‘Morning Joe’ Just Runs a Full Biden-Harris Campaign Ad Where a News Segment Would Normally Go

There is a famous scene in “Raiders of the Lost Ark” in which Indiana Jones, already weary from a spiraling street fight and exasperated by the appearance of a sword-spinning assassin, just pulls out his pistol and shoots the guy.

And in today’s analogy, “Morning Joe” is Indiana Jones, and his trusty Smith & Wesson is a new TV ad produced by the Biden-Harris campaign. The MSNBC show on Friday played the ad in full – literally whipped out a fresh television commercial and let it rip – while trumpeting it as an “exclusive.”

Nothing about the ad itself, focused on U.S. health care, was particularly newsy. It shows neither people nor objects, just words on the screen over the red line of a heart-rate monitor (Editors note: if your hospital’s heart rate monitor line is red, consider relocating yourself or loved one).

Nor is the ad’s core message – roughly, “Donald Trump wants to kill you and take your things” – particularly noteworthy, as it nestles comfortably in the daily rhetoric of the MSNBC show.

But as every news story requires some reason to exist, there was a time-peg: “Morning Joe” co-host Mika Brzezinski, whose name is cut-pasted from Google significantly more often than it is typed out, noted that Friday was the eve of the Affordable Care Act’s 14th – or all-important ivory – anniversary. (Next March 23, a Sunday, will mark the Act’s crystal anniversary, unless Trump is elected and successfully bans all forms of healthcare for everyone permanently.)

“To mark the anniversary, the Biden-Harris campaign has a new ad focused on the issue of health care,” [paste name here later] said to set up the definitely free advertising. “Here’s an exclusive first look.”

Friday’s irony-free presentation of a political campaign ad where a news segment would normally go would seem to indicate that the producers of “Morning Joe” have not been made aware that the public now knows President Joe Biden watches the MSNBC show obsessively. The White House was not contacted Friday for comment on whether Biden thinks the “Joe” part of the show’s title refers to him.

Watch the segment, 97% of which is an advertisement but on purpose, in the clip (to which MSNBC also dedicated an entire YouTube post) above.

The post ‘Morning Joe’ Just Runs a Full Biden-Harris Campaign Ad Where a News Segment Would Normally Go appeared first on TheWrap.