Scarborough on Susan Rice: What if Cheney had asked for unmasking?

MSNBC host Joe Scarborough on Tuesday suggested some people are holding former Obama national security adviser Susan Rice to a different standard than they would have held the George W. Bush administration.

The “Morning Joe” host questioned those dismissing reports that Rice sought to unmask President Trump’s transition team members mentioned in intelligence briefings, asking: “What if Dick Cheney had asked for the unmasking of names for Barack Obama’s incoming administration?”

“This Bloomberg report says that one official familiar with reports say they contained valuable political information, not intel, but valuable political information on what the Trump transition team was doing, including who Trump was meeting, who the Trump team was meeting, what the views were of Trump associates on foreign policy matters and plans for the incoming administration,” Scarborough said. 

{mosads}”If that report is accurate, it begs a lot of questions about what was going on. And people who want to dismiss it as routine, I think, are uncurious,” NBC political analyst Mark Halperin responded. 

Scarborough raised a hypothetical scenario of the Bush administration doing the same thing during Obama’s transition. 

“What if Dick Cheney had asked for the unmasking of names for Barack Obama’s incoming administration?” Scarborough asked. “It’s a very simple question to ask the next time anybody says this is much ado about nothing.”

“Again, there are a lot of things we don’t know, a lot of questions we don’t know. I do know this, though, I heard the ‘hallelujah chorus’ come immediately on cue last night saying, and [panelist] Richard [Haass] is laughing because he saw it too: ‘Nothing to see here, move along, move along.’ “ 

CNN anchor Chris Cuomo had a very different take on “New Day,” Scarborough’s rival morning program.

Cuomo told viewers on Tuesday morning that the controversy surrounding Rice is “another fake scandal being peddled by right-wing media.”

“So President Trump wants you to believe that he is the victim of a ‘crooked scheme,’ ” Cuomo began. “Those are his words. And here are our words: there is no evidence of any wrongdoing.

“And in fact, if anything the NSA asking for identities was a reflection of exactly how much traffic there was involving Trump people and foreign players,” Cuomo continued. 

“The White House blasting the press for not reporting on another fake scandal being peddled by right-wing media.”