Scarborough scolds Trump, Giuliani on Hannity interview: ‘This is just self-destruction’

MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough scolded President Trump’s legal team on Thursday morning following a bombshell interview by Rudy Giuliani, calling his sit-down with Fox News host Sean Hannity “self-destruction.”

“These guys just can’t sit down for five minutes and carve out a communications strategy,” Scarborough said on “Morning Joe” of Trump and the White House legal team’s strategy on messaging and the press. “Everybody is just shooting from the hip. It’s crazy.

{mosads}”This is not somehow Donald Trump being a renegade. Being on the edge. This is just self-destruction,” the former GOP congressman added.

Giuliani told Sean Hannity on his prime-time Fox News program late Wednesday that Trump reimbursed Michael Cohen, his personal attorney, for $130,000 that was paid out before the 2016 presidential election to adult-film star Stormy Daniels to not talk about an affair she says she had with the president.

Giuliani, a former New York mayor and U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York who joined Trump’s legal team in April, contradicted what the president has stated before about not knowing about the payment from Cohen to Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford.

“This [the arrangement of the Wednesday Hannity interview] happened between Giuliani and the president,” Rick Tyler, a former communications director for Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), added on MSNBC Thursday morning. “And the White House communications team was once again cut out of the loop.”

“Legal strategies don’t occur on television, legal strategies occur between lawyers, they occur in courtrooms, they don’t occur on television,” he added after speculating that Cohen may have “flipped.”

“Giuliani has established himself not as the legal strategist here, he’s established himself as the PR strategist. It’s interesting he did it exactly when Emmet Flood is coming on board,” Tyler concluded.

“Because he’s undercut or boxed in Emmet Flood. Because Emmet Flood, from everything I’ve read, has no tolerance for PR strategies over legal strategies.”

Flood, who is replacing White House lawyer Ty Cobb, once represented former President Clinton during his impeachment proceedings and also served as special counsel for President George W. Bush.

The White House has not had a communications director since the resignation of Hope Hicks in February.