JOE SCARBOROUGH (CO-HOST): Some of these things happened 30 years ago, and they're all falling days before the election. Is that a coincidence do you think?
WILLIE GEIST (CO-HOST): Yeah, that's why I say it may have happened anyway. I mean this is obviously an oppo drop. But I do think [Donald Trump's] declaration at that debate that he had not done [sexual assault] opened the floodgates.
MARK HALPERIN: Willie, I totally disagree.
GEIST: Really?
HALPERIN: I don't think you can call it “an oppo drop.” I think the Times makes pretty clear, as you just suggested, that a lot of the women who have coming forward now are coming forward in reaction to what he said to Anderson Cooper. An oppo drop suggests this is being coordinated by the Clinton campaign. I'm always skeptical when stuff comes up, as all reporters should be, and voters --
SCARBOROUGH: I think it's good to be skeptical when you have stories that are 30 years old that come out days before an election. So, I think, Mark, that's actually a very good instinct on your part.
HALPERIN: I mean we should be skeptical and question the timing, but in this case --
SCARBOROUGH: Not skeptical of the stories. I'm not skeptical at all of the stories. Skeptical of the timing, that all of this has dropped over the past five days. Days out from an election, because doesn't it seem that a more appropriate time to drop these stories might have been after the first Republican debate when the front and center issue was how badly Donald Trump treats women? Megyn Kelly's first question in the first Republican debate was how horrifically Donald Trump treats women. Now, if this had happened to me 30 years ago, I would say, “This would be a really good time for me to come forward.” Right? Right? Instead of now.
[...]
What about what he said to Megyn Kelly? Again, I'm just wondering, what was the trigger here?
HALPERIN: The Megyn Kelly questions were about things he said, insulting things he's said --
SCARBOROUGH: But also treating women badly. This has been a recurring theme in media coverage for a year and a half, that Donald Trump is a misogynist. By the way, you look at every Huffington Post story that they ever write about Donald Trump, at the bottom, they say, “He is a misogynist.” It seems to me -- I don't think there's anything special about what he said to Anderson Cooper versus what everybody's been accusing him of over the past year and a half, that it dropped days before the campaign in October.
