MSNBC star Joe Scarborough came to the defense of his one-time pal Donald Trump on Monday morning, insisting that the president’s decision to drop over a dozen bunker-busting bombs on Iran’s fortified nuclear facilities would have been made by his predecessors — and Trump’s 2016 opponent Hillary Clinton.
On Saturday, the United States joined Israel’s military campaign against Iran that is aimed at destroying the Middle Eastern adversary’s nuclear program, with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claiming Tehran was just weeks away from developing a nuclear bomb — an assertion he’s made for decades now.
“Monumental Damage was done to all Nuclear sites in Iran, as shown by satellite images. Obliteration is an accurate term!” Trump boasted on Truth Social about “Operation Midnight Hammer,” though experts say satellite imagery reveals the nation’s nuclear program is “far from destroyed.”
Meanwhile, after Vice President JD Vance and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth both insisted on Sunday that America wasn’t looking for a protracted war that would include toppling Iran’s government, the president sang a different tune just hours later.
“It’s not politically correct to use the term, ‘Regime Change,’ but if the current Iranian Regime is unable to MAKE IRAN GREAT AGAIN, why wouldn’t there be a Regime change??? MIGA!!!” Trump posted on his social media platform on Sunday afternoon.
While a new poll shows Americans overwhelmingly disapprove of Trump’s decision to bomb Iran and worry that it will make the US less safe, Scarborough – an early and vocal cheerleader of the Iraq War – said on Monday’s broadcast of Morning Joe that any other president would have handled the situation the same as Trump.
“The president had no good options,” Scarborough declared. “What would Monday look like if he hadn’t have moved, if Iran wasn’t already at 60 percent, and an ability to create nuclear weapons in a short matter of time, right? … I’m not championing either side of this.”
Turning to Washington Post columnist David Ignatius, the Morning Joe host asserted that the president had enough buy-in from the international community to take military action against Iran, adding that other Republican and Democratic commanders-in-chief would have felt obliged to do the same thing.
“I ask you, how difficult would it have been for any president to not take that shot if they knew that Iran was even being attacked by the United Nations?” Scarborough wondered. “I find it hard to believe that Bush 41, Bush 43, Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, you know, go down the list, any president wouldn’t have felt compelled to take that strike.”
Agreeing with the host, Ignatius said that Trump “inherited” the war plans with Iran from his predecessors, adding that this would have been what they considered if they found “diplomacy wasn’t working.” At the same time, he said Trump’s “choices were debased at the moment” and the president “had to make a decision.”Elsewhere in the show, Scarborough also invoked former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger to observe that the president had only “difficult choices” in front of him when it came to Iran.
“Henry Kissinger famously said that when you’re sitting in the White House and trying to make a decision on foreign policy, the possibility of war, you’re never handed a good decision and a bad decision. You’re handed two very difficult choices,” he stated. “And the president made that choice.”
While Scarborough and his wife/co-host Mika Brzezinski have been loud critics of the president for years now, that wasn’t always the case. Considering him a longtime personal friend, the couple provided Trump a hefty boost in the nascent days of his 2016 presidential campaign, giving the then-reality TV star free rein of their program while promoting his candidacy.
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Though there would be a bitter split between the Morning Joe hosts and Trump prior to his winning the 2016 election, which would include the president peddling wild conspiracy theories about Scarborough killing an intern, the icy relationship may have begun to thaw in recent months.
The couple traveled to Mar-a-Lago for an off-the-record huddle with Trump after his electoral victory in November, prompting viewers to briefly boycott Morning Joe over the perceived “kissing the ring” trip.
As for Scarborough’s own foreign policy views, the former GOP congressman was a fervent supporter of invading Iraq over the George W. Bush administration’s claims that the country was developing weapons of mass destruction.
Though he has tried over the years to selectively criticize other cheerleaders of that war without pointing that finger at himself, Scarborough spent the early months of the Iraq War raging at news outlets, media figures and politicians he felt were too negative and critical about the US-led invasion.
“These leftist stooges for anti-American causes are always given a free pass,” he ranted in April 2003 to then-MSNBC colleague Michael Savage. “Isn't it time to make them stand up and be counted for their views?!”
