MSNBC's "Morning Joe" co-host Jonathan Lemire suggested on Election Day that President Donald Trump may have delivered his closing campaign message at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool because he is trying to lose — quipping, during a panel with co-hosts Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough, that the president could hold a financial interest in a huge Republican defeat.

Scarborough opened the segment by reading aloud a key piece of the closing argument Trump delivered to Americans on Monday afternoon.

"The pipes have been removed. The pipes have been fitted. Pipes are very important to drainage," Trump said.

Scarborough conceded that pipes are indeed important, joking, "If you look into your cross tabs" — invoking the term used for the demographic breakdowns examined in political polling.

"He's not wrong! And that's the thing. That's a problem with the libs on TV," Scarborough joked. "He's not wrong. Pipes are important. Pipes are important."

"I love pipes," Lemire conceded — before raising a sharper question. "I want to know if, perhaps, we should look to see if there's a suspicious Polymarket bet today on Democrats winning. Maybe that came from President Trump because of this closing argument, as one Republican told me yesterday. At least it wasn't about John Husted."

Polymarket is a prediction market platform where users wager on the outcomes of real-world events. Platforms like it have become a recurring reference point in election-cycle coverage — close enough to political news that a cable host can float a "suspicious bet" as a plausible storyline on live morning television. Over the past two years, large and suspicious transactions on prediction markets have left conspiracy theorists wondering whether someone in Trump's family placed bets based on insider knowledge. In related coverage, NBC News reported that a teleprompter operator was ordered to pay $172,000 over prediction bets placed on Kalshi, another platform of the same kind. The case is a reminder that election-adjacent wagers can carry real financial consequences — and a reason any anomalous trade that surfaces on Election Day would draw close scrutiny.

Former Republican political strategist Mark McKinnon, a producer of the Showtime series "The Circus," said that if he were cutting an advertisement for Democrats, it would feature an AI video of Trump rambling incoherently about pipes at the Reflecting Pool.

"And Republicans will say this. My sourcing is from Republicans, because Democrats are like, what? We could win this big?" said Scarborough. "The Republicans just are beyond themselves. It's not just been this week, it's not just been this month. It's not just been the past three months. What's he been doing? Everything he has done has been to hurt Republicans. He's on the wrong side of every 90/10 issue."

Scarborough cited the war, artificial intelligence, tariffs, and slashed healthcare benefits among the issues on which he argued Trump had hurt his own party — the "90/10" shorthand political strategists use for issues where roughly nine in ten voters line up on the same side.

"This proves that there's nobody in the White House — not that we needed proof — that can stand up to Donald Trump, because no one other than Donald Trump thinks it was a good idea to talk about the Reflecting Pool," McKinnon said. "And by the way, on the AI stuff and the data centers, Joe, this is so contrary to his fundamental message of Making America Great Again."

The full segment is available on YouTube.