President Trump and MSNBC anchor Joe Scarborough traded digs at one another in real-time Tuesday morning.
“Watched the first 5 minutes of poorly rated Morning Psycho on MSDNC just to see if he is as ‘nuts’ as people are saying,” Trump tweeted before 6:30 a.m. “He’s worse. Such hatred and contempt! I used to do his show all the time before the 2016 election, then cut him off.”
Appearing on Scarborough’s show “wasn’t worth the effort,” Trump said. “His mind is shot!”
Watched the first 5 minutes of poorly rated Morning Psycho on MSDNC just to see if he is as “nuts” as people are saying. He’s worse. Such hatred and contempt! I used to do his show all the time before the 2016 election, then cut him off. Wasn’t worth the effort, his mind is shot!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 21, 2020
Scarborough returned from a commercial break leading into the 7 a.m. hour by alerting his viewers the president had tweeted about him.
“We hope you’re having a better day than the president of the United States this morning. … Mika [Brzezinski] and Willie [Geist], he is continuing to tweet,” Scarborough said. “As you all know, and as our viewers know, I recommended to the president several years ago to please stop watching our show. That he’d be better for it. The country would be better for it. He’d be able to work more clearly.”
“But he just can’t get it out of his head. He can’t quit us. That makes me sad,” Scarborough said.
Scarborough and his co-hosts have been intensely critical of Trump since he announced he was running for president in 2015. In recent weeks, Scarborough has spent segments of his program scrutinizing Trump’s response to the coronavirus pandemic and lamenting the loss of the Republican Party he was once a part of.
Trump is “damaging his political standing” with “clownish behavior” during daily press conferences, Scarborough said last week.
“And that’s, by the way, conservatives — well, not conservatives,” he added. “You can’t be conservative and support Donald Trump. Trumpists are even saying that now.”
Trump’s defenders in conservative media have suggested Scarborough is not an objective journalist but rather a shill for Democratic causes and Never Trump Republicans.
“He’s typical of the Democrat Party-media, which don’t give a damn about the millions of unemployed, thousands of closed businesses, lives destroyed, and the disastrous mental and physical health consequences from these governors slamming shut their economies,” conservative firebrand and radio host Mark Levin said recently.
Trump has boasted in recent weeks that the television ratings for his daily White House briefings on the coronavirus are better than that of several of the nation’s biggest cable news programs.
Scarborough said the press conferences present no news value and should be tuned out.
“As America is falling further behind per capita in testing, Donald Trump is talking about ratings at his afternoon press conference,” Scarborough said. “You’d think news executives would look at that and say, ‘Hey, wait a second, maybe this guy is not being serious.'”
