MSNBC's Joe Scarborough suggested President Donald Trump is being blackmailed by Russian president Vladimir Putin.
The U.S. president thanked his Russian counterpart Thursday for cutting embassy staff in Russia by 755 in response to Congress passing a bill codifying sanctions against the Kremlin -- and the "Morning Joe" host has had enough of Trump's fealty.
"Donald Trump, at some point in his life, has insulted everybody around him in the harshest of terms, including his own children," Scarborough said.
There is only one exception to Trump's bullying and belligerence, he said.
"The only person that I certainly can think of that he has never insulted, that he has never attacked is Vladimir Putin, which, again, raises the question, and I will ask it again on TV: What does Vladimir Putin have on Donald Trump?" Scarborough said. "Because whatever it is, it must be extraordinary."
MSNBC contributor Donny Deutsch took it a step further.
"Joe, I'm a businessman, (and) I will tell you with certainty certainty -- he clearly owns him," Deutsch said. "I'm going to say this with 100 percent certainty. All kinds of business shenanigans, inappropriate money laundering, whatever you name it, money coming from Russia into the United States in illegal ways in this enterprise -- all the way to to the dossier we've heard about, the tapes. He owns him, there's no other explanation."