Joe Scarborough's State of the Union: Trump 'Did Sh-- No Sane President Would Ever Do'

Joe Scarborough has reacted to President Trump’s State of the Union with profanity — and by questioning his sanity.

After a sweeping denunciation of Trump’s remarks on immigration, inflation, and elections, Joe Scarborough declared the speech “extraordinary… for many reasons,” adding:

“He did sh-- that no sane president would ever do. It was really, really crazy to be watching that in a State of the Union address.”

“No sane president.” “Really, really crazy.” Whatever would Jake Tapper have to say at this talk? 

Scarborough's language moved from policy critique into questions of presidential fitness. The insanity accusation is nothing new for Scarborough. He has previously called for invoking the 25th Amendment against Trump. Looks like Joe might be fantasizing about that again. 

Scarborough’s broadside began with accusations of “unrelenting bigotry” and “lies,” and included this bit of rhetorical sleight-of-hand:

“I’m not going to talk about fascism or Nazism. You just read history and see what type of regimes will pick one or two groups and blame all of America’s ills on those groups.”

Translation: I won’t make the comparison — but I just did. Somewhere, the great James Taranto might be smiling at Scarborough's sly use of apophasis.

As for the profanity: there was a time when Scarborough dropped an f-bomb, and in response, the suits dropped a seven-second delay on him. Now, the vulgarity has become a standard part of Scarborough's shtick.

Joining the panel, Financial Times columnist Ed Luce piled on, calling the speech “boring” and so saturated with falsehoods that fact-checking felt almost absurd:

“There were so many lies that at one point I thought, should we fact check whether the men’s hockey team really did win a gold?”

The morning after a State of the Union used to mean policy debate. On Wednesday, Morning Joe delivered psychological diagnosis, flirtations with fascism analogies, and a gratuitous splash of profanity for bad measure.

Note: When Scarborough told his guests, “Before we dig into it, I will say there are a couple things that I thought were extraordinary,” it was a clear signal to the panel: back to the green room, pour a coffee, maybe fire up a Marlboro. Joe, as is his habit, wasn’t relinquishing the floor anytime soon.

Here's the transcript.

MS NOW
Morning Joe
2/25/26
6:02 am ET

JOE SCARBOROUGH: Well, why don't we go around and give our initial thoughts before we dig into it. I will say there are a couple things that I thought were extraordinary that you wouldn't see in other State of the Unions, unless they were Donald Trump's. 

The first, of course, was just the unrelenting bigotry, the lies, the attacking of one group specifically, the Somalis, Somali-Americans. That's the sort of thing that, oh, you know, I'm not going to talk about fascism or Nazism. You just read history and see what type of regimes will pick one or two groups and blame all of America's ills on those groups. That's one of the things that the president did. 

Another thing that he did was just generally talking about immigration. Again, it's un-American. It goes against what the Republican party has always stood for. It's gone against what Ronald Reagan stood for. 

And this continued lie, and it is a continued lie by this Republican party, and they know they're lying when they continue to suggest that immigrants commit crimes at a higher rate than those who were native-born Americans. And every study, one study after another study after another study shows this is a tired lie. And yet you have an entire party that seems in large part to be based upon this lie. 

Speaking of lies, it's not even a fact check. It's just a straight out lie, because everybody knows watching, everybody knows speaking, everybody knows in the audience. They understand Donald Trump is lying when he's saying that the price of meat is going down, the price of groceries are going down. They know he's lying when he says that he inherited inflation at 9%. No, he inherited inflation at about the same rate that it's at right now when Joe Biden left office. It's about the same as where it was there. 

Also, the idea that you're going to have J.D. Vance who's going to investigate waste and fraud and abuse and corruption, when his family, Donald Trump's family, has made at least $1.9 to $2 trillion [?] personally since he came into office. [NPR claimed it was $4 billion.]

And this whole idea about no stock trading, add up all the money. And by the way, I've always been against members of Congress trading stock. That's absolutely insane. But even add up right now, all the money that they've made. It doesn't come close to the amount of money that Donald Trump has made himself personally, put in his own pocket over the past year. 

So you see that and you go, well, that's kind of interesting. And Willie, I've got to say also, the election conspiracies, he continues it. It's one thing for him to be doing it out on the campaign trail, lying day in, day out, lying day in and day out about election conspiracies. There's no way Democrats can win without this cheating. He says it all the time. He said it in Georgia all the time. You've got a Republican governor in Georgia that said, no, that's not right. You've got a secretary of state in Georgia, Republican, says, no, that's not right. The same one that Donald Trump tried to cheat and get the 11,000 votes to win Georgia back in 2020. He keeps saying that every day. And every day, Democrats are winning by 30, 40, 50, 60 percentage points in races across America. We saw it again last night while this was going on. 

So yeah, there was a broadcaster that said, that speech was extraordinary. Yes, it was extraordinary. It was extraordinary for many reasons. Most of them just, he did shit that no sane president would ever do. It was really, really crazy to be watching that in a State of the Union address. 

. . . 

ED LUCE: Jonathan, I strongly, I mean, I had a lot of favorite moments in this speech, but I strongly agree with your comment on it being boring. Not just the length, the hour 47 minutes, but the predictability of the lies he was telling and the stunts he was putting. 

There were so many lies that at one point I thought, should we fact check whether the men's hockey team really did win a gold?