MSNBC “Morning Joe” host Joe Scarborough offered Republican front-runner Donald Trump some unexpected advice.
He said on his show Friday that Trump should be less available to the news media.
“He needs to be quiet. He needs to stop doing interviews,” said Scarborough, a former GOP congressman.
Trump found himself in yet another controversy this week after he said in a town hall-style interview that, if abortion were banned, women who get them would have to receive “some form of punishment.”
The campaign backpedaled in a statement shortly after the comments were aired on TV, asserting that Trump believes a doctor who performs abortions, and not women who receive them, would be subject to punishment.
“This vaudeville routine that he has been doing,” Scarborough said, “This riffing routine that he has been doing; this late-night comic routine that he has been doing, free form, it’s over, it doesn’t work anymore.”
He said that Trump could continue to be “highly entertaining” with his free-wheeling mega-rallies and seemingly off-the-cuff policy proposals, or he can “start squeezing every word he says” and “have experts advise him, put together speeches, read those speeches in the teleprompter, and not feel like you have to answer every question and not feel like you have to take every interview.”
Scarborough said that Trump should decline participating in debates and town hall-style interviews, like one this week on his own network.
His advice is contradictory to what many journalists and media personalities, including Scarborough, have said was in large part responsible for Trump’s rise to the top of the GOP field: his willingness to engage the news media on almost every front.
