Okay, in what world is it ever a good thing to ever have an election stolen? Joe Scarborough seems to think the ayotollahs rigged the election because Obama's Cairo speech scared them into over reaching and making sure he didn't get credit for the reformers winning in Iran, but if they did, it's a good thing in the long run for the United States.
If they rigged the election Joe, it's likely for the same reasons the Republicans have rigged elections in the United States...to stay in power. Not because they're worried about American politics.
GREGORY: Let's just also address what is the still breaking news out of Iran, and the fact that there is belligerence coming out of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the Iranian regime.
MURPHY: Yeah.
GREGORY: And this administration has a real delicate balance here...
MURPHY: Well...
GREGORY: ...which is are you going to engage? And how do you do it now?
SCARBOROUGH: Right. And how fascinating; we heard the vice president--I mean, they've been looking at the numbers. Did you hear the old, the old Irish pol looking at us, saying, "You know, 70 percent of the vote came from urban areas. That's not Ahmadinejad's strong suit." They know these numbers don't add up. I mean, that's a very--I think that's the strongest message this morning. Joe Biden suggested this morning the numbers just don't add up in Iran.
GREGORY: Right, that Iran is not an actual democracy here.
MURPHY: Well, and I hope that's not news to them.
GREGORY: Yeah.
MURPHY: I mean, behind the--he kept referring to the supreme leader, the Grand Ayatollah, who really pulls the strings there. And now the Iranian democracy, the legitimacy is out the window in the eyes of the world.
GREGORY: Right.
MURPHY: So these are bad guys of no good faith. How do you engage with them if obviously they don't mean much of what they say?
GREGORY: Well, and one of the things that they would say, what the president's been saying is look, the--sort of the nicer we are, the more we promise engagement, the more isolated they become. They do--they have suffered some setbacks along the way. The more belligerent Ahmadinejad is is a sign of more isolation. And if they're more isolated maybe they're easy to deal with, because they don't have friends in, in China, or they don't have friends in Russia, necessarily.
SCARBOROUGH: Right. Well, they...
MURPHY: True. But their faith is always...
SCARBOROUGH: Yeah.
MMURPHY: ...a part of negotiations, and these guys are the anti-good faith. I think we--there has to be some condemnation now, because we are on the side of the Iranian people that are trying to move forward. We can't be on the side of this regime.
SCARBOROUGH: And how fascinating as I sat there listening to him talk about this, looking at the election results. You know, the law of unintended consequences came in again. I suspect that Cairo speech really scared the grand ayatollahs in Iran. If they were going to fix an election...
GREGORY: Mm-hmm.
SCARBOROUGH: ...this was a time to fix it, because the last thing they wanted to do was Barack Obama to take credit for reformers winning in Iran, like they already have in Lebanon. And, and by the way, in the short-term that's bad news for us. I think in the long-term, though...
MGREGORY: Right.
SCARBOROUGH: ...if ayatollahs are seen stealing an election as a result from what Barack Obama did in Cairo, I actually think that's a positive for the United States and Iran in the long run.
