MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough should not do satire. This video is proof.
Over the past few weeks, MSNBC show host Joe Scarborough has been leaning into the hate part of his love-hate relationship with Donald Trump, with the two swapping insults on Twitter over Scarborough’s ratings, Trump’s immigration plan, and the intelligence of Scarborough’s co-host Mika Brzezinski.
The next logical step may have been for Trump and Scarborough to just duke it out during recess on the school playground. But Scarborough instead did what may be the next best thing to hit back at Trump: releasing a "thumping" music video going after Trump on his Facebook page.
Scarborough’s song is called "Amnesty Don," and it mashes together racist stereotypes, footage of old Western films, Scarborough singing in a weird accent, photos of Trump scowling, hashtags, and many, many, many references to Donald Trump’s penis. (The Washington Post accurately describes it as "Crazytown.")
After busting out of a Turkish prison while serving consecutive life sentences for some minor offenses that won't be discussed here, Willie and I, entirely by chance, ended up in Amsterdam where we met a plucky young band that caught our ear. Now, because of our good timing I can pass along the new song written and recorded all in one day about Donald Trump's battle with premature softening. And yes, it's performed by those same crazy kids you've grown to love from Wijk bij Duurstede, Netherlands whom the natives adoringly call "Morning Joe Music." While the original version is in Dutch, the boys luckily recorded an English version of "Amnesty Don" for posterity last night after returning from Hamburg. Enjoy! Musical thanks to Nicholas Wells and Mikhail Pivovarov. Video thanks to Anthony Scutro, Miller Hawkins and Andrew Scarborough.
Được đăng bởi Joe Scarborough 31 Tháng 8 2016
Here’s a sampling of the lyrics:
(Trump) said he’d deport Mexicans before they raped our wives
And ban a billion Muslims before they took white lives.
But then he won the primary, and his courage took a dive.
The cowboys and their kinfolk, they finally understand:
That #Amnesty Don was never sticking to his plan.
(Voice-over:) He’s softening, is there a pill for that?
On one level, Scarborough is trying to demean Trump by attacking him for "softening" his immigration position. He does that by saying it’s like other parts of Trump that are going "prematurely soft." (Did you get Scarborough’s subtle penis allusion there? If you didn’t, the joke is that Trump’s penis is soft like his immigration position.)
But to attack Trump for becoming "soft" on immigration, Scarborough takes the mindset of those who believe in the hard-line position. So the video uses a lot of shockingly racist and offensive stereotypes — that Mexicans will rape wives and Muslims are out to get "white lives" — to accomplish its goal of portraying Trump as an immigration sellout.
It’s not that Scarborough himself believes in these racist stereotypes. (A former Republican Congress member, Scarborough has spent months criticizing Trump’s proposals on Mexican deportation and Muslim immigration as too draconian.) But the video doesn’t make clear whether it’s a satire of Trump’s flip-flops or of the xenophobia driving those beliefs in the first place. And because of that lack of clarity, Scarborough winds up trafficking in racist tropes to get his point across.
It’s enough to leave you with more questions than answers. Is Scarborough mocking Trump for having racist beliefs? Is he mocking Trump for not sticking to those racist beliefs? Or is he trying to do both — while actually accomplishing neither?