Watch: Morning Joe Slams ‘Draft Dodger’ Trump For ‘Astounding’ Ignorance And Lies

MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough and frequent Morning Joe guest Mike Barnicle analyzed President Donald Trump’s bizarre comments to the press in a brief segment Thursday morning. Trump made a long series of statements before a cabinet meeting on Wednesday that left many observers incredulous.

The Morning Joe host showed a clip of Trump’s remarks, which were both confusing and confused at times, before discussing their implications with Barnicle, a journalist and frequent contributor to the show. Trump was discussing how he had essentially fired Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, though Mattis, in fact, resigned.

“Not only is that tough to watch, and is tragic,” Scarborough said. “Much of what he said was complete and utter nonsense, what he said about generals, trashing the greatest generals of the past generation actually is so dangerous on so many fronts.”

Scarborough then read Barnicle and excerpt from a Washington Post article describing Trump’s falsehoods and revisionist history. Trump had talked about the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan and claimed that it had bankrupted the USSR and led to its collapse. This is not the case.

“Then, of course, we saw the praise from toadies,” Scarborough said. “It’s something deeply offensive. Maybe draft dodger doesn’t fit his circumstances perfectly, but I think most Americans would consider what he did draft dodging. He’s draft dodging back during the Vietnam war while Robert Mueller is working for a year to fix his knee so he can go fight in Vietnam. Then you’ve got people like General Mattis and Stan McChrystal and William McRaven who have put their lives on the line for a generation in service and defense of our republic and you have that man in the White House attacking them.”

“And that man in the White House when it came to a confrontation that he felt had to be resolved quickly in order to get Jim Mattis out of the office of Secretary of Defense on January 1 rather than February 1, he had Mike Pompeo, his Secretary of State, call Jim Mattis because he was probably afraid to call General Mattis,” Mike Barnicle said.

“[F]or the past three days, I’ve spoken to half a dozen people who were members of prior administrations and one who is still with this administration. And the theme was the same about this President when they were discussing him,” Barnicle said. “They felt there was a line of astoundingly ignorant and astoundingly isolated and dangerous incidents involving this President who for two weeks has been in basically isolation. And he appears yesterday, finally, bursting at the seams to talk.”

“And every one of the people that I spoke to had one theme in common. They indicated they had been called by members of governments in other nations used to dealing with a sensible, sane and safe United States of America,” Barnicle said. “[They were] asking them what was going on, how long do they anticipate what was going on now would last and did people here in this administration realize the risk and the heightened danger they were bringing by this erratic behavior. That was the common theme.”

“Well, the ignorance was astounding in the President’s display yesterday, Mike Barnicle. It was dizzying, really, to watch him talk and try and recount history in his own words,” Mike Brzezinski said.

Watch the clip above, via MSNBC.