Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough took to the airwaves on Wednesday morning to celebrate former President Donald Trump’s loosening grip on the Republican Party following the GOP’s lacklustre midterm performance.
While congressional control is yet to be decided, it’s become clear that the “red wave” foreseen by some in the Republican Party hasn’t come to pass. The GOP looks set to see some of the worst results in decades by a party not in control of the White House in the first midterm elections of a presidential term.
“Hey, Donald Trump, meet Boris Johnson,” Joe Scarborough said in reference to the UK prime minister who was ousted this summer after a series of scandals and a tsunami of ministerial resignations.
Mr Scarborough added: “There was a coronation last night, probably as grand as King Charles III’s coronation will be in the spring, and it was Ron DeSantis in Florida! Massive victory down there. Right?”
The former Florida Republican congressman said that “unfortunately, Donald Trump lost the rest of America”.
“Now, I’m not going to say this is the end of Donald Trump, but there are a lot of Republicans this morning waking up going, wait a second ‘Ron Desantis is winning Miami-Dade outright and winning 20 percentage points in the state historically while Donald Trump is tweeting cheering against Republicans’,” he added.
“I don’t think last night was a good win for Donald,” Mr Scarborough said, pointing to Mr DeSantis’s win.
Co-host Willie Geist said, “to your point, Ron Desantis winning by almost 20 points in Florida, remaking the map. Remaking the Obama coalition. Winning, flipping by 20 points from a couple of years ago, Latino voters. It would appear this morning this is Ron Desantis’s party and not Donald Trump’s.”
“It’s not Trump’s,” Mr Scarborough said. “Everything Trump touches politically dies.”
Mr DeSantis won reelection by a 20-point margin – 15 points above Mr Trump’s win in the 2020 presidential race in the Sunshine State.
At his victory party, supporters chanted “two more years” as they pushed the governor to run for president in 2024 before the end of his gubernatorial term.
Mr Trump’s election night event was subdued by a tropical storm moving towards Mar-a-Lago. On Wednesday morning, the private club was in a mandatory evacuation zone, according to The Washington Post.
The former president made a brief speech on Tuesday night, thanked the press for attending, bragged about candidates he endorsed winning their races, and congratulated some Republicans who had won and some who were in the lead as ballots were being counted.
But he didn’t mention Mr DeSantis.
“There’s always a wave,” in an off-year election, Mr Scarborough said in surprise at the Democratic performance.
“I’m here because of an off-year election,” he said, referring to his 1994 midterm win in Florida’s first district as the Republicans won the House for the first time in decades following Bill Clinton winning the presidency in 1992.
“There was a wave in 82’, in 86’, with Ronald Reagan, there was a wave against Barack Obama,” he said, referring to the 2010 midterms that the then-president called a “shellacking”.
