Scarborough was born in Atlanta in 1963, the son of Mary Joanna (née Clark) and George Francis Scarborough, a businessman. He has two siblings. In 1969, his family moved to Meridian, Mississippi, in 1973 to Elmira, New York, and in 1978 to Pensacola, Florida. Scarborough attended Pensacola Catholic High School in Pensacola. He earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in history from the University of Alabama in 1985 and a Juris Doctor from the University of Florida College of Law in 1990. During this time, he wrote music and produced CDs with his band, Dixon Mills, including the album Calling on Robert E. Lee, and he also coached football and taught high school. During his first year of law school, Scarborough wrote a musical about televangelists called "The Gospel According to Esther" which premiered at the University of Alabama to positive reviews. Later, the musical was showcased at the Alabama Shakespeare Festival.
Charles Joseph Scarborough (/ˈskɑːrbʌroʊ/; born April 9, 1963) is an American television host, attorney, political commentator, and former politician who is the co-host of Morning Joe on MSNBC with his third wife Mika Brzezinski and Willie Geist. He previously hosted Scarborough Country on the same network. A former member of the Republican Party, Scarborough was in the United States House of Representatives for Florida's 1st district from 1995 to 2001. He was appointed to the President's Council on the 21st Century Workforce in 2002 and was a visiting fellow at the Harvard Institute of Politics at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. He was named in the 2011 Time 100 as one of the most influential people in the world.
In 1986, Scarborough married Melanie Hinton. The couple had two sons and divorced in 1999. While interviewing Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in June 2005, Scarborough expressed concerns about the possibility that one of his sons may have suffered vaccine damage (See Thimerosal controversy). Scarborough said, "My son, born in 1991, has a slight form of autism called Asperger's. When I was practicing law and also when I was in Congress, parents would constantly come to me, and they would bring me videotapes of their children, and they were all around the age of my son or younger. So, something happened in 1989."
Scarborough was admitted to the Florida Bar in 1991 and practiced law in Pensacola.
Scarborough's most high-profile case was briefly representing Michael F. Griffin, who murdered Dr. David Gunn in 1993. Griffin's father was a friend of Scarborough's in-laws, and he agreed to represent Griffin until he found adequate representation. Scarborough made several court appearances representing Griffin, before removing himself from the case, later saying: "There was no way in hell I could sit in at a civil trial, let alone a capital trial," referring to the prospect of prosecutors seeking the death penalty against Griffin. Scarborough assisted Griffin in choosing other counsel from the many who offered their services, however, and helped shield the family from the media exposure, pro bono.
In 1994, Scarborough was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives for Florida's 1st congressional district, becoming the first Republican to represent the Florida Panhandle since Reconstruction. The seat had become open when eight-term Democratic incumbent Earl Hutto retired. In the general election, Scarborough defeated the Democratic candidate, Pensacola attorney Vince "Vinnie" Whibbs, Jr., with 61 percent of the vote. Whibbs was the son of former Pensacola mayor Vince Whibbs. This district had not supported a Democratic candidate for U.S. president since 1960; however, Democratic candidates had continued to hold most local offices well into the 1990s. Scarborough's win coincided with a large Republican wave that allowed the Republicans to take the majority in the House for the first time in 40 years.
Scarborough was reelected with 72 percent of the vote in 1996. In 1998 and 2000, he faced only write-in candidates as opposition.
While in Congress, Scarborough received several awards, including the "Friend of the Taxpayer Award" from Americans for Tax Reform; the "Guardian of Small Business Award" from the National Federation of Independent Business; the "Spirit of Enterprise Award" from the United States Chamber of Commerce; the "Taxpayer's Hero Award" from the Citizens Against Government Waste; and the "Guardian of Seniors' Rights Award" from the 60 Plus Association. In 1996, Scarborough spoke at the John Birch Society’s Council Dinner in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles.
In June 2000, during his congressional career, he received a 95 percent lifetime rating from the American Conservative Union. He signed the Contract with America. Scarborough was a member of the Armed Services, Judiciary, Government Reform, and Education committees. In 1998 he was named chairman of the Civil Service Committee.
Scarborough was one of the 228 members of the House who voted to impeach Bill Clinton in December 1998.
