MSNBC star Joe Scarborough launched into a furious response to Marco Rubio on Monday’s Morning Joe after the secretary of state demanded Poland’s foreign minister express gratitude for Elon Musk’s technology.
Scarborough slammed Rubio for his less-than-friendly message on X to Poland, in which he demanded the country “say thank you” to Musk.
“Poland is now what West Germany was at the height of the Cold War,” Scarborough said, noting its strategic signficance. “It is just unspeakable that this former Cold War warrior would now be going on X attacking the Poles.”
The spat began over the weekend when Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski said his country is ready to look for alternatives to Musk’s Starlink to provide vital communications in Ukraine if the billionaire proves to be an “unreliable provider.”
Musk had previously said Kyiv’s “entire front line would collapse” if Starlink—which is operated by Musk’s SpaceX—was no longer accessible to Ukrainian troops.
Musk lashed out in response to Sikorski’s post about seeking alternatives, calling Sikorski—a minister of a longstanding U.S. ally—a “small man” who should “be quiet.” Rubio then also entered the fray, demanding he show more gratitude.
“No one has made any threats about cutting Ukraine off from Starlink,” Rubio wrote on X. “And say thank you because without Starlink, Ukraine would have lost this war long ago and Russians would be on the border with Poland right now.” The secretary of state seemingly forgot about the land border between Poland and Russia’s Kaliningrad Oblast.
On Morning Joe on Monday, Washington Post columnist David Ignatius suggested that Morning Joe co-host Mika Brzezinski’s father would have an opinion about Rubio’s comments.
“[It’s] safe to say that Mika’s dad would be stunned to read every headline that discusses the situation in Europe,” Ignatius said of Zbigniew Brzezinski, a Poland-born political scientist who served as Jimmy Carter’s national security adviser and a counselor to Lyndon B. Johnson.
Scarborough added, “For those who don’t know what Dr. Brezinski spent his entire life—his entire life—fighting for, it was a liberation of Eastern Europe from Russian aggression.“
“He spent his entire life from the time he was 13, 14 years old—and so did a hell of a lot of other American—whether in uniform or whether in the State Department, or whether in the diplomatic corps or whether in USAID: it was all geared toward pushing back on Russian aggression,” he said.
“And now, Mika, you have Marco Rubio, our secretary of state, attacking Poland, saying, just say thank you,” Scarborough continued. “How about the United States saying thank you to the Ukrainians? To the Poles? To other people in Central and Eastern Europe, in the former Warsaw Pact, that have pushed back and fought, given their lives for the safety of Europe, for the safety of the West, for the safety of the World?”
“I think we are the ones who are in a position to thank them for being on the frontlines in the fight for freedom,” Scarborough added.
Rubio’s “say thank you” post came after a calamitous White House visit last month in which President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance chastised Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky for allegedly being insufficiently grateful for U.S. support during Ukraine’s war against Russia.
Rubio was also notably speaking up for Musk after a report emerged that the pair had clashed in a tense Cabinet meeting in which the tech mogul complained Rubio had fired “nobody” during the administration’s ongoing purge of federal workers.
