Joe Scarborough and the “Morning Joe” team continued to have fun at the expense of ABC’s George Stephanopoulos Tuesday morning after the New York Post revealed the “Good Morning America” host’s supposed $105 million deal with the network.
After holding up the Post’s Tuesday cover, Scarborough and the panel couldn’t help but express their surprise and amazement at the figure.
“By the way, a lot of people are wondering why ABC is, you know — kind of jumped out front, as quickly as they did on the whole Stephanopoulos thing. The New York Post provides some insight this morning,” Scarborough said. “Wow.”
“Which puts the donation in a whole different perspective,” panelist Dorian Warren added.
“If you want to know why he lost count, he didn’t know what the $75,000 — ‘gee, did I give them $75,000 or not?’ Maybe that’s why. $105 million,” Scarborough said.
“That’s his salary?!” asked guest Mike Barnicle.
“That’s his salary.” Scarborough responded while laughing hysterically. “That’s his salary! ABC has put all of their money on — yeah. I wouldn’t let him go scuba diving, I mean, holy cow.”
“I was just talking [yesterday] about transparency in the news, and I think that it’s OK to be on television if you’re transparent about your world view and your leans,” co-host Mika Brzezinski said. “He clearly has them because he worked for the Clintons. Everybody thought they could lobotomize himself. I don’t think it’s surprising.”
“No, no, he’s a liberal Democrat, and that is fine. But what’s not fine is what he did to Peter Schweizer when he came on the air and played judge,” Scarborough said. “It was humiliating. I mean, if you’re at ABC News you’ve got to be humiliated by the fact that he did that and did not reveal that he paid $75,000 to an organization, and then he’s talking about the investigations they did. So, you know, but, they’re not going to do anything to him.”
However, Scarborough did try to play the role of equal-opportunity sage, adding that if the same thing happened to NBC’s Matt Lauer, the “Today” Show host would get the same favorable treatment from the network.
“And let’s be honest, if it happened at NBC and it were Matt Lauer, because everybody’s talking Brian Williams, I mean if all he were doing were ABC World News Tonight, he’d be gone, right?” Scarborough told the panel. ‘But lets face it, if Matt Lauer did that over here, everybody would be [staying silent] because that’s where, you know, that’s where they make the money. They don’t make money on those night news shows anymore. They make it in the morning. That’s where all of the money’s made.”
“At the end of the day, how surprising: it comes down to money,” he added.
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