Latest news with #JoeScarborough
Daily Mail
6 days ago
- Politics
- Daily Mail
BREAKING NEWS Morning Joe throws embattled Donald Trump a very surprising lifeline as Jeffrey Epstein scandal worsens
Joe Scarborough gave Donald Trump a very surprising vote of confidence on the worsening Jeffrey Epstein scandal that threatens to engulf the presidency. The Morning Joe host, who is a notorious Trump critic, said on Thursday that while hardcore MAGA supporters and influencers are outraged by the president's refusal to release the Epstein files, the majority of traditional Republicans don't yet care. 'MAGA influencers, the MAGA base - They're outraged. They're enraged with the president there. There's a split on where they stand on the Epstein files... it's about a 50/50 split,' Scarborough said. 'That said, we've seen no evidence yet of Donald Trump losing support among Republicans. He's sitting at 88 to 90 percent support among Republicans. So until those numbers start moving, I suspect that we're just talking about MAGA influencers, mainly.' Scarborough's comments come as major MAGA allies - who were promised the 'truth' on Epstein - turned their backs on Trump for failing to release Epstein's 'client list. The MAGA world was rocked by revelations of Trump's friendship with the pedophile - including a salacious 50th birthday card published by the Wall Street Journal that Trump allegedly sent him in 2003. Trump denies doing so and has filed a $10 billion lawsuit against the Journal. On Wednesday, the prestige paper alleged that Trump was first told by his Attorney General Pam Bondi in May that his name appeared in papers concerning pedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein. Last week, Trump said Bondi hadn't told him his name was in the files. There's no suggestion of wrongdoing on President Trump's part, but he has angered many of his own supporters by vowing to release the Epstein files while campaigning, only to refuse to do so now he's in power. Democrats are said to be delighted by the scandal and are using it to try and create ruptures between Trump and the GOP. While Scarborough appeared to defend Trump on Thursday, earlier this week, he accused the president of trying to distract his supporters amid the Epstein files scandal. 'Pretty much, what everyone in Washington and New York, anybody in politics have concluded, is that Donald Trump is throwing everything at the wall,' Scarborough said on Tuesday. 'You can say he's doing it to distract from Epstein, you can say he's doing it to distract from whatever, but there is no doubt he's throwing everything at the wall.' Scarborough was specifically discussing the Trump administration's claims that former president Barack Obama is guilty of treason over the Russian interference probe. It's not the first time Scarborough defends the president. Last month Scarborough stunningly defended the president's bombing of Iran - saying Hillary Clinton and several previous presidents would have all done the same. Scarborough, 62, argued that Trump had no other choice. 'I find it hard to believe that Bush 41, Bush 43, Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton - you know, go down the list - any president wouldn't have felt compelled to take that strike,' the former Florida Republican explained. He also said Trump was left with 'no good options' when it came to a solution. 'What would Monday look like if he hadn't have moved?' he asked panelist David Ignatius, who agreed that any president would have made the same call. Both said Trump had 'inherited' the 'battle plan' from presidents cited. Ignatius said all three considered 'this scenario' when 'diplomacy wasn't working.' The MSNBC star left the Republican party over Trump's rise, but had a meeting with him in Mar-a-Lago after the 2024 presidential election, enraging his liberal audience. At the time, David Frum of The Atlantic accused the liberal network host of surrendering to fear of then-president-elect Trump with the headline 'The Sound of Fear on Air.' Scarborough defended himself in a 20-minute rant on his show last December. 'That wasn't the sound of fear, that was the sound of civility,' Scarborough said.
