All that was missing was James Taylor's "You've Got a Friend" playing gently in the background . . .

Reacting to Rep. Ilhan Omar's description of 9/11 as "some people did something," Joe Scarborough, on today's Morning Joe, said that it's "so important for her to succeed."

With considerable trepidation, Mike Barnicle dared broach the subject of Omar's outrageous statement. "Yesterday, there was an event that took place in Washington, a-n-n-n-n-d, I'm going to raise it." He did summon up the courage to describe Omar's statement as a "distortion of . . . reality." He was upset that Democratic presidential candidates refused to condhem it.

That led to a solicitous Scarborough saying that he saw that Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R.-Texas) engaged Omar on Twitter, and scolded he should have just talked to her across the aisle in the Capitol:

"It's so important, I think personally, for her to succeed. Right? She's -- there have been some missteps. But there's something much bigger here, like, going on. We don't want one of our first Muslim, women, Americans, to, to, to, to, blow up politically like this."

"Blow up"? Not the most felicitous phrase when discussing 9/11.

At its core, Scarborough's wish for Omar to succeed is deeply patronizing. Omar is an American citizen. She is an elected Member of Congress. Does Scarborough really expect Crenshaw to, shall we say, Ameri-splain to Omar why obfuscating the reality of 9/11 would be "offensive to some people?" If Omar doesn't understand that by now, she richly deserves to fail.

Scarborough described Omar as having committed "some missteps." Such an understanding guy, that Joe! Saying that Israel had "hypnotized" the world and committed "evil" wasn't a "misstep." Claiming "it's all about the Benjamins," i.e. that Jewish money is corrupting US policy toward Israel, wasn't a "misstep." Omar didn't misstate her beliefs: she revealed them.

Note: Scarborough's fervent wish that Omar succeed has echoes of Chris Matthews, just after the 2008 election, declaring that "I want to do everything I can to make this thing work, this new [Obama] presidency work." Ironically, it was Scarborough who challenged Matthews, asking whether it was really Matthews' job, as a "journalist," to do that. Eleven years later, Scarborough has apparently determined that it is indeed the job of liberals in the media to prop up liberal politicians.

Here's the transcript.

MSNBC

Morning Joe

4/11/19

6:30 am EDT