MS NOW’s Morning Joe panel tore into Donald Trump on Wednesday’s (December 10) show following the President’s rally in Pennsylvania on Tuesday night (December 9), where he boasted of a “roaring economy.”
In his 90-minute speech at the Mount Airy Casino Resort, Trump declared “America is winning again” and “Pennsylvania is prospering again,” pointing to job growth in the area and a recent drop in gas prices. He also stood by his tariffs and repeated an old argument that families should buy fewer consumer goods this Christmas.
“You know, you can give up certain products. You can give up pencils… You don’t need 37 dolls for your daughter. Two or three is nice, but you don’t need 37 dolls,” Trump said, per Mediaite.
Morning Joe co-host Mika Brzezinski slammed Trump’s speech as “confusing,” noting how he was bragging about a thriving economy one moment and then suggesting austerity the next.
“I really wonder how that speech went over if you’re a Trump supporter watching it on TV,” she said. “And the comment about pencils and buying less, I don’t know… It seems a little confusing.”
Willie Geist also picked up on the confused messaging, adding, “[Trump’s] saying that the economy is roaring and doing well, but at the same time he’s preaching austerity: Buy less for your children, buy less for your family this Christmas.”
Geist added that some of the Trump supporters interviewed after the rally were “disappointed” and continued to say “prices were too high.”
“This was supposed to be to reframe the debate about affordability, an acknowledgment that Americans are paying too much for their lives…” Geist stated. “And he immediately goes on the stage with a banner that says lower prices behind him, which is not true. Inflation is where it was when Joe Biden left office, and [he] mocks the idea of affordability. He says it’s a ‘Democratic hoax’ and that no, prices are not actually too high.”
Guest Claire McCaskill, an attorney who served as a United States senator for Missouri from 2007 to 2019, noted how Trump “can lie about a lot of stuff and his base will take it,” but not when it comes to the economy.
“It’s very hard for him to lie about how expensive everything is because people feel it,” she said. “And, you know, I don’t know, this speech, he’s not well. He’s not well.”
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“How dare him tell people how many dolls they can buy their children, or how many pencils they can have. This guy is a walking hypocrite when it comes to conspicuous consumption,” she stated.
Brzezinski concluded by saying Trump’s speech was both “invalidating” and “hypocritical.”
“He spends an entire evening in Pennsylvania kind of joking about it and telling people to buy less,” she said. “Meanwhile, his tariffs are part of what’s tanking it or part of what’s making people hurt. So that’s confusing. That seems hypocritical. That is very invalidating.”
Morning Joe, Weekdays, 6 a.m./5c, MS NOW