The Hill
15-07-2025
- General
- The Hill
The complicated truth behind Gen Z's ‘religious resurgence'
Headlines abound suggesting that Gen Z, mostly led by Gen Z men, are bucking the conventional wisdom that young people are destined to leave organized religion and instead are leading what some call a ' religious resurgence.' In some ways, faith communities may be ripe for growth among a chronically online generation that itself is recognizing the hollow limits of living more of their lives on-screen than off. Less than half of young Americans, a recent Harvard Youth Poll found, feel a sense of belonging to a community, with young men being significantly more likely than young women to indicate 'no strong sense of belonging anywhere.' Being an active part of a faith tradition is one way many Americans have historically developed that sense of belonging. Our work at the Public Religion Research Institute finds that 80 percent of Americans who attend church today regularly say one important reason they do so is to ' experience religion as a community.' Others argue that a religious revival will also serve as a moderating influence on young men, some of whom may be particularly vulnerable to the conspiracy theories and misogynistic content pervasive in the manosphere. Joe Scarborough, co-host of MSNBC's Morning Joe, echoes this concern from a more mainstream vantage point. On his show in May, Scarborough argued that increased church involvement for young men — even in the most conservative-leaning churches — may serve as a reality check for younger men prone to believing the right-wing conspiracies that often populate their red-pill, algorithmic-driven feeds. Our data, however, show no evidence that Gen Z men are becoming more religious. Nor do we find that Gen Z men who attend church frequently hold more moderate political or social views. Our latest Census of American Religion, released in May, shows that young people's rates of religious affiliation have continued to drop overall in the last decade. In 2013, we found that 32 percent of Americans aged 18 to 29 identified as religiously unaffiliated, which rose to 38 percent last year — an increase driven mainly by young women's departure from religion. Just 29 percent of young women were religious 'nones' in 2013, yet by 2024, it was 40 percent. In contrast, young men's lack of affiliation with religion showed little change over the past decade, moving from 35 percent in 2013 to 36 percent last year. To be fair, the plateau in Gen Z men's religious disaffiliation is a notable story, especially given that for much of the past two decades, trend data have shown Americans increasingly shedding religious labels. Yet so far, we find no evidence that Gen Z men are actually becoming more religious. The more significant religion story is that young women and young men are moving apart religiously — a divide that mirrors the broader gender gaps emerging among Gen Z across a wide range of political and cultural issues. Gen Z women have become far more politically liberal than their male peers and display a stronger feminist consciousness than older generations of American women. Many faith traditions, meanwhile, continue to uphold, or even double down on, complementarian theology, which preaches male headship in both church and home and frames a woman's highest calling as being a wife and prolific mother. It's not hard to see why many young women are walking away from organized religion. The strong promotion of traditional gender norms in some denominations may actually help explain why certain young men remain religiously affiliated. But this dynamic also undercuts the idea that greater church involvement will necessarily moderate Gen Z men's attitudes or behavior. For instance, last year, we found that 48 percent of American men who attend church regularly (weekly or monthly) agreed that society is better off when men and women stick to the jobs 'they are naturally suited for.' Among Gen Z men church attenders, that number was slightly higher (52 percent), a stark contrast to the 22 percent of Gen Z women who agree with such traditionalist sentiments. Gen Z male churchgoers are far from moderate on a range of political issues — including belief in the so-called 'great replacement' conspiracy theory. Among male churchgoers last year, we found that 47 percent, including 45 percent of Gen Z male churchgoers, agreed that immigrants are 'invading our country and replacing our cultural and ethnic background.' By contrast, only 19 percent of Gen Z men who do not attend church agreed with the statement. We also find that Gen Z men who attend church (46 percent) are just as likely as older male churchgoers (48 percent) to be classified as Christian nationalists — those who believe that American government and identity should be closely aligned with a conservative form of Christianity. In contrast, only 18 percent of Gen Z men who don't attend church share these views about the relationship between church and state. Our findings echo recent research by political scientists Paul Djupe and Brooklyn Walker, who show that young Christian men are trending more reactionary and theologically conservative than both older Christian men and Christian women. Of note, they find that younger Christian men who embrace a sense of victimhood — such as believing that the system works against people like them — are significantly more likely to identify as evangelicals than older Christian men or women. Rather than serving as a moderating influence, the patriarchal Christianity practiced in many conservative churches may appeal to young men whose sense of masculinity feels threatened — a message that closely mirrors the rhetoric of prominent Republican leaders and right-wing social media influencers. Of course, the jury is still out on whether most Gen Z men will buck the broader secularizing trend in the U.S. and return to church at higher rates than recent trends would predict. But if they are increasingly drawn to traditionalist churches, it could create yet another space where young women and men no longer spend time together, further widening what appears to be a growing gender divide across multiple fronts in society and politics. Melissa Deckman, Ph.D. is CEO of the Public Religion Research Institute, a nonprofit, nonpartisan research organization dedicated to conducting independent research at the intersection of religion, culture and public policy.
