Morning Joe, Curdled Quotes

In an excellent piece, Pete Wehner takes down Mark Halperin for his comments on MSNBC's Morning Joe yesterday. Host Scarborough countered Halperin but not as effectively as Wehner.

Today, however, Scarborough dropped the ball. He fell for a Krugman claim that Republican Michele Bachmann was part of the "climate of hate" for having told her constituents last year to be "armed and dangerous." Scarborough threw the quote at the Minesota Gov. (and possible GOP presidential candidate) Tim Pawlenty as something that was really beyond the pale. Caught unawares Pawlenty dodged the question.

Over at Powerline, John Hinderaker points out that the quote was ripped out of an radio interview he did with Bachmann. (He even provides the audio of the interview.)

For the record, here is what Michele said: "I'm going to have materials for people when they leave. I want people armed and dangerous on this issue of the energy tax, because we need to fight back." Yes, that's right: she wanted Minnesotans to be armed with "materials"--facts and arguments--not guns. If this is the best example of "eliminationist rhetoric" that the far left can come up with, you can see how absurdly weak the claims of Krugman and his fellow haters are.

Too bad neither Scarborough nor Pawlenty read the Powerline piece. Hopefully, someone will point out Joe's mistake to him and he'll correct it tomorrow.

UPDATE: James Taranto is on to this too.