The set of “Morning Joe” was without co-hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski Friday, but that didn’t stop the gang of regulars from delivering their usual outrage towards President Donald Trump.
MSNBC regular and NBC political analyst Anand Giridharadas offered his view that Republicans refuse to stand up to Donald Trump was evidence that the country was “diseased” — and yes, he also managed to crowbar in an oblique Trump- Hitler reference too.
“This is a diseased republic in which so many people agree on not speaking truth to power, in which so many people are so motivated by the protection of their careers, that they won’t do the thing that they promised themselves they would do when they were in high school and college reading about the rise of Hitler or reading about corrupt dictators in Africa and they said, ‘you know, if I’m even in a a moment like that — you think to yourself in college — I’m going to be that guy who is brave.’”
Giridharadas continued:
“We have an entire governing class on the right in which not one person, with a couple of exceptions, is willing to do this suggests to me a very diseased body politic.”
Needless to say, none of what Giridharadas said went challenged, and the conversation swiftly moved into a dryer discussion about the deficit.
This is not the first time “Morning Joe” has compared President Trump to 20th century dictators. In the past, Mao, Stalin and Pol Pot have all been mentioned as Scarborough, Brzezinski and their guests reach for more arresting comparisons.
Scarborough, however, is notoriously sensitive about comparing anyone else to these dictators. On an airing of his show earlier this month, the former GOP congressman launched into an extended diatribe against Newt Gingrich and Fox News for suggesting as much about Robert Mueller.
“When you start comparing Robert Mueller to Stalin or Hitler, you are not attacking Robert Mueller, you are attacking the United States of America, you are attacking the United States Constitution,” Scarborough thundered in a rant which came complete with a dramatic camera zoom on his face.
“I ask those leading Fox News, I ask Republicans on Capitol Hill, conservatives across America, are you really comfortable attacking law enforcement officers and personnel who were protecting your children against the next ISIS terror attack on American soil, comparing those FBI agents to Joseph Stalin, a man who killed between 25 and 40 million of his own people?”
Watch above.