In 1999, while still serving in Congress, Scarborough founded the free weekly Pensacola-area newspaper The Florida Sun. The paper merged in 2001 and is now known as the Independent News.
In May 2001, five months into his fourth term in Congress, Scarborough stated his intention to resign to spend more time with his children. Of his resignation, Scarborough said, "The realization has come home to me that they're at a critical stage of their lives and I would rather be judged at the end of my life as a father than as a congressman." A special election was held in October 2001 to replace Scarborough. Since then, Scarborough has contemplated returning to politics several times. In 2017, Scarborough left the Republican Party to become an independent.
Trump has also aired "wild allegations and fact-free innuendo" stemming from an incident from Scarborough's time in Congress. On July 20, 2001, while Scarborough was in Washington, D.C., one of his aides, 28 years old, Lori Bolterstein Klausutis, was found dead on the floor of his congressional office in Fort Walton Beach, Florida. An autopsy determined that an undiagnosed heart-valve irregularity had caused the 28-year-old to lose consciousness, fall, and hit her head on the edge of a desk the day before. Media trafficked in speculation about the death, often connecting it with Scarborough's resignation from Congress, announced in May. The claim that Scarborough was involved in the death was promoted by publisher Markos Moulitsas and by filmmaker Michael Moore, who registered the domain name JoeScarboroughKilledHisIntern.com. Since 2017, Trump has resurrected the debunked rumor and has called for another investigation. The Wall Street Journal, New York Post, and Washington Examiner have condemned Trump's remarks. "It's remarkable that we have a president who is trying to have someone prosecute the person he considers to be his chief critic in the media," Scarborough responded in 2020. "That's what Putin does. That's what Orban does. That's what autocrats have been doing for centuries." In May 2020, the aide's widower wrote a letter to Twitter's chief executive Jack Dorsey begging him to delete Trump's tweets saying "President Trump on Tuesday tweeted to his nearly 80 million followers alluding to the repeatedly debunked falsehood that my wife was murdered by her boss, former U.S. Rep. Joe Scarborough. The son of the president followed and more directly attacked my wife by tweeting to his followers as the means of spreading this vicious lie." Kara Swisher followed up with an op-ed in the New York Times on May 26, 2020, calling on Twitter to hold Trump to the company's rules. That same day, Twitter began fact-checking Trump's posts and applying warnings to his tweets when they made misleading claims about mail-in voting.
In October 2001, Scarborough married his second wife, Susan Waren, a former aide to Florida governor Jeb Bush and a former congressional committee staffer. Their daughter was born in August 2003; their son was born in May 2008. Scarborough and Waren were divorced in January 2013.
In April 2003, Scarborough Country debuted as a nightly primetime show on MSNBC.
In 2005 the program covered politics and popular culture. Scarborough broadcast the show from Biloxi, MS, during the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. After three days of reporting on the scenes, Scarborough called the situation in the Gulf Coast region "nothing short of a national disgrace". The Times-Picayune wrote that Scarborough’s experiences “put him on the shortlist of network anchors and correspondents for whom Gulf Coast assignments during and immediately after Katrina proved life-changing.” Because of Scarborough's criticism of President Bush, the San Francisco Chronicle said his Katrina coverage had "become essential viewing." Presidential historian Douglas Brinkley wrote in his book on Katrina, The Great Deluge, that “Joe Scarborough was keenly attuned to the devastation along the Gulf Coast...and his diagnosis of the failures was right on the mark."
Scarborough released his first book, Rome Wasn't Burnt in a Day: the Real Deal on how Politicians, Bureaucrats, and other Washington Barbarians are Bankrupting America, on October 4, 2005.
In 2007, New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg joined Geist, Brzezinski, MSNBC president Phil Griffin, and Scarborough to cut the ribbon on the new set of Morning Joe at 30 Rock.
In May 2007, Scarborough became one of the rotating hosts auditioning for the slot vacated by Imus in the Morning on MSNBC. With his morning show, Scarborough won the slot permanently in July 2007.
On December 8, 2008, Scarborough and Morning Joe co-host Mika Brzezinski began hosting a two-hour late-morning radio show on WABC (770 AM) in New York City, replacing 12-year veteran host John Gambling. On April 26, 2010, the radio show was placed on "hiatus", which Scarborough said was to redevelop its format into a new three-hour show. The show never returned.
