MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough called for punishing charges against Donald Trump supporters who stormed the U.S. Capitol to send a message to others.
The “Morning Joe” host said federal judges must impose the harshest punishments possible against the MAGA rioters who attempted to violently overturn the certification of President Joe Biden’s election win during the Jan. 6 assault because other Trump supporters are already plotting violence.
“This was a full-on riot,” Scarborough said. “This was an insurrection. If they look up the definition of conspiracy to commit sedition, it can’t line up more tightly and neatly than this. This is a riot that is meant to do one thing, at the president’s guidance, to stop the count, to stop the count of the Electoral College that was going on inside this building, and they were willing to try to beat police officers to death, to bludgeon them with American flags, to do anything they could do, including calling for the hanging of the vice president to stop this count.”
Scarborough tied that violent action to the foiled mass shooting plot in Denver, where Major League Baseball moved its All-Star Game after Georgia Republicans imposed racist voting restrictions following Trump’s loss.
“Perhaps these are just signs of more things to come,” he said. “There are many people concerned about what’s happening out of Denver, where police arrested four people and removed weapons and ammunition from a hotel room near the Denver stadium that’s set to host MLB’s All-Star Game which, of course, is controversial this year because of Donald Trump and other people on the Trump right attacking it for not being held in Atlanta, Georgia. Police feared a Las Vegas-style shooting during the game after receiving a tip from a housekeeper working at the hotel near Coors Field. The employee discovered more than a dozen weapons and more than a thousand rounds of ammunition in one of the rooms. Three men and one woman were arrested Friday night in connection to the incident and the FBI released a statement Sunday, saying it’s not aware of any direct threats to the All-Star Game and doesn’t know if Friday’s arrests were connected to the event, but they have no evidence as of yet that it is. The All-Star Game was moved from Atlanta to Denver after the uproar over Georgia’s voting law. That led Donald Trump to urge fans to, quote, boycott baseball.”