It was obviously a tough pill -- or shall we say nut -- for Joe Scarborough to swallow. On Wednesday's Morning Joe, the Trump hater par excellence grudgingly admitted that as president, Donald Trump got it right when he chided Angela Merkel over Germany's dependence on Russian oil.
Although Scarborough spoke of "oil," Trump's key concern was Merkel's agreeing to the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, bringing Russian gas, not oil. Here's a 2018 Reuters article quoting Trump saying the gas pipeline deal made Germany "a captive to Russia."
But before bringing himself to praise Trump, Scarborough predictably poured bile on him, calling Trump's treatment of Putin, "contemptible, utterly contemptible."
Scarborough—always eager to play the good ol', down-home country boy -- quoted one of his mother's folksy sayings for purposes of praising Trump:
"One more thing we have to bring up, as contemptible, and I say utterly contemptible, as Donald Trump has been toward Vladimir Putin from the very beginning, we do remember him giving Angela Merkel hell about that pipeline and giving her hell about Germany's dependence on Russian oil [gas.] As my mom used to say, even a squirrel can find a nut every once in a while. That was the nut he found. He got one thing right."
David Ignatius of the Washington Post noted that Trump was also right in pressing Europe to increase its defense spending. That obliged Scarborough to add, "so the blind squirrel found two nuts."
On Morning Joe, Joe Scarborough grudgingly admitting that the "utterly contemptible" Donald Trump was right in chiding Angela Merkel over its dependence on Russian energy was sponsored in part by Volvo, Google, Amazon, Priceline, and BMW.
Here's the transcript:
Morning Joe
3/9/21
6:39 am ETDAVID IGNATIUS: I don't think Europe's going to be the same after Putin's invasion. I think there are going to be so many changes: politically, militarily, in terms of energy dependence.
. . .
JOE SCARBOROUGH: And by the way, one more thing we have to bring up. As contemptible, and I say utterly contemptible, as Donald Trump has been towards Vladimir Putin from the very beginning, we do remember him giving Angela Merkel hell about that pipeline, and giving her hell about Germany's dependence on Russian oil.
IGNATIUS: And not paying for NATO, and not paying for NATO, either.
SCARBOROUGH: As my mom used to say, even a blind squirrel can find a nut every once in a while [Mika Brzezinski laughs uproariously.] That was the nut he found. He got one thing right. He, remember him just poking the Germans?
IGNATIUS: And he said to Europe: you need to spend more ondefense. He was right about that, too.
SCARBOROUGH: So the blind squirrel found two nuts.
