As President Donald Trump struggles against administrative upheaval, a plummeting stock market and the ongoing shutdown of the federal government, MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough delivered a grim prediction for his tenure.
“It does appear that this administration is terminal,” he said in his Christmas Eve broadcast Monday. “This administration will not survive.”
Hosting a panel to discuss Washington’s whirlwind news cycle, the cable host pointed to a recent Washington Post op-ed by columnist Philip Rucker, who declared Trump had become unhinged and that efforts to curb his behavior were futile.
Within the editorial, retired four-star Army Gen. Barry McCaffrey says, “This is a rogue presidency.”
Agreeing with McCaffrey’s assessment, Scarborough asked historian Jon Meacham where the country goes from here.
“This is a rogue president and the question is at this point, what in the world can Congress do, should Congress do?” he wondered.
While Meacham emphasized that lawmakers have a responsibility to act, he added, “I also think it’s up to all of us because far too often what we see in Washington is enabled by the fact that Washington is more often a mirror of who we are than it is a molder of who we are.”
Calling upon the public to get tough on the president rather than looking the other way, Meacham said it was time citizens recognized that things were changing, and not for the better.
“There are still a remarkable number of Americans who are willing to give the president a pass on these things that ... have shaken the basic institutions in a, if not unprecedented, in a scary way.”