Joe Scarborough responded Thursday to the arrest of a lieutenant in the U.S. Coast Guard, who is accused of plotting a mass domestic terror attack, by laying the blame on President Donald Trump and his vitriolic rhetoric.
The co-host of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” ― himself reportedly on a list of Democratic lawmakers and media figures researched by white supremacist Christopher Paul Hasson ― chastised Trump for using “Stalinist phrases like ‘enemies of the people’ that only tyrants have used in the past.”
It was in reference to Trump calling the New York Times “a true ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE” on Twitter Wednesday morning, following its report detailing his purported “two-year war on the investigations encircling him.”
“He writes that in the morning and in the afternoon we have this conspiracy to actually kill top Democratic lawmakers who oppose Donald Trump and journalists who dare to report the truth about Donald Trump,” said Scarborough.
“This is pretty simple. It’s all on the president’s shoulders. It’s all the president’s fault,” he added. “And he sits there with his mouth shut, for once in his life, doesn’t say anything, doesn’t tweet anything, which, of course, makes it even more on him.”
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Also on the show, Scarborough said he believed Trump knows “what actions his words will lead to and what it will encourage.”
“There were times when you talked to him and he seemed weirdly pleased that his supporters would beat up other people in the audience,” he noted. “He’d never vocalize it, but he would react in a way that way that was deeply disturbing, and we saw it.”
“At the end of the day, only tyrants use terms like ‘enemies of the people,’ and Donald Trump has proven, as I’ve said from the beginning, he’s an autocrat in training,” Scarborough added. “The only thing that has held him back has been the United States Constitution.”
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