Republican-led efforts to scuttle a possible nuclear deal between the United States and Iran underscore how “dysfunctional the United States of America is right now,” MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough said Monday, in comments that departed sharply from his tone last week.
Attempts by Republicans to influence the White House’s negotiations with Tehran have included a supposedly controversial invitation to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to speak before Congress and a letter signed by 47 GOP senators warning Iran that the next U.S. president likely won’t honor any deal that lacks congressional approval.
Taken together, Scarborough said Monday, the invite and the Tehran letter show that there is a serious dysfunction in the United States, conceding to co-host Mika Brzezinski that her longstanding position on this issue may be the correct one.
“If you just asked me about Netanyahu, I’d say ‘It’s happened before. He can show up,’ ” the MSNBC host, a former congressman from Florida, said. “If you ask me about the letter, taken apart, I go, ‘You know what? Freshmen do stuff like that. It was stupid.’
“But there’s something about those two actions in tandem, together, a couple weeks apart, that I must agree with a lot of really smart writers at [the Washington Post] and the New York Times, that taken together … I do think it has a really toxic mix about how dysfunctional the United States of America is right now,” Scarborough said.
Last week, Scarborough took a decidedly different approach, battling guests and Brzezinski over whether the GOP’s attempts to influence the Iran deal are “reckless.”
“You keep saying ‘reckless.’ You keep saying ‘reckless’ and ‘destructive,’ ” he said, interrupting Brzezinski. “Guess what … the republic lives. The republic stands. You sound like all those Republicans that every time Barack Obama passes a bill, they go to the House floor and go, ‘Tonight democracy died.’ Democracy didn’t die. This isn’t destructive. They sent a piece of paper to lunatics in Tehran.”
Brzezinski interjected, contesting that Scarborough, a former lawmaker, would not have signed the letter.
“I most likely would not sign that letter,” he said. “But if my colleagues did sign that letter, I wouldn’t go over to them and say, ‘This was destructive!’ I would go, ‘Really? Really, guys?’ That would be my reaction.”
“It’s not destructive, and they are not traitors. It may not have been the smartest political move,” he added later.
