The hosts of “Morning Joe” characterized Donald Trump’s recent interview with Megyn Kelly as a straight-up confession to the federal documents-handling charges he faces from special prosecutor Jack Smith.
Hosts Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough opened their MSNBC show Friday with highlights from Kelly’s one-on-one with Trump broadcast Thursday on Sirius XM: “More now from that interview, where Donald Trump seemed to confess to some of the federal charges against him,” Brzezinski said.
“It happens,” Scarborough said. “When he talks, it happens, all the time.”
“Crimes. Yes,” continued Brzezinski. “Host Megyn Kelly pressed Trump on his handling of classified materials and the audio recording of him showing a classified document to people at his golf club in New Jersey.”
They threw to an extended clip from the interview, with Kelly and Trump sparring over the circumstances of the meeting. After an audio recording leaked, Trump once suggested to Fox News host Bret Baier he was actually holding up a newspaper when speaking with the visitors.
“Why would you be holding up a newspaper saying, ‘This is still secret? I could declassify it if I were [still] president,’” Kelly said.
“I’d have to look at it,” Trump responds, before the two launch into a hurricane of crosstalk in the extended clip, which ends with Trump arguing that the Presidential Records Act allowed him to possess classified documents.
“That was the biggest nonsense, the biggest B.S.,” Scarborough said. “I mean, him saying that he could take whatever he wanted to take because the Presidential Records Act, it doesn’t fall under the Presidential Records Act. The guy steals nuclear secrets. He steals secret plans!” (Smith has not alleged that nuclear secrets were among the documents retained at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate.)
That’s when Scarborough brought home the point that Trump’s answers amounted to a confession.
“He admitted everything right there on tape,” the MSNBC host said. “Clear as day. … You look at the facts of this case. It’s all there in black and white.”
Watch the entire exchange in the video clip above.
