Joe Scarborough Blames Democrat ‘Overreach’ for Trump’s Rising Poll Numbers – By Susan Jones (CNS News) / Feb 14 2019
(CNSNews.com) – “It’s a heck of a turnaround,” MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough said at the start of “Morning Joe” on Thursday, as he cited President Donald Trump’s rising poll numbers — despite the government shutdown.
A Gallup poll conducted Feb. 1-10 shows Trump with 44 percent approval — up from 37 percent in mid-January. “The latest increase in approval is mainly the result of political independents’ improved opinions of Trump,” Gallup noted.
Scarborough blamed Democrat “overreach” for boosting Trump, and he urged Democrats to be guided by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who “knows how to beat Donald Trump.”
“Democrats can’t afford any more unforced errors,” Scarborough said, “because all they are doing is making the once unthinkable now possible and that is the election of Donald Trump in 2020. They’ve got to play smarter.”
Here are his comments in full:
Donald Trump obviously did well because he had a lot of the country’s eyes and ears during the State of the Union Address, even though it was a rambling — as the “The Wall Street Journal” said, sort of this jig-jag sort of thing — but he had his closing argument. Just like in El Paso, he had a closing argument. And the closing argument was made up in large part of mistakes, unforced errors that the Democrats have already made.
You can talk about the botched rollout for the Green New Deal, can you talk about the anti-Semitic statements that one member said; you can talk about what’s going on in Virginia, the blackface controversies there; you can talk about the late-term abortion celebrations in the New York Legislature.
You can talk about a lot of these different things that, again, give Donald Trump a reason to say, don’t look at the mistakes that I’ve made, look at these extremists. I’m here to protect you from the extreme Democrats.
I know of what I speak, because Bill Clinton got elected in 1992 with 43 percent of the vote. People like me got elected in 1994. We immediately went too far right, and what did we do? We re-elected Bill Clinton.
And I’ve said time and time again, Bush won in 2004 — they talked about a permanent Republican majority. Two years later, Nancy Pelosi was speaker of the House. 2008, Barack Obama elected — it was supposed to be an ascendant majority that would be in power for 40 years. Two years later, Americans said, you overreached. They elected Republicans, they elected the tea party. The tea party overreached. Two years later, Barack Obama was reelected, two years later, Republicans in power. And then Donald Trump — and two years after Donald Trump’s extremism, Democrats get elected.
They’ve only been there for two months and they’ve already given Donald Trump his closing argument for the 2020 campaign.
Now, listen, I’m not telling Democrats to be what they are not, Mika. I am just going to repeat what I said before yesterday, and that is, before you hold a press conference, before you put your talking points up … before you say anything that you think is going to be controversial, ask yourself a question, WWND — what would Nancy do? Because she has already proven she knows how to defeat Donald Trump.
There are a lot of young Democrats that haven’t even been in Congress for two months, and they are offering Donald Trump way too much fodder. Yes, he’s a hypocrite. Yes, he’s a racist. Yes, he is all the things that we say he is every single day, but unlike us in ’94 — Republicans, we had Newt (Gingrich) to go to, and his ideas often were even crazier than ours. They have somebody who knows how to win who knows how to put together the largest majority — the largest victory since Watergate. And also — again, I will say it again, somebody that knows how to beat Donald Trump.
Democrats can’t afford any more unforced errors because all they are doing is making the once unthinkable now possible and that is the election of Donald Trump in 2020. They’ve got to play smarter.
