The panel on Morning Joe, Tuesday, was understandably befuddled by revelations that former White House National Security Adviser Susan Rice requested the unmasking of names of Trump transition officials.

Hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski began by playing a clip of Rice on PBS denying claims made by House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes that Trump and his team were monitored.

“I know nothing about this,” said Rice. “I was surprised to see reports from Chairman Nunes.”

“We’re going to have an investigation of this,” said show mainstay David Ignatius. “We’ll begin to dig and learn what the facts were. What was the context of these unmasking requests.”

Scarborough, who has lately become a fierce Trump critic, trained his fire on Rice, arguing that the revelations from Bloomberg reporter Eli Lake deserved to be explored.

The government is “doing exactly what civil libertarians are concerned about the government doing,” said Scarborough.”What is Susan Rice unmasking names for and spreading them across the government, wouldn’t that be the job of [James] Comey or the Attorney General.”

Scarborough then accused The New York Times of downplaying the story, even brandishing a physical copy of the paper on air.

“Why isn’t it in the newspaper of record here?” asked Scarborough. “We’ve got Bill O’Reilly on the front page but we don’t have NSC and Susan Rice?”

“That’s a big story,” Brzezinski interjected.

“I’m not saying it’s not a big story,” Scarborough responded. “I would say that a lot of people would think that this, too, is a big story, not on the front page of The New York Times.”

“It’s on A16 in my hard copy,” offered Mark Halperin.

Watch above.

[image via screengrab]

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