During the opening 6AM segment of today’s Morning Joe, Joe Scarborough accused NBC of having “cooked” its current poll to favor Hillary Clinton. But at 8AM when Morning Joe replayed that opening segment, Scarborough’s criticism of the NBC poll . . . had disappeared. Instead, the video jumped ahead to Mika Brzezinski’s reading of the poll results themselves, which showed Hillary Clinton with an 11-14% lead.
Scarborough’s point was that NBC sampled only during the height of the hot mic hysteria, but didn’t include sampling from after the debate, widely viewed as having been won by Trump. Joe obviously knew he was skating on thin network ice, prefacing his criticism by saying “we work here. We really love working here. We love this place.”
This certainly smells like MSNBC censorship, done to protect both NBC and its pro-Hillary poll. In the video clip, you’ll see the original 6AM segment, containing Scarborough’s criticism, followed by what aired at 8AM, which omitted the criticism and jumped to Mika’s reading of the highly-favorable-to-Hillary poll results.
Note: Joe seems to be correct about the timing of the poll. The hot mic story broke on Friday, October 7th. As per this NBC article, the polling was conducted on October 8-9, at the height of the controversy. The debate didn’t end until 10:30PM on the night of October 9th, an hour at which NBC would presumably no longer have been polling.
OPENING 6AM SEGMENT
JOE SCARBOROUGH: So, this new NBC/Wall Street Journal poll–we work here, we really love working here, we love this place–they take the poll the second the [hot mic] crisis starts, and they stop it right before the debate. It could not have been cooked more to get the result they got.MIKA BRZEZINSKI: It was cooked!JOE: I’m just saying, the point you put it. It’s just ridiculous: we’re going to put this at the height of the scandal.MIKA: Wouldn’t you wait until after [the debate]?JOE: And so they get a 14-point lead. Wouldn’t you do it after the debate?MARK HALPERIN: I think they kept going.JOE: No, no, no. I looked at the fine print and it said they took it once the scandal started, but before the debate.
8AM REPLAY OF 6AM OPENING SEGMENT: SCARBOROUGH CRITICISM OMITTED
MIKA: An NBC/Wall Street Journal poll taken over the weekend shows Hillary Clinton in the lead nationally among likely voters by 11 points: 46% to 35%, in a four-way race with Gary Johnson at 9% and Jill Stein at 2%. In a two-way race, the gap is even larger. Clinton ahead by 14 points, 52 to 38. That is a seven-point swing, my friends, in her direction.
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