Pam Key at Breitbart noted that MSNBC contributor Claire McCaskill toed the usual line of the Media-Democrat Complex on Wednesday’s Morning Joe, claiming that Barack Obama’s administration did not have even “a hint of corruption during eight years.”

The former Democratic senator from Missouri – defeated by Sen. Josh Hawley in 2018 – declared that in the fall, there will be “three metrics that this president is deathly afraid of, to use an unfortunate phrase.” First, the September and October unemployment numbers, because “the complicated and byzantine stimulus that’s been put forward has not eased unemployment.” Then there’s the daily body count from the coronavirus, because “There’s no way there will be a vaccine before September or October.” Obama and his scandals was the third metric, and Trump was going to “lie” and claim he actually had scandals.

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McCASKILL: So what is the president’s playbook? Looking down that tunnel, his playbook is to go to what worked for him in 2016 and is to lie about his opponent. And what that thing was with the senators —I’ve got to get this in —what that thing was with the senators yesterday, he went to that lunch to tell them to lie for him. “You’ve got to lie about Barack Obama and Joe Biden. You’ve got to turn them into something they are not. You got to make them criminals.”

He wants to get to the point where they’re chanting “Lock them up” at his rallies about Obama and Biden, who have done nothing illegal. Nothing, nothing, not even close! Not a hint of corruption during eight years of Barack Obama. No wholesale firing of inspector generals. So I really think it’s startling that he’s so panicked that he felt the need to go down there to shore up the Republicans, you guys got to get tougher and lie better because that’s essentially what his message was yesterday.”

In political expression, there’s a great matter of degree between a politician having “no hint of corruption” and being labeled a “criminal.” The media routinely touted the Obama administration as “largely scandal-free,” which is obviously false. The scandals that Team Trump may focus on do echo 2016. What were they doing to save Hillary Clinton from any legal trouble from using a private email server as Secretary of State and destroying evidence about it? What were they doing to unmask Trump officials and set up the false charge of collusion with the Russian goverment? 

The media can be expected to dismiss every “hint of corruption” the Republicans will keep discussing. So it’s not much of a change of tone between McCaskill’s old job and her new one.