U.S. President Donald Trump talks to members of the press next to White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt on board Air Force One en route to Florida, U.S., November 14, 2025. REUTERS/Annabelle Gordon

An MS NOW (formerly MSNBC) panel recently discussed whether President Donald Trump’s world of "sycophants" is making the president look weak.

“The reason he's so cranky when he gets asked [things] is because the reporters who ask him those questions, that's the only intrusion of reality he has on his life,” Politico columnist Jonathan Martin said on Wednesday's episode of Morning Joe. “Everybody else in his world — his staff, his congressional allies, the friends in New York he talks to on the phone, [Fox News entertainer] Sean Hannity, whatever — it’s all people who are reinforcing him and backing him up. It’s all sycophants he comes into any interaction with on a day-to-day basis.”

Host Joe Scarborough pointed out that conservative network Fox News didn't cover a press conference on the release of the Epstein files on Tuesday, arguing that the network may have done it to please Trump, who faces potential political fallout from the files and his connections to the deceased child sex trafficker.

“I guarantee you, everybody in Washington D.C. was watching that. And if you look at the hosts last night on that network, they were all basically calling it — first it goes from being ‘a Democratic hoax’ to now it's a ‘Democratic scandal,’ … but that's all the president's watching. That's all the president's hearing,” said Scarborough. “So, when somebody actually asks him a question that punctures that reality, he gets really angry.”

“Morning Joe” co-host Willie Geist pointed out that the “intrusion of reality” extended to Trump’s Truth Social media feed and his ‘hijacked’ press pool, which he has installed with “friendly faces.”

“He doesn't take questions often from mainstream media reporters and he doesn't allow reporters who ask tough questions into the pool very often. So, even then in those settings, it's rare that he gets a tough question. And the last couple of days he's reacted poorly when he does.”

Martin said Trump’s growing disconnect with reality was giving Republicans an opening to finally buck him as the voting public sees a president drift away into fantasy.

“It's the first hair fracture you can see on the MRI, right? You can barely make it out, but if you look closely enough and squint, you can see a slight little fracture there,” Martin said. “And guess what happens to those fractures? They don't get smaller, man. They only get wider and wider. And I think that that's the challenge he has.”

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