Joe Scarborough seemed to take a bit of particular umbrage Wednesday morning at the impending exit of Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Arizona).
During the first hour of “Morning Joe,” he lashed out at President Donald Trump and former White House adviser Steve Bannon for destroying his former party and urged his GOP friends still serving to get a grip on reality.
“Donald Trump is not running against Hillary Clinton anymore. He’s running your country and my country, your children’s country,” said Scarborough looking directly into the camera. “This is not 2016, we’re deep into 2017, we’re in trouble … The president is challenging constitutional norms every day and Hillary Clinton, she’s in Chappaqua, never to threaten you or your paranoid existence again. Worry about today.”
Ouch.
At some point, somebody in the control room realized the show could have a viral moment on its hands and moved into a full camera zoom on Scarborough’s face, but sadly by that point the best stuff had passed.
“Come on,” Scarborough said, wrapping up. “Get some smelling salts, watch Crimson Tide win again this weekend, go to church this Sunday, pray for this country and pray that we actually get some leaders that your children can look up to because we don’t have them right now.”
Scarborough, once a GOP congressman from the Florida panhandle, has become something of a bête noire among his former colleagues for his sustained and brutal criticism of Trump.
His embrace of Jeff Flake will likely further enrage the Trump wing of the party — and perhaps the president himself, who has been known to “hate watch” the program from time to time.