There was a disagreement on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, between host Joe Scarborough and co-host Mika Brzezinski.
The discussion had to do with the downed MH17 flight in Ukraine and the way two American presidents handled the situation when planes were shot down during their administration. The presidents? Barack Obama and Ronald Reagan.
Mika Brzezinski tried to educate the Republican with the fact that Ronald Reagan handled a similar situation by staying on vacation for 4 extra days before finally making a statement. Joe lamented how wrong she was about his faithful leader, Reagan.
The convo went like this:
BRZEZINSKI: At the same time there’s these parallels being made to Ronald Reagan and how he responded to the Korean airliner. It took him four days to go back and make the strong statements that he made, just for some perspective.
SCARBOROUGH: He immediately canceled his vacation.
BRZEZINSKI: No, he didn’t, actually.
SCARBOROUGH: Yes, he actually did.
BRZEZINSKI: No, he didn’t immediately cancel it.
SCARBOROUGH: Yes, he did. He immediately canceled it. He immediately went back to the White House. He immediately canceled fund-raising events and campaign events. Yes, he did. You can go back and look. Ronald Reagan didn’t keep campaigning. He stopped when the Korean airliner went down.
Brzezinski, it turned out, was right. Reagan’s address came four days after the attack, in between which he had an aide make a statement about the incident before making a shorter one himself. At the time, Reagan had been on a twenty-five day vacation in California, and resisted returning to Washington, having an aide tell reporters that he had “every facility, every capacity, every capability” to deal with the crisis at his California ranch. The trip was eventually cut short.
Scarborough conceded the point on Twitter about fifteen minutes later:
And thanks to all the kind souls on Twitter who pointed out my boneheaded error as well. You are great ombudsmen! I was wrong. @morningmika
— Joe Scarborough (@JoeNBC) July 21, 2014
Typical!!!!