MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” host Joe Scarborough tore into President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address Wednesday morning, February 25, 2026, calling it “really, really crazy” and lambasting what he characterized as presidential conduct unbecoming of the office.
Trump’s 108-minute speech broke his own record for longest presidential address to Congress. Speaking for an hour and 48 minutes, the president claimed responsibility for a “turnaround for the ages” during Tuesday night’s address before a joint session of Congress. Speaker Mike Johnson and Vice President JD Vance sat behind Trump as he delivered his sprawling remarks.
Scarborough did not hold back while sharing his reaction, saying the Congressional address was filled with “unrelenting bigotry” and “un-American” lies. He began by calling out “just the unrelenting bigotry, the lies, the attacking of one group, specifically the Somalis, Somali Americans.”
The former Republican congressman took particular aim at Trump’s comments about Minnesota’s Somali community, which the president linked to a Minnesota fraud scandal, calling them “pirates.” Trump announced during the speech that Vice President JD Vance would lead a “war on fraud” targeting such cases.
“That’s the sort of thing that, you know, I’m not going to talk about fascists or Nazis. You just read history and see what type of regimes will pick one or two groups and blame all of America’s ills on those groups. That’s one of the things that the president did,” Scarborough said.
Scarborough also challenged Trump’s repeated claims about immigration and crime rates, tearing into what he called “this continued lie” that immigrants commit crimes at a higher rate than U.S. citizens born in the country. “Every study, one study after another, study after another study, shows this is a tired lie,” he argued.
The host fact-checked Trump’s economic claims with particular vigor. When Trump took office in January 2025, headline CPI stood at 3% year-over-year, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data. By January 2026, the annual inflation rate had slowed to 2.4%, its lowest level since May 2025. Scarborough called out Trump for claiming he inherited 9% inflation, noting the president “inherited inflation at about the same rate that it’s at right now when Joe Biden left office.”
Scarborough questioned the appointment of Vice President Vance to investigate government waste and fraud, pointing to reports detailing the Trump family’s financial gains since returning to office. According to the Center for American Progress, in the nearly one year since Trump was reelected president, Trump and his family have amassed more than $1.8 billion in cash and gifts from leveraging the presidency for personal gain. NPR estimated that Trump and his family have made almost $4 billion “off of the presidency” in about a year using conservative estimates. While Scarborough praised Trump’s announced ban on insider stock trading among members of Congress, he argued the amounts involved pale in comparison to the president’s personal financial gains.
Trump defended his administration’s economic policies and immigration enforcement in a record-long speech that became more contentious in the second hour with tense exchanges between the president and Democratic lawmakers. Rep. Al Green, D-Texas, was escorted out of the House chamber near the beginning of Trump’s address after he waved a sign that read “Black People Aren’t Apes,” an apparent reference to a video Trump reposted to his Truth Social account.
Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer she does not regret yelling at President Donald Trump during the State of the Union: “You have killed Americans,” after he criticized Democrats for demanding reforms before funding the Department of Homeland Security.
Financial Times columnist Ed Luce, appearing on the show, added his own criticism, calling the speech “boring” and so saturated with falsehoods that fact-checking felt almost absurd: “There were so many lies that at one point I thought, should we fact check whether the men’s hockey team really did win a gold?”
Scarborough’s insanity accusation is nothing new. He has previously called for invoking the 25th Amendment against Trump. His inflammatory language on Wednesday morning represents a continuation of his increasingly harsh criticism of the Trump administration.
Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger criticized President Trump’s record on affordability during the Democratic response to the State of the Union address Tuesday night. The Virginia governor claimed that during Tuesday night’s State of the Union, “we did not hear the truth from our president.”
The address comes as the Trump administration pursues aggressive immigration enforcement policies led by White House deputy chief of staff for policy and homeland security advisor Stephen Miller and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, who was sworn in on January 25, 2025.
Trump turns 80 in June, so his health will be closely watched. Trump gave a triumphal State of the Union speech, proclaiming that he has ushered in a “golden age of America.” The speech comes at a perilous moment for Trump as his approval ratings have slipped. Americans have lost trust in him on the economy for the first time in his political career, according to a wide range of polls, presenting troubles for his party ahead of the November midterm elections.