'Just looks stupid': Scarborough smacks down Trump for playing into Democrats hands

MSNBC screenshot

Although many Democratic strategists believe they have a good shot at flipping the U.S. House of Representatives in the 2026 midterms, they acknowledge that the math is more difficult for them in the U.S. Senate — where Republicans presently have a 51-47 majority. That isn't a supermajority by any means, but Democrats would need to flip at least three GOP-held seats to retake the Senate next year.

But during the Friday, August 15 rant on MSNBC's "Morning Joe," host Joe Scarborough argued that President Donald Trump and his MAGA allies are "overreaching" so badly that they are increasing Democrats' chances of flipping the Senate in the midterms.

Scarborough, a Never Trump conservative and former GOP congressman, stressed that it was a terrible look for the Trump Administration when armed U.S Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents showed up wearing masks outside a political rally in California featuring Gov. Gavin Newsom on August 14.

Scarborough told his colleague Jonathan Lemire, "They show up in masks at a political rally? I know, yes, this is ominous. This is this, this is that. Blah, blah, blah. This really just looks stupid and plays right into Gavin Newsom's hands, plays right into the Democratic Party's hands, and does the exact opposite thing that they would want to do — which is to suggest we're not here for political reasons, we're here, you know, to do our job to arrest those who are in the country illegally. So, yeah, that was — talk about a miss."

Trump, Scarborough noted, is "upside down in a lot of polls" on immigration not because of "the underlying policies" but because of "the implementation of those policies" and "ham-fisted attempts to intimidate."

Scarborough told Lemire, "People running around again with masks, sunglasses, no identification on them whatsoever…. It's not a sight that Americans want to see on the street — certainly not independents, not swing voters."

Looking at the "bigger picture," Scarborough added, Democrats are "starting to do quite well on generic ballots in one poll after another" — noting that according to reporting in Politico, Democrats "actually can see a Senate majority" if they "squint hard enough."

"If it's a wave election," Scarborough told Lemire, "there's no reason why Democrats don't win a state like Maine that Joe Biden won, I believe, by nine points, and Kamala Harris won. North Carolina: Roy Cooper, the (former) governor — very popular governor there — is in that race. He's ahead in the polls right now. Democrats have talked (former Sen.) Sherrod Brown, an extremely popular populist who ran against a wave in 2024 and lost — they've convinced him to get back in there. And they believe they have an outside shot at Alaska and one or 2 other states."

The conservative MSNBC host continued, "So again, all of this overreach — again, it's disturbing. But it should be concerning to Republicans as well, because they are losing the middle of America."

Watch the full MSNBC video below or at this link.

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