Morning Joe hosts stunned by JD Vance’s ‘messed up’ comments about his wife

The hosts of MS NOW’s Morning Joe were left scrambling for words as they struggled to make sense of JD Vance’s eccentric analogy comparing Iran’s right to enrich uranium with his wife’s freedom to skydive. The VP, visiting Hungary in support of the country’s nationalist leader Viktor Orban ahead of Sunday’s elections, was asked at Budapest airport about comments made by Iran’s parliamentary speaker in which he emphasized his country’s “right to enrichment.”Vance scoffed as he recited Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf’s remark and added: “I thought to myself, you know what? My wife has the right to skydive, but she doesn’t jump out of an airplane because she and I have an agreement that she’s not going to do that because I don’t want my wife jumping out of an airplane.”“We don’t really concern ourselves with what they claim they have the right to do. We concern ourselves with what they actually do and I think the president’s been very clear on the enrichment question. Our position on that has not changed.”Vice President JD Vance compares Iran’s nuclear demands to the prospect of his wife skydiving (Reuters)Second lady Usha Vance announced in January that she is pregnant with the couple’s fourth child, which might have been what her husband had in mind when expressing his opposition to her attempting daredevil stunts, although he did not say so.Reacting to footage of his comments, Morning Joe presenter Mika Brzezinski found it difficult to hold herself together, saying: “I’m just – I really don’t want to hear about women’s rights, and rights and women from JD Vance.”“If that’s your takeaway…” her co-host and husband Joe Scarborough interjected.“Don’t start the morning that way,” Brzezinski responded. “So messed up.”“That was such a confusing analogy, my teeth hurt right now,” Scarborough joked. “I’m still trying to figure it out.”“Yeah,” added fellow contributor Willie Geist. “I also didn't know you were allowed to give your wife rules of things she can’t do. I need to write a few down now on how we operate!”“Women across America have rules that I never grew up with that kill them, so that’s where we are,” Brzezinski added.Morning Joe presenters Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough grapple with Vance's eccentric analogy (Morning Joe/MS NOW)Vance was speaking after the U.S. had agreed a late ceasefire deal with Iran, which was brokered by Pakistan Tuesday, just in time to stop a fresh round of airstrikes. But the temporary truce already looks to be in jeopardy over disagreement about whether or not Israel’s campaign against Hezbollah in Lebanon is included in the two-week suspension of hostilities.Preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon is one of several stated aims of Operation Epic Fury offered by President Donald Trump, despite his claiming to have “obliterated” the country’s enrichment facilities in a previous bombing campaign last summer.Prior to those attacks, Tehran had enlarged its stockpile of uranium enriched to near weapons-grade levels, according to a confidential report by the United Nations’ International Atomic Energy Agency obtained by the Associated Press.Iranian parliamentary speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf has insisted on his country’s right to pursue its nuclear aspirations (Getty)However, nuclear energy need not necessarily be devoted to building weapons of mass destruction. It can also be used to generate electricity, provide drinkable water through seawater desalination, and is used in medical treatments.Just before Vance launched into his skydiving analogy, a reporter had asked him whether the country might be allowed to continue enriching uranium for “civilian nuclear purposes.”He answered that by saying: “What the president has said is that we don’t want Iran to have the capacity to build a nuclear weapon. “The president has also said that we don’t want Iran enriching towards a nuclear weapon and we want Iran to give up the nuclear fuel. Those are going to be our demands during the negotiation.”