“Morning Joe” host Joe Scarborough said Monday that President Trump needs more people who will tell him no in his administration because a cabinet meeting full of yes men and women is “bad for the country.”
The segment began with co-host Mika Brzezinski asking Scarborough how Trump can think about his White House ballroom project when the war with Iran is ongoing.
“I think the president is focused on his legacy, what he considers to be his legacy, and he will always tell you he’s a builder. So he wants to remake the White House,” Scarborough responded, prompting Brzezinski to incredulously argue that the war in Iran will be Trump’s legacy.
“You and I know that. You asked me, though, ‘What’s he thinking?,’ and what he’s thinking is what his legacy is going to be,” Scarborough responded. “Along with what he builds in Washington, D.C., he sees Venezuela, Cuba and Iran as parts of his legacy.”
The Washington Post columnist David Ignatius then chimed in and noted that Trump has failed to surround himself with people who will push back and challenge his ideas.
“He’s surrounded by flatterers,” Ignatius observed. “He needs people who challenge him, who ask hard questions, who say, ‘Sir, Iran isn’t Venezuela. You’ve got to rethink that.’” The columnist and frequent “Morning Joe” panelist later added, “Having the people around you who can help you succeed, I think that’s not been a successful part of his presidency.”
Watch the full “Morning Joe” segment yourself below.
Scarborough, for his part, agreed wholeheartedly with Ignatius.
“I can’t watch the cabinet meetings because I know that not only is that bad for America, that’s bad for Donald Trump,” Scarborough said. “It’s bad for the country. He needs one or two truth-tellers in there that will say, ‘No, Mr. President, you can’t do that.’”
Brzezinski, meanwhile, concluded the segment by blasting Trump, calling the current state of his administration a “problem of perspective.”
“You have a president with no one around him to give him any perspective at all,” Brzezinski argued. “A president who has never waited in a security line at the airport, never once in his life. A president who has never had to go to the grocery store or figure out how to buy a house, never once in his life. At this moment with Iran, a president who has never served this country.”
“It is a problem of perspective that some might say is the issue with Iran and this very perilous moment that we are in,” Brzezinski concluded. “We are hoping that he will have a team around him and that they can work together on understanding the history of this situation.”
