President Donald Trump actually tuned into MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” on Tuesday — but soon discovered that host (and former Trump backer) Joe Scarborough has been continuing weeks-long criticism of the president’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic.
“Watched the first 5 minutes of poorly rated Morning Psycho on MSDNC just to see if he is as ‘nuts’ as people are saying. He’s worse. Such hatred and contempt!” the president tweeted, with no evidence to back up his claim about the show’s viewership. “I used to do his show all the time before the 2016 election, then cut him off. Wasn’t worth the effort, his mind is shot!”
He went on, taking aim at the media more broadly: “It is amazing that I became President of the United States with such a totally corrupt and dishonest Lamestream Media going after me all day, and all night. Either I’m really good, far better than the Fake News wants to admit, or they don’t have nearly the power as once thought!”
Finally, Trump once again touted the viewership of his coronavirus briefings, comparing them to the “Bachelor” finale and “Monday Night Football”before insisting he doesn’t “care” about ratings as much as he cares about the health oft he American people.
For weeks, Scarborough has been criticizing those briefings in particular. On Monday, he advised Trump to stop doing them altogether arguing that they were not helpful to the goal of promoting public health — and also gave Democrats material to use against Trump in his bid for re-election.
On Tuesday’s show, the “Morning Joe” hosts reacted to Trump’s tweet in real time. Scarborough observed, “Here you have a guy who is in the middle of a pandemic, and he can’t get out of the mud.”