In castigating the Trump administration for its rhetoric on the ICE shootings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, Morning Joe spoke of “lie, lies, or lying” 21 times in the show’s first 15 minutes. DHS Secretary Kristi Noem was singled out for particular opprobrium.

And while Mika Brzezinski, Jonathan Lemire, and Willie Geist also got into the action, it was Joe Scarborough who carried the bulk of the “lying” load.

If there’s one person we don’t need to hear pontificating about lying, it’s Joe Scarborough. Joe’s the guy who—just three months before Joe Biden’s candidacy-ending debate meltdown—looked into the camera and angrily declared that the current Biden was “the best ever . . . and f-you if you don’t believe it.”

You might say that Scarborough’s reputation for veracity is not precisely pristine!

The media in general have criticized Noem for claiming Pretti was “brandishing” a handgun, which doesn’t match videos of the shooting. He had a cell phone in his hand. Border Patrol chief Greg Bovino had said that Pretti “wanted to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement,” and that Noem was “100% correct” in alleging that Pretti had been “brandishing” a gun.

But Scarborough said everything DHS said about Renee Good was “lies,” as they hit every ICE-hating take.

On Good, Morning Joe insisted on calling her the “victim,” villainizing ICE, while Mika Brzezinski insisted that the fact that ICE agent Jonathan Ross was previously dragged by a car and required 33 stitches in his leg wasn’t sympathetic, it was proof he was “trigger happy” and shouldn’t have been in the field. 

Later, Scarborough compared the ICE agents in Minnesota to Putin’s Russia, even the Soviet Union: “This looks like something that you would expect in Russia. That protesters—this is happening to protesters, not suspected murderers or rapists. This is what America looks like in 2025 for protesters.”

Suffice it to say that this isn’t the Best Scarborough Ever. When they lament the deaths of Americans, we can recall how many times they felt pain for the families of Laken Riley, Rachel Morin, or Jocelyn Nungaray. That wasn’t 21 times in 15 minutes. 

Here’s the transcript.

MS NOW
Morning Joe
1/27/26
6:06 am ET

JOE SCARBOROUGH: The repeated lies . . . And then Kristi Noem, going back to Renee Good, lying through her teeth . . . “I’m not mad.” And then she turns and tries to leave. They lie about her and immediately Kristi Noem, without knowing any of the facts, lies through her teeth. It happened again here with Alex Pretti. The same exact thing happened. DHS lying through their teeth . . .  All the lies that Kristi Noem has been telling . . . It’s the lies that seem to really have gotten a lot of these Republicans saying, no, no, what she’s saying here is a lie. What she said about Renee Good, all lies. What she said about Alex Pretti, all lies. They lied, lied, lied through their teeth . . . They’re lying to the American people. They’re lying to our constituents. DHS is lying nonstop. 

JONATHAN LEMIRE: Yeah, lies from Secretary Noem, from DHS staff, from over the weekend, Stephen Miller, suggesting that Mr. Pretti was an assassin, intent to kill federal agents. A lie, mind you, on social media that was then amplified by the Vice President of the United States.  And there were Republicans who were uneasy about some of the lies they heard. 

. . . 

WILLIE GEIST: And so much of the problem stems from Kristi Noem’s immediate lies about what happened in both of these cases. 

MIKA BRZEZINSKI: These two killings were jarring. US citizens. 

SCARBOROUGH: Americans. 

MIKA: And then the lies that followed were so fast and so furious that I think it was chilling universally.