MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” co-host, Mika Brzezinski, bemoaned Wednesday the White House physician’s insistence that President Donald Trump suffers from no “cognitive issues” and fretted that it “makes me feel worse and more worried for the country.”
Brzezinski and fellow co-host Joe Scarborough have often speculated about Trump’s mental health and his fitness to serve as president since his inauguration. But Dr. Ronny Jackson gave a glowing assessment of Trump’s health at Tuesday’s hour-long press briefing and dismissed repeated questions about cognitive concerns.
Although Jackson solidly rejected the idea that Trump suffers from the early stages of dementia, Brzezinski remained unconvinced about the chief executive’s health.
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“I’m not sure if it makes me feel better that this doctor says that he has no cognitive issues. It makes me feel worse and more worried for the country,” Brzezinski said.
Because Trump is suffering from no known mental illnesses, Brzezinski said that any controversial thing he has done or said over the last few years can’t be attributed to a cognitive dysfunction. Instead, the controversies occur because the president is just a “bad guy,” said the “Morning Joe” co-host.
“This is all not due to some sort of mental deficiency,” Brzezinski said. “This is who he is. Fantastic.”
Although Brzezinski conceded that she must “take the doctor at his word” in terms of “testing and stuff,” she said that a clean bill of mental health poses an even greater threat to the nation.
“That is — actually truly frightening. It leaves the options as to what’s going on, in a very bad category,” Brzezinski said.
Scarborough claimed earlier in January that members of the media “were not allowed to speak about” Trump’s mental fitness for office until Michael Wolff’s new book, “Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House,” was published in January.
But speculating about Trump’s cognitive health wasn’t a new feat for the “Morning Joe” panel.
Related: ‘Morning Joe’ Claims Media Not ‘Allowed to Speak About’ Trump’s Mental Fitness
Scarborough and Brzezinski speculated in December that Trump’s slurred words while announcing his decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital raised new concerns about his mental health. In November, Scarborough warned that “people close to [Trump] during the campaign” told him repeatedly that the president was suffering from the “early stages of dementia” and “is completely detached from reality.”
Scarborough said in June that Trump “is not a sane, rational human being” and worried in May about Trump’s “confused mental state.” Brzezinski said at the time that one could “argue that this president is completely incompetent, maybe even has some issues medically.”
On Wednesday, Scarborough followed up by claiming that Jackson’s clean bill of mental health for Trump “shocked and surprised a lot of people who have worked around him for the past several years, who have been saying that he is not [mentally healthy].”
PoliZette writer Kathryn Blackhurst can be reached at [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter.
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