Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough, who wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post three years ago saying conservatives who opposed Trump sounded like the “arrogant and unmoored left-wing pundits let loose on MSNBC during the Bush years,” completely flipped his view Tuesday morning as he trashed the people who support President Trump as “a shrinking electorate.”
The MSNBC morning show panel included New York Times columnist Bret Stephens and focused on his recent op-ed entitled “How Trump Wins Next Year,” which argued that the rising economy and spread of right-wing populism around the world bodes well for the President in his re-election bid next year. Stephens noted that “this article is not a wish, it’s a warning.”
Scarborough then jumped in and expressed his hope that the huge turnout of Democratic voters “not lulled to sleep by Donald Trump’s lies” in the 2018 Midterms will transfer over to 2020:
I think America has been awakened to the dangers of this short-term thinking. I think conservatives, I think highly educated women in suburbs, they are gone from the Trump Republican Party forever. So I think that we need to take Bret's warning, it is a global trend. I am hopeful though, as Gene said, nobody will be lulled to sleep in 2020 by Donald Trump’s lies and misinformation.
After co-host Mika Brzezinski briefly put down her own insult of Republicans as people who “don’t care what he (Trump) does,” Scarborough went even further. He dismissed the millions of Americans who voted for President Trump in 2016 and will again in 2020 as a “shrinking electorate” of white people:
By the way, Mika, a lot of those people that still say that, they are white. They are white. They aren't black voters who saw Charlottesville and other things that Donald Trump has done. Who called leaders of all black countries in the Caribbean and Africa, said they were s-hole countries cause they were not white countries. If you are a woman, you see one misogynistic statement and action after another. White males may still be saying that, but it is a shrinking electorate for Donald J. Trump.
First of all, there is no evidence to support that contention. Trump outperformed Mitt Romney and John McCain with the African-American and Hispanic vote in 2016, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis was given a boost by black women in his 2018 gubernatorial race, and Georgia Governor Brian Kemp got a boost from African American men in his election. Second of all, if Morning Joe really believes that the Republican electorate is all “white people,” it is pretty obvious that he rarely exits his MSNBC echo chamber.
The full transcript is below. Click “expand” to read more.
Morning Joe
05/28/2019
7:24 A.M. Eastern
JOE SCARBOROUGH: I think one of the most remarkable things as far as voting trends go is that black women in Central Alabama, not in an off year election, right, in a special election, came out and voted against the Republican candidate in numbers that even exceeded those for Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012. You look at what women did across America in Northern Virginia, Southern California, going out, standing in line, standing in the rain, to vote against Trump supporters in Congress. I think America has been awakened to the dangers of this short-term thinking. I think conservatives, I think highly educated women in suburbs, they are gone from the Trump Republican Party forever. So I think that we need to take Bret's warning, it is a global trend. I am hopeful though, as Gene said, nobody will be lulled to sleep in 2020 by Donald Trump’s lies and misinformation.
MIKA BRZEZINSKI: I hope not. I will say, that traveling and talking to people, I'm still surprised at how many people are just so mad at Washington and they don't care. And they plan on voting for him. They don't care what he does. They just are mad at Washington. It is still there. Bret Stephens, thank you.
JOE SCARBOROUGH: By the way, Mika, a lot of those people that still say that, they are white. They are white. They aren't black voters who saw Charlottesville and other things that Donald Trump has done. Who called leaders of all black countries in the Caribbean and Africa, said they were s-hole countries cause they were not white countries. If you are a woman, you see one misogynistic statement and action after another. White males may still be saying that, but it is a shrinking electorate for Donald J. Trump.
