‘Morning Joe’ Mocks Trump’s Weak Position in Negotiating Trade Deal with China

The crew at Morning Joe had a little fun mocking Donald Trump’s negotiating skills on Monday morning while discussing the president’s efforts at getting a trade deal with China.

Well, not so much “fun” as “sarcastic gallows humor.” But you take your laughs where you can get them these days.

Joe Scarborough was the humor vector this time. The show’s eponymous host told partner Mika Brzezinski that even the folks at Fox News are concerned about Trump’s lousy negotiating position with respect to the Chinese:

“I actually heard this on Fox News last week. Somebody expressing real concern that the Chinese already know that Donald Trump, the only sort of economic trick he has left in his bag is to come to a resolution on the trade war with China to get the economy going. Well, if we all know that, then the Chinese leaders know that. Xi knows that. And so Xi will drive a harder bargain with Donald Trump and at the end of the day, the man who wrote a book on The Art of the Deal while he was losing more money than any American alive will have to strike another bad deal with the Chinese because they know he’s timing all this for his re-election.”

Yep, the great dealmaker has put himself in a weak position from which to negotiate, and China knows it. So the Chinese premier will be in the driver’s seat in terms of extracting concessions from Trump, if the president doesn’t want the American economy to dive into the toilet while he’s running for re-election. (Though if it does he’ll blame the media and anyone else he can think of.)

Also worth noting that The Art of the Deal was written by a ghostwriter who has spent the last few years publicly expressing his regret for the role he played in Trump’s mythmaking that helped him ascend to the presidency. So not only was Trump losing a billion dollars while writing that book, he didn’t even write that book. It is impossible to know if this was backhanded mockery from Scarborough, but it’s fun to imagine.

Watch the video above, via MSNBC.