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Joe Scarborough hammered conservative media on Tuesday's "Morning Joe," alleging that its news coverage is one reason that Republicans have lost the black vote.
"Why is it that we Republicans, certain elements of our party, seem to go out of their way to inflame minority voters?" Scarborough asked. "Why is it that I know I can count on conservative outlets to have a one-sided view and to talk about how a dead boy had it coming and he was in -- on marijuana, he was on pot and he was this, he was that and the other, a young young man."
"I would like in my lifetime for the Republican party to get more than 6% of the African-American vote," he said.
"Republicans used to get huge chunks of the African-American vote and they don't," the Washington Post's Eugene Robinson replied.
Former RNC chairman Michael Steele chimed in, saying that it will take more than "politically correct" comments about Trayvon Martin in order to get more support from blacks. Robinson added that the overwhelming white majority in the party gives right-wing outlets even more reason to "[stoke] these flames."
"I have a suggestion," Scarborough said. "Just because Al Sharpton is doing something and you hate Al Sharpton, doesn’t mean you help your party or your cause by going in the complete opposite direction. Maybe sometimes discretion is the better part of valor. Maybe sometimes conservative outlets should sit back and not purposefully antagonize African Americans."
Scarborough's comments expanded on his latest column for Politico, which addressed the George Zimmerman verdict announced Saturday. In it, he wrote that "conservative commentators were offensive in their reflexive defense of Zimmerman, as well as their efforts to attack the integrity of a dead black teenager."
The MSNBC host has criticized conservative media outlets before. In December, he accused conservative media of "destroying" the Republican party, and before that, he said that
said that GOP donors were "lied to" by conservative media during the 2012 election.
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