9 Reasons Why Scarborough Is Wrong About Newsom's Trolling

He ridiculed Newsom dragging Trump and MAGA on Morning Joe

Gavin Newsom’s trolling of Trump and his MAGA cultists has gotten a lot of attention and clicks over the past week, and while it has garnered many fans it has also received criticism. However, most of the critics have been right-wingers on Fox and social media complaining that it is classless, unfair, unfunny and unprofessional. Cry more. But today, Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough decided to weigh in.

Full disclosure - I stopped watching Morning Joe over two years ago. I found it repetitive and boring with the same anecdotes and stories repeated over and over. Although some of their guests are very good, I can simply follow them on social media where I don’t have to deal with Joe’s constant interruptions, same old stories, and boorish pontifications. For some, the last straw was his visit to Mar-a-Lago to see Trump, but I was out a long time before that because I learn 10 times more in the same amount of time elsewhere.

So how did I know about Scarborough’s comments? Right-wing podcaster Charlie Kirk posted them, gleefully celebrating Joe’s ridicule of a Newsom tactic that has really gotten under MAGA’s skin. Kirk posted the clip to his 5 million MAGA followers with this caption: “Even Scarborough is over Gavin Newsom.” I listened to the clip and I immediately wrote down 9 reasons why I disagree with Team Kirk/Scarborough. First, here is what Scarborough said with his usual tone of sneering condescension:

“The Democrats are trying to find their footing and it’s quite embarrassing actually. I mean, Gavin Newsom - have you seen what he’s doing online? (Big sigh) Just take a deep breath. Don’t try to turn this ship 180 degrees. They don’t know what to do. I have an idea - instead of trying to, like, school Donald Trump, talk into the camera about affordability. Talk about making groceries more affordable. Talk about what you can do for housing and energy prices that continue to go up. Donald Trump’s not on the ballot in 2026, in 2028."

But Donald Trump is on the ballot in 2026 and 2028.

The midterm elections are very much going to be a referendum on the Trump admin. Both the Senate and the House have fully abdicated their responsibility over tariffs, foreign policy, agency oversight, funding - pretty much everything. Their candidates are going to be stuck with the record of this admin because they embrace it, defend it, and never criticize it.

The same applies to 2028 - especially if Vance is the nominee, which is likely. He will be running as someone who has fully embraced Trump and MAGA since he needed them to inject life into his failing 2022 Senate campaign when he was 4th in the primary polling before Trump’s endorsement.

While an argument can be made that trolling Trump by mocking his social media posts isn’t taking on his record, I disagree with that also because his record on so many issues is embedded in many of his deranged posts.

Newsom Does Talk About Pocketbook Issues

The account getting all the attention for trolling Trump is not Newsom’s personal account with 2.4 million followers on X alone. It is an account being run by four obviously talented individuals (according to reports) that puts out a whole series of things in rapid-react fashion. It has fact-checked lies, debunked conspiracies, and put out policy positions in real time while the dinosaurs in the establishment are working on their official statements to be released to legacy press the following day.

As someone who has battled right-wing propaganda and conspiracy theories online for years, it is incredibly refreshing to FINALLY have a Democratic politician create a team that instantly pushes back on it. In modern politics, responding to lies 24 hours later is far too late. In most cases, Dem elected officials (and the Biden Admin) chose to simply ignore the disinformation spewed daily by Trump’s propagandists. Newsom gets it - and others are now getting it also.

What has developed is an approach where Newsom addresses the serious policy issues with his personal account and in interviews, while his team does the other stuff with his press account. It is a synergy that is working extremely well. So for Scarborough to say that Newsom is only trolling and not talking about the issues is wrong, unfair and lazy journalism.

The Trolling Has Broken Out Into Pop Culture

The reason why shows like Morning Joe have zero impact on elections is that they preach to the choir of the same handful of die hards day after day year after year who have already made up their mind, know where they stand on issues, and are political junkies. But to be brutally honest, the people who tend to decide close elections are low-information voters who don’t watch cable news at all and probably don’t even know who Scarborough is.

The most effective use of social media for a politician happens when they are able to post something that breaks out into pop culture - when it crosses over and goes viral with fans of music, pets, movies, sports, cooking, fashion, travel, etc. If you can get a political post to go viral with groups of people who are on social media for things that have nothing to do with politics, then you have hit a home run. Those happen rarely. And I can tell you (because we monitor those places across many platforms daily) Newsom’s troll posts have been seen by millions in those different categories.

It Has Energized the Base

I’m not sure how plugged into the Dem base of grass roots activists that Scarborough is lately. I don’t know whether he reads thousands of comments every day on YouTube, Meta, Threads, Substack, X, Bluesky, Instagram, Tik Tok, Reddit, and several other platforms like we do. I can tell you that morale and energy among the base has been a problem since the election. But it has been getting better every day for the past couple of months.