In his second book, The Last Best Hope, released on June 9, 2009, Scarborough outlined a plan to help guide conservatives back to a political majority after their defeats in the 2006 midterm elections and the 2008 presidential election.
According to Nielsen ratings in 2016, Morning Joe delivered MSNBC's biggest ever total viewer and demo audiences for that time period and beat third-place CNN in both categories. This marked Morning Joe's seventh straight year topping CNN in total viewers. Scarborough also is a regular guest on NBC and MSNBC news programs and has appeared on Meet the Press numerous times. In April 2012, Scarborough guest-hosted Meet the Press.
On November 12, 2013, Scarborough released his third book, The Right Path: From Ike to Reagan, How Republicans Once Mastered Politics—and Can Again.
The program became a Washington "breakfast staple", showing up on screens at the congressional gym and on government jets. Scarborough has covered presidential elections and conventions. In 2015, he interviewed Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and abruptly ended the interview, but resumed it after the commercial break. Having known Scarborough for years, Trump would often call into the show during his first presidential campaign. It has also been reported that President Biden calls Scarborough often to get the host’s take on issues. Morning Joe is the President’s favorite program, and it influences who he listens to and how the White House is run. 2017 marked the program's 10th year on air.
In an op-ed for The Washington Post in August 2016, Scarborough argued that the Republican Party must "dump Donald Trump" as their presidential candidate. Drawing attention to Trump's remarks about Hillary Clinton and the Second Amendment, Scarborough wrote: "A bloody line has been crossed that cannot be ignored. At long last, Donald Trump has left the Republican Party few options but to act decisively and get this political train wreck off the tracks before something terrible happens."
In June 2017, Scarborough and Brzezinski were the targets of tweets by President Trump that, in response to their coverage of his administration, referred to Scarborough as "Psycho Joe" and called Brzezinski "low I.Q. Crazy Mika," while asserting that she was "bleeding badly from a face-lift" when he previously encountered her at Mar-a-Lago. The hosts responded with an op-ed in The Washington Post, in which they described White House officials telling them that the president would kill a pending National Enquirer article if they apologized to Trump for their coverage of him. The president's tweets received criticism from many Republican lawmakers, including Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, Senators John McCain, Susan Collins, Ben Sasse, Lindsey Graham, and Lisa Murkowski.
Scarborough released his debut EP, Mystified, on June 23, 2017. A video for the title track of the new wave-inspired EP was also released on the same day. Scarborough said he planned to release a new EP every month for the following four years.
As of 2016 , Scarborough has residences in both New Canaan, Connecticut, an affluent exurb of New York City. and Jupiter, Florida. In early 2017, during a trip to Antibes, France, Scarborough became engaged to his co-host Mika Brzezinski. The couple married on November 24, 2018, in Washington, D.C., in a ceremony officiated by U.S. Representative Elijah Cummings.
In August 2019, Scarborough drew criticism after posting conspiracy-driven tweets about the death of Jeffrey Epstein, an American financier multimillionaire and convicted sex offender. Scarborough tweeted: "A guy who had information that would have destroyed rich and powerful men's lives ends up dead in his jail cell. How predictably...Russian."
On November 24, 2020, Scarborough released his fourth book, Saving Freedom: Truman, the Cold War, and the Fight for Western Civilization.
In January 2021, Scarborough excoriated the Capitol Hill Police for having enabled the attack at the U.S. Capitol by Donald Trump supporters. He claimed a double standard that had the perpetrators been either black or Muslim, they likely would have been dealt with more harshly.
In 2023, Morning Joe was the #1 cable morning show in New York and Washington, DC. Nationally, Morning Joe ranked #2 in all of cable television in its time slot for the 7th straight year. Morning Joe beat CNN in the ratings for the 14th straight year in total audience and in the Nielson A25-54 demographic group for the 8th straight year. Compared to the previous year, Morning Joe had double-digit viewership growth among total viewers and adults ages 25–54, while CNN This Morning and FOX & Friends had double-digit declines. In August 2023, Adweek reported Morning Joe was the most-watched morning cable news program.