Morning Joe: Trump's vindictive statement on health care repeal failure was "gracious"

Donald Trump has always enjoyed a dismally low bar for expectations, but even by that measure, the praise he is receiving for his reaction to the failure of the Republican health care repeal plan is jaw-dropping.

In the moments following the statement, Trump’s performance was hailed as “disciplined” and “calm” by the corporate media.

Even with a full weekend to think about it, Morning Joe co-hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski went over the top in their praise of Trump, calling his reaction “gracious” and “presidential.”

SCARBOROUGH: Let’s talk about something we both found very interesting. His initial response to the defeat, that was a Donald Trump that few people had seen.

BRZEZINSKI: I agree.

SCARBOROUGH: You actually used the word ‘gracious.’

BRZEZINSKI: Well, everybody was very snarky after — in covering, after his — at the White House, talking about the failure of the bill. I thought for the first time he was incredibly gracious and he took responsibility. In that moment he took responsibility. You look at that alone and I’ve asked some young students I was talking to to look at that alone, that alone was a very good moment for him.

The reality, though, is that in the ten minutes that Trump spoke, he repeatedly — 5 times — told the world that one-sixth of the U.S. economy will “explode,” blamed Democrats for the failure of a bill that they had nothing to do with, griped about the “loyalty” of Congressional Republicans, repeated his slanderous claim that President Obama intentionally sabotaged the law, and fairly boasted about his own incompetence.

I’ve been saying for the last year and a half that the best thing we can do politically speaking is let Obamacare explode. It is exploding right now.

So, Obamacare is exploding. With no Democrat support we couldn’t quite get there —

Obamacare, unfortunately, will explode —

I think the losers are Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, because now they own Obamacare. They own it.

We all learned a lot. We learned a lot about loyalty. We learned a lot about the vote- getting process. We learned a lot about some very arcane rules in obviously both the Senate and in the House —

You know, I said the other day when President Obama left, ’17, he knew he wasn’t going to be here. ’17 is going to be a very, very bad year for Obamacare, very, very bad.

To the extent that it ever existed, Trump’s “discipline” evaporated over the weekend as he widened the circle of blame to include Republicans. And “gracious” is hardly the way to describe a performance in which he slandered the former president, called political leaders who had nothing to do with the bill “losers,” impudently groused about the “loyalty” of his own party, and predicted doom for a significant chunk of the economy.

It is not “presidential” to admit you know nothing about a process that can be explained in a 3-minute Schoolhouse Rock video.

Morning Joe’s backslide into Trump cheerleading may be the most galling recent example, but the corporate media at large have been consistently guilty of lowering expectations for Trump. With so many people’s lives at stake when it comes to health care, that is a perilous trend that must be reversed.