Morning Joe star torches truce with Donald Trump during on-air rant about lawsuits

Joe Scarborough blasted Donald Trump for his lawsuits against the media, nearly a month after his controversial meeting with the newly elected president at Mar-a-Lago.

The host of MSNBC’s Morning Joe claimed that Trump’s lawsuit against The Des Moines Register and pollster Ann Selzer over their poll that had Kamala Harris beating him in Iowa would be thrown out.

‘Ann Selzer? Anna doesn’t have to worry. The Des Moines Registry? They don’t have to worry. The Trump team will not get further than summary proceedings. That gets thrown out very quickly,” Scarborough said Tuesday.

Trump accused the newspaper and Selzer of “blatant election interference” by deliberately releasing the stunningly wrong poll the Saturday before Election Day.

At the time, Democrats viewed Harris’ three-point lead in the Midwestern state as a sign that she had momentum, but Trump would win that lead by a decisive 13.3 percentage points.

Scarborough then moved on to Trump’s lawsuit against CBS News and 60 Minutes over what he claims was their deceptively edited interview with Harris that aired a month before the election.

Scarborough made fun of Trump and argued that 60 Minutes had edited their conversation with Harris as they would with any other interviewee.

He then claimed, like The Des Moines Register case, that this would ultimately be dismissed.

Donald Trump recently won a $15 million settlement from ABC News for an interview George Stephanopoulos gave about the E. Jean Carroll case

Trump has also threatened to sue The New York Times over a series of articles the newspaper published about Trump’s financial dealings in the run-up to the election. Scarborough said The Times had nothing to worry about.

“So you can make sure you can make the threats all you want,” Scarborough said. “But at the end of the day, we still have a pretty, pretty strong First Amendment. And that won’t change in the next six months.’

Morning Joe regular Willie Geist suggested that Trump may have been emboldened to sue more media outlets for defamation after his $15 million settlement with ABC News.

To avoid further lawsuits, ABC agreed to donate the amount to Trump’s presidential library following comments made by George Stephanopoulos on the E. Jean Carroll case.

In the March 10 segment, he interviewed Republican Rep. Nancy Mace, with Stephanopoulos pressing her on why she supported Trump after he was found liable for sexual assault.

Stephanopoulos said, “I’m asking you a question about why you support someone who has been found liable for rape.”

The congresswoman responded, “As a rape victim who has been shamed for years for her rape. You’re trying to shame me again.’

Scarborough said ABC likely agreed to the settlement to avoid journalists being ordered to hand over their phones to the court.

In this March 10 interview with Republican Congresswoman Nancy Mace, George Stephanopoulos pressed her on her support for Donald Trump.

Mace was raped when she was 16 years old and criticized Stephanopoulos for “shaming” her for supporting Trump despite the ruling in the E. Jean Carroll case

“There were mistakes made in that interview,” he said of the Stephanopoulos-Mace interview, “that pushed the process far enough to allow discovery to be made. Would ABC have won if they had fought to the end? There are many lawyers who think so.’

Scarborough and his co-host and wife – Mika Brzezinski – have in recent weeks defended their decision to meet with Trump at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, to discuss how they would handle his second term. .

Liberals viewed this move as an inherent capitulation to the president-elect, especially after Scarborough compared Trump to a “fascist.”

Scarborough has dismissed claims that he fears Trump will retaliate against him once in power, and has argued that the meeting was held to inform his viewers as part of his work as a media personality.