“Morning Joe” host Joe Scarborough compared President Trump’s short-term view of the Iran War Thursday morning to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s initial ideas about the war in Ukraine, declaring our current time “the Age of Asymmetrical Warfare.”
“Iran cannot prevail, but they can cause us significant damage. And we’re playing with fire,” Scarborough said, following a 2012 clip of “Morning Joe” co-host Mika Brzezinski’s father Dr. Zbigniew Brzezinski predicting what the immediate fallout of a potential war with Iran would be. Scarborough said a journalist “who’s been around for about as long as Dr. Brzezinski’s been around” reached out to him about that exact clip Wednesday night.
“[They texted me] saying, ‘Smart guy, that Dr. Brzezinski. This is why every president before Donald Trump did not go into Iran, despite the fact they would have loved their legacy to have been toppling the Ayatollah’s government,’” he shared. Minutes later, the MS NOW host drew his comparison between the Iran War and the Russia-Ukraine War.
“[Trump] only thought this would be a conflict that would last a couple of days, a week or two. Who does that sound like? Vladimir Putin going into Ukraine? See, we live in the Age of Asymmetrical Warfare,” Scarborough explained. “Where weaker countries may not be able to prevail outright, but they can bleed dry another country.”
“You look at Russia, who thought they were going to have Kyiv in three days. A million Russian troops, maybe, have died? 1.3-1.4 million casualties. Their economy’s been wrecked,” he continued. “I think we’re doing much better, obviously, than Russia is as far as degrading military assets. But this is the new world we’re living in.”
Scarborough, a former Republican Florida congressman, went on to call out Trump’s “contempt” for Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
“If Donald Trump didn’t hate Zelenskyy so much, if Donald Trump didn’t hate Ukraine so much, if the administration didn’t have such contempt for Ukraine, they would have called them before the war and said, ‘Listen, we’re going to go in there. We know the Iranians have been supplying drones to Russia. Tell us. How do we stop them?’” Scarborough argued. “If they had, this war would have looked radically different.”
Later, in a separate segment, the morning show host admitted he has been surprised by the “political pain” Trump has shown himself willing to tolerate over his war in Iran.
“We’ve known this president, directly or indirectly, as a politician for over the past 10 years. He’s not been a guy that has been willing to take political pain,” Scarborough noted. “My speculation has been, ‘Well, he knows he’s going to lose the midterms. He wants the toppling of Iran to be his legacy, along with the toppling of Venezuela and the toppling of Cuba.’”
The “Morning Joe” host then concluded, “I do think this is, at the end of the day, about legacy.”
