Scarborough: Trump Is Finally Doing What We've Been 'Hoping He Would Do'

Thursday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” host Joe Scarborough, who in recent months has been one of President Donald Trump’s most ardent critics, heaped praise on the president for a series of policy shifts from the campaign, including on NATO, Russia and China.

Scarborough earlier had used the term “whiplash” to describe the shifts, but explained those were welcomed shift in his view.

“Yesterday before we came on the air, we were talking about whiplash,” Scarborough said. “If these policy shifts yesterday were whiplash, our neck was over here and now, it’s upright. Whether it was on NATO, an embrace of NATO, just absolute — I mean, Tillerson was tough as nails, according to William Cohen and Ambassador McFaul, and a lot of other Trump critics, had a good tough meeting with Putin and with the foreign minister there. China — normalcy in that relationship. We’re actually lined up where we can work with them as a partner on North Korea. A lot of shifts yesterday, but I can’t think of one shift that actually went in the wrong direction. These are all things that he said over the past two years that have scared us and now, the shift. Maybe it’s a day shift, but it’s quite a shift.”

Scarborough added that Trump was finally doing what he and other had been hoping he would do and pointed to the rise of his approval ratings.

“We’re only looking at trend lines,” he added. “It’s a brief trend line. But there’s no doubt, Willie, that Donald Trump is finally doing what we’ve been hoping and America has been hoping he would do, and that is work with the very able people that he appointed. And you can tell, the National Security Council is not Steve Bannon’s play yard — play thing, it is General McMaster’s and General Mattis, and they talked to the commander-in-chief. And certainly, in at least the past five, six days, we have really seen a studying of U.S. foreign policy. It’s not a coincidence that Donald Trump’s approval ratings at least in Gallup have gone up from 35 to 41 percent.

(h/t The Hill)

Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor