Some things never change.
Despite “Morning Joe” co-hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski’s recent trip to Mar-a-Lago to meet with President-elect Donald Trump — a move that drew sharp criticism from their Trump-averse fans — Scarborough has returned to his usual antics. This time, he’s reaching new levels of absurdity as he attempts to downplay the significance of Trump’s historic victory.
“Right now, they’re in this bubble. They won. And so all these Republicans are running around acting like they had a mandate. They won by one percentage point. They won Wisconsin by less than one percentage point.
Let me just say, and I was talking about this on the show yesterday. Everybody needs to take a deep breath. Everybody needs to take a deep breath. Because people are going, oh, this is the age of Elon. Oh, this is the age of the bro culture. Oh, America has darted so for right.
Let’s take Wisconsin, the bellwether states of bellwether states. Kamala Harris lost by less than one percentage point because of the bro culture, right? Wrong. They elected a lesbian woman as senator on this same day.”
This selective reasoning conveniently ignores key facts. As even The New York Times noted, more than 89 percent of counties nationwide shifted in Trump’s favor in 2024. Scarborough also neglected to mention that Trump flipped Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin, states Biden won in 2020, and secured a 7-0 record in critical swing states. Nonetheless, Scarborough also downplayed Trump’s win in Michigan:
“The same thing with Michigan. Oh, the bro culture. No, they elected a woman senator the same day that Kamala Harris lost by one and a half points. A woman who was running the shortest presidential campaign in American history, right?”
Scarborough argued that Trump’s win is being overinterpreted:
“So, all I’m saying is here we are, everybody’s over-reading this. Everybody’s saying, you know, it’s like, sackcloth and ashes for Democrats. Oh, we’ve got to change everything. Whoa, this was the greatest defeat in the history. No, no, there’s no sweeping change here as far as what the American people said. It’s like one percentage point.”
Memo to Joe: Whether Trump won by one percent or more, the result stands. Trump became the first Republican to win the popular vote since George W. Bush in 2004, while the GOP regained control of the Senate and retained the House. Scarborough’s ongoing obsession with Wisconsin is telling:
“Talk about the danger of Democrats overreacting to a 1% landslide. And again, I talk about Wisconsin. I just want to keep going back. Because everybody’s over-reading this as some radical swing to the far right. Where in Wisconsin, Kamala Harris lost by less than one percentage point, and the Wisconsin voters re-elected a lesbian Democratic senator.”
Trump Derangement Syndrome remains a fascinating and often entertaining phenomenon, and few embody it better than Joe Scarborough.
