The hosts of MS Now’s “Morning Joe” said Tuesday that the controversy caused by the image President Trump shared of himself online as Jesus represents the “very rare” occasion that he knows he “screwed up.”
The president ended up pulling the image after the wave of backlash, but tried to brush the scandal off by telling reporters he thought the image, which depicted him in robes healing a sick man, just portrayed him as a doctor. “Morning Joe” co-hosts Mika Brzezinski, Joe Scarborough and Willie Geist did not buy that excuse.
“This is a very, very rare occasion where perhaps he understood that maybe he screwed up [and] pulled it down,” Geist told “Morning Joe” viewers. “But then the explanation shows such contempt for his supporters and the people who believe in him. That he would say, ‘Oh no, I thought I was a doctor. Let’s move along.’ No, you didn’t. We know exactly what was going on there.”
“The people who are apologizing for him now, saying, ‘Oh, you guys can’t take a joke. Donald Trump is just being funny.’ It’s very, very pathetic to watch the few people, there weren’t many, trying to defend this,” Geist added. Watch the full “Morning Joe” segment yourself below.
Scarborough said the controversy marked one of the few instances in which even Trump’s most die-hard supporters pushed back.
“In this instance, there were quite a few people pushing back,” Scarborough observed. “People that have long been, for no good reason, apologists for this man, who does not understand the Bible, does not understand anything about Christianity. He couldn’t even name, when he was asked in his campaign, ‘What’s your favorite Bible verse?’”
“With that lack of knowledge, maybe he thought, ‘Oh, this would be a funny post to put up,’ not understanding that Jesus says everything is forgivable, except blasphemy,” Scarborough continued. “So it appears, at least for a handful of public Christians who have spent the past decade more interested in gaining [Trump’s] support than actually following the Bible, it was even too much for them.”
“The President doesn’t know the Bible, doesn’t read the Bible and has pretty much said that,” Scarborough subsequently concluded. “So he didn’t understand the degree of blasphemy that was.”
