Scarborough: Republicans 'setting themselves up' for 'political disaster' in 2026

Although MS NOW host Joe Scarborough is a blistering critic of President Donald Trump and the MAGA movement and rooted for Joe Biden in 2020 and Kamala Harris in 2024, the Never Trump conservative and former GOP congressman remains a staunch defender of pre-MAGA Reagan and Goldwater conservatism. The Republican Party, as Scarborough sees it, took a wrong turn when it went MAGA.

During a Friday, December 12 rant on MS NOW's "Morning Joe" — which he hosts with liberal Mika Brzezinski — Scarborough argued that Trump is dropping the ball badly on the economy and that Republicans are destined to suffer in the 2026 midterms if they echo Trump's claim that "affordability" is a Democratic "hoax."

Scarborough said of Republicans, "They are setting themselves up every single day for political disaster next year….. It is astounding to me."

The "Morning Joe" host stressed that while Wall Street millionaires and billionaires are doing well in the stock market, many everyday Americans are struggling because of high prices.

Scarborough told Brzezinski, "Bill Clinton was able to say to Americans, 'I feel your pain.' They believed him. He was extraordinarily successful as a politician for decades because of that…. Now, (Trump's) problem is we have a divided economy. You have the top 10 percent of Americans that account for over 50 percent of our GDP this past year."

The Never Trump conservative continued, "So, if the GDP is doing well and the stock market is doing well…. Working Americans, middle Americans, middle-class Americans who are struggling to get by —they're not feeling that part of the GDP. And so, Donald Trump can't feel their pain and has never claimed to feel their pain."

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