Joe Scarborough is deeply concerned about President Trump’s Twitter habits. On Tuesday, the Morning Joe host attempted to take the President to task by reciting a slew of negative words that had appeared in his tweets over the previous 24 hours, after which he suffered a full-scale meltdown over Trump’s most recent tweet storm.
Evidently hurting for new material, the show had begun the segment by running a clip from 2015 of then-candidate Trump claiming he had “the best words.” Looking very pleased with himself, Scarborough responded, “Oh, well here’s a sampling of some of the President's best words from his Twitter feed over the past 24 hours.” A graphic appeared on screen listing words such as “drugs,” “crime,” and “sick,” which Scarborough read aloud.
It’s anyone’s guess what this petty “study” was intended to prove, or how any of this constituted news.
“Oh, my God,” Scarborough gasped as he finished the list. “I feel so inadequate that I went to the University of Alabama instead of Penn.” Dripping with sarcasm, he continued:
Because after all, he tells us what a great degree he got from Wharton. And I know this morning, everybody at Wharton is so proud that that man came from their institution and learned such big, wonderful words as those. This guy is – he's going – he's just completely out of control.
Scarborough attempted to formulate a question for fellow panelist and MSNBC contributor John Heilemann, but he struggled to stay on-topic. He revisited the President’s weekend tweets about the Central American caravan headed for the U.S., whose existence he had denied the day before. He once again downplayed the story and described it as “a caravan in his mind.” Perhaps sensing that at least part of his job description entailed reporting the facts, he lamely offered, “I think there actually is a caravan somewhere in Central America, or maybe moving up to Mexico,” then resumed mocking the President’s concerns. “You can take the tweet down. I don’t want to see the tweet anymore,” he ranted.
Scarborough’s panic then took on a broader scope. He went on a meandering monologue about Trump’s attacks on Amazon and The Washington Post, and ended with the remark, “My God, the Republicans on Capitol Hill are going to have a political bloodbath on their hands this fall, and get wiped out at the ballot box. And yet they say nothing.”
Having finished his tirade, he stared expectantly at a bemused John Heilemann, who appeared unsure of how to respond – or what he was even supposed to be responding to. Heilemann finally replied with a sarcastic, “Yeah!” and the panel burst into laughter.
See below for a partial transcript of the segment:
MSNBC’s Morning Joe
04/03/2018
6:56 – 7:02 a.m. Eastern
6:56 – 6:58 a.m.
DONALD TRUMP: I went to an Ivy League school. I'm very highly educated. I know words. I have the best words. But there's no better word than stupid.JOE SCARBOROUGH: Oh, well you know, here’s a sampling of some of the President's best words from his Twitter feed over the past 24 hours: Stolen, drugs, weak, fake, dead, crime, pathetic, dishonest, biased, joke, fools, embarrassment, ridiculous, wasted, disgraceful, sick. Oh, my God. I feel so inadequate that I went to the University of Alabama instead of Penn. Because after all, he tells us what a great degree he got from Wharton. And I know this morning, everybody at Wharton is so proud that that man came from their institution and learned such big, wonderful words as those. This guy is – he's going – he's just completely out of control. And conservatives, of course, on Capitol Hill are doing nothing about it.
(...)
6:59 – 7:02 a.m.
JOE SCARBOROUGH: John Heilemann, I will continue the list with you. There's this, like, caravan. There’s this caravan, a caravan in his mind – I think there actually is a caravan somewhere in Central America, or maybe moving up to Mexico and, Buzzfeed I think has a reporter on it. So, there's caravan. A big caravan of people. A big – there is a, there's – John Heilemann, there are a couple of vehicles from people who would like to come to the United States, and Donald Trump has been tweeting about this now for four or five days. You can take the tweet down. I don't want to see the tweet anymore. He's been tweeting about this for four or five days, only because Fox News is covering it. And while he’s doing that, he’s attacking the Washington Post, a newspaper that’s investigating all of his misdeeds. He’s slashing and burning Amazon, because he’s angry because guess what they’re doing. They’re using the United States Post Office. A lot of people in 2018 are not using the United States Post Office. But he is. He’s hurting retirees with trade wars. Their retirement accounts are going down. I mean, it’s just absolute chaos, and again, it seems to be one self-inflicted wound after another. And yes, Donald Trump’s approval ratings are going to go down, but my God, the Republicans on Capitol Hill are going to have a political bloodbath on their hands this fall, and get wiped out at the ballot box. And yet they say nothing.JOHN HEILEMANN: Yeah!
[Laughter]
SCARBOROUGH: Thank you so much, John Heilemann.
HEILEMANN: I mean, there’s so much there to go with, Joe. I just, I don’t really know exactly where to proceed on that basis. I liked the part of the tweet where he referred to the – and again, I always love when he uses punctuation In these tweets – the “Weak Laws” thing in quotes, our “Weak Laws” Border. You know, that’s almost as crazy to me as the caravan thing. And of course, there’s a chance that the caravan – a high degree of probability that the caravan reference comes from Fox and Friends. There’s also the possibility he’s been listening to a lot of Van Morrison over the weekend and has been singing “Caravan” with his family down at Mar a Lago. I don’t know.
