During a segment on “Morning Joe,” Joe Scarborough expressed his belief that former President Donald Trump’s motives are primarily driven by financial gain. While there was no evidence presented to support the claim that Trump was selling classified information, Scarborough highlighted Trump’s seemingly strange obsession with boxes of documents and suggested there might be ulterior motives behind it.
The discussion was initially sparked by a Karl Rove column in the Wall Street Journal, which blamed Trump’s decision to hold onto mementos from his time in the Oval Office for the current national crisis of an indicted former president, disregarding legal considerations. The conversation then shifted to a New York Times report that alleged Trump’s unusual fixation on the boxes, referred to as the “beautiful mind boxes” by Walt Nauta, who loaded them onto Trump’s plane for travel. Eugene Robinson chimed in, describing Trump as not only a “bad person” but also a “deeply weird person.”
Scarborough, drawing from his own reporting, shared that Trump was allegedly infuriated by his son-in-law Jared Kushner securing $2 billion for his Private Equity fund from the Saudis, as it was achieved through his own name and presidency. Scarborough rhetorically questioned why Trump would keep the boxes solely for the purpose of embracing them, implying that there could be financial motivations behind his actions.
In Scarborough’s view, Trump’s underlying motive, which has been emphasized for the past eight years, is always money. While he acknowledged the lack of evidence to support claims of Trump selling information, Scarborough suggested that given Trump’s past behavior, it wouldn’t be unreasonable to consider the possibility of him trading information for monetary or strategic benefits, such as access or business opportunities. He cautioned against dismissing Trump’s actions as merely eccentric, arguing that it would be naive to overlook the potential for financial motivations.
Drawing on a lesson from his Psychology 101 class, Scarborough referenced Sigmund Freud’s notion that when someone begins a statement with “I’m not saying…,” they are essentially implying the very thing they claim not to be saying.
Why is he keeping this just so he can hug boxes?” Scarborough asked rhetorically, pivoting from the “weird person” explainer. “We’ve said from the beginning, and today’s the eighth anniversary, people tell us of Donald Trump coming down the escalator. We’ve said from the beginning: This is all about money.”
Scarborough made his point abundantly clear:
If you’re trying to figure out Donald Trump’s motive, whatever it is we’ve been saying for eight years, it’s all about money. So I’m not I’m like, we have absolutely no evidence that he was selling this information to anybody. But but I would never I would never say, oh, he was just doing this to hug the boxes. There’s every reason to believe, given his past, his past, that there would be a possibility that he might trade this information, if not dramatically for money, maybe for access, maybe just so he can make contacts and build a hotel of this place or that place. Not saying he did it, but we would be foolish to be thinking he’s just keeping all of this information because he’s just a weird, quirky dude.
