Morning Joe just demolished “dealmaker” Trump in epic fashion over bungling of Stormy Daniels cover-up

MSNBC host Joe Scarborough railed against President Trump’s sudden decision to meet with the president of North Korea this morning on his show, decrying the move as a potentially a huge mistake done the wrong way, for the wrong reasons, with the only guaranteed result that it will give dictator Kim Jong-un a huge propaganda victory without guaranteeing any real positive result for the U.S.

Scarborough said Trump wanted to find a way to take attention away from the story about his failed nondisclosure agreement with a porn star.

“He makes a decision on North Korea because of Stormy Daniels,” said Scarborough, “and people can deny that all they want, but if you’re doing that, you’re in the tank for Donald Trump because it is painfully obvious that’s exactly what’s going on.”

“This is his pattern,” piped in co-host Mika Brezinski, referring to other actions like the hastily announce steel and aluminum tariffs that the president put forward without consulting his economic advisors which took attention from Hope Hicks resignation.

Scarborough at the end of the segment held up a copy of today’s Washington Post front page and said, “He did not want the Washington Post to have the word ‘Stormy Daniels’ on the front page today. Guess what? He succeeded.”

This time Trump did not confer with his own State Department before impulsively agreeing to become the first American president to meet with the leader of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, and violated his own pledge that he would not negotiate without an advance commitment that they would shut down their renegade nuclear weapon program.

“Suddenly you have the foreign policy community shocked and caught off guard by the most significant announcement a commander in chief could make in 2018,” said Scarborough, adding that it is “all to distract from a president who did not go through proper channels or us the proper inter-agency processes once.”

“That’s exactly right,” added the shows news anchor Willie Geist, adding that it “appears to have been done in a pretty ad hoc matter.”

“When you have the Secretary of State Rex Tillerson traveling in Ethiopia saying, ‘We’re a long way from even the idea of any talks with North Korea,’ continued Geist, “and then a couple hours later the announcement by the White House by a South Korean official, confirmed by the White House, that the president would meet with North Korea.”

Veteran newsperson Andrea Mitchell said it was a shock Trump would accept “almost on the spot,” and take the word of the South Korean foreign minister “rather than having any kind of letter or document to parse and have the intelligence experts analyze as to how committed he really is.”

Kim Jong-un “wants the legitimacy,” added Mitchell, and even those who think he really wants to engage in talks believe “this is conferring legitimacy on Kim Jong-un without getting anything, not even the release of three Americans still being held.”

“There was no process with this whatsoever,” chimed in Scarborough. “No build up. They get absolutely no concessions for this meeting, which again just proves to every dictator in the world, get nuclear weapons, you get legitimacy and you can remain a bad actor and this president will take a meeting.”

Mitchell noted that every American president since Jimmy Carter who has tried to negotiate with North Korea has ended up being made a fool of, and that will continue.

She also noted that just this week evidence arose that Kim Jong-un has been accused of using chemical weapons to kill his own brother and has been accused of supplying chemical weapons to the murderous Assad regime in Syria, so the nuclear question is not the only issue that needs to be addressed with this rogue regime.

Now we have a president acting out of desperation who despite his claims of being a great negotiator couldn’t be more inept at making “deals.”

“It’s all bluster, there’s no deal because he doesn’t know how to make a deal,” said Scarborough. “He’s horrible at making deals. That’s why the man ended up $9 billion in debt.”

“He can’t even make a deal with a porn star,” added Brezinski, referring to the NDA lawsuit. “He doesn’t even sign the papers of the deal that he struck.”

“That’s exactly right,” Scarborough said. “His lawyers can’t even draft a competent deal to keep a porn star quiet. How is he going to keep the North Koreans from getting nuclear weapons?”

Scarborough pointed out Trump himself has repeatedly said there will be no talks without an assurance the North Koreans will end their nuclear weapons program, yet he has now agreed without those guarantees.

He did it without giving his State Department, the U.S. intelligence community or others who are experts in dealing with the North Koreans.

Scarborough’s assessment hits the nail right on the head. If the president can’t even handle the negotiations to keep his personal affairs quiet, how can he be trusted to negotiate with a tyrannical dictator?

Benjamin Locke

Benjamin Locke is a retired college professor with an undergraduate degree in Industrial Labor and Relations from Cornell University and an MBA from the European School of Management.