MSNBC's Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski dismissed Trump administration excuses for why they hired Mike Flynn, despite multiple warnings about his associations, and then kept him on despite even more urgent warnings.
White House press secretary Sean Spicer again blamed the Obama administration for giving Flynn security clearance, but Scarborough pointed out that the previous president had fired him for insubordination before Trump tapped him as national security adviser.
"Kellyanne (Conway), Sean Spicer -- it's becoming close," Brzezinski said, referring to the Trump adviser banned from "Morning Joe" and other news programs after shredding her credibility. "It's already there, I'm just having a hard time bringing myself to say because he is the White House press secretary. But he literally -- every time I hear him talk, it's painful and it's usually not true."
Trump's predecessor reportedly warned Trump not to hire Flynn, and both Scarborough and panelist Willie Geist agreed former President Barack Obama was the source for those reports.
Geist wondered why Trump waited 18 days to dump Flynn after then-acting attorney general Sally Yates had warned the White House counsel that the national security adviser was vulnerable to blackmail.
"Can you imagine getting a warning like that and still moving forward?" Brzezinski said.
Scarborough reminded his co-panelists that Trump had fiercely defended Flynn right up until he was forced to resign, and he continues to defend the retired general as a good man who was treated unfairly.
"They all fiercely defended Gen. Flynn," Scarborough said. "They didn't need Sally Yates' warning -- everybody close to Donald Trump was warning Donald Trump and everybody around Donald Trump that Flynn was bad news. Before the election, after the election and before Sally Yates' warning -- and Donald Trump was his fiercest advocate."
"He fought like hell for him, more than anybody else," Scarborough continued. "He let everybody around him know that Flynn was the one person that was going to be next to him, and everybody around him fell in line and talked about how great Gen. Flynn was. The chorus of praise for Gen. Flynn around this president was unanimous."
