Lying is nothing new for twice-impeached former president Donald Trump, but he seems to be working overtime in the aftermath of the FBI’s historic raid on his Mar-a-Lago estate last Monday.
Now under investigation for possible violations of the Espionage Act tied to the mishandling of national defense information and classified material, Trump has responded to the mounting scandal by deflecting blame and, as “Morning Joe” co-host Joe Scarborough put it, providing “about his twelfth excuse” as the days tick on.
“He’s just making sh–, stuff up,” said Scarborough. “When somebody begins to concoct lies like this, it shows a real level of desperation. We all know he is lying. There have been, I guess if you count it, seven, eight, nine, 10 different lies. We know he’s lying. The disturbing thing is his supporters know he’s lying, and they’re still his supporters.”
It’s now known that 11 sets of classified records were seized from Trump’s Florida residence, including some marked as “top secret” and others meant to be available only in special government facilities – not a former president’s home.
Scarborough mockingly tallied off some of the roundabout ways Trump has explained away their presence in his home.
“I didn’t take the documents, but if I did take the documents, they weren’t classified, and if they were classified, then they were planted, and if they weren’t, I declassified them, and if I didn’t, then it’s a hoax. If it is not a hoax, Obama did it,” Scarborough said, paraphrasing Trump’s excuses. “He keeps changing, he keeps going through the lies. You know, first, he said he was working and cooperating with government agents; then, when we found out the truth about that, he said the agents planted it. Finally, he started lying…saying he declassified them.”
Over the weekend, former Trump aides also began coming out of the woodwork to parrot new excuses, like he simply was in a rush to get out of the White House and didn’t know what was taken with him.
“After all of these different stories didn’t line up, after all of the lies that he had thrown out there and all of the you-know-what thrown against the wall didn’t line up, then he had former aides go on TV and start a new round of lies, one saying, ‘Well, you know, he was in a rush. He was packing, he didn’t know whether he was going to leave or not…. He was in such a rush that he just accidentally took some of the boxes.’”
Watch the full segment between Scarborough and co-host Mika Brzezinski in the video above.
