MSNBC "Morning Joe" hosts Joe Scarborough (left) and Mika Brzezinski (right) repeatedly warned GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump that he had to answer questions before cutting his interview short. Joe Scarborough cuts off Trump: 'You can’t just talk'

MSNBC abruptly cut to a brief commercial break during its interview Tuesday with Donald Trump on “Morning Joe” after the show's co-hosts, Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, repeatedly warned the Republican presidential candidate that he had to answer their questions and not just pontificate.

In launching into an explanation and defense of his call to bar the entry of Muslims in the United States on Monday “until our country's representatives can figure out what is going on,” Trump reiterated much of what he said in earlier interviews in the hour to ABC's “Good Morning America” and to CNN's “New Day,” remarking upon how European cities like Paris and London are no longer the same and that he is proposing a “common sense,” temporary solution to the issue.


“You’ve got to let us ask questions. You can’t just talk. You’ve got to let us actually ask questions. You’re just talking,” Scarborough told Trump, who was calling in to the show, as he often does.

“No, no. I’m not just talking. I’m not just talking. I’m giving you the facts,” Trump responded.

Amid cross-talk, Scarborough then briefly threatened to cut the interview and go to break, which is exactly what he did.

“All right, Donald. Donald, Donald, Donald, Donald — you’re not going to keep talking. We will go to break if you keep talking. We’re going to ask you questions,” Scarborough said, as Trump continued to talk over him. “All right, go to break everybody. Go to break, go to break, go to break, go to break right now. We’ll be right back with more ‘Morning Joe.’”

The show returned with Trump after a brief commercial break, where he fielded questions from panelists Willie Geist, Nicole Wallace, Eugene Robinson and Mark Halperin for more than 10 minutes.

“Gene, I hope you still write well about me,” Trump said, before Robinson asked him if he felt good about appealing to Americans’ base fears.

“No, no, I want to see a country where we can live in peace where buildings aren't going to be blown up, where people aren’t going to walk into a room with innocent people with no guns because there’s no Second Amendment for those people, unfortunately. If they had guns, it would have been a different story,” he said, referring to the San Bernardino, California, attack on Dec. 2. “But I really want where people aren't going to walk into a place and shoot everybody.”

When told by Scarborough that he can’t generalize from the San Bernardino mass shooting that Muslims aren’t helping law enforcement, Trump responded that Muslims need to help more.

“They are to a very little extent, but not nearly to the extent that, I mean, look, not nearly to the extent that they should be,” Trump replied.

As in the first two interviews, Trump mentioned the initial, unsuccessful 1993 attempt to destroy the World Trade Center before the 2001 attacks that destroyed the twin towers.

