Joe Scarborough has revealed that the key “takeaway” of the controversial meeting he and his fellow Morning Joe co-host, Mika Brzezinski, had with Donald Trump is the president-elect’s apparent concern with his shocking secretary of defense pick, Pete Hegseth.
A former Fox News host and military veteran, Hegseth has been among the most jaw-dropping selections out of a uniquely jaw-dropping crop of prospective presidential administration nominees—and the criticism has only grown since it emerged that in 2017 he paid off a woman who accused him of sexual assault.
That revelation reportedly has Trump’s team second-guessing Hegseth as its nominee to head the Pentagon, and it was apparently possible for Scarborough to read the newfound reticence on Trump’s face when they met last Friday.
ADVERTISEMENT
“On background—in our conversation, on background—there were a couple of things that surprised us. One of them was, when his name came up, there was, not a flinch, but a noticeable ‘We’ve got problems here,’” Scarborough said on the Wednesday edition of the MSNBC show. “Those weren’t the words, but I will just tell you, that was the takeaway.”
Scarborough contrasted the concern over Hegseth with that over Matt Gaetz, Trump’s prospective attorney general, who has allegedly had sex with a minor and paid for sex.
“Obviously, everybody knows Gaetz is a problem. But I think there must be more there [with Hegseth], or I think they were just shocked, maybe they were blindsided,” he said.
Scarborough speculated that the lack of a vetting process for Hegseth and Gaetz, unlike secretary of state pick Sen. Marco Rubio, had led to more anxiety from Trump’s team, as it has become apparent that those two picks, and likely others, will face difficulty earning Senate confirmations.
Trump’s communication director, Steven Cheung, said in a statement to the Daily Beast that Scarborough’s suggestion that the president-elect was worried about Hegseth’s nomination was off-base.
“Scarborough is wrong,” he said. “Pete Hegseth dedicated his entire life as a warrior for the troops and for our country... He is an incredibly tough and smart candidate that will fight to put America First. With Pete as our Secretary of Defense, America’s enemies are on notice and our military will be great again.”
In recent days, Scarborough and Brzezinski have faced significant backlash over their Mar-a-Lago meeting with Trump, whom they had outspokenly opposed since his first stint in the White House.
Some, like Republican Nikki Haley, have accused the duo of chasing ratings or, as right-wing pundit Megyn Kelly put it, simply seeking “access to power.”
The co-hosts have dismissed the outcry, which they said was overrepresented on social media, explaining that their intent was to “restart communications” with the president-elect in order to benefit their reporting—and their viewers.
Ratings for the show have dipped since the Trump meeting.
