Right-wing freakout exposes GOP’s insidious contempt for their own voters

The latest ridiculous freakout from President Donald Trump and his MAGA followers has once again exposed just how "stupid" they think their voters are, according to the hosts of MS NOW's Morning Joe.

Earlier this week, at a midterm rally in Ohio, former President Barack Obama took a brief aside to mock the overly gold renovations that Trump has done to the White House, and the Oval Office in particular, calling it out with a pointed comedic jab.

"What's with all the gold? He's got the White House looking like Saddam Hussein opened up a Cheesecake Factory," Obama said.

Certain right-wing pundits attempted to spin that remark as Obama making fun of the Cheesecake Factory restaurant chain, arguing that it exposed him as snobbish and out-of-touch with everyday Americans. Other observers countered these criticisms, pointing out that the reference to the late Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was the actual point of the punchline. Trump himself appeared rattled by the remarks during his own rally appearance, defending his ability to renovate buildings "very good, [and] very beautifully."

During the Tuesday morning broadcast of Morning Joe, co-host and former congressman Joe Scarborough went off on Trump and the other MAGA acolytes for their attacks on Obama's remarks, arguing that it shows how much contempt they have for the intelligence of their voters.

"The fact that they take a very funny Barack Obama joke and go, 'Oh, the guy whose middle name is Hussein has stepped into it,'" Scarborough said. "We can now say he's un-American for making fun — no, not making fun of The Cheesecake Factory, making fun of all the fake gold that Donald Trump has slathered all around the White House. So it's again, time and time again, they think their viewers are so stupid that they're not going to be able to connect things... 'They closed the rural hospitals, my trucking company's out of business, but he made a joke about Donald Trump that had the words "Cheesecake Factory" in it. I'm voting for the Republicans.' Like, do they really think people are that stupid?"

"Well, it's the desperation," co-host Willie Geist said. "As one host said yesterday on Fox News, this is the deplorables moment, just like [with] Hillary [Clinton]. This is it. Again, as Joe just said, no, it wasn't a joke about The Cheesecake Factory. It was a joke about Donald Trump's supergluing pieces of cheap gold all over the White House and making it look as cheap as it does. The other part of this is, do they really want to have a contrast about who the elitist is? If we're comparing Barack Obama to Donald Trump, the guy who is building a ballroom bigger than the white house, the guy who wants to build an arch, who wants to take over the Kennedy Center, the guy who lives in a castle by the sea, the guy who made [$2.3] billion since he took over[.] Do you really want to have that conversation here?"