"Morning Joe" host Joe Scarborough on Monday scolded the national media for covering each other at Saturday night's
White House Correspondents Dinner rather than the violent protests going on 40 miles away, making his comments just after talking about everyone having a great time.
"While that senseless event was going on ... every news organization decided to stay on what is affectionately called the 'nerd prom' in Washington, D.C.,"
Scarborough said on his show.
"They decided to stay on the news-gatherers themselves talking to other news-gatherers, instead of actually going to where the big story of the weekend was, 40 miles up the road. They should have cut in on those riots," he said.
Both Scarborough and his "Morning Joe" co-host Mika Brzezinski attended Saturday nights' "nerd fest," according to several other media outlets covering the festivities, and bantered about the event some on their show Monday.
On Saturday, protests in Baltimore against police in connection with the death of Freddie Gray, 25, turned violent. Gray died after falling into a coma an hour after being arrested on April 12.
Washington Post columnist Jonathan Capehart, on the "Morning Joe" show panel, agreed with Scarborough, noting that he saw on Twitter that baseball fans were kept inside the Camden Yards baseball stadium because of the rioting.
"I thought it was strange," Capehart said,
reports The Wrap.
In all,
34 protesters were arrested and six officers suffered minor injuries, and police said extra officers would be deployed throughout the city over the weekend.
The protesters marched from City Hall to the baseball stadium, and police ordered fans to stay inside until an intersection outside the venue could be cleared.
Meanwhile, a smaller "splinter group" vandalized and looted in other parts of town, and at one point, a protester tossed a flaming metal garbage can toward a line of police officers in riot gear as they tried to push back the crowd.
Watch the video here.
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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