MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough condemned Donald Trump’s latest “fascist” remarks, and he said the former president’s rhetoric had grown so alarming that even Republican senators were pushing back.
The twice-impeached one-term president suggested he would pardon the Jan. 6 insurrectionists if he returned to the White House, and stated flatly that he had wanted former vice president Mike Pence to overturn his election loss that day, and the “Morning Joe” host said there was no doubt that Trump was an authoritarian.
“You have seen the rise of authoritarianism, and it is certainly what we all understand Donald Trump has been wanting to do for quite some time,” Scarborough said. “If you can’t win an election, steal an election, overturn an election — that’s what he was saying, talking about Mike Pence. Yeah, he actually said some things — we haven’t been playing his rallies of late, but he actually said some things that were so inflammatory that you had Republicans coming out and actually criticizing him and saying, ‘Hey, no, no, let’s take a step back, we didn’t want to overturn the election, we were just talking about having some of the votes recounted.'”
“But, again, Donald Trump is now speaking in shorthand, now saying what he really means,” Scarborough added. “He wanted a free and fair election overturned. Why? Because he didn’t win, and, again, his words have consequences. This new sort of almost fascist — I don’t know, do you say almost fascist after Jan. 6 or do you say fascist? His fascist instinct to use violence to overturn government institutions, we’re actually seeing it at Trump events where you have people asking, when do we start using guns? You are seeing it at forums. This past weekend, I believe it was, you had a Michigan Senate candidate telling people to bring guns to polling places. If they didn’t win, they needed to be locked and loaded. Basically saying, if we can’t win at the ballot box we are going to win by killing people.”
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