Calling Donald Trump a "fascist" is Joe Scarborough's stock in trade. He works it into his spiel almost as often as he brings up the fact that he once was a Congressman.
But "fascist" apparently no longer suffices to express the depths of Joe's disdain for the Donald. On today's Morning Joe, Scarborough declared that Trump has gone "full-on Hitler." Trump's sin was vowing to root out "vermin," his term for "radical-left thugs."
Trump = Hitler? Hitler—who carried out history's greatest genocide of Jews?
Trump, the man who delivered on the failed promise of preceding presidents to move the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem? The man behind the Abraham Accords, by which several Arab states opened diplomatic relations with Israel? Trump, the man with a Jewish daughter and son-in-law, and Jewish grandchildren? That's Hitler?
Alex Christy recently looked at a year of media coverage and crowned Scarborough as the media's "King of Nazi Analogies." That didn't even count the use of "fascist." Joe's streak continues.
Surely Scarborough is aware that the scourge of antisemitism in America lies largely on the left. With the chanting on campus, on American streets -- even in the halls of Congress in the person of Rashida Tlaib -- of "From The River to The Sea," effectively a call for the destruction of the Jewish state.
That wasn't Scarborough's only verbal gaffe of the morning. He twice described--without having the guts to name--Trump's spokesman as a "fat, white, pink boy." As in, "his spokesperson is, but you know, one of these fat, white, pink boys that likes to talk tough."
Racialism and fat-shaming, Joe? Really? Imagine the outraged horror across the liberal media if Trump had described, say, a Biden aide, or an MSNBC host -- or a Biden aide who became an MSNBC host -- as a "fat, black girl." Scarborough is on the level of Trump with the taunting.
Scarborough also mocked Trump's immigrant past. In pronouncing "Drumpf," the German name of Trump's forbears before it was changed, Scarborough twice went out of his way to stress the foreign sound of it. Scarborough claimed that Trump, in speaking of immigrants "poisoning the blood of our country," was making a call for "racial purity."
But in doing so, Scarborough suppressed the remainder of Trump's statement. Here's the full version, in which Trump said of illegal immigrants:
“It’s poisoning the blood of our country. It’s so bad, and people are coming in with disease. People are coming in with every possible thing that you could have.”
In other words, Trump was speaking literally, not figuratively, about blood being poisoned by disease. But Scarborough twisted it into a call for "racial purity."
Finally, Scarborough was horrified by Trump claiming that the biggest threat to America is from internal sources. Did Joe forget this?:
"Attorney General Merrick B. Garland and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro N. Mayorkas told senators on Wednesday that the greatest domestic threat facing the United States came from what they both called “racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists. Specifically those who advocate for the superiority of the white race,” Mr. Garland told the Senate Appropriations Committee."
So, it's perfectly fine to claim that the biggest threat to the US is internal, not external -- just so long as you're not talking about those threats coming from the left!
On Morning Joe, Joe Scarborough twice speaking of Donald Trump's "fat, white, pink, boy" spokesman, and claiming that Trump has gone "full-on Hitler," was sponsored in part by Liberty Mutual, Apple, Chewy, UnitedHealthCare.
Here's the transcript.
MSNBC
Morning Joe
11/13/23
6:02 am ETJOE SCARBOROUGH: But you've always had this fascist talk coming from him. And it was just a week or two ago that the Anti-Defamation League and many others were concerned when he was talking about immigrants, quote, poisoning the blood of, of, of America. And, of course, that's again, it's just sort of a calls for racial, racial purity. Which of course I find absolutely fascinating since we are a nation of immigrants.
MIKA BRZEZINSKI: Yeah.
SCARBOROUGH: I mean, Donald Trump -- as Donald Trump himself knows, what were they called: the Drumpfs? What were they, what was his last name: Drumpf?
I think it was the Drumpfs [stretches out the 's']. The Drumps [stretches out the 's' even longer] came here from Germany when -- just having a name Drumpf [stretches out the 'f'], and being from Germany was seen as anti-American and seen as poisoning the bloodstream of Americva.
And now we're going -- we're just going full-on Hitler, talking about, talking about vermin. And of course, it's so interesting. I, I don't know who his spokesperson is, but you know, one of these fat, white, pink boys that likes to talk tough. He goes, oh, it's just, they're triggered. They're triggered. Uses, they will be crushed. Their lives will be crushed.
So, you have a bunch of weak people, a bunch of fat, white, pink boys. A bunch of phony populists, that are going around talking tough and unfortunately, making threats that we, those of us who love democracy, those of us who actually believe in the American experiment all these years later, have to be worried about.
MIKA: Yeah.
SCARBOROUGH: And you look again. You look at the language of Donald Trump. You look at what Donald Trump says he's going to do. And you go back to, to Maya Angelou's saying, that when somebody tells you who they are, believe them the first time. We have to believe him. And we also have to believe that this is the most important election probably since 1864.
MIKA: We try to either call him out on the lies that he puts out there, or not cover just frivolous stuff that he says that is lies. But in this case, you have to look. Amid a rise in antisemitism across the United States, Donald Trump echoed the dangerous language of infamous fascist leaders in a social media post on Saturday, Veterans Day. And then again at a rally later in the day, Trump vowed to root out the, quote, vermin within the country. Take a look.
DONALD TRUMP: In honor of our great veterans on Veterans Day, we pledge to you that we will root out the Communist, Marxist, fascist and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country, that lie and steal and cheat on elections. The threat from outside forces is far less sinister, dangerous and grave than the threat from within.
SCARBOROUGH: It, it, it's really unbelievable what he says.
