Morning Joe devoted a segment to the ridiculous inspector general report that claims Trump did not have Lafayette Square Park cleared of protesters for his infamous Bible photo op.
"Now to this, an investigation by the Interior Department's inspector general published yesterday finds that last June, Washington's Lafayette Square Park was not forcibly cleared so President Trump could hold a photo op outside the historic St. John's Church," Mika Brzezinski said.
"Instead, the report finds that the clearing, which took place during protests against racial injustice and police, happened so a contractor could install fencing. The report did find that Attorney General William Barr urged officials to speed up the clearing, the process of clearing people, once Trump had decided to walk through the area."
"First of all, I've got to say, I think I've been unduly tough on William Barr. because I did not know all of this time, that not only was he operating as attorney general of the United States of America, but he was also the director of scaffolding for Lafayette Park. Imagine that, having that as your second job," Joe Scarborough said.
"You know, the headlines from some of our friends and the panting and heavy breathing after this IG report came out is laughable. The IG himself said this report is not dispositive. 'We can only handle what's in our jurisdiction, and unfortunately,' he said, 'not everything is in our jurisdiction.'
"What this report said was that they had planned to go out and fix the scaffolding for some time. They didn't know that Donald Trump was coming out until later in the afternoon. and Jonathan Lemire, here's one of my favorite parts of the report, that undermines everything that people are writing about this. The head of operations for the park police learned about Mr. Trump's plan when Mr. Barr came out to inspect the area. Quote, asketh Barr, scaffolding director of Lafayette Park, 'Are these people still going to be here when POTUS comes out, Mr. Barr asked, according to the report, referring to the president of the United States.
"The operations commander replied to Mr. Barr, 'Are you freaking kidding me?" He then hung his head and walked away, the report said. Which, of course, undermines every headline that you've seen here. It also, of course, this is the bigger story that Donald Trump did go across with, you know, at first, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, the Sec Def. There were obviously many things that made June the 1st deeply disturbing far beyond scaffolding plans earlier in the day.
"But again, you talk about a lack of perspective in the panting and the overreporting here from Trump apologists. It's laughable on its face. You just need to read the report," Scarborough concluded.
