Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski joined the chorus of hardcore anti-Trumpers arguing against reaching out and understanding Trump supporters.
On Tuesday’s episode of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” Joe Scarborough said that he was more interested in discovering why Trump supporters were so comfortable with voting for an “autocrat.”
“We can sit and try to figure out, Mika, why people feel the way they feel. I’m more concerned on why they’re as comfortable as they were with an autocrat,” said Scarborough.
“I am, too,” said Mika.
“With somebody who said that they — that, that he wanted his attorney general to arrest his political opponent in the last two weeks of the campaign, who would not guarantee a peaceful transfer,” added Scarborough.
When Brzezinski asserted the tired argument that President Trump helped put “kids in cages,” Scarborough said that journalists should not focus their time going around the country to figure out Trump supporters.
“I don’t know that journalists that have been cloistered in New York City and Washington, D.C., should run around America trying to figure out why people feel the way they feel,” he said. “I think people have told us through two elections. And especially this last election, I think there’s a political sickness in this country that there are anti-democratic, post-democratic instincts that, as Anne Applebaum has written about, we’ve seen in Hungary, we’ve seen in Poland, and sadly we’ve seen it in this country as well. I think it’s our responsibility to figure out why that happened.”
Scarborough then said that his friends and family who supported Trump have never been able to provide him a good enough answer for their support.
“I don’t really care what people tell me, because I’ve talked to my friends and my family members. They don’t have a good answer as to why they’re supporting Donald Trump,” he said. “They really don’t. They just sort of mumble around and say, ‘Oh, you know, I don’t like him. I hate him. He’s a horrible human being, but you know, he’s our guy.’ [It’s] really, they’re — again, I — nobody has really given a compelling, cogent reason that’s based on verifiable facts.”
In the wake of the election, some Trump opponents have taken the opportunity to threaten his supporters with harsh, draconian punishment no different than a McCarthyite blacklist. The sentiment apparently started when Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) called for an archive of “Trump sycophants.”
“Is anyone archiving these Trump sycophants for when they try to downplay or deny their complicity in the future? I foresee a decent probability of many deleted Tweets, writings, photos in the future,” she tweeted.
Other prominent leftists agree that Trump supporters should be shamed and pushed aside.
“If you’re a Trumper I hope the pain and anxiety you feel now is excruciating. You voted against America and for a cult leader who has no redeeming or admirable qualities. He’s a cretin who cares nothing about this country and you don’t either. You deserve all the pain and more,” tweeted former MSNBC host Toure.