shown to be inaccurate, Brzezinski said, “The spirit of it was completely true.”
“Morning Joe” guest John Heilemann, a self-styled D.C. insider who managed somehow to remain oblivious to his work partner’s long and storied history of sexual misconduct, said of Fire and Fury that, “It does ring true to a lot of people who’ve reported closely on this White House, including me.”
Scarborough explicitly downplayed the book’s significant errors, reasoning that, “It’s not a front-page story for the New York Times or the Washington Post. It’s a much bigger picture.”
“Criticism of Michael’s book, though, is that he doesn’t get everything exactly right. That’s what happens when you interview 1,000 different people, and everybody comes from their own version,” Scarborough added.
MSNBC’s Katy Tur said elsewhere, “Here’s the thing about the book. I read it. A lot of the stuff did read as – did feel true.”