MSNBC host and former Republican Rep. Joe Scarborough, previously a sympathetic ear to Donald Trump, thinks the candidate’s campaign has revealed itself to be a cynical scheme on American voters.
While discussing the 2016 race Tuesday on “Morning Joe,” co-host Mika Brzezinski said there were signs that Trump’s campaign is a lark, such as the plagiarism blow-up that rocked his wife Melania’s speech at the GOP convention in late July.
Scarborough said the campaign is entirely “a marketing ploy” that has tapped into racial tensions among some voters.
“It is all a marketing— he doesn’t believe it,” he said. “He doesn’t believe Barack Obama was born in Kenya and I’m not defending him. I say this is even worse that you play it cynically. I’ve known the guy for 12 years, I’ve never heard him say the first thing that even resembles a racist remark. And he’s just the type of person that if you were sitting around the table and somebody made a racist remark, he would raise his eyebrow and say, ‘Are you kidding me? Where are you from, the 1950s?’ This is all a scam. It’s all a marketing routine …”
Since his unlikely lock on the GOP nomination, Trump, a political novice, has fallen under intense media scrutiny, keeping a series of controversies alive in headlines, though he attempted Monday to turn the page with a major economic policy speech.
But that same evening, Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine published a piece in the Washington Post explaining that she would not support Trump in the fall.