Democratic candidates desperately need an energized base at the grass roots level for the midterms. Other than some of the national protests, I have not seen any other thing that has injected enthusiasm and much needed levity into the base since the election as much as the trolling that Team Newsom is doing with Trump. Scarborough increasingly sounds like the old man yelling at people to get off his lawn who wants to wallow in misery and despair and seems offended by people having fun with politics for the first time in a long time.

It Triggers Republicans

In the grand scheme of things, this is certainly not the most important consideration. But after nearly a decade of “own the libs” culture war content and insults from Trump, Fox, and MAGA influencers and podcasters, it is refreshing to turn the tables for once and see them so upset over their cult leader being mocked and ridiculed. The trolling simply holds up a mirror to things that Trump himself posts - sometimes generated by his followers - and they seem to be bothered by what they see when it comes from a source that is mocking it.

Authoritarians Hate Being Mocked

Every expert who has ever studied authoritarian leaders and movements will tell you that there is nothing that bothers them more than being made fun of. They want people to be afraid of them - to fear their power and authority. They want them complaining, whining, hurt. It is why they love to call liberals “snowflakes” who melt at the first sign of heat coming at them.

As one commentator wrote who studies this topic: "Authoritarians hate being mocked. They want to make you angry. They want to make you scared. Laughing at them, and getting others to laugh at them, disrupts their control of the field of play. It seizes control.”

It Has Been All Over Fox and Right-Wing Podcasts

How many times have we heard that Democrats desperately needed a leader to step up and take on Trump and MAGA at the national level? There has been a vacuum. Biden is in retirement, Harris has largely taken herself out of the fray for a while, Schumer is Schumer, Jeffries speaks in platitudes, the DNC has been in transition, governors like Whitmer, Shapiro and Beshear have been almost exclusively focused on their states.

For the first time, Democrats have someone who has taken on Trump and Republicans at the national level in a way that has dominated discourse over the past couple of weeks. Fox and right-wing podcasters can’t stop talking about it, or whining about it, as they post the content that Team Newsom is cranking out. It has given Democrats across the country a banner to rally around. Is it enough? No. Is it a start? Definitely.

The Media Has Ignored the Crazy for Years

We have tried desperately to get legacy media outlets to cover the crazy for years. They have almost completely ignored it. We followed Trump everywhere he went for years, clipped every speech and interview, posted his crazy campaign policy videos. We complained often that so much of the insanity that came out of Trump’s mouth was ignored - resulting in a normalized Trump taking hold in the public consciousness.

How much coverage did Trump’s insane statements about Hannibal Lecter, windmills, sharks, whales, electric tanks, Ukraine, education, homeless, revenge and retribution, elections, J6, golf, migrants, on and on get? The average voter who doesn’t watch cable news never saw or heard any of the most insane things he said or policies he proposed. Now they are seeing some of those things for the very first time because they are getting out on different platforms in the form of mockery and ridicule.

How many people who aren’t political junkies know about some of the batshit crazy things Trump has posted from his QAnon followers on Truth Social every day? The answer is close to zero. Now they are getting exposed to it for the very first time. That is a failure of legacy media, but all they can do now is gripe that Newsom is being unserious for exposing it.

It is Fun

Politics doesn’t have to be a daily series of chaotic events, threats to institutions, individuals and allies, and societal upheaval. It wasn’t always the way it is now. For many Democrats, Trump returning to the White House has been like a domestic abuser returning to their home who is even worse after his brief stint in jail - more malevolent, vengeful, and destructive.

Dealing with the onslaught of Trump, Stephen Miller, Elon Musk, Pete Hegseth, Kristi Noem, Tom Homan, Bondi, Patel, et al as they systematically seek to dismantle the Republic has been stressful and at times demoralizing to say the least. So now we have this brief moment of levity and humor, where we laugh at the fake Emperor with no clothes - mock him and their supporters who demand that he be worshipped like a messiah.

No, this isn’t distracting any of us from the serious issues. I write about big domestic and foreign policy stuff every day citing some of the foremost experts on the planet. But I also like to inject a little humor while covering topics that are often dark and depressing. Because the bottom line is that sometimes if we weren’t able to laugh about some of these things we would end up crying.

Which is exactly what Trump and MAGA wants.

Hopefully, Team Newsom will ignore the arrogance and condescension of the establishment which has largely contributed to getting us where we are at right now, and continue to stick with something new that has been wildly successful with the base and pop culture. Ignore the Beltway Bloviators and stick with the plan because the people are with you on this.

If you missed my ‘Today in Politics’ Bulletin yesterday, you can find it here. Thank you for supporting independent media.