MSNBC host Joe Scarborough on Wednesday said he was totally flummoxed by Donald Trump’s decision to turn a town hall event into an impromptu dance party this week.
On Monday night, the Republican nominee stopped taking questions during an event in Pennsylvania after two attendees separately had medical emergencies. The question-and-answer session moderated by South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem then turned into a kind of spontaneous concert, with Trump and Noem spending the next 39 minutes dancing and singing along to music on the stage.
Trump later claimed attendees “began fainting from the excitement and heat” in the room, explaining the event ended up being “different” but insisted it was nevertheless a “GREAT EVENING.” Vice President Kamala Harris took a different view, responding to a video on X of Trump swaying and bobbing his head to the music with: “Hope he’s okay.”
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On Wednesday’s Morning Joe, Joe Scarborough said he still couldn’t make sense of what happened.
“Sometimes you look at things and you just kind of let it go past you, ‘that was a little strange,’” Scarborough said. “And then you look back and you think: ‘What did I see?’”
“And I will tell you, and I saw more and more people commenting going: What happened with Donald Trump for 39 minutes?” he continued. “When he was just standing up on stage, zoned out? What happened?”
Scarborough said his wife and co-host Mika Brzezinski had watched the whole 39-minute dance interlude from beginning to end.
“She said it was just absolutely bizarre,” Scarborough said. “And the people there were at times just staring at him and Kristi Noem. They’re not gonna be doing a buddy film any time soon—not a lot of chemistry there. And 39 minutes, I’ve never seen anything like it.”
Scarborough added that Morning Joe had “kind of stayed away from it” on Tuesday morning, saying they weren’t exactly sure what had happened.
“Here we are 24 hours later,” Scarborough said. “I still have no idea what’s going on. Like, here we are three weeks before the [election], and he’s standing on stage and it’s kind of like he just zones out and just quits. And the teleprompter’s saying: ‘Hey, sir, you can—sir, take more questions, sir,” and he just ignores it.”
Scarborough summed up the whole episode as “very bizarre.”
