Joe Scarborough Slams ‘Stupid’ Idea to Hold WHCD in ‘Open Hotel’: ‘Can’t Think of a Dumber Place’

Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough slammed the “extraordinarily stupid” idea to host the White House Correspondents’ dinner, and the “concentration” of cabinet members it invites, in “an open hotel” as a decision that has “never made sense.”

The remarks came as the MS NOW host opened the first show since chaos erupted at the annual gala on Saturday, when 31-year-old suspect Cole Allen allegedly forced his way toward the ballroom with guns and knives before being apprehended.

A Secret Service agent was shot during the incident, though protected by a bulletproof vest.

A full 1,052-word manifesto was acquired by the New York Post on Sunday, in which Allen, who had checked into the hotel in the days prior, admitted he was targeting top administration officials and President Donald Trump, while mocking the lack of security.

Opening Monday’s Morning Joe, Scarborough said that he and co-host Mika Brzezinski had been saying “for years” that the venue was inadequate.

“It just seems extraordinarily stupid to use an open hotel and get State of the Union-type concentration of power in the United States, especially at a time of war against a country that’s been the epicenter of terrorism since 1979, and have them walking around, going in and out of parties, standing to get their pictures taken before they go in. It never made sense to me. It’s never made sense to Mika,” he said.

He continued: “We haven’t been in, I don’t know, maybe a decade. I can’t remember the last time, but it seems like such an unsecure place.”

Noting the volume of MAGA accounts that used the moment to demand approval for Trump’s ballroom project, he then added: “But I just can’t think of a dumber, dumber place to have this than at the Washington Hilton. I know it’s history, but history be damned when you’re putting your secretary of defense, you’re putting your FBI director, you’re putting the secretary of treasury, putting the vice president, you’re putting the president –”

Brzezinski interrupted to argue that it “was still on the Trump administration” or any other administration “in power” to “have that concentration of power in one place at a time of war.”

Scarborough, however, pushed on with his point: “Anybody that has been there understands you aren’t securing the entire hotel. You’re not checking people’s bags. You’re not doing the basic things that would be done, like, at the State of the Union address.”

Watch above via MS NOW.

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