This is an adapted excerpt from the Sept. 16 episode of “Morning Joe.”
Donald Trump has always been a disrupter. He’s always put people off balance and put them on guard. However, when Joe Biden stepped out of the presidential race and Vice President Kamala Harris stepped in, for the first time in his adult life, this 78-year-old man had to face the fact that the disruption is now coming from the other side: the disruptors are the Democrats.
Trump never imagined he wouldn’t be running against an aging Biden. He never imagined that he would be facing a woman almost 20 years younger than him — a woman who was able to run circles around him on the debate stage.
There is not a serious person out there who would ever suggest that last week’s debate was anything less than a disaster for Trump. You would have to be a deeply unserious person to suggest otherwise. People in his own campaign know he was beaten badly in that debate. People on Fox News have said it. People in The Wall Street Journal editorial page have said it — over and over again. Trump himself knows it. Far from being the reset the campaign needed, the debate ended up making a bad situation even worse. The debate was supposed to be a reset for the Trump campaign. He should have followed the advice of his staff and focused on the economy or inflation. Instead, he wandered off into the fields. Far from being the reset the campaign needed, the debate ended up making a bad situation even worse. That’s why we’re seeing Trump spin even more out of control by the day. He’s spent the last week tripling down on lies about Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio.So now the question is, what is the next opportunity for a reset? We’re fewer than 50 days out from Election Day and people are already starting to vote. Time is quickly running short for the Trump campaign.
Former Rep. Joe Scarborough, R-Fla., is co-host of MS NOW's "Morning Joe" alongside Mika Brzezinski — a show that Time magazine calls "revolutionary." In addition to his career in television, Joe is a two-time New York Times best-selling author. His most recent book is "The Right Path: From Ike to Reagan, How Republicans Once Mastered Politics — and Can Again."
Allison Detzel is an editor/producer for MS NOW. Recommended
