Joe Scarborough Predicts ‘Disaster’ If US Gets ‘Drunk on Militarism’ After Lindsey Graham Warns ‘Cuba is Next’
Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough warned of “disaster” if the U.S. gets “drunk on militarism” as he reacted to a clip of Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) teasing that Cuba would be “next” in an interview on Sunday, adding “real conservatives” have been warning against such “talk” for years.
Graham repeated his suggestion that the Trump administration could turn its attention to Cuba after the campaign against Iran, remarking while flashing a “Free Cuba” hat during a live appearance on Fox News show Sunday Morning Futures with host Maria Bartiromo.
Praising President Donald Trump’s attacks against Iran, the Republican held up the cap and hinted at possible future action against Havana: “You see this hat, ‘Free Cuba’? Stay tuned. The liberation of Cuba is upon us. It’s just a matter of time.”
“This is Ronald Reagan plus,” he said.
The interview came the same day as reports in the Wall Street Journal that Graham had traveled to Israel several times in recent weeks, speaking to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for advice on how to lobby Trump into attacking Iran.
After rolling back the clip of Graham’s gleeful interview on Monday’s Morning Joe, co-host Mika Brzezinski quipped: “I feel like there’s a FAFO hat missing there. This isn’t a game.”
Scarborough then predicted that the kind of “talk” the senator was pushing was a symptom of a style of “adventurism” that “never ends well” for the U.S.:
This isn’t ‘Ronald Reagan plus’, this is Wilsonian adventurism at its very worst. Something that conservatives, real conservatives like me have long feared and loathed. Sort of this Wilsonian idea, this George W Bush idea in his second inauguration, that we’re going to export democracy to all four corners of the globe.
Let me tell you something, that is a recipe for disaster. That is a recipe for American weakness. I have been saying for years now, because I got sick and tired of hearing people tear down the United States of America because a Democrat was in power, or because the Republican was in power. I’ve said for years, America is the most powerful country militarily, economically, culturally – when you look at soft power – technologically, in just about every measure, just like we were at the turn of the century, in 2000 with the collapsed soviet union, we were powerful.
Well, then we went into Afghanistan and Iraq. A lot of people, you know, we understand Afghanistan. But then we had had this sort of talk that you hear from Lindsey Graham about, you know, this military adventurism: We’re on the march, we’re going across the world.
No! No, that didn’t work for George W. Bush, it’s not going to work for this president. And this sort of American adventurism, this sort of jingoism – where you’re saying, ‘let’s invade Venezuela, let’s invade Cuba, let’s invade Iran, let’s march through the world and invade all the bad guys’ – time and time again it has proven to be a trap.
America is strong when America is restrained, there are times we have to send our troops to war, I completely understand that, but this sort of drunk on power, this sort of drunk on militarism always leads to disaster.
Ask LBJ in 1965; ask George W. Bush in 2003, 2004; ask Barack Obama about Libya, how that ended up going. It never ends well. This won’t end well either.
“Well, it seems like President Trump has followed through on a lot of his promises, for better or for worse, I just don’t remember this being one of them,” Brzezinski followed.
“No, not the invasion of Cuba. No,” Scarborough said.
“No, don’t remember that,” the co-host added.
Watch above via MS NOW.
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