COWARDICE

Joe Scarborough: ‘Weak, Dumpy Stooge’ Trump Clearly Being ‘Blackmailed’ by Putin

‘Even Donald Trump supporters know by this point that Vladimir Putin has something over Trump,’ the ‘Morning Joe’ host declared on Tuesday.

Joe Scarborough seems to have come a long way from cozying up to Donald Trump during the early days of the 2016 presidential election.

There have been many bumps in their relationship along the way, but nothing has hit the Morning Joe host quite as hard as the president’s joint press conference with Vladimir Putin this week.

He began by quoting U.S. senators from both parties, who called Trump’s actions “appalling,” “shameful,” “shocking” and “sad.” Or as Sen. John McCain put it: “One of the most disgraceful performances by an American president in memory.”

“What we saw yesterday, it was shocking, it was appalling,” Scarborough continued. While Trump “had an opportunity to show fealty to our republic, instead what he showed was fecklessness toward Russia.” He could have “shown courage in the face of a tyrant, and instead he showed cowardice on that world stage, where the president looked like a weak, dumpy stooge to a KGB spy.”

Searing for a historical analogy, Scarborough added, “There is no parallel. FDR, after Pearl Harbor, didn’t deny that there was an attack. George W. Bush didn’t deny Al Qaeda’s attack on September 11th.”

Later in the show’s opening segment, Scarborough tried to take a stab at why his one-time friend might be behaving so “obsequiously” towards Putin. “We all know that Vladimir Putin is holding something over Donald Trump,” he said. “We do not know what it is, but we know it must be something extraordinary because no rational politician, no rational president would act this way if he weren’t being blackmailed on some level.”

When co-host Willie Geist posited that perhaps Trump’s motivation was simply protecting his “ego” from the notion that he was not legitimately elected president, Scarborough pointed out that “even before the election was called into question, he was like a scared child, afraid to criticize Vladimir Putin.”

“I know that even Donald Trump supporters know by this point that Vladimir Putin has something over Trump,” Scarborough added. “I know they know that.”

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Matt WilsteinSenior Editor

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