Joe Scarborough: Trump Returning to Coronavirus Briefings Would Be ‘Political Catastrophe’ for Him

MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough has warned that if President Donald Trump starts doing Coronavirus press briefings again it will be disastrous for him. The Morning Joe host pointed out that those briefings were fodder for his political opponents.

“He thinks that he was a persuasive, powerful spokesman. I think he feels what happens happened is there was a period of time he had more control over the public perception of this virus and this crisis than he had after he left the stage,” said MSNBC’s John Heilemann.

“So he’s remounting the stage now because he thinks he will do a better job than anyone else explaining what’s going on with this thing, why it’s not anything to be feared, why it’s fake news and why we’re all over blowing it, and why America is doing great. I think he thinks he’s the best messenger for himself. I don’t think that he thinks he was a disaster politically back in the winter and spring.”

“It would be even more of a political catastrophe for his campaign if that were, in fact, the course he chose,” Scarborough said.

“Because, of course, those briefings were the beginning of his slide,” he said. “And with every briefing he made, every time he went off script, he provided, and we predicted at the time, he provided the sound bite that his opponents would use against him in the fall and, of course, that’s where we’ve got so many of his quotes, errant quotes talking about it’s not coming back in the fall, using bleach, using UV lights, hydroxochloroquine.”

“But him repeating those performances, him going out and lying about the pandemic, lying about the numbers as he tried to do on Chris Wallace, it’s only going to hurt him politically more. You look at the numbers of whether Americans trust him and his handling of the pandemic and it’s in the basement. It’s about as bad as you would think it would get but now if he comes out at the end of July and does this for another two, three, four weeks before it’s shutdown again?”