Morning Joe’s Joe Scarborough launched an angry tirade Wednesday against Republicans and The Wall Street Journal for turning a blind eye to former President Donald Trump’s “fascist” threats.
Scarborough, a former Republican member of Congress, pointed to The New York Times interviews with Trump’s former chief of staff, John Kelly. said in a story published Tuesday that Trump met the definition of a “fascist,” would rule as a dictator and had no idea of the Constitution or the rule of law.
The MSNBC host was exceptionally hostile to The Wall Street Journal, whose The editors wrote this in an opinion piece on Sunday that the American people didn’t buy the so-called “fascist meme,” which the Journal said was just a Democratic attack.
“Two days after he said that, a general who was Donald Trump’s longest-serving chief of staff said, yes, he’s a fascist,” Scarborough noted. “Wall Street Opinion Page might want to take another look at this spot.”
Scarborough also complained about the “grotesque groveling and rationalization of a man who promises in his words to become an autocrat.”
Morning Joe’s Joe Scarborough (center) launched an angry tirade Wednesday against Republicans and The Wall Street Journal for turning a blind eye to former President Donald Trump’s “fascist” threats
Trump turned heads when he told Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo earlier this month that he would deploy the U.S. military against “the enemy within.”
Vice President Kamala Harris and other Democrats interpreted this as a sign that Trump would use military force against his political enemies.
Harris even played the clip at a large gathering in Erie, saying it proved the 78-year-old had become even more “unstable and unhinged.”
Scarborough offered a similar interpretation, saying the WSJ targeted Trump despite calling prominent Democrats, including Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi and Rep. Adam Schiff, who will most likely be elected to the U.S. Senate, as “enemies.”
The WSJ justified these comments by announcing Trump’s walk-back, that in an interview with the newspaper, “after some small talk, the Republican candidate made it clear that he was talking about destructive riots.”
The Journal also argued that Trump’s “worst effort to expand executive power — reallocating military construction to build the border wall on Monday — was small beer compared to Mr. Biden’s lawless $400 billion student loan forgiveness.” .’
Kelly, who has not endorsed Harris, confirmed earlier reporting that Trump spoke positively about Nazi leader Adolf Hitler on more than one occasion.
“He said more than once: ‘You know, Hitler did some godly things too,'” the former chief of staff told the newspaper.
Kelly said he urged the then-president to better understand history, as Hitler’s leadership of Germany led to the Holocaust and the murder of six million Jews, and between 70 and 85 million on and off the battlefield.
“First of all, you should never say that,” Kelly told Trump. “But if you knew what Hitler stood for from beginning to end, everything he did was in support of his racist, fascist life, you know, the… philosophy, so that nothing he did, you might say , was good, it certainly wasn’t done for the right reason.’
During his rant Wednesday, Scarborough pointed this out Vanity Fair had previously reported this that Ivana Trump talked to her lawyer about how Trump would give Hitler speeches at his bedside.
“Again, it just fits a pattern. And you would think, though, that at some point there would be one thing… and Hitler seems to draw a pretty good line in the sand that the Republicans wouldn’t reflexively defend him,” Scarborough said.
‘I’m sorry. It’s really just hard to comprehend,” the former Republican lawmaker said. ‘He promises every day that he will arrest his political opponents with the army. Again, it’s hard to fathom, and yet Republicans continue to ride the wave.”
At the end of the segment, Scarborough issued a warning.
“This is more than an election to see who the next president is,” Morning Joe co-host said. “This is an election to determine the future fate of what form of government we have and whether Madisonian democracy survives.”