‘Morning Joe’ Scalds GOP as ‘Fools’ for Thinking Trump’s ‘President for Life’ Quip Was a Joke

MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough ripped Republicans who tolerate President Donald Trump’s not-so-funny jokes about becoming president for life.

The “Morning Joe” host and his guests reacted to Trump’s comments about Chinese President Xi Jinping consolidating power to remain in office indefinitely, and he told guests at his Mar-A-Lago club that “maybe we’ll give that a shot some day.”

“When Republicans are just saying, it’s just a joke, or when Republicans ignore the fact that this man is talking about being president for life, if they think that Donald Trump is joking, then they’re fools,” Scarborough said. “I don’t think they’re fools, I think they know exactly what he’s saying.”

Co-host Mika Brzezinski said the remarks fit into a disturbing pattern of behavior by the president.

“You look at some of his attitudes towards race and other things and you worry,” she said. “This guy wants to bring us back in time. The people in the room clapping and laughing — at this point, who would clap and laugh at that? I mean, I would be stone-faced.”

NBC News reporter Heidi Przybyla suggested maybe the crowd didn’t find the joke exactly hilarious — or she at least hoped they didn’t.

“You have to hope that it was nervous laughter,” Przybyla said, but Brzezinski expressed doubts. “Jokes aren’t funny when there’s some tendency of truth here, and when there are strains of authoritarianism going on here in the homeland. The way that the wall is being blown between this executive and, for example, the Department of Justice. the racism, for example, like you mentioned, and that is something that the people in the room, I think, probably were laughing nervously at. I don’t know, I wasn’t there.”

Scarborough said Trump was trashing constitutional norms out of sheer ignorance, and he blamed Republicans who should know better.

“Isn’t that the problem, he doesn’t know history, doesn’t know constitutional history, doesn’t know constitutional norms, doesn’t know diplomatic history — and he has no interest in learning,” Scarborough said.