“Morning Joe” co-host Joe Scarborough said he has known former Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) for many years and has been shocked to watch his friend change his entire personality into a MAGA Republican.
Axios’ Jim VandeHei and The Atlantic’s Jonathan Lemire began the discussion by saying they were shocked that President Donald Trump is ending the campaign with a “closing message” about the Reflecting Pool. After spending millions more than expected and taking months longer than expected, the Reflecting Pool is back to looking the way it did before.
The metaphor is obvious, and they agreed that showing Trump’s obsession with beautifying Washington compared with helping Americans only reinforces his failures on the economy, jobs and a reckless war with Iran.
Delivering ten speeches where Trump talks about his renovation projects “corrupts these candidates,” said VandeHei.
He noted that he has known Rogers as Scarborough has and that Rogers has always been “a very sensible guy.”
“I mean, he’s the type of guy you like to go sit in the back, you know, stand in the back, say, hey, how are you voting on this? Like people listened to Mike,” said Scarborough, a former Republican Congressman from Alabama. “I don’t recognize him. I don’t recognize a lot of my buddies from Congress. But Mike Rogers, I guess, because he was such a steady voice and a steady force and a guy that, you know, I just said, man, I’m glad he’s on the intel committee. I’m glad he’s there. I’m glad he’s minding the gap. And now to see him turn into this like parrot of Donald Trump and the islamophobia, it’s just — he’s better than that.”
Behind the scenes, he said he’s also hearing from Republicans that Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kansas) looks like a complete fool for delivering his closing message on why he had to throw a single mother in debtors’ prison. Now Marshall is claiming that his Democratic opponent, Pastor Adam Hamilton, is “grooming children, possibly.”
VandeHei said that the tribalism over the past 10 to 20 years has had such a huge impact on Republicans it appears it “melts brains and melts souls way quicker and way more profoundly than I thought possible. Because you see this in so many different candidates. And it’s not just that people are using these kinds of BS attacks, which we always see in politics.”
He questioned what normal person would be swayed by a message from the president about a U.S. senator’s behind, or who is endorsing who and whether that will sway voters.
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