‘They need a real-time fact checker’: Morning Joe calls on his own network to stop running Trump briefings

‘They get distracted by the ground noise’

MSNBC‘s Joe Scarborough criticised his own network while talking about coverage of Donald Trump's daily briefings.

On his show, Morning Joe, former Republican congressman Scarborough showed clips of Mr Trump making statements in his daily briefings and interviews before adding his voice to criticism of networks including his own MSNBC for not fact-checking the president.

“The president lies so much in these press conferences, I still for the life of me don’t understand why the networks, including our own, allow Donald Trump to lie for two hours to the American people,” he said.

“If he were giving good information, that would be one thing, but it is a lie. So if this network or CNN or Fox is going to run him lying for two hours a night, they need a real-time fact checker.”

He acknowledged that MSNBC, along with other networks, do fact-check incorrect statements from Mr Trump, but said he didn't think they did enough.

“I know we come out of it and our anchor, whoever it is that day, runs down a list of what the president just said and sort of debunks if it needs debunking those facts. So there is some evolution there, I think that’s a good thing,” he said.

However, he added that anchors “get distracted sometimes. I’m not just talking about our network, all the networks, they get distracted by the ground noise – can you believe the president said this? Can you believe he tweeted that? No.”

Scarborough, who presents the show with his wife Mike Brzeszinski, said networks need to “get the facts, get his quotes, get the death toll, get the people in his administration that warning him from early January, put up his words, not your words.”

He concluded by saying that he wants Mr Trump to succeed as president, but believes that “he’s not trying to succeed. In fact, he’s spreading disinformation, he’s trying to cover up all the mistakes he’s made over the past two months.”

Both Scarborough and Brzezinski have been on the receiving end of Twitter insults from the president, whom they have known socially for years.

According to a tracking project hosted by Johns Hopkins University, upwards of 401,166 people have tested positive for coronavirus in the US. The death toll has reached at least 12,936.