Chris Matthews swung by “Morning Joe” with cohosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski on Monday to weigh in on Donald Trump’s freshly begun fraud trial out of New York.
Zeroing in on how Attorney General Letitia James’ case brings into question the former president’s wealth — a decades-long touchstone of the former reality star’s persona — Matthews surmised that the trial will “dismember” him by alienating him from the voter base that idolizes him.
“The rules of engagement are gone. He doesn’t trust anybody, he isn’t to be trusted. And on this crime in New York, the one thing I think the average Joe, excuse the expression, in Philadelphia or around the state of Pennsylvania or the whole Rust Belt, the average person who makes an average income looked up to Trump as some rich guy,” Matthews began. “‘Hey, even this rich guy is with us, this New Yorker, this Manhattanite. He agrees with us.’ They’ve been using his wealth as a demonstration of their own honesty.
“Now,” Matthews continued, “he’s not going to be shown to be so wealthy. I mean, he’s wealthy enough, certainly, but this trial, because it goes on for three months, it’s really going to dismember the guy.”
Scarborough and Brzezinski prefaced the segment with predictions and assessments of Trump’s wealth.
“Well, we’ve always said, it always goes back to money with Donald Trump,” Scarborough said. “This does hit him right at the heart of what he values the most, and it’s more immediate than some of these criminal cases.”
“This case, I don’t think we can underestimate how much this case is a very bad deal for Donald Trump, compared to the others where he might have highfalutin ideas that he can get around things,” Brzezinski said. “I don’t think he will, my analysis, but this case hits at the heart of everything he’s about: his money, his fortune, the size of things.”
Watch the full “Morning Joe” segment with Matthews in the video above.
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