Yahoo
02-07-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
‘Morning Joe' Blasts ICE Claims of Arresting the ‘Worst of the Worst'
MSNBC's Morning Joe tore into the Trump administration's nationwide immigration crackdown after shock revelations ICE has arrested only a tiny fraction of those described as the most dangerous migrants. 'The thing that we heard time and again was 'the worst of the worst', the violent offenders. It wasn't those who ran red lights or were caught speeding five miles an hour faster than the speed limit,' host Joe Scarborough said Wednesday. 'When did the Trump administration go from having as their goal getting the 'worst of the worst' and getting the violent offenders, to deciding they're going to do sweeps at Home Depot?' he asked. It comes after data obtained exclusively by NBC revealed that of the 13,000 immigrants to the United States known to have committed murder, less than 6% have been detained by Department of Homeland Security (DHS) immigration officials since Donald Trump assumed office in January. ICE has also, according to NBC's report, detained at most 11% of the total 15,811 immigrants convicted of sexual assault. By contrast, only a third of the overall number detained so far have any criminal background at all. Speaking with NBC reporter Julia Ainsley, who authored that report, Scarborough asked on Wednesday when exactly it would appear that the Trump administration went from targeting 'the worst of the worst' to picking up 'hotel workers and people on farms.' 'I think there were two points when they majorly ramped that up,' Ainsley replied, pointing to the establishment of quotas for immigration officials with 'just the first week of the Trump administration,' and when in mid-May White House aide Stephen Miller allegedly began calling ICE chiefs to threaten them with dismissal if they didn't start 'arresting 3,000 [people] a day.' 'It's much harder to arrest criminals, people who are hiding from the law and know how to do that,' she added. 'It's a lot easier to go to a place where people are just going about their daily lives, taking their kids to school, going to work, and make large sweeps there.' The Department of Homeland Security has denied the veracity of NBC's claims, but not yet produced hard numbers to counter them.
Forbes
30-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Forbes
MSNBC's ‘Morning Joe' Charges Toward Its 20th Year: ‘We Want To Break New Ground'
'Morning Joe' co-hosts Joe Scarborough, Mika Brzezinski, and Willie Geist on the set at MSNBC ... More headquarters in New York. In a time of relentless--maybe exhausting is a better word--change, MSNBC's Morning Joe has remained remarkably consistent--in fact, co-hosts Joe Scarborough, Mika Brzezinski and Willie Geist have quietly taken the title of longest-running morning show team on television as they close in on two decades together. While it's very rare in television for one set of hosts to endure as long as these three have, a lot has changed. The show that began in a studio in Secaucus, New Jersey, soon decamped for New York. The sets have changed. So has Scarborough's look, evolving with the times from v-neck-sweater-over-white-tee to jacket-no-tie to jacket-and-rep-tie-with-sneakers and occasionally just a branded Morning Joe sweatshirt. But the mission of the show today is pretty much the same as it was in the beginning: setting the stage for the day in politics and news by bringing together legislators, academics, journalists, authors, and others to try and make sense of what's happening over a cup (or more) of coffee. 'Morning Joe continues to be at the center of political conversation with influential audiences not just in Washington, D.C. and New York, but across the country,' Scarborough said. Joe Scarborough and co-host Mika Brzezinski host the "Morning Joe" show on April 7, 2009 in New York ... More City, during Scarborough's sweater-and-crisp-white-tee phase. (Photo by) Dominant in DC--and on YouTube And while they have yet to knock the goliath of Fox News Channel's Fox 'n' Friends from its perch as the most-watched morning show in cable news, Morning Joe has been the top-rated morning show in the Washington, DC market, home of course to influential viewers like Donald Trump, who has consistently bashed MSNBC while also conceding that he's a regular viewer. Nationally, Morning Joe has averaged 701,000 viewers in the second quarter, more than doubling that of CNN, and the second quarter also marks 41 consecutive quarterly wins over CNN. Among viewers 25-54, the key demographic valued by advertisers, Morning Joe has also beaten CNN, drawing an average audience of 62,000 viewers in the second quarter of 2025. Despite a dip in overall viewership following the presidential election in November--common after viewership traditionally climbs during the months leading up to Election Day--Morning Joe's audience has rebounded, climbing 11 percent among total viewers and 9 percent in the key demo. MORNING JOE — Pictured: (l-r) Willie Geist, Mika Brzezinski, Joe Scarborough — Broadcastng from New ... More Orleans' John McDonogh High School, MSNBC's Joe Scarborough, Mika Brzezinski and Willie Geist encourage viewers with a community involvement call-to-action (Photo by Cheryl Gerber/NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal via Getty Images via Getty Images) The show has also seen its viewership on YouTube rise dramatically, with 56.2 million views in the second quarter, up 38% from 1Q 2025. And while Morning Joe is considered a politically-driven