Joe Biden’s decision to endorse Kamala Harris was the one thing that Donald Trump feared, according to MSNBC host Joe Scarborough.
The Morning Joe host claimed the president turned the tables on Trump by supporting his vice president in the 2024 White House race.
He said that Trump—the “ultimate disruptor”—and his supporters have been put on the defensive by Biden’s decision.
The Republican response to the move, complaining it was undemocratic and unlawful, is a telling sign that the GOP is running scared, said Scarborough.
“I’ve also had a good bit of reporting from deep inside the Trump camp that this is the one thing that Donald Trump feared,” he continued during MSNBC’s special coverage.
“He has always considered himself to be the ultimate disrupter. And for the first time—not just in his political life, but the first time in his media life, in his professional life—the disruption is on the other side. People are not having to respond to the shocking turn of events from him for once,” he added.
Scarborough, who hosts the MSNBC morning show alongside Mika Brzezinski, claimed that Trump and his campaign will have to respond to the Democratic nominee shuffle and he said, “They’re not happy about it at all.”
“I think that’s why you’re seeing a lot of Trump’s acolytes in politics and the media coming out and bitterly complaining about this,” he continued.
He cited former House Speaker Newt Gingrich for going onto X and “talking about how this is a violation of democracy, how it’s shocking and stunning that they’re delegitimizing the votes of 14.5 million Democrats.”
“You also have House Speaker Mike Johnson going around saying that he’s going to do everything he can to try to nullify this, despite the fact Democrats haven’t even had their convention yet,” Scarborough said.
The Morning Joe star praised the timing of Biden’s announcement on Sunday rather than allowing the uncertainty to drag on and risk further Democratic defections. He said the question was not whether Biden wanted to endorse his vice president but whether it would be “better for her to fight for it, win it on her own, and not be seen as somebody who was tapped by President Biden.”
The decision to endorse her, he said, brought Democrats “an awful lot of relief.”