Remember when Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski were seen as enabling the presidential campaign of their good friend Donald Trump? They don’t.
On Tuesday, the Morning Joe co-hosts sat down with Seth Meyers on Late Night to discuss how they are feeling about the state of Trump’s presidency. Sixty-seven days in, Meyers asked the pair if it has been “what you expected, worse than what you expected, or better than what you expected?”
“Hmm,” Brzezinski said, turning to Scarborough before delivering her answer. “It’s far worse. It’s almost at the point of no return.”
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Scarborough said they have known Trump for more than a decade and “never expected it to be quite this bad.” When Meyers suggested they used to have a “friendly relationship” with Trump, he replied, “Not a physical relationship.” Brzezinski corrected Scarborough by calling it a “friendship.”
As Meyers pointed out, Trump recently unfollowed both of them on Twitter. Scarborough said that was a “highlight” of his month, while Brzezinski added, “In all seriousness, it shows that we got in his head.”
Since he became president, Trump has spent an inordinate amount of time praising Morning Joe's direct competitor Fox & Friends. Scarborough said he thinks the change of heart may have come when he suggested on air that Chris Christie and Bernie Sanders both delivered higher ratings than Trump when they appeared as guests. “He went crazy, sent me a letter, had a spreadsheet, talked about how his ratings were higher than ours,” Scarborough said.
“We attacked him. I mean, said he could start World War III, said all of these horrible things about him during the campaign,” he continued. “Said he was a racist, a bigot, it all rolled right off his back. The second we said Chris Christie and Bernie Sanders out-rated him, that was the end.”
“Mika and I both have been surprised by the people who we think in a time of crisis have actually stepped up,” Scarborough added later, praising Republicans like Mitch McConnell, John McCain, and Lindsey Graham, whom they never expected would actually push back against Trump’s “B.S.”
“Honestly, the fact that Republicans are still sucking up to him at this point is kind of pathetic,” Brzezinski said. “The whole thing has turned into lies and misinformation, calling the news ‘fake news,’ undermining the judiciary, undermining practically every branch of government. I don’t care if you’re a Republican or a Democrat, there’s right and there’s wrong. And this guy’s wrong.”
For that, she received almost as much applause as Scarborough did when he told Stephen Colbert last month that Republicans would be “judged” by future generations for how they responded to Trump.
“I hope that Donald Trump becomes the Donald Trump that—and we’ll say it—that we’ve known privately,” Scarborough said. “A guy that’s a hell of a lot more gracious in private than this sort of reality-show president that he plays on TV.”
“That is so weird,” Meyers replied. “Everybody else in show business are nice on television and then assholes behind the camera.”
