On MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” Monday morning, host Joe Scarborough, once an enthusiastic supporter of Donald Trump when he was a presidential candidate, claimed in a long rant that President Trump wants to “keep America white.”
As The Washington Examiner noted, appearing with Scarborough was Princeton professor Eddie Glaude Jr., who echoed, “You’re absolutely right.” Scarborough also targeted the Trump administration, snapping, “People around Donald Trump commit more crimes — and are incarcerated at higher rates than actually people who cross the border illegally.”
Scarborough began his rant like this, as he spoke about the southern border and Trump’s rhetoric regarding it:
Donald doesn’t like it, but 80 to 90 percent of the drugs, according to Donald’s own government, they come through those legal points of entry, 80 to 90 percent. And people like Donald Trump, Lindsey Graham, Mitch McConnell, those type of people, they commit crimes and are incarcerated at higher rates — well my God especially people around Donald Trump commit more crimes — and are incarcerated at higher rates than actually people who cross the border illegally and legal immigrants as well.
Then Scarborough turned his criticism of Trump into an attack on Trump’s supposed racism:
So, this is just a big old fat softball coming down the middle of the plate to you, to say, if we know they’re lying, if we know they’re bending the truth and the stats show that they’re lying, this is really about nothing more — it ain’t a dog whistle, it is a racist P.A. announcement that all of Trump supporters in America can listen to. “I know the facts aren’t on our side, I know we’re not going to win in the courts,” but let me just tell you, “I’m trying to keep brown people, or as I said on Twitter last week, people from Latin America, out of the United States,” because when I say, as Donald Trump, when I say “Let’s Make America Great Again,” I’m really just saying, as Donald Trump, your president, “Let’s keep America white.”
Glaude Jr. interjected, “Absolutely,”
Scarborough, on a roll, continued with his version of Trump stating further, “Majority white is what it’s all about.” Then he added, “Put that on your bumper sticker if you’re supporting Donald Trump in 2020 because that, he has proven at last, is all his presidency is about.”
Glaude Jr. agreed: “Joe, that is a huge softball, about that big, you’re absolutely right.”
Scarborough teed the ball up: “Knock it 450, go Ken Griffey on it, Junior on it. Go.”
Glaude responded:
If I could put it this way: He’s lying through his damn teeth and everybody knows it. And what’s interesting is that the machinery of government is moving on the basis of a known lie. That’s what’s so confusing about this. That there are all these folks who are complicit with the lie. So that’s the first thing. He’s lying through his teeth. The second thing, right, is that Noah [Rothman] is right, the constitutional crisis we’ve been talking about that’s on the horizon with the Trump administration is here. The co-equal branches of government are not doing their jobs; Trump has engaged in constitutional overreach and now we have to confront what the imperial presidency means for Madisonian democracy. Some of us didn’t want to confront it under Barack Obama; many didn’t want to confront it with regards to Nixon and the Bushes and then Nixon and Clintons, however the order goes, right? But it’s here now. We have to confront it.
As The Examiner noted, Media Research Center Vice President of Research Brent Baker commented, “When you can’t make a cogent argument against the threat President Trump is trying to address, you resort to the tired old slander of asserting Trump and his supporters are motivated by racism. That’s the sum total of Scarborough’s take on the border wall. As if no one who isn’t a racist could possibly want a nation with secure borders. And it’s nice that Glaude has discovered the ‘imperial presidency’ after showing no such concern during the Obama years.”
CNN reported as far back as February 2016 that even the brass at MSNBC was concerned about Scarborough’s closeness to Trump, writing:
… at NBCUniversal’s headquarters at 30 Rockefeller Center, Scarborough’s relationship with the Republican presidential frontrunner has become a subject of frustration among staff, and an increasingly problematic issue for the network’s top brass. In background discussions, NBC News and MSNBC journalists, reporters and staffers said there was widespread discomfort at the network over Scarborough’s friendship with Trump and his increasingly favorable coverage of the candidate. “People don’t like that Joe is promoting Trump,” one MSNBC insider said. Others described Scarborough’s admiration for Trump as “over the top” and “unseemly.”
Video of Scarborough’s rant below, courtesy of the Media Research Center: