President Donald Trump launched into an angry tirade on Tuesday, November 4, 2025, after MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” hosts mocked him on air, reviving a long-standing feud with Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski despite their previous attempts to build rapport with the 79-year-old president at Mar-a-Lago.
The latest confrontation erupted after New York mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani appeared on the morning show ahead of that day’s elections. When introducing Mamdani, Scarborough quipped that “the communist joins us now,” echoing Trump’s frequent social media attacks on the 34-year-old democratic socialist.
Mamdani quickly corrected the record, stating there are reasons people might not want to vote for him, but urged honesty about his politics. He emphasized he identifies as a democratic socialist, no matter how many times President Trump calls him otherwise.
The panel also discussed the recent death of former Vice President Dick Cheney, describing him as a rare Republican who maintained his principles during Trump’s rise. Scarborough noted that Cheney was seen as a defender of democracy when so many others in the party lost their way, particularly after January 6, and said people should be grateful to him for that stance.
Co-host Willie Geist pointed out that one of Cheney’s final public acts came about a year ago when he announced he would be voting for Kamala Harris in the presidential election. Geist highlighted how Cheney, once considered the face of the Republican Party during the Bush years, had warned that Trump could never be trusted with power again.
The commentary clearly stung Trump, who hours later fired off a Truth Social post attacking the show’s ratings. “Wow! Joe Scarborough’s Television Ratings are really bad. They have gone, as they say, ‘down the tubes,’ as has the rest of MSNBC. It’s a beautiful thing to watch! President DJT,” he wrote.
The outburst fit Trump’s familiar pattern of mocking media ratings and declaring victory while simultaneously revealing how deeply “Morning Joe” continues to irritate him. But Mamdani appears to bother the president even more.
Trump has relentlessly attacked Mamdani since he announced his mayoral campaign. At a White House dinner with technology executives in September, the president told reporters he did not like to see a communist become mayor. He has repeated this characterization countless times since.
On Tuesday, Trump escalated his attacks by accusing Mamdani of being a “Jew hater” and declaring that any Jewish person who votes for him is stupid. In a Truth Social rant, he claimed Mamdani is a proven and self-professed hater of Jewish people.
The Tuesday morning episode also occurred as Trump was simultaneously pushing Senate Republicans to eliminate the filibuster, a demand he had made four times in five days. The president warned that the midterm elections would be rightfully brutal for Republicans if they failed to embrace what he called the nuclear option.
In a caps-heavy Truth Social post that day, Trump argued Democrats are far more likely to win the midterms and next presidential election if Republicans do not terminate the filibuster. He claimed it would be impossible for Republicans to get common-sense policies done with what he called crazed Democrat lunatics blocking everything by withholding their votes.
The government had been shut down since September 30 as Congress failed to pass a budget bill. Democrats were calling for any spending plan to roll back Republican cuts to Medicaid and extend tax credits to prevent health insurance premiums from skyrocketing. Recent polls showed a majority of voters blaming Republicans for the shutdown, with Trump suffering from his highest-ever disapproval ratings as voters soured on his economic policies.
Tuesday’s elections represented the first major electoral test of Trump’s second term, with voters heading to polls for local and statewide races in New York, Virginia, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. In New York’s mayoral race, Trump had endorsed Mamdani’s opponent, former Governor Andrew Cuomo, in what many viewed as a referendum on Trump’s return to office.
Despite Trump’s increasingly desperate calls to end the filibuster, Republican leaders in Congress remained resistant. Senate Majority Leader John Thune’s spokesperson told CBS News last week that the South Dakota Republican, who has previously rejected calls to change the filibuster rule, still opposed the move.
During a “60 Minutes” interview that aired on Sunday, Trump acknowledged he disagreed with Thune on this point, though he said he liked the senator and thought he was terrific. House Speaker Mike Johnson also cautioned against eliminating the rule, telling reporters that while it was possible, many people would say it was not wise.
The filibuster, which requires 60 senators to agree to bring legislation up for a vote, has existed in various forms since the 1780s and was adopted as an official rule in 1917. Johnson expressed deep concern about what might happen if Democrats had a bare majority in the Senate without the filibuster in place.
Trump’s Tuesday meltdown over “Morning Joe” and his attacks on Mamdani demonstrated his continued obsession with cable news coverage and his willingness to lash out at perceived critics. The episode underscored how the president, despite holding the nation’s highest office, remains deeply affected by media commentary and political opposition.
