According to MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough, Democrats have told him off-the-air that they believe Bill Clinton raped Juanita Broaddrick. Scarborough doesn’t name any names but he says “many” have told him this so the suggestion is that we’re not just talking about one or two Democrats. “How did Democrats split the difference on Bill Clinton when they knew, or many believed and would tell me off the air that he raped Juanita Broaddrick?” Scarborough asked.

This is the kind of admission that really ought to be a show-stopper. I mean that literally and figuratively. First, it ought to stop all other discussion taking place on Morning Joe and lead to a long discussion about President Bill Clinton, suspected rapist. A very long discussion would be needed to allow the panel to go back over 25 years of history (back to 1992) and the rumors surrounding Clinton and the media’s response to those rumors when he first ran for president.

It ought to lead to some reconsideration of the Republicans who made Clinton’s sleazy behavior one of the arguments why he wasn’t fit to be president in the first place, and it ought to lead to some reconsideration of the Democrats who shrugged it all off as tabloid trash and bimbo eruptions. And that’s not to mention the Starr report, impeachment, France laughing at us, presidential knee pads and all the rest that came later as partisans tried to defend Clinton at the end of his tenure.

Joe Scarborough could devote an entire program to Hillary Clinton’s role in defending bill and later capitalizing on his power and fame to make her own way toward two White House runs, not to mention millions of dollars. While presenting herself as a champion of women, Hillary did nothing about her own husband’s decades of abuse of various women up to and including rape.

All of this has been talked about endlessly on the right but hardly at all (at least in the open) on the left until very recently. To recap, the fact that multiple Democrats think Bill Clinton is a rapist should be a banner headline, bigger than Bill Cosby and Harvey Weinstein combined.

What it should not be is a throwaway line meant to create a momentary illusion of partisan balance in the midst of another attack on President Trump. But that’s exactly how this came up today. From the Washington Free Beacon:

The comment came during a discussion of what Scarborough said was too much of a willingness by Republicans to accept an unacceptable president like Donald Trump, and he made a comparison to Democrats who looked past Clinton’s alleged sexual misconduct because of their political agreements… “I just don’t know how you split the difference with somebody who you believe is a xenophobic, racist bigot,” Scarborough said, going on to recount again how he decided he would not vote for Trump in 2015 when the then-candidate discussed banning Muslims from the United States. “How do you split the difference? And I’ll make Democrats uncomfortable and make them hate me too, because I want to be an equal-opportunity offender,” Scarborough said.

And that’s where he dropped the bomb about Democrats telling him they believe Bill Clinton is a rapist, i.e. to make a show of his own fairness.

There are plenty of Democrats reassessing their views on Bill Clinton now solely because they need to do so in order to prosecute their case against Trump. But Bill Clinton never really gets held accountable. He’s just a kind of social justice accounting gimmick. People give passing lip service to what should be an explosive news story and quickly go back to attacking Trump. Twenty-five years have passed and the progressives screaming their lungs out over Trump are still quietly whispering off camera about Clinton. Juanita Broaddrick reacted to this on Twitter:

WOW….JUST WOW!!Scarborough: Many Democrats Have Told Me They Believe Clinton Raped Juanita Broaddrick https://t.co/MmWj2548aC — Juanita Broaddrick (@atensnut) January 9, 2018

Here’s the clip of Scarborough’s comment. I haven’t seen the full program but in the initial response from Eugene Robinson, Clinton isn’t mentioned: