Joe Scarborough Scorches GOP for ‘Letting’ Trump Pursue ‘Political Enemies’: ‘This Has to Stop!’

Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough scorched congressional Republicans on Thursday for “sitting back” and “letting” President Donald Trump pursue his “political enemies” as he warned that the “quickening” pace of vendettas was setting up a “new normal” that will come to “hurt” the party “later.”

The MSNBC host was reacting to an Oval Office press conference late Wednesday, where Trump — flanked by FBI director Kash Patel and U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi — railed against longtime adversaries Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA) and former special counsel Jack Smith, urging that both be investigated.

From the opening of Thursday’s Morning Joe, Scarborough praised Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) for standing her ground in a viral verbal throwdown with a MAGA influencer challenging her January 6 narrative on Wednesday. The host fumed that “lies” about the event had now become “truth.”

Pivoting, Scarborough unloaded on Trump for squandering the “positive” Gaza peace deal coverage by “churning up a political fight at home” while also shredding Republicans he said were “sitting back.” Marveling at Wednesday’s Oval Office presser, he went off:

Now [MAGA] want to go on, and now they want to prosecute other people who they think, ‘Oh, Joe Biden sicced on Donald Trump.’ My God! We’re going to show a clip coming up. It’s unbelievable. We’re going to show a clip of the president inside the White House with his Attorney General, FBI director, and other people standing by, just sitting there shuffling their feet while Donald Trump, president of the United States, says: ‘This person should be arrested. This person should be arrested.’

Could you imagine what – ‘Lindell TV’ – could you imagine what the far right, what the MAGA right would have done if Joe Biden had held a press conference in the Oval Office saying ‘I want these 4 or 5, you know, Republicans arrested’? They would have gone crazy!

And the question is, when are Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee
going to say something? When are the Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee going to say something? When are the far right wing podcasters going to say something? Saying, you know: ‘This is really dangerous because they’re going to come after us next. If this is the new normal in Washington D.C., we might be next.’

No! No! No! This has to stop. And here is a president. I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again. Here’s a president that had had a historic breakthrough in Middle East peace. And two days later, he’s just completely stepping on every good headline by talking about continuing to pursue political enemies. It makes no political sense for him. It’s bad for Republicans, it’s bad for Democrats, it’s bad for everybody. And yet it continues.

Rounding on Republicans once again, Scarborough kept up the heat, demanding action and that they implement “guardrails”:

Republicans need to speak up. And for God’s sake, when is the United States Supreme Court going to stop all the ambiguity so Americans can stop being like thrown to the ground and beaten up and arrested only to be released later on? By law enforcement officials going after illegal immigrants? Like, when? Like the pace is quickening and it’s quickening every day. And if Republicans don’t speak out and if the Supreme Court doesn’t do its damn job, then what we’re looking at is the new normal. And that’s a new normal that doesn’t just hurt Democrats now, it hurts Republicans later. It hurts independents. It hurts all of us. It weakens the constitution. It weakens political norms. It makes this democracy a much, much more dangerous place to live, more dangerous place to speak.

He didn’t stop, rounding again in shock at Bondi:

I mean, we’re talking about now an attorney general about now an attorney general that’s calling people that are peacefully marching terrorists, saying they’re as dangerous as MS-13.

In one final call to action, he railed:

Stop calling them the Republicans when they stop acting like Republicans. But that’s what they’re doing, they’re sitting back and they’re letting this be the new normal. And it has to stop. For everybody’s sake. Damn, this is not hard. Put up guardrails, institutional guardrails that James Madison put up that that political leaders of both parties have put up over the past 240 years.

Watch above via MSNBC.