It wasn’t just the ongoing Kevin McCarthy-House speaker debacle on the minds of “Morning Joe” hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski Thursday morning. They were also eager to dive into what Brzezinski called former President Donald Trump’s “irrelevance” in the whole matter.
On Wednesday, the twice-impeached former president wrote to his own Truth Social account that Republican representatives should take the win and vote for McCarthy’s bid for House speaker, a painfully slow campaign that far-right reps of the party have blocked over six votes and two days.
“Some really good conversations took place last night, and it’s now time for all of our GREAT Republican House Members to VOTE FOR KEVIN, CLOSE THE DEAL, TAKE THE VICTORY,” Trump said wrote.
McCarthy, however, continued to falter, with “Morning Joe” co-host Willie Geist pointing out that even a loyal Trump supporter like Colorado Rep. Lauren Boebert said, “Yes, he’s my favorite president, but I don’t care what he says right now, I’m not voting for Kevin McCarthy.”
“There is a lot at play here right now,” Geist said.
“We’re beginning to really see Trump’s irrelevance play out with even some of the staunchest Trumpers kind of blowing him off,” Brzezinski said.
Scarborough, meanwhile, couldn’t even pretend to hold in his laughter, even getting Geist to crack a smile as he described Trump’s continued misfirings over the last few days.
“The influence of Donald Trump is just not there,” Geist said. “It’s background noise at this point. He’s putting out statements on his down-market social media site trying to exert some influence.” (It was the latter, cutting description of Trump’s own social media platform that seemed to tickle Scarborough the most on-air.)
Later in the segment, Scarborough concluded that these two things – Trump’s growing lack of influence and McCarthy’s staggering inability to secure support in the House – are not happening “in a vacuum.”
“This is happening because the voters aren’t calling saying like they did in the past, ‘You follow Donald Trump,’” Scarborough said. “Those calls are not coming because Republican rank-and-file members, in the end, understand it is Donald Trump that has put them in this place.”
Watch the full “Morning Joe” segment in the video above.
