OPINION: Kellyanne Conway has a right to respond to baseless ‘Morning Joe’ attacks

I enjoy the casual format that isn’t tied to constantly moving things along and the conversations are robust and seemingly authentic.

I also like hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, and have interviewed them a few times in the past year.

{mosads}But here comes the “but” you knew was coming.

If the show is going to ban Kellyanne Conway from appearing after its very public announcement in February declaring such, it should not provide the co-hosts the opportunity to eviscerate the president’s counselor on a daily basis with the type of Burn Book gossip one would hear in “Mean Girls 2.”

Exhibit A was on full display Monday as Brzezinski broached Conway without the latter having any ability to defend herself.

“This is a woman, by the way, who came on our show during the campaign and would shill for Trump in extensive fashion, and then she would get off the air, the camera would be turned off, the microphone would be taken off and she would say ‘bleeech I need to take a shower,’ because she disliked her candidate so much,” Brzezinski said.

“‘I have to take a shower because it feels so dirty to be saying what I’m saying,’” Brzezinski added, mocking Conway in the process. “I guess she’s just used to it now,” adding, “I’m [Conway is] doing this for money.”

Scarborough backed up the account, adding in more impossible-to-prove-or-disprove tidbit.

“‘I’m just doing this for the money, I’ll be off this [campaign] soon,’” the former GOP congressman said, imitating something he described Conway saying off the air in October. Except…

“I don’t know that she ever said, ‘I’m doing this for the money,’” Scarborough admitted. “But this is just my summer vacation, my summer in Europe. And basically, I’m gonna get through this.”

According to Brzezinski’s allegation, Conway said she was supporting Trump for the money. But in the next sentence, Scarborough said he couldn’t confirm the claim.

No matter. The Conway innuendo was the lead story on my former publication, Mediaite, as well as many others, after it was posted on Drudge.

The claim fulfilled a list of priorities for liberals in the media. Their aim is to be as provocative as possible in hopes that their commentary will go viral. Facts or proof aren’t necessarily required. The only prerequisite is that someone senior in the Trump administration or the president himself is on the receiving end of it.

The political media/chattering class bubble in the ivory towers of New York and Washington, D.C. will embrace “speaking truth to power” and the First Amendment right to speak out without a filter in an effort to be “real.”

In this case, the “conversation” consisted of attacking someone who couldn’t respond.

And it happened again on Friday.

“Note to CNN. Sorry, I love CNN. But you’ve got to stop putting Kellyanne on the air. It’s politics porn,” Brzezinski said. “You’re just getting your little ratings crack, OK? But it’s disgusting.”

“There’s nothing that she brings to the table that’s honest. Your hosts know it,” Brzezinski added. “Your hosts look pained when they interview her because they know they’re just doing politics porn.”

Brzezinski was referring to am Anderson Cooper interview with Conway last Tuesday that went viral afterward. Viral not because of anything that was said, of course, but because Cooper, an anchor and not an opinion host, rolled his eyes at Conway twice in a very pronounced way.

Morning Joe declared on Feb. 15 that Conway wouldn’t be allowed to appear on the program again. 

But for a show that took such an unprecedented stance, Conway certainly gets a ton of airtime and coverage, doesn’t she?

By the way, if Conway said this off the air to Mika and Joe back in October, and she got banned in February, why did they wait to share such information? Why didn’t they do it when the ban was announced?