Last year, Joe Scarborough went on The Late Show to declare his independence from the Republican Party (after hyping Trump for most of the campaign). This week, he urged voters to put a check on Donald Trump in the midterm elections.
Discussing the president’s unconscionable response to the apparent murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, Scarborough’s Morning Joe co-host Mika Brzezinski said, “That can’t be our reality, and at some point this has to end one way or another.”
“You know a great way for it to end is for everybody to get out that gives a damn about this republic and, 19 days from now, go out and vote,” Scarborough said. “Whether you’re a Republican, whether you’re a Democrat, whether you’re an independent, you have to agree that Donald Trump needs to be checked.” Without exactly spelling it out for viewers, he was telling them to vote for Democrats who will be that check, adding, “This is the most important election of our lives.”
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Later in the interview, Stephen Colbert asked his guests about the 2020 election. Scarborough thought Joe Biden and John Kerry would both likely run for the Democratic nomination while Brzezinski is particularly excited about Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA). But when Colbert brought up the possibility of someone trying to primary Trump from the right, Scarborough repeated his prediction that Trump won’t run for re-election.
“He didn’t want to be elected for president, he didn’t think he was going to be elected president, he didn’t even think he was going to get the Republican nomination,” Scarborough said. “He’s going to cash out.”
“I think that would be a smart thing for him to do,” Colbert replied, getting a laugh from the audience. But he was being serious. “I’ll tell you why I don’t want it to happen, because I think it’s important that the voters of America have an opportunity to say, ‘Oops, my bad, we made a mistake there’ and correct themselves. And if Donald Trump doesn’t run, he takes away that corrective action of history and therefore his presidency is whole and unjudged, if he just doesn’t run again.”
In that scenario, Colbert said Trump can say, “I fixed it, I made it great again, goodbye,” and take the $100 million he raised and open “another failed casino or something.”
“That’s the thing—he won’t do that,” Scarborough argued. “He’ll get money from the Saudis. He’s proving to the Saudis he’ll be their lap dog. He’ll make money from President Putin when he gets out. Donald Trump is all about money. It’s what drives him.”
