MSNBC's Joe Scarborough scorched President Donald Trump for squandering his political capital on vulnerable Republican candidates in two red-state losses.
The "Morning Joe" host questioned the president's decision to hold 11th-hour campaign rallies for Eddie Rispone in Louisiana and Gov. Matt Bevin in Kentucky -- both of whom lost their races.
"The president went all in," Scarborough said. "I want you to imagine a business owner whose daddy gave him $400 million, right? And then that business owner says, 'I'm going to start casinos in New Jersey,' right? Imagine that, and imagine a guy whose daddy gave him $400 million. We're just making this up right now, $400 million in today's dollars."
"He decides he's going to start a casino business and then he ends up $9 billion bankrupt, that's kinda like what this is," he added. "How do you as a Republican lose Kentucky and Louisiana?"
Associated Press reporter Jonathan Lemire said the president isn't getting good political advice because there's no one left to offer any.
"There's no one around him to tell him to stay away from some of these races or tell them that his line of attack is not going to work," Lemire said. "The president is popular in Louisiana -- he won it by 20 points -- but you're not going to go in there and paint the governor as a socialist and expect that to win. The governor in Kentucky, that was closer, but that was a race maybe you should stay away from. He didn't, in part, because he's so desperate right now to feed off the rally crowd, but to prove he's vital during impeachment, and instead there's three southern governor races in the last weeks, he lost two of them."
Scarborough said the losses badly dent the president's brand heading into his re-election campaign.
"There's political blood in the water," he said. "If the president had anyone around to say, you know what? Stay away from Kentucky because they elect Democratic governors from time to time. Stay away from Louisiana, don't call the Louisiana governor a socialist because he's more conservative than you are, Donald, on a lot of issues, and he really is."
"It was, I mean, talk about how Donald Trump going down there and saying what he said about the socialist governor really was political malpractice," he added.
