Looks like President Trump’s dropping of the MOAB might have had an even bigger impact on Morning Joe than it did on ISIS. In March, the show was in full Apocalypse Now mode about President Trump. Take this excerpt from my item of March 6th: “Joe and Mika waxed apocalyptic, claiming the country is ‘in crisis’ and questioning President Trump’s ‘stability.’ At one point, Mika even seemed to choke up as she said, ‘this is really a dark time which could get worse.’”
Cut to today, when, in the wake of foreign policy success on the Russia, China, Syria and Afghanistan fronts, Morning Joe‘s tone on President Trump has changed radically. There was praise across the board, from Joe, Mika and Willie, as well as from regular guests David Ignatius, John Heilemann and Mark Halperin.
Excerpts:
Hmm: all of this MSM praise for President Trump. Should people in the president’s base be worried?
JOE SCARBOROUGH: We’ve all prepared for Trump the disaster. How do you handle Trump the success if we keep moving in this direction?. . .DAVID IGNATIUS: He’s also becoming a credible leader in foreign policy with a strong team, and I would say some real successes.JOE: Ambassador McFaul [former ambassador to Russia], who’s long been a Trump critic, actually said “Vladimir Putin thought he had a dupe in the White House. Tonight, Vladimir Putin is scratching his head, going: what the hell do I do next?”. . .JOE: [Putin] is learning the same exact thing that Jeb Bush, and Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz and all of these people who thought they were so much smarter than dumb Donald Trump learned in the campaign.. . .MIKA BRZEZINSKI: Big picture, Willie, when we look at the week that was, and of course tomorrow’s Saturday, and you never know what could happen, but in this moment you see Trump actually following through on something he always said he would do, especially on the world stage. And that is, keep people guessing. And Russia is right there in the position to be most surprised.. . .WILLIE GEIST: [Trump] wants to go with people who are going to get him wins, which he appears to have gotten a couple of them on the foreign policy front this week.JOHN HEILEMANN: Right, and I think for a lot of people, Willie, who are concerned about Donald Trump as Commander-in-Chief, certainly people on the left side of the political spectrum, but also a lot of people on the mainstream conservative side of the political spectrum, they look now at the notion, as John McCain said to us last week, that the biggest thing that he took out of the Syrian strike last Friday was, it looks like Donald Trump is listening to the generals, and that gives me cause for some degree of greater comfort and confidence.. . .MARK HALPERIN: Keeping people unsettled, but being willing to switch on a dime: that is the way Trump’s always been, and it’s worked this week on foreign policy.”
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