The millions and millions the Koch brothers have spent to buy government from the local level on up has brought fairly intense media scrutiny of them in the last few years, forcing them out from under their rock. Their initial foray into public was with long, glowing ads about what a wonderful place Koch industries is, back in the fall of 2014. Then they trotted out their general counsel to telljust how committed the Kochs are to the underclasses in their "work" on criminal justice reform. Apparently that hasn't been enough, so the brothers themselves have been making the media rounds. The friendly media rounds, like this tongue-bath from Joe Scarborough , who visited them in their Kansas boyhood home.

Scarborough asked him about the "personal impact […] on you and your families" about "the level of vitriol" coming from Harry Reid and "liberals" during the last elections. He asked Charles Koch about how he became "one of the most influential people in the world," and about their mother—was she really as "gracious" as Charles wrote in his new book? (You can read an excerpt at Morning Joe!) There were a handful of actual questions that, in the hands of anybody but Scarborough, could be considered probing. But Scarborough's lack of substantive follow-up—other than "you are absolutely right about that"—made certain that the Kochs came out looking like nothing more than concerned citizens who want freedom for everyone. They're even (cough) bipartisan. From the transcript:



I don't care what party, I just want somebody who's going to advance these ideas to take us away from this two-tier system, getting involved in all sorts of unproductive things, and all this waste and like our, our total unfunded debt and unfunded liabilities.

SCARBOROUGH: Do you see a candidate out there? That's not… CHARLES KOCH: Not in, not in great measure. MIKA BRZEZINSKI: Not in great measure? You sound like my dad.

The money that, that, that we, we raise, which we hope to raise $250 million for all elections, not just presidential, next year. Whether we can or not because I'm going to give very little to that because most of mine goes to my foundation and other things to advance these ideas. So what we're working for is to get that picking winners and losers out of it.

In other words, who's going to eviscerate social insurance programs and get rid of all the regulations that are preventing us from becoming trillionaires. To be very clear about just how much they don't have their thumbs on any scale in the Republican nomination process, here's the "substance" of the interview.So, now, there's no candidate now that they now support, even though "some other people who support some of our things, gave money, gave $15 million to" Ted Cruz. It's just those "other people" who show up at all the Koch conferences to make the various candidates bow and scrape for a few millions. But, you know, the little bit that they're doing, it's not to buy the government or anything.

Uh-huh. Actually, the amount the Kochs have pledged to raise and spend on the 2016 elections is $889 million, but I guess Scarborough somehow missed that news, because he just let that drop. As he did with every assertion by the brothers. Maybe this was his audition to be the new moderator for the rest of the GOP debates.

Ladies and gentlemen, your liberal MSNBC.