Not for nuthin'…. But….. Joe Scarborough went on national television Tuesday morning and told America the news media is biased. In favor of Donald Trump. The MOAM nearly spilled his Dunkin' on the dog.
What was said
On Tuesday morning, October 6, 2026, on MS NOW's Morning Joe, Scarborough was talking about the President's Monday night rally in Grand Island, Nebraska. There, defending higher gas prices from the Iran war as “a small price to pay,” Mr. Trump said, “They could take out a city. Let them take out Los Angeles. Let them take out San Diego,” as Mediaite and KTLA reported.
Then Joe turned his guns on the press. Here he is in the MS NOW clip posted by Mediaite:
“But he's graded on such a curve that the bias actually breaks the other way. He gets away with things that no other president would ever get away with because people in the media are so numbed by it all by now. So media bias, yeah. Media bias in a way that breaks his direction.”
Right before that, he took care of the folks at home:
“If any president in American history had called for the obliteration of two American cities, even in what his deranged supporters would say is a joke, deranged because if you think it's funny to joke about 10 million Americans being killed by Iran, that's a serious problem.”
And right after it, he said you could make a supercut of Trump's clips and raise “the same questions about his mental acuity” that were raised about Joe Biden's, “but that's not happening and that won't happen.” Then he looked ahead:
“Maybe afterwards people say, oh, I knew about this all along and I'm going to write a book about it. Where was the media?”
He also said people “from Fox News” complaining about anti-Trump bias is something he thinks is “cute.” Coverage: Mediaite, “Joe Scarborough Fumes That the Media Has a Pro-Trump ‘Bias’ Because Reporters are ‘Numbed To It All’” (Oct 6, 2026) and TheWrap (Oct 6, 2026). MS NOW's own clip from the same morning is here.
Context (not spin)
First, the rally line. The MOAM isn't here to defend every ad-lib a politician makes at a podium. That one landed badly, and some Republicans said so, including San Diego congressional candidate Jim Desmond, a Navy veteran (NBC San Diego). The White House's Steven Cheung said the President “was clearly stating U.S. cities would have been threatened if a nuclear Iran hadn't been stopped.” Fair people can argue about it. Tonight's post is about what Joe did with it.
Second, the “nobody covered it” complaint. Joe said he checked the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post and the Financial Times websites that morning, and only the Times had it. Maybe so at that hour. But KTLA had the story up Monday night, and by Tuesday it had been written up by The Guardian, The Hill, USA Today, NBC San Diego, TheWrap and Mediaite, with video from the BBC and ABC News. Oh, and it was on Morning Joe. That's a funny kind of blackout.
Third, the “pro-Trump media.” On the same Tuesday morning, the President was on Truth Social at 9:50 AM complaining that Fox News is “promoting the Dumocrats” and has “totally lost their way!” And his White House tried to ban CNN, Politico and Joe's own network, MS NOW, from covering it (The Hill, Oct 6, 2026). If that's the press playing favorites, nobody told the favorite.
Fourth, the mental acuity bit. That one's a doozy coming from Joe. On March 6, 2024, on his own show, he said of President Biden: “This version of Biden intellectually, analytically, is the best Biden ever. Not a close second.” He also said, “Start your tape right now because I'm about to tell you the truth” (video). In May 2025, when Jake Tapper came on Morning Joe to plug Original Sin, the book he and Alex Thompson wrote about Biden's decline, Joe told him, “I was obviously wrong” (Mediaite). Credit to him for owning it. But “I'm going to write a book about it. Where was the media?” Joe, the book got written. You were the media.
MOAM's diagnosis
Severity: MILD.
This is commentary, so here's the MOAM's opinion. After ten years of wall-to-wall Trump coverage, the fella with a three-hour weekday show that's mostly about Donald Trump has figured out that the press goes easy on Donald Trump. That's like a Yankees fan sitting in the bleachers at Fenway, complaining the place is rigged for the Red Sox because the Monster's in left field.
And he called the folks who'd shrug the line off as a joke “deranged,” in a segment about media bias. The MOAM has a name for that condition. It's on the banner up top.
Mild, because Joe didn't trot out Hitler, didn't swear, and did once admit he got Biden wrong. But it's a chronic case with a documented relapse history, and the patient told us to roll tape. We did, Joe. It's still rolling.
MOAM Out.
