MS NOW's Joe Scarborough spoke to Donald Trump for the first time in months after the attack on Venezuela — and the president doubled down on controversial remarks he had made nearly a decade ago.
The "Morning Joe" host said he'd spoken to the president about a half dozen times since his return to the White House last year, but their conversation Monday about the invasion of Venezuela was their first in a few months.
"I called to get the reaction and to see what I might be able to glean on what was coming next," Scarborough said. "Just to set up the conversation, he was very excited and proud yesterday when I talked to him by phone to try to get those insights on his decision to launch a military attack on Venezuela.
"Now, most of the 20-minute call was filled with the president recounting the U.S. military's flawless execution of the operation, and he talked an awful lot about the courage shown by those who raided [Nicolás] Maduro's fortress, and how quickly they dispensed with the scores of Cuban troops that were guarding the Venezuelan dictator."
"The president concluded his summary of the attack by noting the message that this will surely send about America's strength to Putin, Xi and Iran," Scarborough added.
Like most conversations with Trump, he said the challenge was trying to find a pause to insert a question, and when that opportunity finally came, Scarborough said he asked what would come next.
"Was there a timeline?" he asked. "Was there a plan for reconstruction, for elections, for democracy? The president's answers to that were the same that he's been giving publicly and mainly general, but when I pressed comparisons with America's failed occupation of Iraq, the president's response was very different. I asked him, I said, 'Mr. President, when you say, quote, we're going to run everything, that obviously causes deep concerns because of the disaster in Iraq.'
"The president's response: 'Joe, the difference between Iraq and this is that [George W.] Bush didn't keep the oil. We're going to keep the oil,' and to underline his point, Trump said his comments were no longer on background and said, 'In 2016, I said we should have kept the oil, it caused a lot of controversy. Well, we should have kept the oil.'"
"The president said, 'and we're going to rebuild their broken-down oil facilities, and this time we're going to keep the oil,'" Scarborough added. "Saying the United States is entering a new era of geopolitical engagement seems to be an understatement. ... Donald Trump's brazenness draws from 19th-century imperialism."
Some of those remarks might simply be bluster, Scarborough said, but he said the president seemed serious.
"The question now for all of us is how far the administration actually plans to go," Scarborough said. "How much of this is bluffing? How much is this actually going to be by design in these military operations across the hemisphere, and whether Congress will ever fulfill its constitutional duties and step up before the next military action begins. So, obviously not a big surprise from much of what the president said yesterday. It sounded a lot like what we've been hearing, what he said to NBC reporters that reached out to him, and New York Times reporters who reached out to him."
"But obviously the thing that stands out is, he said, 'We're going to keep the oil,'" Scarborough added. "And he was proud of it. He said, you know, he always saw George W. Bush as a sucker for going to Iraq, you know, spending blood oil and treasure and not keeping the oil. This was, of course, what [Fox News anchor] Bret Baier said to him. Well, you can't do that, that's a war crime. The president brushed back on that didn't agree with, and certainly here we are nine years later, and he sang the same thing, and he still thinks this is fine for U.S. policy."
After the 2024 election, Scarborough and his co-host Mika Brzezinski sparked controversy by visiting Trump at Mar-a-Lago. Their audience and critics questioned the visit's appropriateness given their previous critical coverage of Trump. Scarborough later explained the meeting as an attempt at dialogue and understanding with the president-elect.
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