Frequent "Morning Joe" guest Donny Deutsch was met with an awkward silence Thursday when he tried to tie ESPN's recent controversy involving the reassignment of football announcer Robert Lee to President Donald Trump.
Like the rest of the panel, Deutsch was critical of ESPN, which is in a public relations nightmare after news broke that it switched Lee, an Asian-American, from calling a Virginia football game because his name was similar to Confederate General Robert E. Lee and due to the the recent violence in Charlottesville, Va. ESPN has claimed this was solely to prevent Lee from being mocked online.
At the end of the segment, Deutsch interjected and said, "Joe, it does show you with what's happening, starting obviously with the president on down, how the country is just on edge, to the point where you get this insane overreaction."
There was a pregnant pause, before host Joe Scarborough muttered, "Yeah."
Deutsch was similarly rebuffed by others in the show in June when he challenged Trump to a fight in the "school yard" because of his tweets attacking Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski.
Deutsch is not a journalist or a politician; he is instead presented as a "branding and marketing expert." Like MSNBC hosts Scarborough and Brzezinski, he once was friendly with Trump and is now one of his fiercest critics.
Deutsch earlier in the show called ESPN's decision one that "unfortunately feeds Donald Trump red meat" as an example of political correctness run amok.