The hosts of MSNBC’s Morning Joe mocked Donald Trump on Tuesday after he told a rally that the U.S. is now perilously “close to World War II.”
Speaking at an event in Atlanta on Monday night, the former president careened from topic to topic, at one point addressing his handling of the pandemic. “Nobody knew what the hell it was either,” he said. “COVID. They call it COVID. I call it the China virus. But we’re close to World War II because we have people in the White House…”
Trump then paused as several attendees at the rally called out “three,” flagging that he’d confused a very real conflict with one that he’s been assuring voters will take place if he doesn’t win next week’s presidential election.
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“World War III, thank you,” Trump said to laughs. “Thank you. Thank you. I had World War II—I had World War II—I had World War II veterans. I didn’t realize they weren’t veteran afterwards, thank you very much. But would those World War II veterans stand up? Because we have a couple here that are unbelievable. World War II. Thank you. The guy looks better than I look! He looks better than Trump!”
“A little bit confused there,” Morning Joe co-host Mika Brzezinski said after showing a clip of the moment. “Donald Trump needing help from his own audience in Atlanta yesterday, once again forgetting the U.S. has already fought World War II.”
“In his defense,” co-host Joe Scarborough said, “Nobody really wrote about that war.” He went on to sarcastically add: “It’s not as if that historical event is the most written about and read about event of the 20th century.”
“So it’s easy for him to forget it,” Scarborough said. “It’s happened two, three times. Just like he’s accidentally called Joe Biden Barack—he keeps saying Barack Obama’s in the White House. It happens I guess… to Grandpa Simpson.”
In September 2023, Trump said in a speech at the Vote, Pray, Stand Summit in Washington, D.C., that “radical left thugs” were trying to “arrest their leading political opponent—and leading by a lot, including Obama,” presumably of Biden. Of Biden, Trump said later in the speech that the U.S. had a president “who is cognitively impaired, in no condition to lead, and is now in charge of dealing with Russia and possible nuclear war—just think of it, we would be in World War II very quickly if we’re going to be relying on this man.”
In Atlanta on Monday, Trump also invoked one of the belligerents of World War II, complaining that his political opponents say “he’s Hitler.”
“And then they say he’s a Nazi,” Trump continued. “I’m not a Nazi. I’m the opposite of a Nazi.”
Trump’s longest-serving former White House chief of staff, John Kelly, recently said that the former president fits the definition of a fascist, expressed admiration for Hitler’s generals, and that the GOP nominee “prefers the dictator approach to government.”
