Morning Joe Slams ‘Reality TV President’ Trump For NoKo Announcement: ‘Of Course It’s a Deflection’
Morning Joe held back on doling out praise to President Donald Trump for what the White House was touting as a historic diplomatic breakthrough: an agreement between the U.S. and North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un to meet.
Co-host Mika Brzezinski opened Friday morning’s episode by asking, “Is this a deflection?”
“Of course it’s a deflection,” fellow co-host Joe Scarborough replied, before noting how Trump’s big tariff announcement came out of nowhere, following a week of bad PR for the White House — much like the latest North Korea announcement, coming shortly after porn star Stormy Daniels announced she was suing the president over an NDA she signed to keep quiet about their alleged affair.
Later in the segment, the Morning Joe panel noted that Stormy Daniels was not on any newspaper front pages, as the Washington Post and NY Post led with the breaking North Korea news.
“The president was desperate to change the headlines, he has succeeded,” Scarborough said.
NBC News’ Andrea Mitchell explained that Trump’s discussion with South Korean officials about the meeting was not prepared in any way, according to a New York Times report, and that the U.S. secretary of state wasn’t even in the loop.
“They announced it when Rex Tillerson was asleep in Africa,” she said.
“The State Department, our closest allies, I’m sure people on the Hill — nobody knew about this, Donald Trump just decided to play reality TV show president to change the headlines,” Scarborough said.
“This is the king of deflection, and he was very disturbed yesterday,” Brzezinski said. “And he does’t want his family seeing the porn star on the front pages of the papers. It causes deep distress to him to have details of that being revealed by his press secretary, and it it seems that this was his point: to deflect.”
Watch above, via MSNBC.
[image via screengrab]
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