To watch Donald Trump respond this week to a looming indictment from the Manhattan DA has been to watch a man “devolving,” one who’s “completely out of control” and one who’s “melting down,” “Morning Joe” co-host Joe Scarborough said Friday.
“This is a guy who’s shakin’ in his boots,” he said of the former president.
“Morning Joe” spent a portion of its program Friday responding to Trump’s late-night Truth Social post in which he threatened “potential death and destruction” were an indictment to come down from Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg, with panelists Rev. Al Sharpton saying Trump appears “scared to death,” Jonathan Lemire saying he’s becoming “more dangerous,” and co-host Mika Brzezinski noting that the embattled politician’s behavior is “not surprising.”
The ongoing scrutiny surrounding Trump’s alleged hush-money payments to adult film actress Stormy Daniels using campaign funds in 2016 led to many expecting that the Manhattan DA was going to meet and conclude its opinion this week. Trump said on Saturday that he expected to be arrested as early as Tuesday.
Shortly after midnight on Friday, Trump took to his Truth Social account to once again rail against the investigation and its lead investigator.
“What kind of person can charge another person, in this case a former President of the United States, who got more votes than any sitting President in history, and leading candidate (by far!) for the Republican Party nomination, with a Crime, when it is known by all that NO Crime has been committed, & also known that potential death & destruction in such a false charge could be catastrophic for our Country?,” Trump wrote. “Why & who would do such a thing? Only a degenerate psychopath that truely hates the USA!”
The former president additionally shared an image of himself holding a baseball bat next to Bragg’s head.
“I could tell ya, at least when I was a lawyer in northwest Florida, if you did that, held that baseball bat up and put it on social media, if there were social media back then, and there was a split screen with a prosecutor, I mean, you could expect a knock on your door,” Scarborough said Friday. “That is threatening violence against a prosecutor and trying to get other people to commit acts of violence against a prosecutor.”
“This is a guy who’s shakin’ in his boots,” Scarborough continued. “Of course, he’s threatening the lives of other people, but you read these tweets or whatever you call it on that failing platform, and this is a guy who, he’s out of his mind scared. He’s melting down. And now he’s threatening riots that will lead to ‘death and destruction’ if he gets charged with a misdemeanor.”
Reflecting more widely on the week at large, which has also featured reports that behind closed doors, Trump was making light of the situation and hoping to make his indictment a media spectacle, Scarborough concluded that the latest late-night rant shows “how quickly this is devolving for a man who’s completely out of control.”
“He’s melted down,” Scarborough said. “We go from a lower-third that says, ‘Trump Threatens DA With Violent Imagery,’ to now, ‘Trump Threatens DA With Death and Destruction’ – again, using his own words. He’s now threatening a DA with death a destruction.”
Brzezinski closes out the clip by saying that the only thing “shocking” about the situation is the response from the Republican Party at large.
“This is a moment for Republicans in Congress to step up. This is where Trumpers who support Donald Trump, who are still in leadership positions who are afraid of their base, need to say, ‘You know what? This is the line.’ And they never draw the line,” Brzezinski said. “This is no surprise that Donald Trump is acting this way, amplifying violent imagery. He suggested that Second Amendment people could act against Hillary Clinton. Remember Charlottesville? This is the beginning of his presidency. He said there were very fine people among a group of violent white nationalists. He blamed the media the day after pipe bombs were sent to Democrats that he had attacked, and of course, he praised the Jan. 6 insurrectionists. So it’s not surprising, his behavior. What’s surprising to me is that Republicans in Congress and media entities continue to promulgate this, or allow it to happen without reporting on it.”
Watch the full “Morning Joe” segment in the video above.