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MS NOW anchor Joe Scarborough said he “can’t think of a dumber place” to host the White House Correspondents’ Dinner than an “open hotel,” after a gunman opened fire before being apprehended by law enforcement during the Saturday event.
“Mika and I have certainly said it for years,” Scarborough said during “Morning Joe” on Monday, nodding to his co-anchor and wife Mika Brzezinski.
“It just seems extraordinarily stupid to use an open hotel and get State of the Union-type concentration of power in the United States, especially at a time of war against a country that’s been the epicenter of terrorism since 1979,” he added, referring to the war with Iran.
Cole Tomas Allen, the 31-year-old California teacher and engineer accused of targeting top White House officials, was arrested after storming the Washington Hilton hotel Saturday where Trump, his Cabinet members and 2,500 guests and journalists were gathered.
In a chilling manifesto first reported by The Post, the accused gunman called himself the “Friendly Federal Assassin” and revealed he was hell-bent on killing Trump “Administration officials (not including [FBI Director Kash] Patel)… prioritized from highest-ranking to lowest.”
“I just can’t think of a dumber place to have this than at the Washington Hilton,” Scarborough ranted Monday morning. “I know it’s history, but history be damned when you’re putting the secretary of the defense, you’re putting the FBI director, you’re putting the secretary of treasury, you’re putting the vice president, you’re putting the president.”
To “have them walking around, going in and out of parties, standing to get their pictures taken before they go in. It’s never made sense to me, it’s never made sense to Mika,” Scarborough said.
The MS NOW co-hosts have not attended the dinner in “maybe a decade,” he continued.
But anyone who has attended the prestigious media powwow would know that “you aren’t securing the entire hotel, you’re not checking people’s bags, you’re not doing the basic things that would be done at the State of the Union address,” Scarborough said.
Brzezinski chimed in with some criticism for the Trump administration, saying it’s up to “whatever White House is in power to make that decision, to have that concentration of power in one place, at a time of war, five weeks after we decapitated Iran’s government.”
Allen was subdued and arrested after exchanging gunfire with agents during the Saturday event – injuring one Secret Service officer, who was briefly hospitalized and “saved by the fact” that he was wearing a bulletproof vest, according to President Trump.
In his anti-Trump memo, the suspect mocked the “insane” lack of security at the Hilton hotel when he arrived armed to the teeth without so much as a sideways look from staffers.
“Like, the one thing that I immediately noticed walking into the hotel is the sense of arrogance. I walk in with multiple weapons and not a single person there considers the possibility that I could be a threat,” he said of the assembled security.
While Scarborough ripped into the “unsecure” location of the correspondents’ dinner, he also blasted Trump’s argument that the shooting is proof that a White House ballroom is sorely needed.
“This event…will never be held in the White House ‘cause it is not about the White House. It is about correspondents,” Scarborough said.
He added that a flurry of social media posts just after the Saturday shooting from GOPers including Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche and former NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani in support of the ballroom seemed like a “coordinated” effort from the White House.
“What happened last night is exactly the reason that our great Military, Secret Service, Law Enforcement and, for different reasons, every President for the last 150 years, have been DEMANDING that a large, safe, and secure Ballroom be built ON THE GROUND OF THE WHITE HOUSE,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post Sunday morning.
“This event would never have happened with the Militarily Top Secret Ballroom currently under construction at the White House. It cannot be built fast enough!”
English (US)