Scarborough Defends Kamala Not Doing a Fox News Debate: ‘They All Deliberately Mispronounce Her Name!’

BRZEZINSKI: “So Donald Trump is backing out of the ABC News debate against Vice President Kamala Harris and is instead proposing another debate on his terms. Trump said he won’t participate in the September 10th debate because President Biden will no longer be his opponent after he dropped out of the race. Trump took to Truth Social to declare he would only show up to a September 4th Fox News debate in Pennsylvania with a full arena audience, adding in a follow-up post that he picked the new date strategically as early voting begins September 6th. Harris responded on X writing, ‘It’s interesting how any time any place becomes one specific time, one specific safe space. I’ll be there on September 10th like he agreed to. I hope to see him there.’ And you know, if he’s not there, she can have a national audience for an hour and talk about what —“
SCARBOROUGH: “Yeah.”
BRZEZINSKI: “— she might do when she becomes president of the United States of America.”
SCARBOROUGH: “Yeah, yeah. Jonathan Lemire, they already decided, the campaign’s decided where they’re going to meet. He obviously is now proposing something that is no more likely for Kamala Harris to attend than — than him attending something on MSNBC in prime time. It’s just — it’s just not going to happen, which means he’s trying to figure out a way to get out of this debate gracefully and just not going to be able to do it.”
LEMIRE: “No. And let’s recall here that Trump is arguing the reason why that September date shouldn’t be valid anymore is that the plan was for him to debate Joe Biden. But if you actually read the contract, the negotiation, the settlement, the agreement about this debate, Joe Biden’s name is not in there. It’s simply the Republican nominee versus Democratic nominee. So that is what the Trump camp is trying to do. He’s also alleged bias against some of the ABC anchors, which is nonsense. And we’ve now heard from the vice president’s campaign saying, look, we’re not going to change the plan. We’ll be there on September 10th. And there’ve been some Democrats who are saying, let’s be clear that she shouldn’t debate on Fox. Fox, which had to pay $787 million as part of a 2020 Big Lie-related settlement that still pushes on truths —“
SCARBOROUGH: “Hey, hey — and Jonathan — and Jonathan, not only that, again, and this is — this is serious — they — they all deliberately mispronounce her name, Ka-MA-la.”
LEMIRE: “Yeah.”
SCARBOROUGH: “Repeatedly. All the hosts. KA-mala, KA-mala, KA-mala. I mean —“
BRZEZINSKI: “I mean, some of them don’t do it on purpose, but there’s definitely like a kind of thing they’re doing there to make —“
SCARBOROUGH: “Yeah.”
BRZEZINSKI: “— even her name seem different of whatever.”
SCARBOROUGH: “And it’d be like if MSNBC hosts said ‘J.D. VEENCE’ and would ‘J.D. VEENCE’ want to go on a network that deliberately mispronounced —“
BRZEZINSKI: “Shady J.D..”
SCARBOROUGH: “— ‘J.D. VEENCE’s’ name. KA-mala. Here work with me, it’s Ka-MA-la.”
BRZEZINSKI: “Yeah.”
LEMIRE: “Yeah. The sentence would be — the setting would be —“
SCARBOROUGH: “Ka-MA-la. Go ahead.”
LEMIRE: “— the setting would be rigged. The setting would be rigged. To your point —“
SCARBOROUGH: “Right.”
LEMIRE: “— why — why would she go to Fox, which is still putting forth these bad-faith arguments? I’ve talked to people in both campaigns who believe eventually a deal will be reached, probably on that ABC date. Maybe Trump will negotiate some changes. Well, maybe this time we will have a crowd as opposed to last time. Because recall, the Biden team did kind of get what they wanted in terms of format. It ended up not working out —“
BRZEZINSKI: “Yeah.”
LEMIRE: “— for the president. So there — there’s some room here for negotiation. But I do think, especially if you’re Trump, my guess would be he will do this debate eventually for two reasons. One, I don’t think he could stand being called a coward if he actually does duck the debate with the vice president. But secondly, if momentum continues this direction and Harris gets a boost from her running mate pick, gets a boost from a strong convention a couple of weeks from now, and we’ve heard from Karl Rove at the very top of the show, if she’s got momentum and got a lead, well, Trump’s going to need — he’s the one who’s going to need the debate in an effort to try to change the narrative of the race.”
BRZEZINSKI: “Yeah, that would be an opportunity. And he does bulldoze people and he doesn’t have boundaries of the truth. So a debate is where he could make a big impact if he wanted to.”