The generally amicable co-hosts of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” got in an on-air tiff Wednesday morning when Mika Brzezinski criticized House Speaker Paul Ryan for his weak denouncement of Donald Trump’s latest controversial remarks about “Second Amendment people.”
After Ryan called Trump’s comment, which was widely read as a veiled threat of violence against Hillary Clinton, a “joke gone bad,” Brzezinski advised the Wisconsin congressman to “go home and spend some time with your family.”
“[Trump] can’t stop himself. He is a trainwreck going 1,000 miles an hour. It is about the Republicans around him now. The story is about you. And I don’t mean to have a nasty tone –” she said, before co-host Joe Scarborough interrupted.
“You’re a Democrat. Mika, you’re a Democrat,” Scarborough said. “It means nothing coming from you. You’re a Democrat.”
“Excuse me?” a visibly frustrated Brzezinski replied. She fired back, “Actually, the Democrats are going to win the election” and said the Republicans would do well to take advice before Scarborough cut her off again.
“Let me say this to my Republican Party: You are letting Donald Trump destroy the party,” the former GOP congressman said. “We’ve said from the very beginning when he started blowing himself up. When Paul Ryan endorsed him, that it’s only going to get worse. And it just keeps getting worse, doesn’t it?”
Brzezinski jumped in to finish her earlier point that Ryan should return to Janesville, Wisconsin, to “look your children in the eyes” and “ask if you are doing the right thing” standing by Trump.
“And I’m sorry that I’m a Democrat and it means nothing coming from me, but I’m telling you, that’s how this story ends,” she said, in a barbed shot at her co-host.
“Don’t get mad at me here,” Scarborough said.
“I am,” Brzezinski fired back. “A little bit.”
The two anchors went on to reconcile, with Scarborough saying he agreed with her point but didn’t want Republicans to discount it because she isn’t a conservative.
Watch the tiff via Politico:
