MSNBC's Joe Scarborough, who engaged in a
Twitter battle with Donald Trump last week, said Monday that Trump's weekend arguments against House Speaker Paul Ryan and likely Democratic challenger Hillary Clinton show a campaign that has changed little since last summer, and have left him concerned about Trump's skills in the White House.
"Paul Ryan's saying, 'Hey, I'm not ready right now, but I'm thinking about it,'" said Scarborough. "It was a very clear sign, for anybody who's not stupid, for anybody that didn't just start practicing politics nine months ago . . . it was a sign."
And if Trump can't handle Ryan in negotiations over support, said Scarborough, "What's he going to do when he starts negotiating with people across the world, if he can't handle this Paul Ryan negotiation any better than this?"
His criticism, and the ensuing discussion, was met with a quick retort from Trump, who tweeted that the show "has gone really hostile" against him:
Scarborough and co-host Mika Brzezinski, who earlier in the show said she thinks the tension over the Ryan/Trump meeting is "fake," laughed off the tweet, and Scarborough commented back to him, on the air, that "it's very funny when you say you don't watch the show. Keep it up. It makes us feel good that you tweet about us.
"You have like 8 million followers or 20 million on Twitter. But I can tell you, if you add in Armed Forces Radio, right now 221 million people are watching "Morning Joe" right now. It's very impressive."
Meanwhile, Scarborough said he did not think Ryan said anything "offensive" against Trump, and NBC's Andrea Mitchell, also on the show, said that she does not recall any time a presumptive nominee had attacked someone as powerful as the sitting speaker of the House.
"I just think it was a mistake," said Mitchell, who noted that she had spoken with some Republicans who believed that Ryan should have waited until after he met with Trump before commenting about him.
At this time, Trump has a "very short, small window to turn around" his issues concerning Hispanics, women, and more, "but it looks like he's going back to his playbook from the early Republican primary."
As for now, Scarborough said, Trump is "wildly out of control," and he's making the mistake "every politician makes" when they didn't think they were going to win their races a mistake even President Barack Obama made.
"Every president that walks in that people didn't think was going to win," thinks they have nothing to change, noted Scarborough, claiming that they think "Well, everybody was against me from the beginning and everybody said I couldn't win from the beginning, so now I'm not going to listen to anything anybody says because I'm powerful and mighty, I'm smarter than everybody else in the world."
But, he predicted, if Trump doesn't get his "you know what" together in the next three weeks, "he'll lose the election and he won't be able to turn it around."
Further, his attacks on Ryan will be seen as an insult in the House, particularly among lawmakers, and as a result, "you're not going to do 'blank' for Donald Trump. I'll let people at home fill in the blanks for him. It was such a shortsighted, ham-fisted move."
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Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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