Morning Joe spent its opening segment scalding the notion of either Rudy Giuliani or John Bolton as Secretary of State in the Trump administration. Giuliani was described as completely unqualified for the job, and someone who has personally profited off national security matters, a la the Clintons. Bolton was blasted as a “neo-con on steroids” whose views are out of sync with Trump’s, and is “donor-driven,” with Sheldon Adelson’s name being dropped.

So who’s Scarborough and company’s pick for SecState? Joe and Mike Barnicle called the selection of Tennessee Senator Bob Corker a “no-brainer.” Maybe so, but not necessarily in the way they meant it. Corker is infamously the man who facilitated President Obama’s disastrous Iran deal. Corker has been castigated across the conservative spectrum, as here, here, here and here.



Note: among the linked articles blasting Corker for facilitating Obama’s Iran deal is one from Breitbart. You’d guess that Trump’s senior adviser Steve Bannon, former head of Breitbart, is no Corker fan.

Note segundo: Elise Jordan is a former adviser to the relatively isolationist Rand Paul, so no surprise she’d be opposed to any neo-con.

JOE SCARBOROUGH: And now [Rudy’s] now he’s running around saying I will not be Attorney General, which he said to him, I’m not going to be Attorney General but I will be Secretary of State, something that he’s temperamentally not qualified to be, and he’s not qualified to be it based on any experience or training or any contacts. Donald Trump, as Michael [Steele] said, owes nobody nothing. . . . ELISE JORDAN: I felt like the John Bolton speculation — JOE: Oh my God! JORDAN: — is also very donor-driven — JOE: It is donor-driven. JORDAN: — and it’s because John Bolton is so popular with the AEI crowd, with the big with the donor crowd, and that’s someone I feel who made edgeways by saying, oh, Trump’s not that bad, Trump could be tolerable, and now is really trying to go in for the big win. . . . JOE: Sheldon Adelson, for instance. We are talking with John Bolton, there’s another great example, John Bolton is a bigger neocon than Dick Cheney, but the donor class is pushing Bolton on the Trump campaign, on the Trump team and he just doesn’t need him. Could you explain what a wreck, Elise, as somebody that knows, that for foreign policy what a massive neocon on steroids John Bolton is? . . . JORDAN: It’s just incredibly disappointing that one of the things I think Trump can do really effectively is curb corruption, curb the pay-to-play in Washington that’s so rampant, and then Rudy Guiliani who has benefited and profiteered so much from the national security state, is in line to be the next Secretary of State. JOE: We always do that “Drunk Rudy Giuliani,” he’s drunk with his own power . . . Everything that Donald Trump campaigned against, John Bolton is for. For the invasion of Iraq in 1998, he still thinks invading Iraq was the right thing to do, he wants to invade Iraq now, he wanted to go harder into Syria: everything. JORDAN: We didn’t go hard enough into Libya. That’s his critique of Obama: not that we went in, that we didn’t go hard enough.

. . . JOE: And again, you have Rudy Giuliani, who’s gotten rich off of national security interest, just like Hillary. JORDAN: That’s his huge business right now. And I think Qatar is a huge client, and he talks frequently about the men that he lost on 9/11 in that horrible tragedy and then he’s had some pretty shady ties with a lot of the regimes who were involved in 9/11. MIKA BRZEZINSKI Still ahead on Morning Joe . . . the Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee joins us. JOE: By the way, a guy that has not been out promoting himself, which is exactly the sort of temperament you would want as your Secretary of State. MIKE BARNICLE: That’s a no-brainer. JOE: That’s a no-brainer!



