The hosts of “Morning Joe” weighed in on President Donald Trump’s slow but steady political drama as more information comes out about his relationship with disgraced financier and sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein
At the top of their conversation on Thursday, co-host Joe Scarborough said that all the headway Republicans have made since Trump landed in the Oval Office has gone downhill, noting that now only one in three Americans support how the president’s administration is running the country.
“Right after the election, gains Republicans made over the past 10 years, gone in a night,” Scarborough said, adding that Trump’s Epstein matters are stirring up more issues for the GOP. “It is bad news for the White House and bad news for Republicans defending the White House.”
That’s when co-host Jonathan Lemire shared his insight on the myriad of factors that have impacted Trump’s likability, one of of them being the ongoing Epstein scandal.
Watch the “Morning Joe” clip via MSNBC below:
“The bombshell of the story that simply will not go away. As hard as Donald Trump is trying to make the Jefferey Epstein matter go away, it simply won’t,” Lemire said, while discussing how Trump is apparently scrambling to get Republicans to remove their names from a discharge petition that aims to force the release of all government records related to Epstein. This comes after legislators released thousands of emails from Epstein, some of which include details about how Trump “knew about the girls” involved in Epstein’s sex trafficking scheme.
“It was sort of a panicked behavior. That’s how people put it to me yesterday in the White House when we started seeing those emails,” Lemire explained. “When Trump himself, as well as some of his top DOJ officials, pushed Republicans to remove their names from the discharge petition, unsuccessfully, it still was signed. It still hit the number of votes needed, there’s a sense this story is gaining momentum, and it’s not quite clear where it goes next, but it’s certainly taking a real toll on this presidency.”
Watch the full segment in the video above.
