WATCH: Joe Scarborough Says He ‘Screwed Up’ Covering Hillary Emails in 2016 But Still Says Was ‘Legitimate’ Story

Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough admitted he and his show “screwed up” with their coverage of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s emails in 2016, but maintained that and other stories about her were “legitimate.”

During a Washington Post Live interview with Scarborough, David Ignatius asked about the amount of airtime then-candidate Donald Trump received from Morning Joe during the 2016 campaign, and said “As you look back, is there anything you’d do differently in terms of the kind of visibility that he had on your show, and on TV generally?”

Scarborough delivered a lengthy response that focused on the fact that he offered airtime to all of the candidates, and ticked through some of his own strong criticisms of Trump.

But he circled back after Ignatius’ next question, telling the interviewer “Let me go back really quickly to your last question and tell you where I think we screwed up.”

“I do look back and look at the attention that we paid to the Hillary Clinton emails, which I thought, that was very legitimate at the time, I thought the Clinton Foundation, looking into the Clinton Foundation and how the Clintons cashed in on public service, that was a legitimate question to ask, Hillary Clinton getting paid as much as she did by Goldman Sachs to give a speech, or getting paid by state colleges $250,000, I think all of that was legitimate,” Scarborough said.

“But obviously, looking back on it, I think that we on Morning Joe, and I think other people in the media, paid way too much attention to that, especially if you look at what we’ve been through over the past four five years,” he added.

Watch the clip above via Washington Post Live.

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