Add Joe Scarborough to the growing list of Republicans who have grown a pair and blasted Donald Trump. In the last 48 hours, Scarborough completed his transformation from Trump’s BFF to a full-fledged member of the #NeverTrump band.
For much of the time after the Donald launched his bid to buy the presidency, Scarborough was one of his loudest cheerleaders. Slate notes that whenever Trump stopped by “Morning Joe” for much of 2015 and the first half of 2016, it was invariably a softball fest. A notable exception came in December, when Scarborough abruptly went to break when Trump wouldn’t stop ranting.
However, the scales began falling off Scarborough’s eyes in May, when Trump falsely claimed that “Morning Joe’s” ratings were on the wane. In truth, it had beaten CNN’s morning show for the seventh year in a row. Since then, he and Trump have been openly feuding, and Scarborough has been one of the few Republicans to criticize Trump’s numerous outrages. For example, watch Scarborough call for Trump to stop his ugly feud with Gold Star Muslim parents Khizr and Ghazala Khan.
Apparently the scales fell off completely when Trump suggested that gun nuts might take matters into their own hands to stop Hillary Clinton. Within hours, Scarborough rushed out with a burning op-ed that ran in Wednesday’s edition of The Washington Post. After ticking off the numerous incidents that “would have disqualified any other candidate for president,” Scarborough unloads on the Donald for his latest outrage.
“Trump and his supporters have been scrambling wildly all day to explain away the inexplicable, but they can stop wasting their time. The GOP nominee was clearly suggesting that some of the ‘Second Amendment people’ among his supporters could kill his Democratic opponent were she to be elected.”
To Scarborough, there’s only one way forward for the GOP after this–it needs to move quickly to “get this political train wreck off the tracks.” He then tells his fellow Republicans what they need to do if they want to save any face.
- The Secret Service should interview Donald Trump and ask him to explain his threatening comments.
- Paul Ryan and every Republican leader should denounce in the strongest terms their GOP nominee suggesting conservatives could find the Supreme Court more favorable to their desires if his political rival was assassinated.
- Paul Ryan and every Republican leader should revoke their endorsement of Donald Trump. At this point, what else could Trump do that would be worse than implying the positive impact of a political assassination?
- The Republican Party needs to start examining quickly their options for removing the Republican nominee.
Scarborough continued attacking on Wednesday’s edition of “Morning Joe.” Watch here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d7dTrxRDg80
When co-host Mika Brzezinski flayed Paul Ryan and other Republicans for not having the guts to reject Trump even after this latest outrage, Scarborough said that Brzezinski’s words fell on deaf ears with many Republicans because “you’re a Democrat.” His point–while Brzezinski was absolutely right, “it means nothing coming from a Democrat to these Republicans.”
Scarborough then begged the GOP to come to its senses.
“Let me say this to my Republican party. You are letting Donald Trump destroy the party. And you’ve done it from the beginning. We’ve said from the very beginning when he started blowing himself up. When Paul Ryan endorsed him, that it’s only going to get worse. And it just keeps getting worse, doesn’t it?”
The point was obvious–to a certain segment of the GOP, when a Democrat dares to call for civility, he or she is just being a partisan hack. So only Republicans have the right to criticize Republicans? What does that say about the state of civility in this country? Nothing good, from where I’m sitting.
