'Morning Joe' co-hosts Brzezinski and Scarborough tiff: ‘Mika, you’re a Democrat’

MSNBC co-hosts Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough exchanged heated words on air Wednesday morning while trying to make the same point that the Republican leadership is not denouncing Donald Trump strongly enough.

The argument started when Brzezinski laid into Ryan over the Wisconsin Republican’s fresh refusal to disavow Donald Trump after the Manhattan billionaire suggested at a rally on Tuesday that “the Second Amendment people” might be the only group capable of stopping Hillary Clinton from appointing liberal judges if she’s elected. Many interpreted the comment as, at best, a joke about assassinating her, and the remark was widely denounced by politicians and pundits from both parties.


“Please, Paul Ryan, go home and spend more time with your family. Okay? You need to be grounded,” Brzezinski said Wednesday morning amid a discussion about why the GOP’s most prominent leaders have thus far refused to reject their party’s presidential nominee. She was interrupted by Scarborough, who wanted to make a similar point himself.

“You're a Democrat. Mika, you’re a Democrat,” he said. “Let me say this. Let me say this, because it means nothing coming from you. You’re a Democrat.”

“Excuse me?” a perturbed Brzezinski interjected.

“It means nothing coming from a Democrat to these Republicans,” Scarborough said. “Let me say this to my Republican party. You are letting Donald Trump destroy the party. And you've done it from the beginning. 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?”

The two quickly reconciled, with Scarborough explaining that he agreed with Brzezinski’s point and only wanted to make it himself so that it could not be easily dismissed by Republicans watching the morning political talk show. He said he often tried to let Brzezinski deliver attacks against Democrat Hillary Clinton for a similar reason.

Brzezinski replied that “It's not as if I'm saying what I'm saying for partisan reasons. I'm actually frightened right now and I can't believe that there are leaders that are allowing this.”

“When I say go home and spend time with your family, I mean look at your children in the eyes and look at your wife in the eyes and really ask if you are doing the right thing, because you are doing the wrong thing by supporting this candidate,” she said. “You are doing the wrong thing ten times over. You're hurting this country for your political benefit and you're making the wrong play, even in terms of your political benefit. 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 and someone’s going to get hurt.”