On Wednesday, Joe Scarborough, co-host of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” attacked President Trump, predicting “nobody will be lulled to sleep in 2020 by Donald Trump’s lies and misinformation,” and warning that white voters in the United States are a “shrinking electorate.”
New York Times columnist Bret Stephens was a guest on the show, where the show discussed his recent op-ed “How Trump Wins Next Year,” in which Stephens argued that the victories of nationalists around the world in recent elections were indicators of “Trumpism.” Stephens had written:
I suspect Trump will be re-elected next year barring an economic meltdown or foreign-policy shock. You may think (as I often do) that the administration is a daily carnival of shame. You may also think that conservatives are even guiltier than liberals and progressives of them-before-us politics: the 1-percenters before the 99 percent; the big corporations before the little guy, and so on.
But the left has the deeper problem. That’s partly because it self-consciously approaches politics as a struggle against selfishness, and partly because it has invested itself so deeply, and increasingly inflexibly, on issues such as climate change or immigration. Whatever else might be said about this, it’s a recipe for nonstop political defeat leavened only by a sensation of moral superiority.
Scarborough stated (transcript from Newsbusters)
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.
Co-host Mika Brzezinski interjected, “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.”
Scarborough then vented his anger at whites: “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.”
There was a time when Scarborough was a fan of Trump; CNN reported in February 2016 that even the brass at MSNBC were concerned about Scarborough’s closeness to Trump. CNN wrote:
… at NBCUniversal’s headquarters at 30 Rockefeller Center, Scarborough’s relationship with the Republican presidential frontrunner has become a subject of frustration among staff, and an increasingly problematic issue for the network’s top brass. In background discussions, NBC News and MSNBC journalists, reporters and staffers said there was widespread discomfort at the network over Scarborough’s friendship with Trump and his increasingly favorable coverage of the candidate. “People don’t like that Joe is promoting Trump,” one MSNBC insider said. Others described Scarborough’s admiration for Trump as “over the top” and “unseemly.”
Video below: