“Morning Joe” host Joe Scarborough and his fellow MSNBC panelists could not hold back their disgusted reactions Wednesday morning to footage of President Trump’s cabinet heads heaping praise upon him during a Tuesday meeting.
In response to Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick telling the president that he is having “the time of his life” working for Trump, Scarborough mockingly retorted, “‘I’m having the time of my life … saying things that degrade me as a man.’” Both he and co-host Mika Brzezinski seemed physically uncomfortable after watching the footage from Tuesday’s cabinet meeting.
In addition to Lutnick’s comments, the meeting also saw Secretary of Labor Lori Chavez-DeRemer tell Trump that he is the “transformational president of the American worker” while Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent informed the president, “Our country has never been so secure, thanks to you.” Theirs were not the only positive comments directed at Trump during the meeting, either.
Altogether, the remarks caused “Morning Joe” co-anchor Willie Geist to ask one simple question, “At what point does personal pride come in?” You can watch the full segment yourself in the video below.
Geist went on to call out Trump’s male cabinet members for being so quick and eager to worship the president, despite their MAGA personas as hyper-masculine men. “A lot of the guys we just heard from there are these sort of self-described masters of the universe,” he noted. “The MAGA ethos of masculinity, of being an alpha male [and] all that … You just don’t find more beta behavior than what we saw around the table yesterday.”
Rev. Al Sharpton, for his part, aimed his criticism in Trump’s direction, calling out the president for both expecting and being willing to receive such embarrassing praise from his cabinet members. “I mean, you have to ask yourself the mentality of the president that he requires this — or even allows this,” Sharpton said. “I wouldn’t even allow it because it talks to your insecurity and self-doubt that you have to have. It’s really sad.”
Scarborough, meanwhile, argued that the only famous figures deserving of congratulations on Tuesday were Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce, who announced their engagement on Instagram. He and the rest of the “Morning Joe” crew went on to spend several minutes, like many Americans, discussing the forthcoming wedding between the Kansas City Chiefs tight end and the “Anti-Hero” singer.
