Political Wire

Scarborough Calls McConnell a ‘Snowflake’

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Joe Scarborough ripped Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) on Morning Joe for referring to protesters of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation as “angry mobs,” after attendees of President Trump’s campaign rally last night chanted “lock her up” in reference to Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA).

Said Scarborough: “Now the president of the U.S. is holding rallies where angry mobs of people are demanding to lock up a U.S. senator because they disagree with her politics. I guess due process and keeping your head, that was in vogue for Republicans last week. Mitch McConnell must be shocked at the angry mobs.”

He added: “He was a snowflake just a couple days ago, just melting on national television because of all the angry mobs. I wonder what Mitch thinks again about people talking about locking up one of his colleagues… because they disagree with her politically. That’s an angry mob, right?”

Trump Won’t Be Invited to Their Wedding

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New York magazine has a good profile of Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski:

Sources close to Trump told me he’s angered by what he perceives to be the phoniness of Scarborough and Brzezinski, the very sort of Washington bullshit he campaigned against in the first place: To his face, and to other members of his administration, they’re friendly; to the cameras, it’s a different story. And those sources in the White House believe the shift in tone on Morning Joe reflects a combination of frustration at being shut out of Trump’s orbit and simple jealousy — Scarborough has always been thought to have presidential aspirations. “He wanted to be president, and he’s not. And, of all people, Donald Trump is. This is crazy,” a second senior White House official said. “They lost access in month two, month one, of a White House where part of their stock-in-trade was ‘Donald this’ and ‘Donald that’ and ‘The president told me this’ and ‘People close to the president told me that.’ It became very obvious around here who they talked to every day, and it wasn’t the president.”

Scarborough and Brzezinski said the White House is misrepresenting their motivations, though they didn’t rule out that Scarborough might be interested in running for president in the future.

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Kushner Delivered Threat to Scarborough

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New York Magazine reports that Joe Scarborough’s main point of contact in the White House about a threatened National Enquirer story was Jared Kushner. It was Kushner who told Scarborough that he’d have to personally apologize to Trump in order to have the story spiked.

An NBC News spokesman told CNN that Scarborough kept several network executives apprised of the alleged threats “contemporaneously.”

Brzezinski and Scarborough Respond to Trump

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“Morning Joe” hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzenzski blast President Trump in an op-ed in the Washington Post for his Twitter rant about them:

The president’s unhealthy obsession with our show has been in the public record for months, and we are seldom surprised by his posting nasty tweets about us. During the campaign, the Republican nominee called Mika “neurotic” and promised to attack us personally after the campaign ended. This year, top White House staff members warned that the National Enquirer was planning to publish a negative article about us unless we begged the president to have the story spiked. We ignored their desperate pleas.

The president’s unhealthy obsession with “Morning Joe” does not serve the best interests of either his mental state or the country he runs. Despite his constant claims that he no longer watches the show, the president’s closest advisers tell us otherwise. That is unfortunate. We believe it would be better for America and the rest of the world if he would keep his 60-inch-plus flat-screen TV tuned to “Fox & Friends.”

They conclude:

More significant is Mr. Trump’s continued mistreatment of women. It is disturbing that the president of the United States keeps up his unrelenting assault on women. From his menstruation musings about Megyn Kelly, to his fat-shaming treatment of a former Miss Universe, to his braggadocio claims about grabbing women’s genitalia, the 45th president is setting the poorest of standards for our children.

Quote of the Day

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“You talk to these jackasses behind closed doors and you go ‘what are you doing’ and they go ‘we’ve got to get to the tax bill so we’ve got to do this first.'”

— “Morning Joe” host Joe Scarborough, quoted by The Week, marveling at the fact GOP lawmakers were willing to change “one-sixth of the economy so we can get to a tax bill.”

Scarborough Tries to Repair Relations with Trump

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Last week, Joe Scarborough and his “Morning Joe” co-host, Mika Brzezinski, visited Donald Trump at Trump Tower to rekindle a once-rosy relationship that has turned bitter and adversarial, sources with knowledge of the meeting told CNNMoney.

The three also discussed the possibility of conducting an interview for “Morning Joe,” though nothing was decided or finalized.

GOP Has Destroyed Its Brand

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Joe Scarborough said the Republican Party has “shattered its brand,” Politico reports.

Said Scarborough: “Can we just stop for one minute and talk about how much the Republican Party has shattered its brand by comparing Democratic debates,” noting that the Democratic contests have been heavily focused on policy issues.

Republican debates, however, “focus on the size of hands, personal insults, the size of — suggestions about the size of body parts that we won’t even mention on this morning news show… The contrast is absolutely staggering, and as a Republican, I’ve got to tell you it’s extraordinarily depressing.”

Taegan Goddard

Taegan Goddard

Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire -- which for more than two decades has been one of the nation's most influential political news sites.

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