An extraordinary first half-hour of Morning Joe today. The thesis was that President Trump had gotten off on a seriously bad foot by failing to look back at history in his inauguration speech, sending a first and ungracious tweet about the Women’s Marches, sending Sean Spicer out to berate the press over crowd-size reporting, and above all for a self-referential, boastful, angry speech, referencing crowd size, given while standing in front of the wall of fallen heroes at the CIA.
And the message, delivered repeatedly and in the starkest terms, by Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, was that those aides who abetted President Trump, who counseled him to adopt a combative tone, should be fired and leave immediately. View the video to see the myriad ways in which Joe and Mika pummeled the presidential aides who did not advise President Trump to moderate his remarks.
Note: Joe and Mika never identified the aides they thought should be fired for having counseled President Trump to be combative. But the New York Times article that Joe cited stated that “Kellyanne Conway . . . contributed to the combative mood” and that Sean Spicer “advocated an opening-day declaration of war.”
This Insurrectionist’s view: President Trump, without backing down an inch on substance, would have been better advised to take a more conciliatory tone, and certainly not to have used the CIA speech to boast about crowd size and berate the media.
But even if Conway and Spicer in some way egged the president on, they have been invaluable members of the team. I believe President Trump would not have won the election but for Conway’s contributions. And Spicer has been a very able and articulate spokesman. If they made mistakes, let them learn from them. I think it would be a huge mistake to cut them loose.
JOE SCARBOROUGH: A lot of aides fighting each other and some aides actually, believe it or not, goading Donald Trump along. Those aides should be fired today for the good of America.. . .MIKA BRZEZINSKI: It is show time.JOE: It’s show time.MIKA: It’s show time.JOE: You know what?MIKA: The show has begun really badly. Whoever didn’t write or should have written or should have edited that speech should go today. Out. Good-bye. Done. And whoever did not coordinate the CIA event correctly should go today.JOE: Should be fired.MIKA: Out. Done. It’s show time and nobody can afford this.JOE: Whoever was encouraging him, goading him to keep fighting about the size of the crowds, as the New York Times reports.MIKA: Or whoever didn’t back down.JOE: Should be fired today for the sake of America . . .JOE: — talks about advisers fighting on the inside. And, again, to those advisers telling him to restrain, we thank you. For the sake of America, we thank you. For those advisers that were telling him to be combative on his first day. We ask you to leave now for the sake of this country . . . You are a disgrace. Leave the White House right now.. . .JOE: Let me explain to people working for Donald Trump. You, writing a speech for your boss, without mentioning history, without alluding to the past, without — talking about this as part of an unbroken chain of events going back over 240 years, that is like going to a Christmas Eve service where the priest forgets to talk about Baby Jesus . . . If you believe for one second you didn’t do that during this speech and stopped a lot of people from actually looking how radical and revolutionary this speech is, then you’re a fool. And again, I say: sneak out the back door of the White House today.MIKA: Hurry.JOE: Because you are not up to the task of this job.
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