One theme that ran through Donald Trump’s appearance at an MSNBC sponsored “town hall meeting” was the softball questions lobbed to Trump by Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski and the way they let him prattle on about nonsense without challenging him. Take this exchange:

SCARBOROUGH: So you’re going to repeal Obamacare —

TRUMP: He lied about — repeal and replace. Absolutely —

SCARBOROUGH: What do you replace it with?

TRUMP: Health care savings plans, one way. We have to get rid of the lines between states. I do tremendous health care.

SCARBOROUGH: Right.

TRUMP: I have so many employees. I have thousands of employees. I’ve employed tens of thousands of people. I built an unbelievable business and one thing that has come out when I filed the documents with the FEC in terms of my business —

SCARBOROUGH: Right.

TRUMP: I built an unbelievable business. So I have tremendous numbers of people —

SCARBOROUGH: So let’s clarify (ph) —

TRUMP: Joe, we have to get rid of the lines. There’s a line —

SCARBOROUGH: Right. So you’re talking about letting people shop from one state to another —

TRUMP: We have to.

SCARBOROUGH: To insure — so let me ask you this, though. There is a guarantee now that all Americans get health care. This has been — well, in New Hampshire it was supposed to be a big problem for you —

TRUMP: We’re going to keep it an open —

(CROSSTALK)

SCARBOROUGH: Are you going to guarantee all Americans health care?

TRUMP: Joe, Americans aren’t getting health care lately. You know —

(CROSSTALK)

SCARBOROUGH: I know but I’m not — but this is what I’m asking you. Just like you’ve guaranteed — what you’ve guaranteed on the second amendment. This has been a fight within the Republican party and what it means to be —

TRUMP: Sure. Sure.

SCARBOROUGH: Conservative. But you have constantly said even in New Hampshire — the live free or die state that every American should get health care. Is that your position —

TRUMP: Let me tell you, that’s not what I said. That’s not what I said. Here’s what I said. We’re going to have great plans. They’re going to be much less expensive and they’re going to be much better because the Obama plan is unaffordable and it’s a disaster. And by the way in ’17 it’s going to die unless the Republicans continue to fund money like — it’s not affordable by the country, not affordable by the people. But what I say is this, we’re going to have great plans. But there will be a group of people that is not doing well, that has no money. We cannot let them die in the streets.

SCARBOROUGH: Right.

TRUMP: And we’ll work out either through Medicare which we’ll save or something. We will work out a plan where instead of having people dying in the streets. And I say to the Republicans all the time. And by the way I get standing ovations from Republicans, from Republican groups. I got one yesterday. I said we can’t let people die in the streets. We got to work out a deal with the hospital or with somebody in that community where if somebody is sick and really sick. And they don’t have housing and they don’t have —

SCARBOROUGH: Right.

TRUMP: All — we can’t let them die.

SCARBOROUGH: So all Americans will get health care of some sort —

TRUMP: We’re going to take care of them. We’re going to take care of them. We have to take care of them. Now, that’s not single payer. That’s not anything. That’s just human decency. And I’ll tell you what. Every single time I say that, I say to people in the audience — I say, “so what do you think?” They all stand up and give me a standing ovation, OK?

SCARBOROUGH: All right.

TRUMP: So some people would take that and they’ll say, “oh, that’s terrible.” That’s — what we’re going to have is we’re going to have private plans, we’re going to have maybe the health care savings plans which are very good. We’re going to get rid of the lines. You know what happens when you get rid of the lines? You have tremendous competition and the price goes way down. The reason the lines are there is because the insurance companies are making a fortune having monopolies in the various states. And —

(CROSSTALK)

SCARBOROUGH: All right. We’re going to get back to that. We’re going to ask how you pay for that and a lot of other things but we need to go to break.

This discussion is about as close to content-free as you an get and still have sounds coming from people’s mouths. Even if we had health savings accounts (which are great if you actually have money to save) and were able to buy insurance policies across state lines, neither of these solutions do much towards solving the perceived problems ObamaCare allegedly tried to solve. What if you have a pre-existing condition? How do either of these solutions help you. How do you get insurance companies to carry high-risk patients without forcing healthy people to buy a product they neither need nor want with money they may not have? And on and on and on.

And, for the record, Scarborough never came back to how Trump was going to pay for his solution.

I do tremendous health care.
…
I have so many employees. I have thousands of employees. I’ve employed tens of thousands of people. I built an unbelievable business and one thing that has come out when I filed the documents with the FEC in terms of my business —

After this interview, Scarborough not only have wanted to “get rid of the lines” he may have resorted to snorting a few of those lines to erase this dumpster fire from his memory.