Joe Scarborough: MAGA Doesn't Get America

**Sam Stein** (0:13)
Welcome to The Bulwark Podcast, I am Sam Stein, filling in for Tim while he is on vacation. Now, there are two programming reminders before we jump in. So some of this week and next week's show may actually come out later than normal. We have guest hosts like myself, different schedules than Tim's. Please be patient with us, really appreciate that.
And then this will be dark both this Friday and next Friday. So Thursday's show will be your weekend pods. Save them, dribble them out through the weekend if you want, if that's how you prefer to have your podcast. With that out of the way, I have got a great guest for you today. He is the co-host of Morning Joe, Every Morning from 6 to 9 Eastern on MS Now. I still have trouble saying that. He's a former Republican member of Congress. I don't know if he's ever mentioned that before.
He's a fellow lover of the Boston Red Sox, somehow managing to win 14 in a row as of now. He is my good friend and all around Mensch. It's Joe Scarborough. Joe, how you doing, man?

**Joe Scarborough** (1:12)
Sam, thank you so much for having me. I greatly appreciate it.

**Sam Stein** (1:16)
Look, for 17 years now, I've been wanting to host with you as the guest, and I finally get my moment. And this is a real like having trouble grappling with the power I possess right here.

**Joe Scarborough** (1:29)
I love it. I do have to ask you before we start though, over your left shoulder appears to be a picture of George W. Bush. I can't read the writing. Please tell me that it says, now watch me hit this drive.

**Sam Stein** (1:39)
Now watch this drive.

**Joe Scarborough** (1:41)
Is that what it says?

**Sam Stein** (1:42)
Yeah, classic moment.

**Joe Scarborough** (1:43)
I got to get those for my kids because my youngest son, Jack, just learned how to hit. And every time he hits, he gets up there, he's talking, and he gets up there and he goes, now watch me hit this ball.

**Sam Stein** (1:54)
Oh my god, yeah, no, it's a running joke among the friends. And then we usually shank it, so that's the problem.

**Joe Scarborough** (2:00)
Of course.

**Sam Stein** (2:01)
So look, it's funny, I was thinking about this show with you, and my mind drifted back actually to the early morning Joe days when you, I don't know if people remember this, but you used to do, if I remember correctly, you used to do a radio program like the hour after.

**SPEAKER_3** (2:16)
Oh, yeah.

**Sam Stein** (2:17)
So you would do the six to nine, and then you get off and you do a radio program. And I remember those days, and I remember you come up to the DC Bureau a lot, and you would just kind of scuttle off the set and do the radio program. And back in those days in the DC Bureau, back when I was in the Nebraska Avenue studio, as one of the guests was always Pat Buchanan. And Pat, I think you and I both have like this affinity for Pat. He was an exceptionally nice guy, obviously some controversial views, but I remember this conversation we had right before radio program months. And I'm going to set this up.
You were trying to talk him out of doing a book. Do you remember this?

**Joe Scarborough** (2:53)
Right.

**Sam Stein** (2:53)
You remember that.

**Joe Scarborough** (2:55)
I do remember it. I tried to talk him out of doing a book that basically, I think it was called The End of Whitey's World or something like that. His brother-in-law offered to pay him a lot of money not to put the book out. His publisher tried to get him not to put the book out.
He put the book out, and then, shock of all shocks, there was great blowback on it.
For people that know Pat and that worked with Pat, and this goes all the way back into the 1970s, 1980s, they will tell you that Pat was an extraordinarily nice man. He was kind to everybody. But he, like Donald Trump, like many other people in this Trump movement, they were kind of stuck in 1954 For them, that was America. And there were so many things with Pat that I agreed with. But on immigration and on a lot of these other issues, this nationalism and this, you know, I think he too, like a certain historian that was on Tucker's show, may have tried to blame Churchill for World War II. So there is a connection. Yeah. Between Buchananism and Trumpism. And I would say that as people kind of grapple with where Donald Trump came from, I think you look at Pat Buchanan's campaigns in 92 and 96, along with Ross Perot's campaigns in 92 and 96 And that really, that really has brought us to where we are today, along with my former party, the Republican Party, and some of its worst instincts. Yeah.