It's a hot clip, a reporter (from "Lindell TV") asked former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi why she refused calls for National Guard troops on January 6.
Pelosi yelled "Shut up!" at the reporter. "I did not refuse the National Guard. The president didn't send it. Why are you coming here with Republican talking points as if you're a serious journalist?"
Joe Scarborough opened Thursday's Morning Joe by going on a lengthy diatribe during which the rant-o-meter rarely dipped below 11. He was furious over this reporter's question. "What the American people want to know is why so many people are too stupid to know the truth. That's what the American want to know! They're fed disinformation by Lindell Network and by all these other right-wing networks. Like this lie that it was Nancy Pelosi. January 6th, Nancy Pelosi refused? No, that's a lie."
A few days after January 6, The Washington Post reported (and NPR repeated) that just-resigned Capitol Police chief Steven Sund insisted he had called requesting the National Guard six times before the during the rioting, and Pelosi's staff said no six times.
Over the years, Mika Brzezinski has stepped up when the outbursts of her husband and Morning Joe co-host Joe Scarborough raised questions about his emotional well-being. If Joe's emotional health was worrisome, his physical health seemed fine: Scarborough rarely came up for air during his long rant about Trump, and the Republicans, and the Supreme Court operating with no "guardrails." And even the longish clip doesn't fully reflect how agitated Scarborough was this morning. A few minutes later, he continued in the same disturbed vein in a conversation with Jonathan Martin of Politico.
As Joe raged on, all poor Mika could do was sit by, murmuring comforting sounds. Her oft-pained facial expressions, left little doubt of her awareness that Scarborough was suffering another troubled episode.
In November 2019, Mika was so manifestly troubled by Joe's verbal excesses that she hung her head in embarrassment.
In April 2020, we noted Joe going on a screaming fit about the coronavirus so loud that at times it pegged the sound system. An obviously concerned Mika suggested to Scarborough that he might want to soothe his nerves with a musical time-out, asking, "do you need to go listen to the Stones, or are you okay?"
Then in July, 2020, when Joe disappeared from the show for two weeks, we wrote of Mika tweeting in explanation, "I told him to."
In January 2021, Scarborough acknowledged on his own that at times, the world had just become too much for him:
"Over the past four years, I will admit at times when it was hard to watch the news, in fact, Mika would have to watch the news for me. For a year or two at a time, I could not watch. I could only read the news, because I was so agitated by what I saw."
All snark aside, it's time for Mika to intervene again, giving Joe a needed break and perhaps arranging for him to talk with an appropriate person. We sincerely wish Joe and Mika the best.
Here's the transcript.
MSNBC
Morning Joe
10/16/25
6:00 am EDTLINDELLTV REPORTER: Are you at all concerned about the new January 6th committee finding you liable for that day? Why did you refuse the National Guard on January 6th?
NANCY PELOSI: Shut up. I did not refuse the National Guard. The president didn't send it. Why are you coming here with Republican talking points as if you're a serious journalist?
LINDELLTV REPORTER: The American people want to know. We still have questions. Thank you.
MIKA BRZEZINSKI: Actually, Nancy Pelosi had the question. Um, it was a good question.
JOE SCARBOROUGH: The American people want to know? What? The American people know. The American people know. What the American people want to know is why so many people are too stupid to know the truth. That's what the American want to know! They're fed disinformation by Lindell Network and by all these other right-wing networks. Like this lie that it was Nancy Pelosi. January 6th, Nancy Pelosi refused? No, that's a lie.
But it's amazing, Mika, how these lies become truth. In part, they become truth because more Democrats don't do what Nancy Pelosi just did right there. The lies are everywhere on the far right, and they're all around January 6th. The lies continue. They try to do investigations where there are lies. We're going to see the president talking about investigating the investigators again after they spent years with John Durham doing the same thing, spending millions and millions of taxpayers dollars.
Again, pursuing lies, pursuing lies. And yet this -- the American people? No, the American people [shouts] know there are a group of people who intentionally want to believe lies on the MAGA right!
You know, it's like Jesus said, you know, there are people who, like, could go into the light, but they choose the darkness instead. That's a spiritual side. We're talking politics here. Far less significant, of course. But people can know the truth, but they don't like the truth. So they keep spouting lies to Nancy Pelosi and other people about January 6th when they know the truth.
They've even tried to erase that attempt to throw out a presidential election from their minds! And now they want to go on, and now they want to prosecute other people who they think, oh, Joe Biden sicced on Donald Trump.
My God. We're going to show a clip, Mika, coming up. It's unbelievable. We're going to show a clip of the president inside the White House with his attorney general, FBI director, and other people standing by, just sitting there shuffling their feet while Donald Trump, President of the United States, says, this person should be arrested, this person should be arrested.
Could you imagine what LindellTV, could you imagine what the far right, what the MAGA right would have done if Joe Biden had held a press conference in the Oval Office saying, I want these four or five Republicans arrested? They would have gone crazy.
And the question is, when are Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee going to say something? When are the Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee going to say something? When are the far-right-wing podcasters going to say something. Saying, you know, this is really dangerous because they're going to come after us next. If this is the new normal in Washington, D.C., we might be next.
No, no, no. This has to stop. And here is a president, I've said it before, I'll say it again. Here is a president that had a historic breakthrough in Middle East peace. And two days later, he's just completely stepping on every good headline by talking about continuing to pursue political enemies! It makes no political sense for him. It's bad for Republicans. It's bad for Democrats. It's bad for everybody! And yet it continues.
Republicans need to speak up. And for God's sake, when is the United States Supreme Court going to stop all the ambiguity so Americans can stop being like, like thrown to the ground and beaten up and arrested only be to be released later on by by by by by law enforcement officials, like, going after illegal immigrants? Like when? When, it like, the pace is quickening, and it's quickening every day.
And if Republicans don't speak out, and if the Supreme Court doesn't do its damn job, then what we're looking at is the new normal. And that's a new normal that doesn't just hurt Democrats now. It hurts Republicans later. It hurts independents. It hurts all of us. It weakens the Constitution. It weakens political norms. It makes this democracy a much, much more dangerous place to live, a more dangerous place to speak your First --.
I mean, we're talking about now an attorney general that's calling people that are peacefully marching, like, terrorists! Saying they're as dangerous as MS-13. You know, we had a Million Man March when I was in Congress. We had mostly Republicans come and march in Washington, D.C. There were no Democratic attorney generals calling us terrorists or calling for our arrests. None!
Is that what Republicans on Capitol Hill and sitting in the Supreme Court? And yes, they are Republicans. Sorry, Chief Justice Roberts. We'll stop calling them Republicans when they stop acting like Republicans. But that's what they're doing. They're sitting back and they're letting this be the new normal. And it has to stop for everybody's sake! Damn! This is not hard. Put up guardrails, institutional guardrails that James Madison put up, that political leaders of both parties have put up over the past 240 years.