program, some of the show's most-watched videos on YouTube deal with economics, including an April segment on Trump's tariff war that drew more than 1.2 million views, and one that focused on a warning from the CEOs of Walmart and Target about rising prices and empty shelves that's been watched 1.5 million times: 'We want to break new ground' The focus on non-linear viewership is a reality for all of cable and broadcast news, as a generational shift in media consumption means younger viewers are far less likely than their parents and grandparents to sit down in front of a TV and watch live news. Morning Joe has plans to meet those viewers where they are with consumable chunks of the live show on social media, and new content produced specifically for non-linear viewers. "Looking ahead, the entire team is excited to build on what has made the program successful for nearly two decades. We want to break new ground in the audio space, revamp and beef up our newsletter, and experiment with town hall meetings with the loyal Morning Joe family,' Scarborough said of the show's plans. The show's daily audio showcast, a podcast-style version of the daily broadcast, is MSNBC's most-listened-to, with 1.4 million downloads so far in June. MORNING JOE — Pictured: (l-r) Willie Geist, Bradley Cooper — Bradley Cooper swings by to talk to ... More hosts Mika Brzezinski and Willie Geist of "Morning Joe" (Photo by Virginia Sherwood/NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal via Getty Images via Getty Images) 400 voices a month With four hours each morning, Morning Joe has time to cast a wide net, and it does: averaging 400 different voices each month. Often, those are newsmakers, like Sen. Amy Klobuchar who talked on a Monday morning about the assassination of her friend and fellow lawmaker, Minnesota Democrat Melissa Hortman, who had been shot and killed two days earlier. Over the last few weeks, other guests have included Trump border czar Tom Homan, talking about ICE raids and protests in Los Angeles, and Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries, who discussed Zohran Mamdani's upset victory in the Democratic primary for New York City mayor. But the show's bookers are also quite effective at landing big names in entertainment and theater, with Ben Affleck, Jon Hamm and Seth Rogan appearing on Morning Joe in recent weeks.
Fox News
23-06-2025
- Politics
- Fox News
Scarborough defends Trump's decision to strike Iran, suggests other presidents would have done the same
MSNBC's Joe Scarborough defended President Donald Trump on Monday over his decision to strike Iran's nuclear program, suggesting other presidents might have made the same choice. "I said on Thursday or Friday, the president had no good options. What would Monday look like if he hadn't have moved? If Iran wasn't already at 60% and an ability to create nuclear weapons in a short matter of time, right?" Scarborough began. "I find it hard to believe that Bush 41, Bush 43, Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, you know, go down the list, any presidents, wouldn't have felt compelled to take that strike." Scarborough, a former GOP congressman and longtime critic of the president, asked Washington Post columnist David Ignatius, about Trump's decision during "Morning Joe." "I'm not championing either side of this. Although I ask you, David, how difficult would it have been for any president to not take that shot if they knew that Iran was even being attacked by the United Nations?" Ignatius said that past presidents have also considered this scenario. "Three previous presidents have considered precisely this scenario. They're the ones who developed the weapons and the battle plan. This was something inherited by President Trump. And each of them pulled back because of the uncertainties associated with the action. They decided it just wasn't worth doing," he said. "If President Trump decided last Friday, there is no chance that the negotiated settlement that I want to resolve this is going to work, the Iranians are jamming me, they're just pushing me along, they're stonewalling, is the word that J.D. Vance used. He, in a sense, did have no choice but to move it on to a different terrain," Ignatius said. He warned that the U.S. just doesn't know what might come of the move. "The problem is on that different terrain. We just don't know what's ahead. But I take your point, right. It's his choices were debased at the moment he had to make the decision," Ignatius said. Scarborough noted that past presidents didn't have Iran in a degraded and "cornered" position. He said Iran was "even getting condemned by the United Nations for how quickly they were moving towards developing a nuclear weapon." MSNBC contributor Katty Kay agreed with Scarborough and said Iran had been weakened over the last year, putting Trump in a unique position. "You look at the situation with Hezbollah being degraded, the situation with Syria and Assad falling, Hamas being degraded in Gaza, all around the region, Iran has suffered blows over the past year, not just the past week, and so gave Donald Trump a different set of circumstances in than those three previous presidents have faced," she said. Trump earned praise from other prominent critics as well, including former National Security adviser John Bolton, who said on Sunday, "President Trump made the right decision for America." "It was a decisive action. It was the right thing to do. I thought somebody should do it for a long time. But better late than never," Bolton told CNN's Kasie Hunt.
