Scarborough: Trump Restarting Daily Coronavirus Briefings Will Be ‘Political Catastrophe for His Campaign’

In response to President Donald Trump planning to resume his daily coronavirus briefings on Tuesday, MSNBC “Morning Joe” host Joe Scarborough said such a decision would be a “political catastrophe” for his 2020 reelection campaign.

Scarborough argued Trump would continue to go off-script and provide soundbites to his opponents that would then get used against him, which he advised would be “politically devastating” to the president.

“Mika, it would be even more of a political catastrophe for his campaign if that were, in fact, the course he chose, because, of course, those briefings were the beginning of his slide. And with every briefing he made, every time he went off-script, he provided, and we predicted at the time, he provided the soundbite that his opponents would use against him in the fall. And, of course, that’s where we’ve got so many of his quotes, errant quotes talking about it’s not coming back in the fall, using bleach, using UV lights –”

“Hydroxychloroquine,” co-host Mika Brzezinski added.

“Hydroxychloroquine,” Scarborough continued. “You can go down the laundry list of it. It’s just bad. Not only is it bad medicine, not only is it bad for Americans’ health. … But him repeating those performances, him going out and lying about the pandemic, lying about the numbers as he tried to do on Chris Wallace, it’s only going to hurt him politically more. You look at the numbers of whether Americans trust him and his handling of the pandemic, and it’s in the basement. It’s about as bad as you would think it would get, but now if he comes out at the end of July and does this for another two, three, four weeks before it’s shut down again, you know, I think there are a lot of Republican donors and a lot of Republican senators and House members and a lot of people on the Trump campaign team that understand that … this will close the door finally on any chances he has for a comeback.”

Scarborough added, “Again, I’m just saying this neutrally. I can say that because I know a lot of Republicans who are thinking the same thing. This would be politically devastating for him if he goes out and performs the same way over the next month going into Labor Day, the way he did this past spring.”

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