This is the Dec. 16 edition of “The Tea, Spilled by Morning Joe” newsletter. Subscribe here to get it delivered straight to your inbox every Monday through Friday.
Is this what MAGA looks like in meltdown mode?
Yesterday, Donald Trump came under withering criticism from conservative allies and MAGA loyalists after his heinous attack on Rob Reiner, following the Hollywood director’s brutal death.
Fox News’ Laura Ingraham called Reiner a “Hollywood legend,” warmly recalling an interaction she once had with the liberal director.
Jesse Watters dedicated part of his show to the late star under the headline “Rob Reiner Was a Hollywood Legend.” The segment featured one of Hollywood’s strongest Trump supporters, James Wood, who praised Reiner as a patriot and expressed shock that anyone would attack his slain friend.
The leader of Turning Point USA similarly praised Reiner for his grace and compassion in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s death.
Piers Morgan, a longtime friend of the president, called Trump’s comments “dreadful” and urged him to delete the post.
The editor of Christianity Today, Russell Moore, blasted Trump’s post as “vile, disgusting and immoral,” warning that the normalization of such hatred would one day be studied by students “to the shame of our generation.”
At the National Review, the editor’s one-word response was “Disgusting.” Fellow editor Charles Cooke went further, calling Trump’s comments “insane and disgraceful” and adding that “the White House [choosing] to tweet it out is pathological.”
The near-universal condemnation was soon followed by Chris Whipple’s reporting in Vanity Fair on Trump’s White House, which included a series of blistering assessments of the president and his team from chief of staff Susie Wiles. While Wiles posted denials on social media this morning, her words carry an unmistakable ring of truth — because, well, they were recorded by Whipple himself.
I’ve been saying for some time that President Trump’s volatile behavior is not hurting Democrats — far from it. For the first time since 2018, Democrats now hold a double-digit lead over Republicans in the generic-ballot test. Trump’s own poll numbers have also collapsed.
Those in the GOP who are finally speaking out against the increasingly erratic behavior coming from the West Wing are not doing so in pursuit of a Profile in Courage Award. They’re starting to cross Donald Trump because his indefensible conduct is becoming toxic to a growing number of exhausted voters.
As Moore wrote yesterday, this generation will be judged harshly for enabling such hatefulness and cruelty for so long.
“Did I agree with [Rob Reiner’s] politics? I did not. Did I love him as a friend, as an artist, as an icon of Hollywood and as a patriot? I most certainly did. And I am just absolutely devastated by this terrible event, especially for his family.”
—
MAGA supporter and actor James Woods, breaking with President Trump’s reaction to Reiner’s death
SUSIE WILES LETS LOOSE
Vanity Fair is out this morning with a striking new interview in which Susie Wiles, President Trump’s chief of staff, calls his most loyal allies her “junkyard dogs” and delivers a blunt inside account of Trump, his governing style and the people closest to him — words few in the White House are willing to say out loud.
ON PRESIDENT TRUMP
“Trump … has an alcoholic’s personality.” He “operates [with] a view that there’s nothing he can’t do. Nothing, zero, nothing.”
ON VICE PRESIDENT JD VANCE
“A conspiracy theorist for a decade.”
ON RUSSELL VOUGHT
“A right-wing absolute zealot.”
ON ELON MUSK
“He’s an avowed ketamine [user]. And he sleeps in a sleeping bag in the [Executive Office Building] in the daytime. And he’s an odd, odd duck, as I think geniuses are.”
ON PAM BONDI
[Re: The Epstein files] “First she gave them binders full of nothingness. And then she said that the witness list, or the client list, was on her desk. There is no client list, and it sure as hell wasn’t on her desk.”
ON HERSELF
“I’m not an enabler. I’m also not a bitch. I guess time will tell whether I’ve been effective.”
CATCH UP ON MORNING JOE
SPILL IT!
The “Morning Joe” family is getting into the Christmas spirit! We’d like to know:
What’s the best Christmas present you’ve ever received?
Share with us, and we’ll feature a few of your stories in an upcoming holiday edition.
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."