Joe Scarborough comes clean, admits the press "was pretty damn hostile" to Hillary Clinton

Giving voice to the rodeo of injustices that apparently stampede around his brain, Donald Trump jumped on Twitter Friday morning to rage once again about his election opponent from 10 months ago.

Specifically, Trump whined loudly about Hillary Clinton’s supposedly adoring press coverage from last year:

The Russia hoax continues, now it's ads on Facebook. What about the totally biased and dishonest Media coverage in favor of Crooked Hillary?

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 22, 2017

The greatest influence over our election was the Fake News Media "screaming" for Crooked Hillary Clinton. Next, she was a bad candidate!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 22, 2017

The punch line, of course, is that the Beltway press and corporate media spent most of 2016 trying to bury Clinton, obsessing about her emails and continuing the time-honored, decades-long tradition of treating the Clintons with contempt and trying to criminalize their public service. Her campaign coverage was relentlessly caustic in an oddly personal way.

In her new book, “What Happened,” Clinton writers about the thumb-on-the-scale press coverage she received on the campaign trail. The claim is backed up by lots of empirical evidence, and it was a reality that many in the media were trying to erase even before the election.

Now joining the parade is MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough. Following Trump’s angry Friday tweets, Scarborough led his table full of guests in a discussion about how unfair the press was towards Clinton last year, how they relentlessly beat her up, and obsessively focused on her allegedly faults.

“I think the fake news media was pretty damn hostile towards Hillary Clinton throughout most of the campaign,” Scarborough said. “So that’s just fake news, Donald.”

Media Matters’ Alex Morash noted the oddity in Scarborough now lamenting the news media’s rough treatment of Clinton:

Great work #MorningJoe team 4 discovering media was hostile to @HillaryClinton during the campaign.

No one knew from watching your show. pic.twitter.com/0ML0l9m1DR

— Alex Morash (@AlexMorash) September 22, 2017

Notably, Scarborough never hinted, let alone acknowledged, that he was indeed one of the main culprits within the D.C. press of that “pretty damn hostile” attitude towards Clinton.

But he was. And the problem goes back years.

“Has nobody told her that the microphone works?” quipped Scarborough last year, following a Clinton victory rally during the Democratic primary. He then led a lengthy discussion about Clinton’s voice, as he and his guests dissected her “screaming,” and complained that she being too “feisty” and acting “not natural.”

Soon after the November election, Scarborough was reduced to hysterics and sarcasm when Clinton’s campaign supported recount efforts in tightly contested states.

And of course, he was one of the many men who felt the need to tell Clinton to smile at random times.

We welcome Scarborough’s newfound concession about the “pretty damn hostile” media coverage Clinton had to endure.

But will he admit he was part the problem?